history of tour guiding in middle age

History of Tour Guiding

History of Tour Guiding

Tour guiding is considered as one of the oldest occupations/professions of the west. The evolution of tour guides and the guiding history was classified by Pond (1993) into four periods:

First phase (3000 B.C. to A.D.500)

There are a number of references in history from the Roman Empire to the Middle Age, throughout the renaissance and into the Modern Age. Tourism saw the first major development during the period of the great empires. During this period, travelling was risky, uncertain and time taking.

Also read Tour Guiding in a museum

The ancient Persians, Assyrians and Egyptians used to travel through surface (land) and the waterways. This activity spread and so did the number of guides, they were known as ‘explainers’ or ‘leaders around’ (as they lead the group), who mainly assisted visitors travelling abroad.

Second phase (A. D.500 to A. D.1500) 

The second phase is in the period between the fall of Rome and the start of Renaissance known as the Middle Age and for approximately 1000 years from A. D. 500 to 1500. Religious pilgrimage was the most prevalent type of journey by the middle and the upper classes.

The fall of Rome resulted in the decline of the economy and chaos in the social order. The safety and security of the travellers came as a serious concern; therefore the guides had to serve as a pathfinder , safety escort and protector .

Third phase (A.D.1500 to around 1700) 

The third phase covered the period of the Renaissance and the Grand Tour, approximately A.D.1500 to around 1700. During the period of renaissance, excursions were taken by the youth of prosperous families who were also called ‘Grand Tourists’ for cultural and educational reasons.

These people (tourists) were expected to enrich their knowledge through long journeys while being accompanied by a guide who gave them information about tourist’s places to sightsee, guides in this period came to be known as ‘cicerone’ .

The word cicerone derives from Cicero, the most esteemed tour guide in the European society. The guide was expected to be well versed in many practical subjects, areas, be articulate and be multi-lingual. 

Fourth Stage (post 1700)

Mr. Jan Carlzon (the former president of Scandinavian Airlines) termed the exact instant when the customer (here tourists) has a direct contact with any of the front-line employees/ staff as the ‘moment of truth’ . This idea has had a marked influence on the service industry (tourism and travel is a part of the service industry) and is now globally accepted (Pond, 1993).

Also read Walking Tour

Once the tourist arrives at the tourist destination, the tour guide becomes responsible throughout the tour as they are in regular touch with the tourist or traveller. 

A tour guide’s job is physically and virtually demanding. (www.aitt.asn.au) (http://www.123helpme.com/brief-history-of-tour-guide-preview.asp?id=259328 accessed on 29 th Jan.’2017 and Works Cited Principles and ethics of Tour

Phases in Tour Guiding

First Phase (3000 B.C. to A.D.500)

Second Phase (A. D.500 to A. D.1500)

Third Phase (A.D.1500 to around 1700) Fourth Phase (post 1700)

Also read Present status of Tour Guides

  Tour Guiding 

A Tour Guide is a person employed to show the tourist around places of interest. The Activity of guiding tourists during a tour is known as tour guiding. Tour guiding is ancient activity. 

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How Was Tour Guiding During the Ancient Times?

Tour guiding is a profession that has been around for centuries. In ancient times, however, tour guiding was quite different from the way we know it today. Tour guides were not just responsible for showing visitors around a city or a historical site, but also for educating them about the culture and customs of the place they were visiting.

Ancient Egypt: In ancient Egypt, tour guides were known as “singers of tales.” These individuals would recite stories and myths associated with temples and other religious sites. They were highly respected and often held positions of great importance in society.

Ancient Greece: Tour guiding in ancient Greece was also quite different from what we know today. Guides would lead visitors to important sites such as the Parthenon or the Oracle at Delphi. They would also provide information on the history and significance of these sites.

Rome: In Rome, tour guides were referred to as “cicerones.” These individuals would show visitors around the city’s many monuments and landmarks, including the Colosseum and the Pantheon. They were often well-educated and knowledgeable about art, architecture, and history.

