Grand Italy & Sicily

You’ll arrive in Rome to streets layered with ancient ruins, medieval buildings, Renaissance palaces and Baroque churches, each one carrying the burnished glow of centuries. After time to unpack, you step back out to restaurant chatter, polished stone and waiters weaving between trattoria tables along the street. This evening, you meet your Travel Director and fellow travellers over dinner at a local restaurant, sharing Roman specialities as you pass warm plates and savour the first forkfuls of the trip.

You'll enter the Vatican Museums with your Local Specialist, where you catch the low murmur of visitors echo through marble halls and rooms filled with papal treasures, painted ceilings. In the Sistine Chapel you'll gaze up at prophets, sibyls, angels, God and men swept across the ceiling by Michelangelo’s brush, from the nine scenes of Genesis to Adam’s finger reaching towards the touch of God. Outside, look up to the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica, then cross the Tiber into ancient Rome, passing from the long open ground of the Circus Maximus to the carved stone of the Arch of Constantine. Inside the Colosseum, the arena drops away below you into a maze of exposed passages. Among the stacked arches, weathered brick and pale stone tiers, ancient Rome’s appetite for spectacle lingers. Later, you may choose to continue through the Pantheon, fountains and piazzas, where water splashes against stone and church bells ring above the rooftops. Occasionally, access to the Vatican Museums is limited. If tickets are unavailable, you’ll instead explore the Capitoline Museums, home to iconic Roman art and archaeology.

Leaving Rome, you watch cypress trees, vineyards and silvery olive groves slip beyond the window as the countryside stretches into Tuscany. In the Square of Miracles, your Local Specialist will lead you towards the Leaning Tower, where Galileo is said to have tested ideas of velocity and gravity from its famous tilt. You'll stand among the cathedral and baptistery, noticing light shimmer across the mosaics, striped marble facades and the pale sweep of one of Italy’s most extraordinary squares. From here, you'll continue to Santa Margherita Ligure, where pastel buildings, harbour air and the promise of the coast carry you towards the Italian Riviera.

With your Local Specialist, you’ll head for Cinque Terre, where the Five Lands line a UNESCO-listed coastline of colourful sea-cut villages. Weather permitting, you arrive at one of its fishing villages by boat, feeling the engine hum through the water as painted houses climb above the shore. In Monterosso, you choose between the medieval quarter and the sandy beach, moving from narrow lanes and old stone walls to the soft sound of waves at the bay. Portofino adds polished boutiques, cafe bars and the piazzetta, where you can linger over a drink while yachts sit in the harbour and voices drift across the water. Your cruise continues along the rugged Ligurian coast to Santa Margherita, with cliffs, coves and bright village facades passing from the deck.

As you travel north to Lake Maggiore, you'll reach Baveno and follow its cobbled streets towards the square. After settling into your hotel, you might look across blue rippling water, green mountains and boats rocking close to shore. This afternoon, you may choose today’s Optional Experience cruise to Isola Bella, crossing towards a palace and Baroque garden arranged in terraces above the lake. On the island, you'll pass grand rooms, fountains, statues and obelisks as the Teatro Massimo rises above the planting. Among the parterres, you trace low box hedges as fountain mist cools the air and perhaps spot a white peacock wandering beneath the citrus trees.

From the comfort of your luxury coach, you can watch the Soave vineyards in neat green rows, then pass Padua as northern Italy leads you towards Venice. By the canals, the road falls away and water takes over, as you pause to hear boats nudging through narrow channels. After the day’s journey, you'll join your travelling companions for dinner, gathering over warm dishes, poured wine and the hum of voices around the table.

From a private boat, you’ll cross the lagoon past churches and palaces built between the 13th and 18th centuries, following carved façades, arched windows and weathered marble along the waterline. As you near St Mark’s Square, you continue along the waterfront past the Bridge of Sighs and the Doge’s Palace, where Casanova made his daring escape. Turning into St Mark’s Square, you look up at the Basilica’s domes, arches and gold mosaics, catching light flash across gilded detail and pale marble. Later, you settle into a traditional gondola, listening to the oar dip and music drift along the canal walls. At a Venetian glassblowing workshop, you feel the furnace heat on your skin and watch as master craftsmen turn molten glass into delicate, handmade pieces using centuries-old techniques.

Bid farewell to Venice and travel south, stopping in Bologna to enjoy Italy's food capital before continuing to Renaissance Florence. The afternoon is yours. You can follow the smell of espresso from cafe bars, browse leather-shop windows or pause beneath painted shrines set into street corners. Later, you may choose today’s Optional Experience to San Gimignano, where medieval towers stand above narrow lanes and lush vineyards. Back in Florence, you sit down to bistecca alla Fiorentina, take a sip of local wine and cut into a thick, peppery Tuscan steak.

For your choice experience, you can enter the Accademia Gallery and stand before Michelangelo’s David, following the white marble from clenched fist to watchful eyes. Then, as you continue past the cathedral, bell tower and baptistery where you pause to trace each fine carving of Ghiberti’s intricately recreated biblical scenes cut into the gilded bronze panels of the Gates of Paradise. Or join your Travel Director through Florence’s streets to a local cafe, where you pause over a typical Italian treat as the sweet, buttery scent of pastry floats through the air. In Piazza della Signoria, you move from Neptune’s fountain to Hercules and Cacus at the entrance of Palazzo Vecchio, looking up at Neptune’s horses, Hercules’ raised club and the palace’s rough-hewn stone blocks. Discover Florence's artisan heritage with a leatherworking and goldsmithing demonstration. This evening, you may choose an Optional Experience of Tuscan dishes and regional wines, raising a glass of Chianti from the nearby vineyards.

Travelling south through the volcanic hills of Frascati, you make your way towards Pompeii, where Mount Vesuvius buried the city in 79 CE. With your Local Specialist, you enter its preserved streets, stepping over cart ruts in the stone, pausing at faded frescoes and looking into doorways that once opened onto Roman homes and shops. From Pompeii, you follow the clifftop road to Sorrento and look out across the Bay of Naples as the vast, deep-blue sea stretches out to the horizon.

With your Local Specialist, you cross the Bay of Naples towards Capri, watching limestone cliffs line the route across the Mediterranean as salt air brushes your face. At Marina Grande, you step onto the quay to ropes creaking at their moorings and ferry engines humming across the water. You ascend to Capri town, following narrow alleyways worn smooth by centuries of visitors from Emperor Tiberius to Gracie Fields. You descend to the port by funicular railway for the return to Sorrento, watching the hillside slip past in flashes of villas, terraces and blue water. Later, you may choose today’s Optional Experience along the Amalfi Coast, travelling a shoreline of steep roads, sea cliffs and villages set into the cliffsides above the water.

After breakfast, you head for Matera and enter the Sassi with your guide, ducking into ancient dwellings and churches dug from limestone. You move through worn stairways, cave thresholds and pale stone passages, close to the spaces where around 20,000 people lived until the 1950s. As you explore one of the Mediterranean’s most extensive troglodyte settlements, you look across roofs, lanes and doorways layered into the ravine. Your guide also points out locations used in The Passion of the Christ. Later, you continue to Alberobello, where you settle in for two nights among whitewashed trulli and conical roofs.

In Alberobello, you explore another UNESCO World Heritage Site with your Local Specialist, moving through narrow lanes between whitewashed trulli, their grey limestone cones packed tightly together and tipped with small stone pinnacles. You duck through rounded doorways, look up into domed interiors and study roofs laid in tight circular courses without a smear of mortar. Outside, white symbols mark some of the stones and the lanes squeeze between houses that seem modest at the door and astonishing in the roofline. This evening, you sit down to a freshly prepared Farm-to-Table dinner tasting Puglia through regional ingredients and local recipes.

Following the Gulf of Taranto, you’ll travel south into Calabria, watching the road bend past shorelines, mountain slopes and the shimmering Purple Coast. At Italy’s southern edge, you board the ferry for Sicily, feeling the deck hum beneath you as salt wind moves across the Straits of Messina. After disembarking, you continue to Taormina and meet your Local Specialist at the Greek Theatre. You climb through ancient stone tiers, run your hand along weathered stone and pause at the open-air stage, looking from Mount Etna’s dark volcanic slopes to the Ionian Sea beyond the theatre’s broken arches.

On Sicily’s Dawn Coast, you may spend the morning by the Ionian Sea, gazing out across the bright blue water listening to the waves lapping against the shore. Or choose today’s Optional Experience to Mount Etna, Europe’s highest active volcano, where you look across old lava flows, crater slopes and black volcanic rock, tasting mineral grit in the mountain air. Later, you travel through Sicily’s countryside towards Palermo, watching hills, fields and towns pass the window before you enter the capital among balconies, church domes, carved façades and the hum of city streets.

With your Local Specialist, you enter Palermo Cathedral through the Gothic-Catalan portico, passing beneath ogival arches and finely incised stonework before looking up to the white nave and Baroque dome shaped by Ferdinando Fuga’s 18th-century remodelling. At the Palace of the Normans, you step inside the Palatine Chapel and gaze up at gold mosaics, Byzantine figures and patterned surfaces that glimmer above marble floors. The afternoon is yours, or you may choose today’s Optional Experience to Teatro Massimo, Italy’s largest opera house, before continuing to a historic street market where you listen to vendors’ abbanniate calls ring over crates, stalls and daily trade. This evening, join your Travel Director and travelling companions at a local restaurant for regional Sicilian cuisine and local wine.

After one last goodbye in Palermo, your grand tour of Italy ends with a departure transfer to Palermo Falcone–Borsellino Airport.