About Itinera

Travel played a pivotal role in the shaping of the intellectual and artistic culture of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe. While capital cities such as Rome, Paris, and London served as major attractions for travelers, the increasing specialization and ease of mobility over the course of these centuries drove exploration into remote areas such as Greece, Egypt, and the Near East. Simultaneously, an interest in “national” landscapes and antiquities made infrequently trafficked local regions the focus of new forms of tourism. The ramifications of this expansion of cultural tourism during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have been the subject of recent scholarly debates since, and Itinera offers a platform through which contemporary interests may engage with these issues.

Visualizing, understanding, and generating new insights into the changing patterns and objectives for these types of travel are the primary motivators of behind Itinera. Designed to allow scholars and students to better comprehend the interconnected phenomena of mobility, object collection, and site documentation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Itinera is an map-based, interactive, digital resource that overlays and juxtaposes the movements of travelers alongside the objects of their study and their own creative output. Itinera therefore operates on between two central modelings. The “Travelers” section introduces a user of this site to the historical network in which individual agents existed, while the “Routes” and “Chronology” sections sketch the travels undertaken during their lifetimes.

This digital environment has been proactively developed to collect and present historical data within a richly and transparently -structured visual context. Itinera presents the opportunity for academics and enthusiasts alike to engage with the phenomena of cultural tourism through an innovative academic apparatus. These visualizations not only account for the pre-existing scholarship on individual tours, but more crucially, Itinera promotes user-centric inquiry into the creation of meaningful historical relationships among people, objects, and sites.