This chapter attempts to provide comprehensive information about Ruskin’s place in the history of British cultural tourism, and to answer the questions of where, when and how he did the travelling on which his culture criticism and guidebooks are based.

Historical Contexts

The European history of cultural tourism, in search of famous, preimagined sites, has religious origins, dating from the classical world of Greece and Rome as mapped in Homeric geography, where travellers made for such sacred centres as Delphi and Dodona seeking inspiration and guidance or to witness and participate in major ritualistic sporting events (Sigaux, 1966: 9–14). Medieval pilgrimage was directed to the Holy City of Jerusalem, once seen as lying at the centre of the world, which was the dominant destination from the 11th century until Catholic Rome began to establish itself from 1300, the first Holy Year, as the leading pilgrimage centre in Europe, while the shrine of St James of Compostella in northern Spain achieved a separate popularity. In the Renaissance, humanist learning and then other motivations entered in, as Nicholas T. Parsons writes in his history of the guidebook, Worth the Detour: