The historical experience of Women of the Grand Tour at MuSa in Salò takes centre stage on Saturday, September 26, 2026, when art historian Anna Torterolo presents the closing lecture of the museum’s autumn cultural series.
Beginning at 17:00 at the MuSa (Museo di Salò, Via Brunati 9) with free admission to the public, the presentation examines eighteenth-century female travelers who ventured across the Alps into northern Italy. Torterolo, an author and specialist in European Enlightenment culture, examines how aristocratic women, writers, and artists navigated the physical hardships and social scrutiny of continental transit to cultivate intellectual autonomy.
Eighteenth-Century Travel and the Art of Seduction
In contrast to the structured, male-dominated educational circuits undertaken by British and German patricians, female travelers on Lake Garda operated within nuanced social parameters. Away from the restrictive domestic conventions of London, Paris, or Geneva, women in Italian coaching inns, post stations, and private salons exercised greater personal expression.
Torterolo analyzes the social codes of the era: the subtle semiotics of folding fans, the anonymity afforded by Venetian-style carnival masks, and lively conversational exchanges that crossed rigid class lines. Traveling in horse-drawn carriages over rough mountain passes, these pioneering figures challenged the patriarchal assumption that travel was solely a male pursuit, documenting Benaco landscapes, classical ruins, and local folk traditions in extensive correspondence and travel memoirs.
The TOURIST! Exhibition at MuSa
The lecture serves as the concluding event for the major temporary exhibition TOURIST! Il fascino del viaggio sul Garda tra Romanticismo e Belle Époque, which remains open to visitors through Sunday, October 4, 2026. Curated by MuSa director Paolo Boifava alongside Maria Paola Pasini of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore and travel literature scholar Attilio Brilli, the exhibition brings together more than one hundred historical paintings, garden panoramas, vintage travel posters, period couture, antique leather trunks, and early photographic plates.
The collection chronicles the transformation of Lake Garda from an isolated stage of romantic wanderers into Europe’s premier lakeside winter resort, celebrated by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Stendhal. On Saturdays and Sundays at 15:00, the museum conducts guided exhibition tours included in the standard admission ticket (capped at 15 participants, bookings via 0365 20553 or info@museodisalo.it). Visitors can pair a museum visit with an architectural exploration of the neighbouring Duomo di Salò or Gabriele d’Annunzio’s hillside estate at Vittoriale degli Italiani.
