Traveling with the privy councilor is a very special pleasure. In September 1786, Johann Wolfgang Goethe - 37 years old and bored with his ministerial life - set off south. It goes over the Brenner Pass and to Lake Garda, via Verona to Venice, further via Bologna, Rome and Naples to Sicily. The Italian Journey is one of the most famous travelogues in literary history, but it is also a book about the Weimar poet prince himself. The work is based on his letters, notes and his diary of the Italian Journey for Frau von Stein, but was only written thirty years later: Zwischen In 1813 and 1817 Goethe revised his notes. – With a compact biography of the author.