An early cultural tourist

out on the journey with a good idea of how we will get there and where we will stay and have a sense of what we will encounter on location. Cyriacus of Ancona (1391–1452), the first cultural tourist since antiquity, lacked these advantages when, in the first half of the 15th century, he sailed around the Mediterranean in search of the remains of Greek and Roman civilizations. Cyriacus first became fascinated by ancient monuments while working in his home city Ancona and looking at the marble arch, erected in AD 115, to the Roman Emperor Trajan. He suddenly saw the structure in a new light. He no longer saw it as just a familiar and generally overlooked landmark, but as a doorway to the wonders of ancient imperial Rome. Not many people of Cyriacus’s time were interested in historical travel; they generally ignored old buildings and structures, or worse, dismantled them for their building materials.