This book has explored a series of questions concerning topographical art produced by British and Italian painters, amateur and professional, in north-west Italy during the long nineteenth century, 1800–1920. Our period began when Italy was largely closed to British visitors as a result of the Napoleonic wars. As the century progressed it opened up rapidly following political, social and technological changes. By the end of our period Italy was a favoured place for many British visitors and large numbers of wealthier people regularly visited or settled there, including those with business interests in the region. From the 1860s British cultural institutions, including Anglican churches and museums, were established in many places along the coast, notably the Museo Bicknell at Bordighera, which opened in 1888 and still thrives today. We have shown how some resort towns, such as Alassio and Sanremo, were established from the 1860s onwards by British developers mainly for British visitors and residents. By the Edwardian period many small fishing villages became tourist hotspots. To take the area around Portofino as an example, the novelist E. F. Benson (1867–1940) stayed with his friend Francis Yeats-Brown at Portofino and wrote his novel The Osbornes while on holiday there in 1910. They had met the previous year at Paraggi Castle nearby, which had been rented by Lord Stanmore. Elizabeth von Arnim took Castello Portofino for a month in 1920 and set her popular novel The Enchanted April in the castle. The caricaturist and novelist Max Beerbohm moved to the Villino Chiaro above Rapallo in 1910 and lived there until he died in 1956, receiving many visitors.

These close links were reinforced when Italy and Britain became allies during the First World War. The war itself produced some remarkable paintings of aerial landscapes by British airmen such as Sydney Carline. A good example of the influence of Italy on British culture during the war is The Book of Italy, which was published in 1916 by the Pro Italia committee under the patronage of Queen Elena of Italy, Prime Minister Asquith and many other notables. It was designed to raise money for the families of Italian soldiers and sailors in Britain and for the Italian Red Cross.