Keywords: Grand Tour, Deep Mapping, GIS
The Grand Tour is a well-known phenomenon which occurred between the XVI and the XIX century in Europe. Above all British citizens, but from other countries as well, undertook their long journey towards the southern countries of Europe for several reasons. Till now, the researches about this topic have focused on the education received by that people who decided to leave their homeland for new discoveries and why, the itineraries, the visited places, the forged relationships.
The aim of this paper is to move the attention on the feelings, emotions and impressions that travellers had visiting different places and on the possible influence their opinions had on their compatriots through letters written during the journeys and the dissemination of their travel journals once they were back home. Deep mapping is a powerful instrument to investigate such matter. Indeed, one of the aim of deep maps is the exploration of places according to their histories, the people and the relationships that were built in there.
This project is a work in progress which purpose is to create a deep map, through GIS, based on the descriptions of the Grand Tour travellers who visited South Italy and Cyprus, which can be analysed with both a quantitative and qualitative approach to investigate the ideas and feelings that specific locations used to evoke. Places are solidly tied to the identity of populations. The examination of sensations and opinions about places is a valuable starting point to achieve a deeper level of knowledge about the identity of communities and how such identities were perceived and described by foreigners.