Round-the-world Travel. From Jules Verne to the First Globetrotters

The exhibition Round-the-world travel. From Jules Verne to the first globetrotters explores the first global circumnavigations undertaken by tourists for pleasure. They first became possible in 1870, after the opening of the Suez Canal and America’s transcontinental railroad, but their popularity soared following the publication in 1872 of Jules Verne’s legendary novel Around the World in 80 Days. Conceived as part of a Swiss National Science Foundation project, the exhibition follows in the footsteps of the thousands of tourists – the majority of them Western and many Swiss – who travelled around the globe between 1869 and 1914.