My aim in this article is to examine the accounts of certain Arab writer-travelers who visited the main European capitals between the 19th and 20th centuries in which they described museums, art galleries, important buildings and monuments and, on the basis of these accounts, to come to grips with a specific aspect of the formation of the modern Arab identity in which aesthetic considerations interact with political reflections. Art, architecture and archeology have played a significant role in the modeling of the historical-cultural bases of the modern Arab world according to a dialectic process which the Arab travelogues have amply evidenced, demonstrating how the construction of personal identity is intimately related to a representation of the identity of others. In this connection, it is interesting to note, in fact, that the attention of the Arab writer-travelers considered here is not only drawn to the more obvious aspects of Western progress – technological developments, administrative organization and public transport – but also to art and architecture which they feel to be an integral part of the European system. Preserving and conserving the national heritage and making it available to everyone in public places and museums has a significance which seems not to have escaped the notice of the Arab writers who have contributed, thanks to their accounts, to creating “the context and the substance of a society’s perception of the rest of the world” (B. Agai, O. Akyildiz, C. Hillebrand, 2013, p. 17).
