Italian Journey

“In September 1786 Goethe, minister of a small German court and the most famous writer in Germany, slips away from Karlsbad before dawn under a false name and goes south. In diary entries and letters he records the Alps, Lake Garda, Palladio's Vicenza, Venice, his long-desired Rome, Naples under Vesuvius, Sicily's temples and the search for the primal plant, and a second year in Rome among artists — and comes home a changed man.”