Chapter 3 An Encounter on the Acropolis (1910–1914, 1965) Yet why must I, like so many others, name the Parthenon the undeniable Master, as it looms up from its stone base, and yield, even with anger, to its supremacy? — L e C o r b u s i e r , 1914
The “Reversed” Grand Tour The aristocratic ritual of the Grand Tour, which by the end of the seventeenth century had become a must for young men of the educated elites of northern Europe, was a trip across the Alps and through upper and central Italy, ostensibly devoted to studying monuments and landscapes and culminating with a prolonged stay in Rome.1 The Grand Tour was an ascent to lofty regions both literal and figurative: the physical heights of the mountains and the cultural heights of Italy. It was also a journey of contrasts and comparison: lands of rainy weather and of sunny weather, wealth and poverty, past and present, progress and backwardness. And as the illustrated travel accounts, or Voyages Picturesques, of the eighteenth century advised, any trip to exotic climes was enhanced if some danger was also experienced. Although the Grand Tour was no longer mandatory by the early twentieth century, Charles-Édouard Jeanneret made a similar journey in 1911. His Grand Tour, however, has been called “reversed”: instead of going to Rome, he went to Constantinople and Athens. He experienced a series of contrasts paralleling those of the traditional Grand Tour, traveling through the plains of eastern Europe to the heights of Mount Athos and the Acropolis. In doing so, he also passed from being a painter to being an architect. [Figure 3.1] 109