Getty’s Newest Manuscripts Exhibition Is a Trip

The J. Paul Getty Museum presents Going Places: Travel in the Middle Ages, an exhibition showcasing the many ways artists during the Middle Ages depicted the reasons and modes for travel.

The exhibition is on view at the Getty Center September 2 through November 30, 2025, and features manuscripts from the Museum’s permanent collection, many of which are rarely seen. Included will be both the 13th century Romance of Alexander, an exciting new addition to the collection, as well as The Book of Marvels of the World, a manuscript acquired by the Getty Museum in 2022 that was the focus of the 2024 exhibition The Book of Marvels: Wonder and Fear in the Middle Ages.

In medieval times, travel was not for leisure but mainly for work or professional duties. Given that the average European during this time rarely ventured beyond a 20-mile radius in their lifetime, the concept of travel during the Middle Ages was vastly different from our modern understanding. However, while regional and international travel was infrequent during this period, the concept of travel loomed large in the medieval imagination. The work of artists during the period documented the realities of travel but also evoked fantastical experiences in faraway destinations. The exhibition primarily highlights religious travel, but it also looks at other reasons for travel, which included diplomacy, war, trade, and tournament fighting.

“This exhibition allows our audience to connect with medieval art through what today is an almost everyday human experience–travel,” says Timothy Potts, Maria Hummer-Tuttle and Robert Tuttle Director of the Getty Museum. “Many of our visitors are travelers themselves, coming to the Getty from around the world, and this exhibition offers them a glimpse into how people hundreds of years ago understood travel through art.”

The exhibition unfolds over three sections: Following in the Footsteps of Christ: Christianity and Travel; Distant Lands: Diplomacy, Trade, and the Imagination; and Medieval Modes of Travel.

Following in the Footsteps of Christ highlights how journeys were central to the narrative traditions of the Christian Bible and that pilgrimages were the primary form of medieval religious travel. Apart from literal movement between places, this section also explores how conversions of a spiritual nature were represented as mental journeys. One featured work is The Sick, the Leprous, and the Lame Praying at Saint Hedwig’s Tomb; People Coming to Visit Saint Hedwig’s Tomb. The relics of saints attracted many throughout Europe who were in search of miraculous cures, which is seen in the lower half of the page as pilgrims travel by foot, horseback, and cart to reach the shrine of Saint Hedwig. Above the traveling pilgrims, many pray at her tomb hoping for divine healing.

Distant Lands focuses on trade and warfare as other reasons for travel during the period, as well as journeys of the imagination sparked by manuscripts of world histories, romances, and encyclopedias depicting mythical beasts and exotic lands. Included in this section is China (Seres), which depicts merchants at a faraway port loading goods onto a waiting ship. While Europe and China had a mercantile connection since the 1300s, the artist engaged the imaginations of viewers by representing China as a desert inhabited by dragons. This portion of the exhibition also looks at the dark side of medieval travel through forced movements including the English expulsion of Jewish communities, the enslavement of Moors in Africa, and Christopher Columbus’s enslavement of Indigenous peoples in the Americas.

Medieval Modes of Travel showcases both real and imagined modes of travel. Artists reflected the medieval realities of walking, sailing, and riding, but they also gave visual form to more fantastical modes of travel through images of legendary travelers from ancient history and faraway destinations. Highlighted in this section is Barlaam, Carrying a Shoulder Pack, Crosses a River, showing the hermit Barlaam crossing a river in a small boat accompanied by a ferryman, as he travels to India to convert Prince Josephat to Christianity. In cities that spanned rivers, these small boats served as water taxis, taking passengers to various destinations along the riverbank.

“Travel doesn’t necessarily involve great distances and can mean something different to everyone, both in the Middle Ages and today,” says Larisa Grollemond, associate curator of manuscripts at the Getty Museum. “We hope this exhibition invites visitors from all backgrounds to see their own experiences and notions of travel reflected in these medieval narratives of mobility of all different types.”

Visitors to the exhibition will be able to engage in an exciting interactive component inspired by early 8-bit arcade video games. “Pilgrimage Road” presents its players with the decisions, challenges, and rewards of the medieval route to the shrine of Saint James the Apostle in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, one of the most popular religious journeys of the Middle Ages. The road is perilous, but a spiritual reward awaits the determined pilgrim, with plenty of opportunities along the way to learn about the realities of medieval religious travel.

Going Places: Travel in the Middle Ages is curated by Larisa Grollemond, associate curator of manuscripts at the Getty Museum, and Benjamin Allsopp, former graduate intern at the Getty Museum.