Welcome to the website of Robert & James Adam’s Grand Tour letters and writings 1754–63. The aim of this project is to present an online critical edition of all the known Adam brothers’ Grand Tour letters and writings as a freely available, open-access, fully searchable database. This will enable readers to view the letters in their original form alongside new and accurate transcriptions, with contextual scholarly annotations. 

The website will be updated periodically as the project progresses through its various phases. The completed online edition of the letters will be hosted from 2025 by Sir John Soane’s Museum, custodians of most of the surviving Grand Tour and architectural drawings from the Adam brothers’ office, and will be licensed under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA licence. 

The project is supported by a Digital Project Grant from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and is a collaboration between UCL’s Bartlett School of Architecture and the University of Buckingham’s Department of History and History of Art. It also has the full backing of Sir Robert Clerk of Penicuik, owner of the largest surviving collection of Adam Grand Tour letters, and the support of Sir John Soane’s Museum, the National Records of Scotland, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Royal Institute of British Architects and London Metropolitan Archives/City of London.  The editors and directors of the project are Dr Adriano Aymonino of the University of Buckingham and Colin Thom of the Survey of London at UCL’s Bartlett School of Architecture. The project’s technical director is Dr Giles Bergel (UCL and Oxford). The project’s transcriber is Harriet Richardson.  Please send any comments or new information to us by email to: editors@adamgrandtour.online