The Grand Tour was the principally 17th- to early 19th-century custom of a traditional trip through Europe, with Italy as a key destination, undertaken by upper-class young European men of sufficient means and rank when they had come of age. The custom—which flourished from about 1660 until the advent of large-scale rail transport in the 1840s and was associated with a standard itinerary—served as an educational rite of passage. Though it was primarily associated with the British nobility and wealthy landed gentry, similar trips were made by wealthy young men of other Protestant Northern European nations, and, from the second half of the 18th century, by some South and North Americans.
A c. 1760 painting of James Grant, John Mytton, Thomas Robinson and Thomas Wynne on the Grand Tour by Nathaniel Dance-Holland
The Grand Tourist, like Francis Basset, would become familiar with Antiquities, though this altar is an invention of the painter Pompeo Batoni, 1778.[citation needed]
Portrait of Douglas, 8th Duke of Hamilton, on his Grand Tour with his physician Dr. John Moore and the latter's son John. A view of Geneva is in the distance where they stayed for two years. Painted by Jean Preudhomme in 1774.
Northerners found the contrast between Roman ruins and modern peasants of the Roman Campagna an educational lesson in vanities[citation needed] (painting by Nicolaes Pietersz Berchem, 1661, Mauritshuis)
Tourism is travel for pleasure, and the commercial activity of providing and supporting such travel. UN Tourism defines tourism more generally, in terms which go "beyond the common perception of tourism as being limited to holiday activity only", as people "travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure and not less than 24 hours, business and other purposes". Tourism can be domestic or international, and international tourism has both incoming and outgoing implications on a country's balance of payments.
Tourists at the Temple of Apollo, Delphi, Greece
The first sunrise seen from the torii gate on the sea, which is considered a sacred place (Ōarai im Japan)
A Japanese tourist consulting a tour guide and a guide book from Akizato Ritō's Miyako meisho zue (1787)
Prince Ladislaus Sigismund of Poland visiting Gallery of Cornelis van der Geest in Brussels in 1624