The Cultural and Political Impact of Visits to Sicily based on British Grand Tour Accounts (xvii-xix centuries)

With the growing popularity of the Grand Tour, British aristocrats visited parts of Continental Europe, and this fostered research on cultural transfers between Britain and Italy, and on British texts on this matter, particularly those referred to the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Italy, indeed, was amongst the most popular choices. The reason for this was the opportunity to study ancient architecture and local culture, and to promote interaction between artists, writers, or lovers of disciplines including the visual arts, geography, history and literature. To testify to this fascinating phenomenon in the history of western civilization, there are many monographs on the Grand Tour, as well as a substantial number of interesting sources because most archetypal Grand Tourists wrote a travel diary; at the same time, collections of private letters were written to family and friends by a variety of people, who give personal accounts of their particular experiences. While the Mediterranean is claimed to be the ancient cradle of western civilization, few places in the world have seen empire after empire rise and fall the way Sicily has through the ages, and, with its distinct cultural flair, Sicily epitomized the heart of the Mediterranean, steeped in its own culture and history of ancient civilizations. In this context, there had been British travellers to this Mediterranean island for centuries, anxious to visit a region whose contemporary culture was as impressive as its past. This paper aims to explore the conceptualization, and the cultural significance of visiting Sicily between the XVIII and XIX centuries, when the British upper class toured the Mediterranean by sea, and to extend the research to discover political goals and purposes. From a vast quantity of writings, a branch of literature, journals and periodicals, could provide useful insights into British travellers’ political, and even military, interest in Sicily. In particular, an early nineteenth century account, a travel diary published by The Royal Military Chronicle, which first appeared in 1810, represents an interesting source that deserves to be mentioned as a real mirror of an era.