Joseph Addison was not just a traveler but also a well-known essayist, a poet and a statesman as well as the founder of literary journalism in England (The Tatler, The Spectator). He left England in 1699. He went first to Paris and then spent almost a year at Blois. During his prolonged stay in France he learned the French language and got to know some of the most important figures in Parisian cultural circles, such as the philosopher Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715) and the poet and critic Nicolas Boileau (1636-1711), historiographer royal at the court of Louis XIV.

In 1700 he began his journey through Italy, which took him to Savona, Genoa, Milan, Venice, San Marino, Rome, Naples, Capri, Ostia and Florence. He returned to Genoa in 1701 and took ship for France again. After visits to Vienna, Hamburg and the Netherlands he went back to England for good in 1703. The account of his travels in Italy, Remarks on several parts of Italy, & c. in the years 1701, 1702, 1703, published in London in 1705, emphasized the marked contrast between the cultural splendor of the past and a present heavily conditioned by cultural and political ultra-conservatism. Addison was greatly impressed by the port of Livorno, which had become an indispensable destination for English trading vessels. His wonder at its efficiency and its potential for trade and profit constitutes a clear testimony to the growing importance of the Tyrrhenian port.

Joseph Addison was firmly convinced that there was nowhere else in the world where a traveler could find as much to stimulate him as in Italy: from the nature to the collections, from the music to the art studios, from the literature to the antiquities. His approach to describing the places was to start out from what the classics, the sources, had had to say about those places. He tried to avoid the most frequently visited locations and to find new routes and roads in his exploration of the land.