The ‘Grand Tour’: What are the origins of Modern Eurocentric travel

And how it still influences tourism as we know it

Colonial Era World Map: The New York Public Library

Long before the era of the digital nomad and budget flights, there was something called the Grand Tour.

If you were a wealthy European aristocrat in the 17th and 18th centuries, your education wasn’t considered complete until you had spent a year or two gallivanting across the continent in a private carriage. The goal was to soak up the Renaissance, learn French, master the art of fencing, and return home with a trunk full of memories. The memories of a now highly cultivated worldly persona.

But looking closely at the DNA of the Grand Tour, we see that the event wasn’t supposed to be just an educational trip, as Bridgerton and other shows paint it to be. It was the blueprint for the Eurocentric power dynamics that still define how we travel across the globe today.

The “Elite” Itinerary

Travel to China in the 18th Century: The British Library

The Grand Tour was the ultimate status symbol. If you could afford it, that meant you were someone worth paying attention to. It was inaccessible to the lower classes and by design, so they were excluded from the “elite”. 

To participate, you needed serious capital to invest in a horse (or two), a carriage, and a small army of servants to help you all the way. The itinerary was also mostly inflexible and focused in Paris, Rome, Venice, and Florence, at the time considered the “cradle of Western civilization”. And, potentially in an attempt to validate the trip as actually educational, you had to take a chaperone (officially, a tutor) with you, to ensure one was studying Cicero and not gambling and drinking the night away.

This created a specific narrative: that travel is a tool for self-improvement and social signaling. Fast-forwarding to today, while we’ve swapped oil painting for Instagram reels, the underlying flex remains the same: The uninhibited traveler is still a figure of immense privilege.

From The Grand Tour to Colonial Expedition

While the Grand Tour stayed within European borders, the mindset it cultivated didn't. As European empires expanded, the exploration of the continent and the absorption of Western-centric history and culture culminated in the "discovery" of the colonies.

This is where the hierarchy shifted from class to geopolitics. When those same aristocrats (and eventually the rising middle class) traveled to the Global South, they weren't interested in learning local philosophy or languages as equals. They were there to see more of a land they deemed as “exotic”, to conquer lands they saw as ‘empty’ under the guise of converting local peoples to Christianity, to show them the correct path. 

The Rise of Commercial Tourism 

Tourism in Cappadocia, Turkey: By Mesut Kaya

This was also known as the colonial gaze (if you have time, give Edward Said's classic Orientalism a read), which eventually became the tourist gaze. The process didn’t happen overnight, but with globalisation, there’s been a rise in tourists from all classes in the West travelling to what’s now considered the ‘global South.’ 

Domestic travel in industrialised countries, including the UK and the US, became more popular as the working class also sought a little escapism from the bleak factory cities. But it wasn’t until air travel became more affordable in the 70s that the masses really started travelling around the world. 

From there, the ‘tourist gaze’ continued the imagination of the Grand Tour (without the French classes). Working-class Brits could now go on safari to see the exotic animals of the Serengeti, as aristocrats used to; the average European could find them on a boat sailing to the Caribbean to indulge in its exotic beaches, as colonial officers used to on pit stops between their explorations.  

So now you see how we got here…

The ghost of the Grand Tour still haunts our travels and lives on in our habits. We see it in:

• Passport privilege: How Westerners can explore the Global South with ease, being welcome expats, while the reverse is often a bureaucratic nightmare for unwelcome immigrants (yes, we’ve talked about this recently here)

• The Eurocentric lens: The way non-Western cultures are still treated by many as a backdrop for spiritual awakenings or cultural discovery, often commodifying local traditions for a punchy Instagram caption, while silently judging the living conditions of people in other countries. 

• Decolonisation as a trend: Modern travelers often go through experiences in developing nations to build a brand of being "woke" or adventurous.

The Bottom Line / The Colonial Legacy Lives on in Tourism 

The Grand Tour paved the way for Westerners to view the world as a gallery meant to be curated and consumed. While travel is one of the most beautiful ways to connect, we have to ask ourselves: Are we visiting a place to learn from it, better understand our fellow humans, and exchange our cultures on equal footing, or are we just following a 300-year-old map of privilege?

If done with reciprocity in mind, tourism can be about building a deeper understanding, respect, and genuine interest in learning about our world, while honoring local communities, their cultures, and their autonomy. It can be a positively transformative experience, but that doesn’t have to be at the expense of local people and the environment. 

It’s up to us to find better ways to enjoy travelling.