The Middle Ages: During the Middle Ages, tour guiding became more focused on religious sites such as cathedrals and monasteries. Guides would provide information on the various saints and religious figures associated with these places.

The Renaissance: With the advent of the Renaissance came a renewed interest in classical art and architecture. Guides during this time period would often focus on leading visitors to important works of art such as Michelangelo’s David or Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.

Today, tour guiding has become a highly specialized profession with individuals specializing in everything from adventure tourism to culinary tours. However, it is important to remember that without these early pioneers of tour guiding, we may not have had such a rich understanding of our cultural heritage.

Conclusion:

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"The Tour Guide in the Middle Ages: Guide Culture and the Mediation of Public Art," Art Bulletin 100 (2018) 36-67.

One of the great premises of medieval popular religion was the localization of the holy, the essential principle of the pilgrimage. At the same time, there was a widespread equation between excessive art and holiness. One result of these complementary dynamics was that many pilgrims felt that the localization of the holy was indicated by an elevated artistic environment, an attitude that was used at times by religious institutions at some holy sites to meet the expectations of some great experience on the part of the tens and even hundreds of thousands of visitors who are recorded as having annually visited these places. At the high point of the pilgrimage (11th-12th centuries), almost all of these pilgrims had no or only very little formal education. And so the question arises, given the important role of art in the lived experience, how was this often complex form of visual media negotiated in this unique intersection of high culture and the non-elite in actual practice? In other words, what provided the crucial interface for a largely uneducated public and the often phenomenally expensive art programs that had been created almost entirely for their benefit, practically speaking? Or, put another way still, was there such a thing as a "tour guide" in the Middle Ages? This study investigates the medieval "tour guide" or, perhaps better, it investigates guide culture. Toward this end, I ask such questions as was there a "tour guide" in the Middle Ages, that is, is there evidence for an artistic component within medieval guide culture? If so, what was the precedent for this? What was its relation to artistic culture in general and pilgrimage culture in particular? Is there any evidence of guide support, such as guide training or guide aids? What can we say about the range of artistic culture addressed by medieval guides and, in this regard, what sort of information did they convey? Who were these guides and what social groups did they address? Did they act to maintain--consciously or unconsciously--the traditional social distance between the spiritual elite and the non-elite? And how does all this affect our conception of medieval artistic culture, broadly speaking? Medieval guide culture and its mediating dynamic, ephemeral by nature, have been largely overlooked. But at least something--even if little more than an awareness--of this culture may be recovered. The evidence suggests that it was an active factor in the transmission of particular categories of knowledge and claims, and strongly affected both the object-viewer dynamic and the social context of medieval public art. And in this, the guide, variously understood, was often the principal mediator between the ordinary visitor and the sometimes incredibly lavish and complex art programs--between the public and the public work of art--of the Middle Ages.

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Grove Encyclopedia of Medieval Art and Architecture

Sarah Blick

Modestia est signum Sapientiae Studie nejen o středověkém umění k poctě Dalibora Prixe

Daniela Rywiková

The journey and travel itself represented a popular allegory in ancient as well as Chris-tian culture and mysticism of a human struggle for attaining eternal life or heavenly delights. Physical travel during the Middle Ages represented a long, dangerous and arduous activity. Apart from the physical dangers connected with travel as such, there was the immense threat of sudden death lurking nearby with its potential to cause not only the physical end of the traveler’s body but worse, that of his soul, leading it to eternal damnation. In order to protect the medieval traveler on his journey, fine art played an important role as some of its iconography was believed to have protective power and played an important role in the medieval Art of dying well (ars moriendi). Well-known examples of artwork protecting travelers from the physical dangers in-cluded images of St. Christopher, the Holy Face (Vera icon), the Virgin Mary etc. However, there also were images that were supposed to turn the traveler’s mind to-wards spiritual and moral matters. The article attempts to present a closer view of the specific iconography accompanying travelling people of the Late Middle Ages as well as to address the phenomena of the non-corporeal pilgrimage and the concept of the wandering and erring soul.

