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He studied History and German at the universities of Berlin, Bochum, Florence and Paris. He has been Maître de Conférences at the University Lumière Lyon 2 since 1999, and is now a Professor for Early Modern History at the university of Limoges. His research is concentrated on religious history, especially of the 16th and 17th centuries, on the cult of saints and the Roman Inquisition, as well as on the history of travel.Publications and research projects related to the conference:« Grand Tour et Inquisition romaine. Deux nobles français face au Saint Office dans la Rome des années 1590 » (in print).Médiateurs et instances de médiation dans l’histoire du voyage, colloque international du Centre de Recherche Interdisciplinaire en Histoire, Histoire de l’Art et Musicologie (CRIHAM), (en collaboration avec l’Institut historique allemand et le CRHIPA / Grenoble), Limoges, 3-5 décembre 2014.albrecht.burkardt@unilim.fr&#160;At the Origins of the Grand Tour. Travel in the Treatises of Education of the Nobility from the 16th to the Early 17th CenturyThe Grand Tour as a key element of aristocratic education starts to be quite well-known even in its characteristics as a social practice. Still we know little about its origins. Of course, the practice is elder than its name, which does not mean that it has always been considered as an ideal. At the end of the sixteenth century, François de la Noue already observes that every year hundreds of young French noblemen travel to Italy – practice he doesn’t approve at all.  And when Etienne Pasquier, during the same years, tries to get his son employed as a servant of the French ambassador in Rome, he does so in order to “repair” the damage caused by the t young man’s improvised journey, which the father did neither approve nor appreciate. Nevertheless, theses noblemen leave. Do we have to conclude that the Grand Tour as a practice preceded its idealisation in theory? The conference will try to answer this question through the witness of two sources: the treatises concerning aristocratic education on the one hand, those dedicated to the “reason of state” on the other. According to the examples cited above, the analysis will centre on the production of these texts in France and Italy, while taking also in consideration examples from the practice. More precisely, the challenge is to find out, when and due to which circumstances the Grand Tour is established as an ideal of aristocratic education.