The Mediterranean Sea has long served as a space of encounters through periods of intensified interaction. The French historian Fernand Braudel describes the Mediterranean as ‘a thousand things at once. Not one landscape, but landscapes without number. Not one sea, but a succession of seas. Not one civilization, but a number of civilizations, superimposed one on top of the other’ (Braudel 1985: 4). Yet the Mediterranean, often portrayed today as a place of sun-drenched shores, azure waters, and white-washed houses, was largely a product of the 19th- and 20th-century geographical imagination, closely associated with an emergent practice: tourism.

The unprecedented increase in mobility during the 19th century, partly attributable to advancements in transportation technologies, led to the emergence of ‘the tourist’ (MacCannell 2013). This development was accompanied by a proliferation of tourist industries. Guidebooks, perhaps more than anything else, served to orchestrate touristic encounters with places. The production of guidebooks expanded rapidly, with many focusing on the lands surrounding the Mediterranean. Yet only in the 1880s did comprehensive guidebooks covering the entirety of the Mediterranean emerge. Two such guides, published by arguably the most popular publishers of touristic literature in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, enable us to diachronically explore how the Mediterranean, with its diverse landscapes and urbanscapes, was delineated, choreographed, and practiced via the sea. Handbook to the Mediterranean, compiled by Robert Lambert Playfair and published by John Murray in 1881, was the first comprehensive tourist guide to the Mediterranean published in English. In 1911, thirty years after Murray’s Handbook to the Mediterranean, Karl Baedeker published The Mediterranean: Sea Ports and Sea Routes, following an earlier German edition of 1909.

These guidebooks were preceded by and simultaneously existed with a multitude of guidebooks to destinations that promoted regional, land-based exploration of the Mediterranean basin. Murray’s and Baedeker’s volumes about the Mediterranean, however, promoted a maritime approach by which the tourists could view the Mediterranean landscapes and urbanscapes from the deck of sea-going vessels, with brief interludes at select destinations on land. This mode of engagement also distanced the viewer — the tourist — from the object of their gaze. Thus, these guidebooks, which are narrated as panoramic vistas from afar, meld disparate parts of the Mediterranean into one imagined geography at the expense of the diversity and the nuances of the cultures and peoples inhabiting its actual shores.

Geographical imagination as a concept refers to the ways in which individuals and societies perceive and conceptualize spatial relationships and places. It shapes how humans understand, interpret, and interact with different geographical settings influenced by cultural, social, and political contexts (Gieseking 2017; Gregory 1994; Said 1978; Harvey 1973; see also McAleer and MacKenzie 2015). Derek Gregory, who defines geographical imagination as ‘the complex of culturally and historically situated geographical knowledge and understanding that characterizes a certain social group’, in particular assigns agency to travel writing as an important component in the production and reflection of geographical imagination (quoted in Gieseking 2017: 2; Gregory 2001; see also Teng 2004). Such imaginaries ‘matter because they reduce complexity and shape identities’, say Riccardo Bavaj, Konrad Lawson, and Bernhard Struck, a reduction achieved by ‘homogenising space’ (2022: np). At the same time, as Maria Todorova demonstrates, geographical imaginations are not static, and they often overlap (1997).

The Mediterranean as we understand it today is the result of one such evolving cultural and historical construction that took hold within touristic imaginaries. The panoramization of Mediterranean from sea-going vessels, along with the ensuing homogenization of the Mediterranean spaces, contributed to the emergence of the Mediterranean as an imagined geography, as did the reduction of direct bodily engagement between tourists and the local people and places.

Practices approximating tourism emerged around the Mediterranean long before the modern era. Under the unifying influence of the Roman Empire, for instance, people traveled with increasing intensity, making time for sightseeing, buying souvenirs, and consulting guidebooks (Popkin 2022; Beard 2022). The sociologist Loykie Lomine provocatively and humorously explains that

Similar claims have been made for pilgrimage practices. Victor and Edith Turner have famously claimed that ‘a pilgrim is half a tourist’ (Turner and Turner 2011: 20). While this is applicable to most pilgrims, from Buddhist monks to Muslims on their way to Mecca for the Hajj, Christian pilgrims in particular affected the regions surrounding the Mediterranean. Sacred sites from Santiago de Compostela in Spain to the Holy Land and beyond attracted these pilgrims (Fleischer 2000; Bar and Cohen-Hattab 2003).

