cahn

I was reading Blanning, and I ran into this observation on European visitors in Italy on their Grand Tours:

They came equipped with a yardstick against which contemporary conditions were almost certain to be found wanting, namely a classical education. Most famously, the contrast between the classical past and the Christian present inspired one of the greatest historiographical and literary creations of the eighteenth century, as Edward Gibbon recorded in his Memoirs: 'It was at Rome, on the 15th of October 1764, as I sat musing amid the ruins of the capitol, while the bare-footed friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter [the Church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli], that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.'

I knew that it was a trope to go to Italy and complain, (I think selenak said women were more likely to accept current-day Italy on its own terms?), but this instance particularly struck me, since I've read (and liked) The Decline and Fall, and I didn't konw that this was how he got his inspiration.