Church History

Barry Levis

Linda Safran , Jill Caskey , Adam S . Cohen

Emma J . Wells

The experience of architecture and imagery is a critical area of inquiry for pilgrimage studies. For example, how was the building perceived and interpreted? Who were the spectators, and what might the decoration have meant to them? In many cases devotional campaigns – material, architectural or decorative – worked as a visual link between building and spectator, communicating to them the function of the building. Pilgrimage art and architecture was, predominantly, designed to be seen and understood and, as such, played an integral role in the visitor’s experience of a space, accommodating and expecting multiple responses whilst inspiring a reaction of the senses. Thus, these aesthetic schemes communicated; they were intended to be read and cannot be divorced from the spaces they inhabited or the people they affected

Amanda Luyster

The categories of sacred and secular are ubiquitous in the interpretation of medieval art. They serve to structure fields of research, essay collections, symposia, museum exhibitions, and course topics. These terms as we understand them today were not, however, consistently applied in the Middle Ages. Therefore distinguishing between secular and sacred always risks anachronism, imposing the values and divisions of modern mentalities upon medieval thought and practice.1 Indeed the very terms that modern scholars use to distinguish non-sacred works of art – secular, arte profana, weltliche Kunst, svetskoe iskusstva – did not emerge until the seventeenth century and later.2 Equally vexing for the scholar who seeks to define the categories of sacred and secular is their frequent convergence in almost every realm of medieval life, including politics, devotion, domesticity, science, entertainment, and perceptions of the supernatural. Works of art and architecture physically record this overlap, making absolute distinctions between secular and sacred features in a given monument or object difficult and sometimes unproductive. The chapters in this collection reconsider the usefulness of the terms ‘secular’ and ‘sacred’ through the investigation of medieval monuments and objects that attest to passive convergence, active dialogue, or engineered friction between these categories. The papers were originally presented in a double session at the annual meeting of the College Art Association in Boston in February 2006. Readers might expect, as we did at the outset of this project, that a close examination of works of art that straddle the divide between sacred and secular would reveal the ineffectiveness of modern designations, which do not always set neatly upon medieval works of art. Yet the following negotiating secular and sacred in medieval art chapters generally argue for the retention of these categories because they prove to be valuable tools for analysis. At the same time, several authors offer alternative terms, in some cases introducing classifications generated from medieval sources themselves. While focusing on specific objects and monuments, the authors employ innovative methodologies applicable to broad fields of inquiry. In this respect, their arguments resonate beyond the borders of art history and archaeology into related fields such as political history, science, and literature. In so doing, they raise awareness of the rich complexity of the medieval secular world, which encompassed a vast array of social practices and cultural categories. At both the micro- and macro-levels, these studies contribute new and provocative conclusions regarding what secular and sacred meant in the Middle Ages.

It cannot be doubted that medieval devotion towards the cults of saints was a physical affair, involving touching, kissing and even crawling as a way of coming into direct contact with the intercessory power of the divine. Expressions of the physicality of this type of worship can be seen in the design of the architectural and decorative schemes of medieval foramina-type saints’ shrines, and permeate the artistic elements of these sacred locales. Few survive, but in the stained glass and illuminated manuscripts of the twelfth right through to the fifteenth century, pilgrims are depicted crawling into them, kissing the shrine through its apertures, and bestowing ex voto offerings in the shape of infected or broken limbs. Whilst highlighting the variety of monumental architecture deployed in the space of cult churches, they also demonstrate the importance of the multi-sensory involvement of such locations. This paper will explore the importance of sensory experience throughout the late twelfth to the early fifteenth-century, with a particular focus on the act of bodily participation with the divine, and how this was reflected in the architectural and visual structure of a saintly site. To illustrate the importance of sensory means of veneration towards the cults of saints, several stained glass images from the decorative frameworks of two of the most popular English shrines of the medieval period will be analysed; one of whom was a very locally venerated saint, and the other who was perhaps the most popular saint in the country for the majority of the Middle Ages.

Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art and Architecture

Ivan Foletti , Martin F . Lešák

Erik Inglis

This study analyzes what fifteenth century pilgrims from Northern Europe wrote about the art and architecture they encountered while on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Although these pilgrims did not have the discipline of art history, they nonetheless had a strong art historical imagination that conditioned their reception of old art and architecture. Their attempts at dating objects demonstrate a pre-modern periodization in which important rulers or dynasties matter most, and the terms medieval and Renaissance are unknown. They expected striking objects to have significant histories, studied those objects appearance for clues to those histories, and read a city’s buildings as a trustworthy barometer of its vitality. Lacking our hierarchy of fine and applied arts, they were open to appreciate a wide range of objects, which they frequently praise in terms of their workmanship.

Step by Step Towards the Sacred. Ritual, Movement, and Visual Culture in the Middle Ages

Martin F . Lešák , Sabina Rosenbergova

The articles published in this volume aim to contribute to the art historical debates on the role of visual culture within medieval rituals and how the latter were experienced bodily. The studies focus on the essential importance of movement within medieval religious practice and its impact on production, conception, perception, and use of artistic objects and architecture in the Middle Ages. At their core is the moving body, individual or collective, which enters into dialogue with the surrounding architectural or urban space, artefacts, and images, thus awakening their sacred potential with each and every step. Shifting attention to the movement of the worshipers and the objects themselves, this book wishes to instigate further discussion on various medieval visual cultures.

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The first tour operator went into business in England in 1758, and is still in business today. In Europe, pleasure travel started in earnest during the 1840s, when Thomas Cook began conducting tours to Paris and later around Europe. By the 1850s, railroad tours were already in operation. Modern tour operators – companies that organize group tours and independent travel packages — date back to the mid-nineteenth century, and most likely have their roots as ticket agents for steamship lines and railroads. In addition to selling passage, the agents were eventually called upon to develop itineraries and secure accommodations for their wealthy clients. Out of this grew the organized business of selling planned tours to groups of travelers.

Through the 1930s tour wholesaling continued to grow, but that happened slowly, since comfortable and affordable means of passenger transportation were not widespread, and travel was costly. The post-World War II period, beginning with the late 1940s and early 1950s, marked a dramatic turning point for the tour operator industry. The introduction of modern long-range commercial aircraft and the development of the interstate highway system both opened long distance travel to millions of middle class travelers. Add to that the growth of low cost airlines, increased access to airports, and the ability to travel more cheaply, and the travel bug sent millions of people all over the planet.

The media have popularized aspects of touring and made them appear accessible to the public, which has helped to increase the number of tour travelers. The television program “The Love Boat” inspired middle class travelers to take a cruise. The 1969 film, “If it’s Tuesday, this must be Belgium,” based on Caravan Tours, popularized over-the-road bus travel.

Today there are over 600 tour operators in this country, plus hundreds in other countries. Most of them wholesale their tours, that is, sell them through travel agents, or sell them directly over the internet. Even in this day of the internet, where travelers can more readily create their own itineraries, tour operators still have the advantage of bulk purchases that reduce costs, and of inside knowledge of vendors and destinations.

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The history of tour guides

Historical sources confirm that tour guides originated in the 17th century in the Vatican with the advent of tourism. The ‘cicerone’, as he was called, guided people through the historic sites of the Mediterranean. In the 18th century, tourists in Japan booked tour guides for a fee or bought special books, such as Kaibara Ekken’s Keijo Shoran (The Excellent Views of Kyoto).

What does a tour guide actually do?

