The overall aim of the Grand Tour Dalmatia project was to research records of space in pictures and words, to analyse the position of Dalmatia between the western and eastern itineraries of the Grand Tour, to provide a more nuanced cultural portrayal of Dalmatia of that period, and to create greater insight into the influence of the region on the development of European Neoclassicism and Romanticism.

Over the course of the three-year project (2014–17), we explored the potential of computational and visual methods for analysing travelogues on Dalmatia, which were never before collected. Although our first intention was the collection of literal and visual records of Dalmatia as a destination of European Grand Tour in the eighteenth and the nineteenth century, very soon we realized that a computational approach can provide an opportunity to develop research methodologies, particularly in terms of contextualization and comparison of data. The result is establishment of the chrono-geographical database of the history of the Grand Tourism in Dalmatia in the eighteenth and the nineteenth century.

Creation and development of the database is an interdisciplinary effort which encompasses three processes: research, design and programming. The aim is to transform the collected data into a more useful set of information, so that it could represent more than just a collection. The chrono-geographical database is thus a research tool which enables a new methodological approach.

The selection of the spatial and temporal criteria enables a number of possibilities for the classification and comparison of travelogues, which offer new research adventures.

By expanding its spatial and temporal frame, it can continue to grow.

This potential is now being further developed within the framework of the new project, TraveloguesDalmatia. The focus of the foundational project has shifted from examining how travel narratives depict the region of Dalmatia and their influence on the development of European Neoclassicism and Romanticism in literature, art, and architecture, to investigating the role of travel narratives in shaping the “Dalmatian artistic heritage” in modern Europe. In particular, it examines the interaction between the cultural and artistic representation of Dalmatia and travel narratives recorded in various media. The chronological scope has been broadened from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to encompass the publication of the earliest essential travelogues at the end of the seventeenth century—those that later travellers, investigating Dalmatia’s artistic heritage in the eighteenth century, would subsequently reference—all the way up to travel accounts of journeys through Dalmatia prior to the Second World War.

More precisely, the temporal framework of the research extends from c. 1675 to c. 1941, symbolically delineated by several key travelogues. The period opens with the works of Jacob Spon and George Wheler, whose accounts of travelling through Dalmatia together in 1675 offer two perspectives on the same region. These were the first essential travelogues upon which travellers in the following century would draw as they discovered, evaluated, and presented Dalmatia’s artistic heritage to the European scholarly, cultural, and artistic public. The period under investigation concludes with the publication of Rebecca West’s 1941 travelogue, which arguably offers the most significant perspective on Dalmatia’s artistic heritage immediately prior to the outbreak of the Second World War.

The research period marks a phase of modernisation in modes of travel, brought about by the nineteenth-century Industrial Revolution. Dalmatia, as a borderland, followed these changes at a slower pace, further piquing the interest of travellers. Politically, Dalmatia underwent multiple transformations during this time: initially part of the Venetian Republic, which expanded eastwards on several occasions and thus helped define Dalmatia’s modern boundaries; then subjected to the revolutionary upheavals of the early nineteenth century, wherein abrupt changes of rule (between Austria and France) were eventually stabilised under a prolonged period of Austrian administration.

Following a century within the Habsburg Empire, Dalmatia became a matter of dispute between the Kingdom of Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, calling into question its territorial integrity. During the interwar period, modernisation processes continued slowly, while complex political circumstances and unitarist tendencies cast a critical light on the Dalmatian cultural identity inherited from earlier eras. In this dynamic period, travellers consistently observed Dalmatia’s enduring artistic heritage from an external vantage, recording their impressions and disseminating them throughout Europe. When examined comparatively, their travel narratives—varying in genre and medium—serve as reliable sources for understanding the representation of Dalmatia’s artistic heritage in modern Europe.

The database is based on the ‘author – place – travelogue’ relation. It comprises books, images, photographs, essays and letters created as a result of the direct experience of a place (Dalmatia), from the perspective of the author (traveler).

Over the course of the project, a typological classification of travel narratives will be developed, and in parallel, the travelogues themselves will be categorised within the project database.

 

Chronogeographical database concept: Damir Gamulin, Ana Šverko

Database design: Damir Gamulin

Database development: Bruno Babić

Data collection: Mateo Bratanić, Irena Kraševac, Iva Raič Stojanović, Katrina O’Loughlin, Jure Roić, Ana Šverko, Ivana Vlaić, Elke Katharina Wittich