Discovering Dalmatia brings together twelve texts offering new interpretations of conceptions of the space, natural beauty, and cultural heritage of Dalmatia as a destination for educated travellers from the late seventeenth to the first half of the twentieth century. (…) It includes analyses of accounts by a wide range of travellers, from Jacob Spon, Robert Adam, Aleksander Sapieha, Ludwig Salvator, Franz Thiard de Laforest, numerous Viennese painters and Art History students, to Gertrude Bell and Bernard Berenson. (…) Before us is a book in which the “view from the outside” is considered in a critical, comparative, and contextual way. Dalmatian spaces are thus integrated once more into European spaces, in which the interest in this forgotten or unfamiliar, not to mention exotic, land first appeared during the Renaissance and Baroque periods. The interpretations of the travelogues – from manuscripts and printed books to sketches, graphical representations, pictures, and photographs – focus on the shattering of prejudices, culture shocks, and the aesthetic experiences of a generation of European intellectuals, which allow contemporary readers to understand the value of this complex space, and to understand the establishment of the cultural and natural heritage of the Croatian coastal region.
From a review by Marko Špikić
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