Grand Tourers

Stephen Bayley

We asked leading design critic Stephen Bayley and illustrator Michael Frith to re-imagine the classical 'Grand Tour', aboard a spectacular Ferrari Roma

Three centuries before Grand Tourers became an integral part of the Ferrari range, English aristocrats and literary types used to participate in what became known as The Grand Tour, a cultural journey set mostly in Italy. The brave and curious took in Venice, Florence, Rome, and Naples, all of which provided rich observation for famed diarists such as Dr. Johnson, and inspiration for poets of the calibre of Byron and Keats.

Visiting Rome, historian Edward Gibbon began his epic work, "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire". This Spring, with Italy in lockdown, The Official Ferrari Magazine invited one of Britain's leading design critics, Stephen Bayley, to imagine himself behind the wheel of a Ferrari Roma, and to follow in the footsteps of those intrepid travellers. A tale wonderfully illustrated by Michael Frith.