Do You Know Is Stendhal Syndrome?
Let’s imagine this situation for a moment: you decide to go on vacation to a place you’ve never been before, it can be a big city or a place surrounded by nature. When you get off the plane or get out of the car and admire what you have in front of you, you begin to feel that you are going to faint, that your pressure is getting lower and lower and that you must support or support yourself so as not to fall face down on the floor.
Well that, basically that is Stendhal Syndrome, also known as Florence Syndrome or Traveler’s Syndrome. The sensations of extreme happiness can be experienced either in front of a collection of works of art in Italy or in the mountains of the Swiss Alps. It all depends on each person and the sensations that occur inside.
Where does Stendhal Syndrome arise? To know the origins, we must go back almost two centuries, to France. There, Henri Marie Beyle, a writer known under the pseudonym “Stendhal”, decided to take a trip to the Italian city of Florence, an extremely beautiful place rich in artistic expressions.
When he visited the Basilica of the Holy Cross, he began to experience a sensation that until then he had not experienced. In the words of the traveler: “I had reached that degree of emotion in which the heavenly sensations given by the Fine Arts and passionate feelings collide. Leaving Santa Croce, my heart was beating, life was exhausted in me, I was scared of falling “.
Have you ever had that feeling in your life? It can be, as we said before, with a work of art or an expression of nature. Dizziness, fainting spells, tachycardia, the urge to cry with emotion, vertigo … all at the same time is Stendhal Syndrome. Although science indicated that it is only possible to experience it in the city of Florence, the truth is that travelers have affirmed that they felt it in other places, both in a city or in a natural place.
It is true that there are some artistic expressions that arouse many emotions, such as the Mona Lisa in the Louvre or the Pieta in the Vatican, but there are also people who feel something indescribable in the face of natural beauty, such as Niagara Falls or the fjords in Norway. It all depends on what each one considers as “beautiful” or majestic.
Or maybe it has to do with the passion that characterizes us or something that we really love. If your dream is to know the Golden Gate of San Francisco or the Pyramids of Nice in Egypt, it is likely that when you are in front of these architectural works, your happiness is such that you start crying, jumping with emotion or thinking that you are going to faint.
And as you can see, it is not something new, since in 1817, Stendhal was the first to speak about it. Subsequent investigations say that there are cases all over the world, not just in Florence as happened on his trip to the writer. With the globalization of tourism, the amount of works of art that have been recovered, the majesty of certain buildings and above all, the magnificence of nature as opposed to life in the city, this Syndrome is expressed in all parts of the world.
No one can yet determine why these sensations occur and some even indicate that everything is moved by suggestion. What is true is that we must allow emotions to express themselves in all their splendor. If you are going to travel to a place and have great expectations about it, if the dream of your whole life has been to visit a particular Museum, if you have saved for years to reach a specific mountain or if you think you will find your favorite place in the world, you are likely to experience Stendhal Syndrome. You don’t have to remember the name of this writer who lived two centuries before you. You just have to dedicate yourself to enjoying yourself and letting happiness flood your trip.