From a penchant for collecting souvenirs to a dependence on guidebooks, these earlier practices undoubtedly shared certain characteristics with tourism as we understand it today. However, tourism as a mass phenomenon did not emerge until the modern era. In fact, many theorists of tourism have associated tourism with modernity. Dean MacCannell, in his seminal work The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class, defines the tourist as ‘one of the best models available for modern-man-in-general’ and considers ‘the empirical and ideological expansion of modern society to be intimately linked in diverse ways to modern mass leisure, especially to international tourism and sightseeing’ (MacCannell 2013: 1–3). Similarly, John Urry, in his The Tourist Gaze, argues that ‘acting as a tourist is one of the defining characteristics of being “modern”’ (Urry 1990: 2; see also Wang 2000). While both MacCannell and Urry find tourism to be a condition of modernity, their theoretical frameworks differ in many other aspects. According to Rudy Koshar, while MacCannell’s tourists search for ‘authenticity’, Urry’s tourists look for ‘novelty’ (Koshar 1998: 325). Accompanying the rise of the tourist class was the growth of tourist industries, from guidebook publishers to postcard manufacturers, that supplied the consumerism associated with touristic behavior. Guidebooks in particular became an essential part of a tourist’s arsenal, guiding touristic encounters whether in pursuit of knowledge or fun. Guidebooks, as Jan Palmowski observes, ‘professionalized travel for the middle classes, and rationalized — and in this way directed — essential components of the tourist experience: the anticipation, perception, and memory of travel’, making guidebooks a unique and valuable source of historical information (Palmowski 2002: 106).

While earlier guidebooks existed, the real boom in guidebook publishing only occurred after steam-based travel increased the mobility of the middle classes (Zuelow 2015: 77; Barton 2011). In Europe, two publishing houses, John Murray’s and Karl Baedeker’s, dominated the guidebook industry with each putting their own spin on the organization and presentation of information, and mediating touristic experiences of distant lands. Because they were probably the most popular purveyors of guidebooks of their time, their publications on the Mediterranean provide insights into how the ‘connecting sea’ came to be ‘packaged’ for the touristic gaze. While travel for leisure often involved sea passages, the development of maritime tourism followed a trajectory of its own. Prior to the mid-18th century, the sea was seen as an unruly, chaotic, and fearsome place. In his influential work The Lure of the Sea: The Discovery of the Seaside in the Western World 1750–1840, cultural historian Alain Corbin discusses the transformation of the seaside from a place of contemptible wilderness first to a therapeutic and then into a hedonistic setting for ‘a life-style full of obscure joy’ (Corbin 1994: 95; see also Walton 2005: 12). Corbin’s study of the seaside ends with the arrival of the railway era, the socio-economic broadening of leisure, and the birth of the ‘modern beach’ (Corbin 1994: 295).

While the railway has received significant attention as a catalyst for tourism, the role of steam-based technologies of the sea in the development of tourism has not been explored as extensively. Yet scholars such as John Armstrong and David Williams argue that ‘the case of the railway in promoting popular recreational travel, introducing excursions and encouraging resort development has been overemphasised and in some instances wrongly credited with a pioneering role. That role, in fact, was played by the steamboat’ (Armstrong and Williams 2005: 61; see also Cerchiello and Vera-Rebollo 2015 for an account of Spanish steamship tourism). Although it is beyond the scope of this article to determine whether the train or the steamer wins that contest, maritime tourism is significant, and as John Walton emphasizes, ‘the sea, as destination, transport medium and basis for pleasure journeys, has, after all, been one of the key components of the explosive growth of tourism’ (Walton 2014: 110). Building on this notion, and considering the fact that the guidebooks produced by Murray and Baedeker both focused on maritime journeys as the defining experience of the Mediterranean as a whole, this article turns to how seabound voyages have affected our understanding of the built environments of the Mediterranean.

