Many of the thousands of travellers taking advantage of the peace of 1815 wished to escape rapidly industrialising Britain, whose polluted air caused and aggravated so many respiratory illnesses, to experience for months or years the warmth of the Mediterranean. The poet Catherine Maria Fanshawe’s description of her arrival at Genoa in January 1820 encapsulates the experience of many: delight in the first view of the Mediterranean after weeks of travel; disappointment in the quality of the hotel; and astonishment at the variety of subjects to be sketched:

On arrival they ‘were miserably lodged, or perched, on the 6th or 7th storey of a wretched Hotel’, but were delighted by ‘the incomparable prospect, which commanded the whole bay and from my windows I cd have dropt an orange into the Mediterranean’. Moreover, she was almost mesmerised by the variety of scenes: ‘Oh the Orange Trees! And Oh the beautiful grouping and endless variety of Tower and Dome and Arch and Spire and even at that late season of colouring from the grey Olive to the Pomegranate and the Orange. My green Sketch Book was full at Genoa!’

The Mediterranean climate was believed to be especially advantageous for consumptive patients and in the winter months many wealthy people suffering from this disease travelled with their families to take advantage of the relative warmth and clean air. Guidebooks throughout the nineteenth century emphasised the benefits of different places for invalids. In the second half of the century, and especially after the opening of the coastal railway in 1874, many British, French and German visitors became seasonal or permanent residents on the Riviera.