The European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) defines “tourist guide” as follows: “A person who guides visitors in the language of their choice and interprets the cultural and natural heritage of an area, which person normally possesses an area-specific qualification usually issued and/or recognised by the appropriate authority.” This means that a tour guide is a person with knowledge of a place and subject, who primarily receives, supervises and accompanies tourists. The tour guide imparts detailed knowledge about geography, history, art history and cultural, scientific, social facts and relationships, either in their own local language or in a foreign language.

Tour guide systems are also used to protect the tour guide’s voice and assist with successful guided tours. Tour guide systems transmit the tour guide’s words through a microphone and headsets to the guests. The tour guide’s voice is protected and all guests hear his words at the same volume and quality. Often, tour guide systems are confused with an audio guide. The latter plays back pre-recorded content without a tour guide actually guiding the guests.

Tour guides in Germany and Europe

In Europe, tour guides are represented by the European Federation of Tourist Guide Associations (FEG), although tour guide qualifications are specific to each country. In some cases, the qualification is national, while in other cases it is regional. Since 2008, EN15565 has been the European standard for the training and qualification of tourist guides. However, it says nothing about local recognition as a tour guide.

In Germany, the ‘tour guiding’ profession is not regulated by law and is a freelance profession. Training courses are generally provided for tour guides working for tourist offices. However, in many other countries, tour guides may only work following training that leads to a qualification and successfully completed state examinations. In Austria, for instance, tour guides are only permitted to operate after training lasting one and a half years. The examination is sat in the local Chamber of Commerce.

World Tourist Guide Day

In 1987, the World Federation of Tourist Guide Associations announces the Tourist Guide Day. Over 50 tourist guide associations join forces to advertise the profession and highlight the difference between them and self-appointed tour guides who guide tourists through towns and cities without relevant knowledge, training or further education.

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What is history of Tour Guiding In Modern age?

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What is the history of tour guiding during middle age?

Tour guiding was not that widespread during this time. It was mostly reserved for the royalty who went touring the world.

What has the author Frank Pentland Chambers written?

Frank Pentland Chambers has written: 'The age of conflict, a contemporary world history, 1914 to the present' -- subject(s): History, History, Modern, Modern History 'This age of conflict, a contemporary world history, 1914 to the present day' -- subject(s): History, History, Modern, Modern History

What are the different ages in history?

ancient age, medieval age and modern age are the different ages.

What has the author Walter Moss written?

Walter Moss has written: 'A History of Russia' -- subject(s): History 'An age of progress?' -- subject(s): History, Modern, Modern History

What is the difference between ancient and modern?

The Ancient period of history is generally accepted as ending 500 CE, followed by the Dark Age, then Middle Age and Modern Age.

What the differences between ancient and modern?

What has the author martin van creveld written.

Martin Van Creveld has written: 'On future war' -- subject(s): History, Military art and science, Military history, Modern, Modern Military history, War, World politics 'The changing face of war' -- subject(s): Military history, Modern, Modern Military history 'The Age of Airpower'

What has the author WD Townson written?

W.D Townson has written: 'Atlas of the world in the Age of Discovery 1453-1763' -- subject(s): History, Modern, Juvenile literature, Modern History

About the prognosis of delusional disorder in middle age?

This is a modern concept and doesn't apply to this time in history.

What has the author Duncan Townson written?

Duncan Townson has written: 'Spices and Civilizations (Greenhaven World History Program)' 'Atlas of the modern world' 'Atlas of the world in the age of discovery, 1453-1763' -- subject(s): Historical geography, History, Modern, Juvenile literature, Maps for children, Modern History

What are the different phases of history?

Prehistory, ancient times, middle ages, modern times Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Middle Ages, Renaissance, Industrial Age, Space Age, Information Age.

What year did modern history start?

1789 was the start of modern history. :) Personnaly I would go back a lot further, to the Renaisance. All history is a continuum, but certainly there are some eras where things did take off rapidly. 1789 ignores the start of serious science in the West, and the age of western exploration.

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