The rise in sea voyages on the Mediterranean, beyond advancements in transportation and circulation technologies, was also directly linked to the expanding involvement of European powers throughout the Mediterranean basin. Napoleon’s 1798 campaign to Egypt was a watershed event in igniting an interest in Egypt, in its history, and its people (Gregory 2001; Reid 2002; Behdad and Gartlan 2013). The Greek War of Independence, which began in 1821, led to the formation of an independent Greece and the strengthening of a discourse that connected European cultural roots with ancient Greece (Mazower 2021; Dritsas 2006). French colonization efforts in North Africa, starting with Algiers in 1830, gave the French a foothold in the North African shores of the Mediterranean (Young 2018). The unification of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861 catapulted Italy into the scramble for Africa and resulted in the colonization of Libya in 1911 (McLaren 2006). More broadly, the struggles of the Ottoman Empire during the 19th century resulted in the British, French, and Germans exerting fluctuating but increasing influence on the Ottoman and formerly Ottoman territories. Such geopolitical shifts in the Mediterranean basin had a direct correlation with the changing tourism landscape of the Mediterranean (Gordon 2003).

In fact, one of the major drivers of British imperialism, the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O), played an important role in the opening of the Mediterranean to the tourist classes when the company allowed passengers on their mail boats. Initially established as the Peninsular Steam Navigation Company in 1837, P&O was formally incorporated by Royal Charter in 1840. (On the role company played in British imperialism, see, for example, Harcourt and Palmer (2006).) P&O’s 1844 ‘excursion’ to the Mediterranean is often considered as the very first cruise (Crouch and Laing 2008). The novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, who received a free ticket to travel on this excursion, described the undertaking: ‘[I]n the space of a couple of months, as many men and cities were to be seen as Ulysses surveyed and noted in ten years. Malta, Athens, Smyrna, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Cairo were to be visited’ (Thackeray 1848: vii). Thackeray was amazed at the speed of this journey, which was to take ‘a couple of months’. While slow even by late-19th century standards, for Thackeray, whose point of comparison was Ulysses’ ten-year sojourn, it was fast indeed. By the 1880s, however, one could travel aboard a P&O steamer from England to Egypt in thirteen days. With the simultaneous expansion of railway networks, one could also complete the same journey in six days by traveling overland to Brindisi by rail and hopping on a steamer to Alexandria (Pemble 1988: 25). Such developments, whether political or technological, expanded the geographical horizons of ordinary tourists, enabling their access to novel experiences abroad both by land and by sea. Concurrently, the earliest guidebooks dedicated to experiencing the Mediterranean in its entirety and from the sea began to contribute to an imaginary Mediterranean based on viewing it from the sea.

The preface to the 1881 Handbook to the Mediterranean summarizes the motivations behind the creation of the earliest guidebook covering the entirety of the Mediterranean:

This passage describes a perceived shift in the tourism landscape in which travelers were flocking to the Mediterranean ‘on whose shores rose all the mighty Empires of the world, whose ports and harbours became the most populous, prosperous and magnificent cities’ (Playfair 1881: v).

John Murray’s foray into the world of guidebooks began in 1836. Initially, Murray took on the task of writing the guidebooks himself. However, as his company grew, he enlisted the expertise of other authors, including Sir Lambert Playfair, who compiled guidebooks on Algiers and eventually the Mediterranean (Murray 1919: 46). Although written and compiled by numerous individuals, they were commonly known as Murray’s handbooks. The earliest guidebooks, to the ‘Continent’, were followed by volumes covering more distant locations, including Egypt, India, Russia, and Japan. In 1840, Murray published A Hand-book for Travellers in the Ionian Islands, Greece, Turkey, Asia Minor, and Constantinople, which covered a large portion of the eastern Mediterranean. This publication was followed in quick succession by other volumes to other destinations around the Mediterranean Sea, including Handbook to Spain, Handbook for Travellers in Greece, Handbook for Travellers in Southern Italy, Handbook for Travellers in Portugal, and more. Most of these titles would have several editions, with each edition updating logistics and places to visit. These not only presented the most up-to-date information on hotels, timetables for transportation, and places to eat but also reflected changing perceptions.

