To be a tourist is one of the characteristics of the “modern” experience. Not to “go away” is like not
possessing a car or a nice house. It is a marker of status in modern societies and is also thought to be necessary to
health. 47 In Imperial Rome, for example, a fairly extensive pattern of travel for pleasure and culture existed for
the elite.
In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, pilgrimages had become a widespread phenomenon practicable and
systematized, served by a growing industry of networks of charitable hospices and mass-produced indulgence
handbooks. Such pilgrimages often included a mixture of religious devotion and culture and pleasure. The Grand
Tour had become firmly established by the end of the seventeenth century for the sons of the aristocracy and the
gentry, and by the late eighteenth century for the sons of the professional middle class. 48 There was a
visualization of the travel experience, or the development of the gaze, aided and assisted by the growth of
guidebooks which promoted new ways of seeing.
The eighteenth century had also seen the development of a considerable tourist infrastructure in the form of
spa towns throughout much of Europe. The whole apparatus of spa life was designed to provide a concentrated
urban experience of frenetic socializing for a dispersed rural elite. 49 In the countryside work and play were
particularly intertwined in the case of fairs. People would often travel considerable distances and the fairs always
involved a mixture of business and pleasure normally centered around the tavern. But before the nineteenth
century few people outside the upper classes traveled anywhere to see objects for reasons unconnected with work
or business. 50 Travel is now thought to occupy 40 percent of available “free time.” It is a crucial element of
modern life to feel that travel and holidays are necessary. 【題組】48 (A)And it is this which is the central characteristic of mass tourism in modern societies.
(B)There have always been periods in which much of the mass of the population have engaged in play or
recreation.
(C)Over this period, treaties on travel shifted from a scholastic emphasis on touring as an opportunity for
discourse, to travel as an eyewitness observation.
(D)Travel was considered an essential part of education, which led to the emergence of travel writing.