The virtual tourist gaze in Greece, 1897–1905

• Research in early tourism to Greece is mainly conducted in the arts and humanities.
• Nineteenth century tourist guidebooks to Greece emphasise classical stereotypes.
• Stereoscopic guidebooks emphasise classical and contemporary Greece.

While travelling in Greece in 1892, a British tourist wryly commented on a group of tourists arriving in Athens who were travelling with nothing but a Baedeker guidebook and a pair of opera glasses (Armstrong, 1893). By 1892 tourist images were beginning to determine the benchmark for authentic vistas of Greece. This argument analyses an early technology for generating three dimensional images of Greece and the technological, ideological and discursive features that distinguish a particular iteration of the early tourist gaze. The study seeks to bring research from the humanities on tourism in Greece to a broader audience as a means of investigating the potential for more productive cross-flows in research covering tourism and the arts and humanities.