'Beauty and convenience': British perceptions of Bologna and its portici in the age of the Grand Tour

[From first paragraph] The institution of the eighteenth-century Grand Tour has become an essential element in the conceptualisation of Anglo-Italian relations during the long eighteenth century . The British travelled to Italy, the original home of the arts and civilization, to study both classical antiquity and the artistic productions of the renaissance era, when the arts were reborn after the perceived barbarity of the medieval dark ages.