History
Antiquity
Travel outside a person's local area for leisure was largely confined to wealthy classes, who at
times travelled to distant parts of the world, to see great buildings and works of art, learn new
languages, experience new cultures, enjoy pristine nature and to taste different cuisines. As early
as Shulgi, however, kings praised themselves for protecting roads and building way stations for
travellers. Travelling for pleasure can be seen in Egypt as early on as 1500 BC. During the
Roman Republic, spas and coastal resorts such as Baiae were popular among the rich. The
Roman upper class used to spend their free time on land or at sea and travelled to their villa
urbana or villa maritima. Numerous villas were located in Campania, around Rome and in the
northern part of the Adriatic as in Barcola near Trieste. Pausanias wrote his Description of
Greece in the second century AD. In ancient China, nobles sometimes made a point of visiting
Mount Tai and, on occasion, all five Sacred Mountains.
Middle Ages
By the Middle Ages, Christianity and Buddhism and Islam had traditions of pilgrimage.
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Wu Cheng'en's Journey to the West remain classics of English
and Chinese literature.
The 10th- to 13th-century Song dynasty also saw secular travel writers such as Su Shi (11th
century) and Fan Chengda (12th century) become popular in China. Under the Ming, Xu Xiake
continued the practice. In medieval Italy, Francesco Petrarch also wrote an allegorical account of
his 1336 ascent of Mount Ventoux that praised the act of travelling and criticized frigida
incuriositas ('cold lack of curiosity'). The Burgundian poet Michault Taillevent later composed
his own horrified recollections of a 1430 trip through the Jura Mountains.
