The 1740s
An important watershed in the history of the journey to Italy came in the 1740s, when the extraordinary archeological discoveries at Herculaneum (1738) and Pompeii (1748) added new coordinates to Italian itineraries. Up until then it had been possible to recognize the origin of travelers, and it was said, quite rightly, that the English could be distinguished from the French by the fact that the English preferred Venice, while the French had favored Rome ever since the time of Rabelais.
Around the middle of the 18th century, however, there occurred what has been called the “internationalization” of the Grand Tour , which unified the itineraries (from north to south) hinging around the epicenter constituted by the two cities. This “internationalization” represented the material aspect of a supranational concept of Europe, a typically 18th-century idea and a mark of the cosmopolitan culture that was emerging. At the same time the duration of the journey began to shorten, a sign of a reduction in the financial means available and in the willingness to devote time to it.
The presence of the English remain significant throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, and that became unassailable in the latter in particular, a “golden age” of travel which did not come to a complete end until the eve of the 19th century, when the Napoleonic storm broke over the continent. Building on its foundations in the 17th century, therefore, the “golden age” did nothing but expand the phenomenon out of all proportion, so that between 1760 and 1780 a chorus of complaints could be heard from foreigners besieged by their fellow countrymen not just in the major cities but even in the minor ones (including Pisa ,Lucca and Siena)