PAGAN HOLIDAY | How the ancient Romans invented tourism.
By Tony Perrottet

QUICKLY, WHEN WAS THE BIKINI INVENTED ?
Most people think the honors go to a Parisian designer in 1946, who named it after the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. But as ancient Roman mosaics show, women were wearing the skimpy two piece swimsuits back in the first century AD: Made from soft goatskin, they were the perfect garment for lounging by the beach or working out on the sands, before enjoying a bouillabaisse-like stew and a glass of chilled wine.

It’s not the only surprising fact about Roman holiday habits. Today, millions of people visit the Acropolis, sail the coast of Turkey standing in awe before the Sphinx in Egypt, without realizing that these rituals date back to the roots of Mediterranean civilization: In fact, tourism was invented in the Mediterranean 2,000 years ago, and there is nothing new under the sun.

During the Pax Romana, from 30 B.C.-200 A.D, a flourishing class of well-to-do, educated citizens lived in the great cities of the Empire – citizens who shared a common heritage, spoke both Latin and Greek fluently, and felt at home with their peers from Mérida in Spain to the shores of Palestine. With plentiful spare time and cash, these pioneer sightseers took advantage of an extraordinary interlude of world peace. Never had travel been so easy or safe:

They took journeys in merchant ships from one end of the Mediterranean to the other, sleeping under the stars with their servants and sipping Falernian wine. They enjoyed road trips along the excellent basalt highways. They could stay at roadside inns – many extremely luxurious, with their own bath houses, five-star restaurants and silk sheets on the beds. (Others hotels were more basic: Roman literature offers no shortage of complaints about rock-hard mattresses, dubious food, demented innkeepers, mosquito-filled rooms and rough company; the author Plutarch recommends that travelers should hum to themselves to drown out the drivel. And along the way, they pored over guidebooks that were written on long papyrus scrolls, visited temples that doubled as museums, picked up cheesy souvenirs from local vendors and scrawled graffiti on their favorite sites – “I was amazed” being a particular favorite phrase.

THE GRAND TOUR OF ANTIQUITY
The biggest tourist attraction of all was Rome itself, a metropolis of 1.25 million people whose grandeur outstripped anything the world had ever seen. Tourists thronged its gilded monuments, gaped at its splendid palaces and swam in its lavish baths (some as large as Notre Dame cathedral, with heated pools and dolphin motifs engraved in silver; both men and women swam naked, which gave these pagan palaces a reputation as busy pick-up venues).

They rushed to the gladiatorial combats in the Colosseum and the chariot races at the Circus Maximus. From Rome, the rest of Italy beckoned: Hiring comfortable padded wagons, they rode the superb basalt highway of the Appian Way south to the Bay of Naples, the first seaside resort, where they could lounge at fashionable beachside restaurants, take yachts out to beautiful islands like Capri and enjoy all-night drinking parties in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius. The more scientifically-minded, like the Emperor Hadrian, made sure to visit Sicily, where they could inspect the smoldering peak of Mount Etna and gaze down into the Underworld.

 

The Western half of the Empire had the allure of wealth, fine food and wine: Travelers loved to head to the spa towns of southern France to loll in the hot waters of splendidly-designed cities like Nîmes, sip the vintage wines of Gaul and devour plump olives, succulent oysters and rich cheeses. In Spain, they would seek out the dancing girls of Cadiz, which the poet Martial assures us were the sexiest in Europe. Dinner entertainment would include talented musicians and exotic courtesans wafting from table to table in translucent robes; jugglers, fire-eaters and poetry-readers would be thrown into the mix. These Western journeys ended at the edge of the Empire, where the towering Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar) loomed.

But ancient tourists were passionate history-lovers, and the Eastern half of the Empire truly captured their imaginations. Greece was heart of the Old World: Here the Gods had once romped, and legendary heroes like Hercules fought. Athens was considered the most gorgeous city on earth (and an excellent place to pick up artwork souvenirs, like marble reproduction statues);

Delphi was home to the famous oracle of Apollo; Sparta the land of great military heroes. And every four years, the lovely sanctuary of Olympia hosted the famous athletic Games – a mob sporting event, where 40,000 spectators would display violent passions that put modern soccer fans to shame. The local population made a good living from the tourist trade. Clustering around the tourist attractions were the first industry professionals: Whole populations of tour guides (called mystagogi, “those who show the sacred places to foreigners”) worked at key spots, although their spiels were not always welcome (“Jupiter protect me from your guides at Olympia,” prays one satirist, “and you Athena, from yours at Athens!”)

From Greece, it was a short hop to Troy (in modern Turkey, then the ancient province of Asia Minor), where relics of Homer’s great battle could be inspected, and the tour guides would point out the tomb of Achilles and show visitors a glass goblet that was supposedly modeled on the lovely breast of Helen of Troy. Now tourists entered the glittering coast of Turkey, and Romans loved to unwind in luxurious cities like Ephesus and Pergamum that garlanded its shores like pearls. (The coast was blessed with three of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, including the Mausoleum, the Temple of Diana and, on an island just off-shore, the Colossus of Rhodes). Continuing south, the shores the Near East offered exotic allure, with memories of ancient Persian culture suffusing the air like spices at a market. Sensual cities like Damascus and Palmyra would serve as jumping-off point to visit Petra in Jordan and the merchant city hidden within a spectacular desert crag, where gems from Arabia and silks from China were sold as bargain souvenirs and the ancient outpost of Jerusalem

With its ancient ruins and exotic culture, Egypt was a sightseer’s paradise. Guided by the giant lighthouse called the Pharos, travelers would disembark at Cleopatra’s fabled capital, Alexandria, home to the world-famous Library. (It was a popular spot, even though the Alexandrian locals were considered hard to deal with: “They worship only one god there,” a traveler complained. “Cash!”) From here, they would book wonderful river trips down the Nile: they would call in at the Pyramids (which were then covered in a sheath of limestone, and gleamed like enormous icebergs rising from the sands) and explore the hieroglyphic-covered relics of Luxor, once the capital of the all-powerful Pharaohs. All this was only the gateway to the wonders of Africa, whose Mediterranean coast was one of the wealthiest in the Empire: A traveler could sojourn in Carthage in modern Tunisia, a thriving center of learning (and birthplace of St Augustine). The intrepid could also head to the fringe of Empire, modern-day Morocco, where the Atlas Mountains were one of the natural wonders of the world.

Finally, the happy travelers would head back to their home cities – whether it be Marseilles, Smyrna, Syracuse or Rome itself – to show off their souvenirs and boast of their journeys to friends. Today, as we explore the beloved sites of the Mediterranean, we should spare a thought for those trailblazing Roman tourists, who were the guinea pigs of Western travel. Perhaps we should raise a glass to the Romans’ enthusiasm, and share a toast inscribed by a thrilled ancient sightseer, who inscribed a graffito in Egypt’s remote Valley of the Kings:

Those who have not seen this… have seen nothing. Happy those who have!

Tony Perrottet is the author of Pagan Holiday: On the Trail of Ancient Roman Tourists (which is published in the UK as Route 66 AD and Germany as In Troja ist Kein Zimmer Frei).

For more information on Roman tourism, including maps and photographs, please visit :
www.tonyperrottet.com/paganholiday