From voice to paper. The Grand Tourist’s journey

The first experiment worked very well and the issue was sold out, so in 2026 The Grand Tourist has now become a biannual publication. The second issue continues the journey. Ernstberger boards the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express from Paris to Italy and photographs it en route to Tuscany; Kelly Wearstler leads readers to discover some of her favourite independent creatives in Amsterdam; Boucheron's high jewellery coexists with stories of design, hospitality and contemporary culture. The Grand Tour evoked by the title thus acquires a real geography, made up of people, objects and places.

The exchange, however, also works in the opposite direction. Stories created for the magazine become episodes of The Grand Tourist Reports. Podcasts, magazines, websites and newsletters thus end up being different entries in the same editorial project.
Perhaps this also explains the unusually large range covered by The Grand Tourist. Its subject matter is apparently design, but its idea of design has porous boundaries. A conversation about an interior can coexist with one devoted to a jewel, a hotel, a restaurant or the work of an artist.

In this respect, even the name The Grand Tourist is revealing. The historic Grand Tour did not simply consist of reaching a destination. The journey was a resource for the formation of taste, through the encounter with architecture, artworks, landscapes, objects and people. Rubinstein's version replaces the geographical itinerary with editorial curiosity, but retains the same principle: culture is understood by moving among things. The magazine makes this movement physical.

Its creation is part of a broader redefinition of what a magazine can be today. While news and information have moved to screens, a part of independent publishing has chosen another direction: fewer issues, better paper, longer stories, objects designed to remain instead of disappearing at the next issue. The Grand Tourist seems to occupy precisely this space.

There is a small paradox in this story. A project that began at a time when physical movement had almost stopped began to travel through conversations. A few years later, those conversations found a shape one can literally hold in one’s hands.

Perhaps paper has not survived despite digital. The Grand Tourist suggests another possibility: precisely because more and more of what we read, watch and listen to has become immaterial, paper can once again have a different kind of weight.