Collections · The Grand Tours
The Grand Tours, restored for print
Where the other rooms settle in — one coast, one range, one line — this room keeps moving: a mail steamer out of Marseille for the Orient, the night express to Athens, Rome by train de luxe, a Friday motor-coach circuit of Corsica, the midnight sun at the top of the map. These are the sheets that sold the horizon itself, and every one has been dated and cleared, one by one. Twelve are below; the catalogue holds more.
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The icons, restored
Simplon-Orient-Express — Athènes, 1926
The Simplon-Orient-Express was laid out in 1919 expressly to reach Constantinople and Athens without touching German rails, and La Nézière hung the Acropolis over the night train with a chariot riding the steam. The sheet is night-black to its Greek-key border, so the Parthenon's stone must stay a shade warmer than the smoke — that sliver of warmth is all the light the poster has.
Wagons-Lits east · four formats
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Paris en Orient (viâ Marseille), 1909
One ticket, two companies: the PLM's expresses ran you down to Marseille and the Messageries Maritimes mail boat carried you on to the Orient — the marine painter Eugène d'Argence signed the sheet in 1909, and it was printed in Hugo d'Alési's own Paris atelier. Minarets rise out of the sunset haze behind the black-and-red liner; that skyline has to stay a breath paler than the hull or the whole distance collapses.
The steamer age · four formats
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Rome — par le train de luxe « Rome Express », 1927
The Rome Express had carried Paris to Rome in sleeping cars since 1890, and Roger Broders painted its poster in 1927 — the Colosseum sighted through a broken arch, goats grazing where the tourists would stand. Everything runs on two colours, violet shadow and sun-baked ochre; let the violet drift toward grey and the Roman heat goes out of the stone.
Trains de luxe · four formats
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Lago di Garda — Summer & Winter Resort, c. 1905
Elio Ximenes signed this Garda for the Italian State Railways around 1905, and this printing carries the English panel their New York office used to sell Italy as a 'summer & winter resort' to Americans. The red lateen sails hold the whole sheet upright — their reflections should break into the water in pieces, never melt into it.
Mediterranean winters · four formats
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Norway — The Land of the Midnight Sun, c. 1914–1924
Thorolf Holmboe painted the Nordland coast for a living, and the state railways' sheet names his exact spot in a printed caption — Grønøy, looking across to Bolgen mountain, latitude and all — with the midnight sun sitting on the water between two map insets. It is a painting wearing a poster's clothes, so the brushy orange path across the sea must keep its texture; smoothed flat, it reads as sunset instead of midnight.
Midnight sun summers · four formats
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Calvi Beach, Corsica, 1928
Roger Broders drew Calvi for the PLM in 1928, and this is the English-titled edition of his La Plage de Calvi — two steamers wait in the bay below the Genoese citadel, because the beach was still a sea crossing away. The bather's orange wrap is the one hot note against all that blue, and its zigzag pattern must stay knife-sharp even while the fabric billows.
Island crossings · four formats
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Deeper into the catalogue
The quieter departures — trade-fair Vikings, a one-mark ocean crossing, and the road that climbs from the sea.
Bologna, c. 1928
The state tourist office's Bologna of about 1928 stacks the city's two leaning towers — the Asinelli and the half-height Garisenda — inside a painted arch, with the cursive 'libertas' of the civic arms slipped in like a signature. The striped border does the architecture's talking; keep its ochre bands even, or the arch loses its depth and the towers stop leaning.
Italian art cities · four formats
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Auto-Circuits de la Corse, 1922
An all-in Corsican circuit for 975 francs, motor-coaches leaving Nice every Friday — the 1922 sheet is half advertisement, half cartography, down to the dotted steamer line stitching Nice to 'the most beautiful island in the world'. The island must stay the colour of parchment against that milky blue sea; the thin route threads across it are the fragile part of every copy.
Auto-circuits · four formats
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Norges Varemesse — Bergen 1927, 1927
Gunnar Tandberg's dragon-prowed longship won the national trade fair's poster competition in 1923, and Bergen flew it again for the 1927 fair whose dates run across the foot of the sheet. It is pure flat poster-building — sun, striped sail, smokestack, a line of fish in the waves — and every colour has to butt clean against its neighbour, without halos.
Viking revival · four formats
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Panorama im Leipziger Krystall-Palast — the Lahn enters New York, 1893
Before you could afford the crossing you could buy it for one mark: open nine in the morning to eleven at night, Hans von Petersen's painted panorama put Leipzig on deck as the Lloyd steamer Lahn came into New York harbor. The sailor waving his cap from the rigging carries the sheet — his whites must stay bright while the harbor behind keeps its milky, printed distance.
Panorama craze · four formats
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Visit Ghent and the Towns of Art of East-Flanders, 1920
The Belgian State Railways went out in English in 1920, selling Flanders as 'the towns of art' to bring foreign travellers back after the war, and René De Cramer painted the Gravensteen fortress gilded by evening light. All the drama is in the water — the moat has to hold the gold of the walls and the black of their shadow side by side without letting the two bleed.
Towns of art · four formats
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La Route des Alpes — de la Mer à la Haute Montagne, c. 1920
Each summer the PLM ran open motor-coaches over the high passes, and Broders drew the whole itinerary as a ribbon of names climbing out of the flowers — 'from the sea to the high mountain', as the sheet promises along its foot. The lettering strung up that winding route has to stay legible at whisper size; those little names are the poster's entire promise.
Sea to summits · four formats
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The rest of the room
The works above are a taste — the catalogue holds 40+ The Grand Tours works. Browse it by subject:
Choosing a format
Rolled poster
The cheapest way in — pick it if you already own a frame or want one chosen for the room, not the shipment.
Framed paper
Arrives ready to hang, glass over paper — the classic museum-print look, and the safest default for most rooms.
Stretched canvas
No glass, no glare — texture close to a painting's, and a natural fit for painterly surfaces.
Framed canvas
The canvas texture with a finished edge — the most furniture-like of the four, and the largest sizes live here.
Prices vary by size and format; every listing shows all options in your own currency. Undecided? Ourprint format guidecompares the four honestly.
From the journal
Why is this work free to print in the first place?The Grand Tours and the public domain — the full guide →