Аннотация:Isabella d’Este (1474–1539), Marchioness of the small Italian princely state of Mantua in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, was an enthusiastic traveller and an assiduous sightseer. This essay uses the Marchioness's voluminous correspondence to demonstrate that Isabella d’Este was well aware that European cultural tourism, which was becoming increasingly fashionable in male aristocratic circles, was for a woman, too, an important avenue to the political influence and social prestige that she aspired to. D’Este used travel to educate herself more fully, to escape the confines of her public role and to project herself as physically courageous and contemptuous of the passive pursuits recommended to her sex.
