Roman Monuments, Ruins and Remains: British Women Traveller' Perception of Historical Heritage in Early XIX Century.

The theme of the vision of antiquity is central during the second half of 18th and the first decades of 19th century Europe, when a new concep- tion of the ‘past’ arises. During this period archaeology as a science was founded1 and many expeditions were organised by the British, through Europe to Asia and North Africa, in order to explore distant cultures and their heritage. Many travels reports were published between the 1820s and 1830s which included some accounts by women travelling across Europe, narrating the experience of the journey from the British Isles to the Continent, especially in Italy, leading eastwards to Egypt and even to the Red Sea and India. Considering this, there emerges a vision and consideration of antiquity in the writings of women travelling across so large a territory, both of classical antiquities starting from Rome to those of the Roman Empire in the Orient, and of the autochthonous cultures. In this context the paper reflects upon the narration of the experiences of Anne Katherine Elwood in her Narrative of a Journey Overland from England, by the Continent of Europe, Egypt, and the Red Sea, to India (Elwood 1830), and Judith Montefiore’s Private Journal of a Visit to Egypt and Palestine (Montefiore 1836). While Elwood’s narratives were meant for the general public, Montefiore’s writings were printed essen- tially for private reading, ‘addressed to a near and very dear relation’ (Montefiore 1836: Preface).