‘Reading’ Venice Through the Eyes of Three Czech Travellers from the Late 19th Century

The chapter presents an analysis of the travel books written by three Czech authors who visited Venice around the 1870s and 1880s: Výlet do Benátek [Trip to Venice, 1874] by Jindřich Lorenz (1854-1935), Cesta z Vídně do Terstu, Benátek, Římu, a popis Italie [Journey from Vienna to Trieste, Venice, Rome and Description of Italy, 1881] by Ludevít Rajmund Pazdírek (1850-1914), and Cesta do Lublaně a do Benátek [Journey to Ljubljana and Venice, 1888] by Jan Jelínek. The analysis focuses on three themes related to the travel experience: mobility, gastronomical aspects, and cultural heritage. The data collected enables the authors to provide a geo-literary histor- ical overview to discuss and problematise the long-standing relationship be- tween Venice and tourism, and to describe how Central European tourists lived, perceived and narrated the city in that period.