The transformation process of Petersburg into an industrial metropolis has produced, in the collective imaginary as well as in the practicalities of everyday life, on the one hand a progressive fragmentation and hierarchisation of interior spaces, and on the other, a general reconsideration of the dualism city vs non-city. With the development of long-distance and suburban rail networks, space and time suddenly experienced a condensation, and what once could be reached only at the cost of a long, arduous and risky immersion into the uneven and inhospitable rural/provincial landscape was now within the citizen's reach. Within a few decades, the exploration of the "other" space changed from being a privilege for the elites to a mass cultural phenomenon, a practice of identification for the new urban lower-middle class. The aim of this paper is to retrace how this new concept of tourism – antithetical to the old aristocratic Grand Tour – took shape: a tourism whose aim was to encounter "internal" and "intrasystemic" otherness, nestled away in the folds of industrial modernity, in the crevices of a deeply stratified and heterogeneous landscape.

Pietroburghesi in viaggio. Cultura popolare ed etnografia urbana