The Early Tourists’ Guide to Italy

The top destination of Late Renaissance travellers who followed the itineraries of the Grand Tour was Italy. And many of these Early Tourists described and captured it splendidly in their travel diaries.
This guide is the result of the compilation of these very chronicles into one single, comprehensive, and fascinating narrative, often told in the first person, in which all comments and observations – precursors to our modern reviews, yet still so true and reliable almost five centuries later – have been presented as much as possible in their original version.
Given this widespread interest to visit Italy at the turn of the seventeenth century, it is not surprising that it would also be the favourite foreign setting chosen by Shakespeare, Jonson, and other playwrights of the time. What is puzzling, however, is that many details contained in their works match exactly the Early Tourists’ reports, even though none of the authors had ever set foot in Italy.
The first volume of the series is dedicated to Vicenza, since it is in this very city that, in 1600, a Flemish jurist and a Dominican friar published the first guide to Italy. Moreover, the Vicentine territories were home to Luigi da Porto, the author of the novella La Giulietta, the original source from which Shakespeare drew inspiration to write the most famous romantic tragedy of all time.