Grand Tour, a journey of discovery to Italy, often lasting a year or more taken by young noblemen to complete their education which had been based on the classics. By the 1720s the Grand Tour had become a rite of passage, not unlike today’s gap year.

Italy was widely viewed as the place to admire (and often acquire) the finest art of all periods. 

Grand Tourists commissioned portraits and viewed paintings from leading artists and collected antiquities and reproductions of famous works. These souvenirs of the Grand Tour – the experience of a lifetime – were prominently displayed in country houses in Britain and Ireland on their return.