For at least fifteen hundred years travellers have brought home souvenirs of the places they visited. Some are bought, some simply acquired. They range in price from nothing - such as pebbles on a beach - to the extravagantly expensive, but they all serve as reminders of certain places. Among the earliest examples of souvenirs are objects brought back to Europe by Christian pilgrims visiting the Holy Land as early as the sixth century. The scallop shell became the pilgrim's emblem, and there are a number of commemorative badges bearing this motif. Back in 330 BC, Alexander the Great needed 3,000 camels and mules to cart back the souvenirs from the Persian capital of Persepolis.
The grand tour undertaken by British aristocrats in the eighteenth century yielded souvenirs on a grand scale. The gentry who travelled generally had large country houses to fill and sent back paintings and sculptures, both contemporary and classical. During the nineteenth century, as travel became less hazardous and expensive, souvenir makers began to cater to the less wealthy. Holidays by the seaside opened new markets, as did the great expositions held in Europe and North America in the mid-nineteenth century.…