Despite extensive coverage of individual Mediterranean locales, a comprehensive guide to the entire Mediterranean, however, remained conspicuously absent from the Murray’s catalog until the late 19th century. Playfair suggests that people who had traveled all over Europe had become ‘weary of the rail and river-steamer’ and were therefore ‘flocking in yachts and sea-steamers to that great inland basin’ (Playfair 1881: v). While even a brief look at the scope of Murray’s publications from the same period reveals that land-based tourism was continuing to flourish, a new demand for sea-based travel through the Mediterranean was also obviously emerging. The company had accurately judged this emerging demand for Mediterranean travel, as the first edition of the Handbook to the Mediterranean sold out within a year and a second edition hit the shelves in 1882. This second edition also proved to be an opportune moment to revise and, in the cases of Sicily, Sardinia, and Cyprus, entirely rewrite sections of the book (Playfair 1882: vi). The publication of later editions, such as the ones in the 1890s, attest to an ongoing interest.

Murray’s guidebooks, as Rudy Koshar explains, were conceived at a time when the travelers had to arrange their time efficiently. Unlike the predominantly upper-class Grand Tourists of the earlier centuries, 19th-century travelers did not have unlimited resources. To respond to the needs of this new tourist class, Murray’s handbooks avoided unnecessary details and focused ‘primarily on what ought to be seen rather than what could be seen’ (Koshar 1998: 326). The Handbook to the Mediterranean would follow this recipe, although the peculiarities of sea travel through a very large geography would necessitate even further restraint. The Handbook to the Mediterranean, therefore, included fewer details on hotels, lists of tradespeople, and so on than would be normally included in Murray’s handbooks (Playfair 1881: vi). The Handbook to the Mediterranean was also a balancing act between yachting and steamer travel. Places for good anchorage, suggestions on purchasing and outfitting yachts and associated expenses, and useful maps and charts constitute a significant part of the introduction to the volume. Even an extensive list of provisions for food, from jams to cans of sardines, was included. At the same time, steamship routes and timetables were incorporated when and where possible.

Murray’s suggested tour of the Mediterranean follows a counter-clockwise loop: from Morocco east along the coast of North Africa — Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, and Syria. Taking in Asia Minor and the Greek Archipelago, the route then reaches Greece and Albania, where the first part of the book concludes. The second part begins in the Adriatic, and continues along the coast of Italy, covering the islands of Sardinia, Lipari, Sicily, and Corsica, eventually to reach the southern coast of France and Spain, ending at Gibraltar (Figure 1). The decision to commence the tour in North Africa rather than following the southern coast of Europe was likely an attempt to evoke a sense of distance between the perceived ‘self’ and its ‘other’. Playfair hints at this: ‘To a stranger who has not travelled in the East, the first view of Tangier is very striking. Although Europe has been left behind but a few short hours, he finds himself transported into a city as thoroughly oriental as a page of the “Thousand and One Nights”’ (Playfair 1881: 2).

While the route prescribed by Murray’s Handbook is primarily maritime, it does include inland excursions along the way. Playfair advises that ‘a traveler to Algiers would hardly care to leave the country without making a trip through the Chabet el-Akira to Constantine; a cruise on the coast of Syria would be incomplete without a visit to the Holy City; no man would go to Malaga, and abstain from running up to Granada’ (Playfair 1882: v). The Handbook to the Mediterranean incorporates basic information for the tourists to undertake such inland trips, but it also suggests that tourists travel with a set of Murray’s handbooks, particularly to Spain, France, northern Italy, southern Italy, Greece and Ionian Islands, Turkey in Asia and Constantinople, as well as Algeria and Tunis, attesting to the simultaneity of land-based and maritime tourism.

Murray’s 1881 Handbook to the Mediterranean was a response to the increase in demand for maritime tourism in the Mediterranean, but composing a book that provided adequate information but was still manageable in size proved to be a major challenge. Murray’s strategy to address this difficulty was to limit much of the information on the everyday interactions between tourists and local populations. While crucial for overland travelers experiencing intimate cultural encounters, knowledge of local customs was less vital for sea travelers, whose journeys fostered greater distance from local cultures.

