http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/9166601

Pagan holiday : on the trail of ancient Roman tourists

"The ancient Romans were responsible for many remarkable achievements - Roman numerals, straight roads - but one of their lesser-known contributions was the creation of the tourist industry. The first society in history to enjoy safe and easy travel, Romans embarked in droves on the original Grand Tour, traveling from the lost city of Troy to the top of the Acropolis in Athens, from the fallen Colossus at Rhodes to the Pyramids of Egypt, ending with the obligatory Nile cruise to the very edge of the Empire. And as travel writer Tony Perrottet discovers, the popularity of this route has only increased with time." "Perrottet first discovered the origins of this ancient itinerary when he came across the world's oldest surviving guidebook in the New York Public Library. Intrigued by the possibility of re-creating the tour, and wanting to seize the opportunity for one last excursion with Les, his pregnant girlfriend, before their lives changed forever, Perrottet set off to rediscover life as an ancient Roman. He was armed for travel with only the essentials - a backpack full of ancient texts and a second-century highway map reproduced on a twenty-foot-long scroll. As he retraced the historic route, fighting the crowds and reading aloud to Les two-thousand-year-old descriptions of bad food, inadequate accommodations, and pushy tour guides, it became clear to him that tourism has actually changed very little since Caesar's day."--Jacket.

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