During the height of the summer tourism season, frustrated residents in Barcelona organized protests. Some carried signs that read “tourists go home” and paraded them past restaurants packed with travelers. Others aimed water guns at diners and sprayed them while they tried to eat.
Travel experts have given a variety of reasons for why cities like Barcelona feel inundated with tourists. Cruise ships have gotten bigger, travel surged after the pandemic lockdowns, and low-cost airlines make it easier to hop from one city to the next.
Overtourism might be new, but leisure travel is thousands of years old. The ancients also liked to travel, and similar to modern tourists today, they tended to follow the same itineraries and hit the same spots. Sometimes – they even irritated the locals with their bad behavior.
Tourism in Ancient Times
The travel practices of the Augustans have lent insight as to what the ancients were like as tourists. Emperor Augustus ruled Rome from 27 B.C.E. to 14 A.D., and there is evidence of Augustan tourism in Egypt, Greece, modern-day Turkiye, and Sicily, says Loykie Lominé, an associate lecturer at The Open University in Milton Keynes, England.
“Interestingly, all those destinations are still very popular today – and the many motivations to travel have not changed either: cultural tourism, educational tourism, religious tourism, etc.,” Lominé says.
Evidence of Ancient Souvenirs
Like many tourists today, Augustan tourists wanted keepsakes of their travels. Augustan tourists didn’t exactly take home a snow globe, shot glass, or t-shirt that said, “I ate the worm.” But like modern tourists, they did like to display their worldly goods.
“We know from archaeological evidence that Augustan travelers... often purchased and kept various types of souvenirs that reflected their journeys and their personal interests,” Lominé says.
Common keepsakes included small figures or medallions dedicated to Apollo, Diana, or Jupiter, Lominé says. Travelers brought back jewelry, and Lominé says that scrolls made from parchment or papyrus were also desirable souvenirs, especially among educated tourists.
Augustan travelers also toted home items they could showcase as pieces distinct to a particular region. For example, Lominé says that travelers to Greece collected “black-figure” and “red-figure” storage jars, which were vases made with a technique unique to the region. Those who went to Egypt bought ceramics decorated with Egyptian symbols, such as lotus flowers, hieroglyphs, or depictions of deities.
Early Tourism Industry Catered to Elite
In Augustan society, only elites had the means to travel for leisure, and Lominé says there is evidence of a tourism industry catering to these tourists. He gives the example of letters from Cicero (who was a bit ahead of the Augustan era), who wrote about his villa at Tusculum as if it were a type of vacation home he regularly frequented. In later letters, Cicero wrote about a trip to what is now modern-day Turkiye and offered a type of travel log in which he described the journey and the distinctions between life in Cilicia versus Rome.
Other archeological evidence indicates there were rest stops, inns, and commercial taverns that serviced travelers who needed to rest, resupply, and tend to their horses, Lominé says
Graffiti on Egyptian Monuments
Ancient travelers weren’t always on their best behavior when they traveled. Lominé says there is archeological evidence that Roman visitors left graffiti on monuments in Egypt, including the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Less than 10 percent of men in Augustan society were able to read and write Latin, so Lominé says this meant the graffiti belonged to urban, wealthier citizens.
And what words of wisdom did these ancient travelers leave behind? They inscribed phrases like “Apollonius was here.”
“This sounds terribly modern, but it’s true!” Lominé says.
Ancient Roman Beach Resorts
Protesters in Barcelona are not the first to complain about obnoxious visitors. In Augustan times, most people could not afford a trip to Greece or Egypt. But they could get a break away from Rome and travel to the beach, where the villas and shops catered to those on a summer getaway.
Not everyone welcomed the influx of merrymakers. In his retirement, philosopher Seneca the Younger found them obnoxious and wrote in 51 A.D., “Why must I look at drunks staggering along the shore or noisy boating parties ... Who wants to listen to the squabbles of nocturnal serenaders?”
Read More: Which Ancient City Is Considered the Oldest in the World?
Signs of Tourism in Ancient Egypt
Augustan society wasn’t the first to travel, and scholars have evidence there were “sure signs of tourism” in Egypt by 1500 B.C.E.
Historians credit the Nile Valley as a main reason why ancient Egypt was a tourism hotspot. The valley provided locals with stone that enabled them to create tombs and temples as early as 2,700 B.C.E.
By 1,500 B.C.E., some sights in ancient Egypt were already one thousand years old.
Greek Festivals Attracted Ancient Tourists
Modern tourists might head to Chicago to watch the NASCAR Cup Race or attend Lollapalooza, journey to Austin for South by Southwest, or fly to Nevada for Burning Man. Similarly, some ancients journeyed to a destination not to see it or experience a new culture but to partake in a festival.
Festivals in ancient Greece, for example, attracted Greeks who had settled as far as France or Libya and wanted to return for the event.
Starting in 500 B.C.E., many Greeks considered the Isthmian festival in honor of Poseidon worth the trip. The festival included athletic events and musical competitions. There were also public recitations, peddlers, and fortune tellers.
Business Travelers of the Augustan Era
Elite travelers in Augustan society left behind evidence of their journeys, but Lominé says they weren’t the only ones to hit the road.
“There were other travelers whose journeys have not been documented in the same way,” he says. “Army officers, provincial governors, merchants, pilgrims, whose names and lives have been completely forgotten, but who have also contributed to tourism development in the Augustan society.”
Read More: Dark Tourism: Why People Travel to Sites of Death and Tragedy
Article Sources
Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:
Associate lecturer at The Open University in Milton Keynes, England. Loykie Lominé
Tourism in Augustan society. Histories of Tourism. Representation, Identity and Conflict
Travel in the Ancient World. In the Beginning 3000 -1200 B.C.
Pilgrims and pilgrimage in ancient Greece. Introduction
Emilie Lucchesi has written for some of the country's largest newspapers, including The New York Times, Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times. She holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and an MA from DePaul University. She also holds a Ph.D. in communication from the University of Illinois-Chicago with an emphasis on media framing, message construction and stigma communication. Emilie has authored three nonfiction books. Her third, "A Light in the Dark: Surviving More Than Ted Bundy," releases October 3, 2023 from Chicago Review Press and is co-authored with survivor Kathy Kleiner Rubin.
