This chapter discusses the significance of tourism in classical antiquity. It focuses on Augustan Rome and its Empire between 44 BC and AD 69, the period between the assassination of Caesar and the end of the reign of Nero and of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. It shows that, contrary to common beliefs and assumptions, tourism existed long before the famous Grand Tour of Mediterranean Europe by English aristocrats. The sophisticated Augustan society offered everything that is commonly regarded as typically modern (not to say post-modern) in terms of tourism: museums, guide-books, seaside resorts with drunk and noisy holidaymakers at night, candle-lit dinner parties in fashionable restaurants, promiscuous hotels, unavoidable sightseeing places, spas, souvenir shops, postcards, over-talkative and boring guides, concert halls and much more besides.

Methodologically, this chapter is based upon three main types of primary sources: archaeological evidence, inscriptions and Latin literature. Most Latin authors mention facts related to travel and tourism. Their names are here given in their common English version (e.g. Virgil for Vergilius) and references are made in a conventional way, mentioning not the page or year of publication of a specific edition but the exact localisation of the text, e.g. Propertius 1, 11, 30: book 1, piece 11, line 30, making it possible to find the quoted passage in any version. Archaeological evidence concerns transport (e.g. the paved roads facilitating travel, such as the 'Queen of Roads', the Appian Way from Puteoli to Rome, by which Saint Paul came to Rome [Acts 28.13]) and accommodation, notably the inns discovered in the ashes of Pompeii and Herculaneum, whose plans are reminiscent of the European hostels of the 16th century (Bosi, 1979: 237–56; Mau, 1899; Tucker, 1910: 22). Inscriptions too are important as they give evidence in a very human way: they were made by average Augustan travellers and not by erudite people or scholars.