Baedeker’s The Mediterranean: Sea Ports and Sea Routes, published thirty years later, in 1911, offers a glimpse into how the tourism landscape of the Mediterranean had changed over the intervening three decades. From their commitment to providing independent travel experiences to their distinctive red covers, Baedeker’s and Murray’s guides shared many common attributes. Given that both Baedeker and Murray targeted middle-class travelers, a certain level of rivalry was inevitable, particularly when Baedeker started publishing his books in English in addition to the original German. The similarities between their productions obviously irked Murray, who on one occasion noted that ‘Messrs Baedeker have long ago proved how easy it is with a book ready printed and published to produce another book on the same subject and identical in plan — availing themselves of its information, sending them out in the same Red Cover’ (Murray 1919: 48). It is undeniable that both Murray’s and Baedeker’s guides frequently covered the same geographies, with Baedeker’s often following an earlier volume by Murray. Yet they were not the same. For instance, one of Murray’s earliest handbooks focused on the eastern Mediterranean, particularly Anatolia, yet Baedeker’s Konstantinopel und Kleinasien only appeared after the turn of the 20th century, and was published in German (Baedeker, 1905). In their tone and organization, too, there were discernable differences, perhaps indicative of the cultural backgrounds of their publishers. Palmowski, in comparing the two, observes that Baedeker guidebooks are more somber in their descriptions and that while ‘both guidebooks carried out their agenda to determine “what ought to be seen”, Murray went a step further, showing more clearly not just what ought to be seen, but how it should be appreciated’ (Palmowski 2002: 108).

Baedeker’s The Mediterranean: Sea Ports and Sea Routes was prepared by John Kirkpatrick, an emeritus professor from the University of Edinburgh, following an earlier German edition prepared by Dr. F. Propping, who had reportedly visited most of the places described in the book. A geographical sketch of the Mediterranean by Theobald Fischer was also included. The intervening years between the publication of Murray’s and Baedeker’s guides to the Mediterranean would result in two very different volumes covering the same geography. Perhaps most remarkably, while Murray’s Handbook to the Mediterranean promoted private yacht travel with a sprinkling of steamship routes, Baedeker’s The Mediterranean depended almost entirely on steamship routes.

Murray’s Handbook to the Mediterranean presents the traveler with a simpler, more prescribed route that traversed the Mediterranean in a counter-clockwise manner, offering a limited number of land-based excursions. Baedeker’s laid bare an entire network of possibilities for the tourist, allowing them to choose their own adventures. This is not to say that Baedeker offered an off-the-beaten track alternative; the places highlighted in the volume were still very much the popular tourist spots of the era. To facilitate a tourist’s unpredictable movements in response to the plethora of choices it presents, Baedeker’s The Mediterranean obsessively reiterates timetables for steamships and trains, whereas Murray’s Handbook, three decades earlier, was preoccupied more with sites of good anchorage. Changing transportation technologies and an increasing availability of steamship lines operating in the region were obviously at the root of this major shift that had distinct consequences for how tourist experiences were choreographed in the region (Figure 2).

The unprecedented surge in mobility during the 19th century, spurred by remarkable advancements in transportation technologies, gave birth to the remarkable phenomenon of tourism. Accompanying this transformative shift were the burgeoning tourist industries and, notably, the proliferation of guidebooks that curated the tourist experience of diverse destinations. By examining two influential tourist guides published by arguably the most popular purveyors of touristic literature in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Murray and Baedeker, this article explored how the Mediterranean, with its diverse landscapes, urbanscapes, and cultural and political variety, was depicted, choreographed, and experienced.

Guidebooks to the Mediterranean played a crucial role in shaping a distinct perspective of the Mediterranean, one that prioritized observing the region from the vantage point of the sea and at a distance. By presenting the Mediterranean as a series of unfolding panoramic vistas experienced from afar, these guides merged the various landscapes and urbanscapes of the Mediterranean into a cohesive whole. While panoramic vision predates the advent of modern tourist guidebooks, the widespread popularity and influence of these guides allowed them to contribute to framing the Mediterranean as a conceptual unity and to the formation of a geographical imagination of the Mediterranean.