Best of Italy - Premium

You arrive in Rome, where scooter engines hum past ancient columns, the scent of coffee wafts from doorways and Renaissance palaces rise above streets woven with medieval stone and Baroque curves. As you settle in, you might hear church bells ringing between the rooftops and watch evening light soften the city’s ochre stone. Later, join your Travel Director and fellow travelers for dinner at a local restaurant, sharing Roman specialties as names become familiar around the table.

Beneath gilded ceilings, you'll follow your Local Specialist through the Vatican Museums, passing cool marble, richly painted walls and treasures collected by generations of Popes. Inside the Sistine Chapel, you gaze at Michelangelo’s nine scenes of Genesis, from the delicate reach of two hands to prophets, sibyls and the sweeping figures of The Last Judgement. Back in the open air, you pause before the pale stone, grand facade and rising dome of St Peter’s Basilica, then cross the Tiber towards ancient Rome. The Colosseum waits beyond, its tiered arches catching light and shadow as you move through stone passages and hear how the arena used to fill with the roar of spectators and the dust of combat. Later, perhaps continue through Rome’s piazzas, where water spills through sculpted fountains and polished stone glows beneath the city lights. 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.

As Rome recedes, you'll travel north through Lazio and into Tuscany, where vineyards sweep over the Chianti hills, olive leaves flash silver and cypress trees stand like dark brushstrokes beside pale country roads. Approaching Florence, you may catch terracotta rooftops spreading beyond the hills, your first hint of the Renaissance city ahead. Later enjoy a meal with fantastic flavors and regional wine.

In Florence, your choice experience begins either at the Accademia Museum or a local cafe. You can study Michelangelo’s David, from his watchful gaze and taut hand to the concealed sling showing him poised before his confrontation with Goliath, or join your Travel Director for an Italian treat. At the cathedral, you take in green, white and pink marble flowing across the facade and Giotto’s bell tower, while the Baptistery’s recreated Gates of Paradise gleam with gilded detail. Renaissance sculpture occupies every angle of Piazza della Signoria, Florence’s political heart, with Neptune, Hercules and Cacus outside the Palazzo Vecchio. Later, you watch artisans demonstrate Florence’s leatherworking and goldsmithing traditions, catching the rich scent of worked leather and the glint of gold as skilled hands cut, shape and finish intricate pieces.

On Pisa’s Square of Miracles, you stand beneath an expanse of sky as white marble glows across the cathedral, baptistery and the Leaning Tower’s rising arcades. As you cross the Apennine Mountains, wooded ridges fold into Emilia-Romagna, with vineyards tracing the lower hills and streams flashing through green valleys before the land opens wide. Beyond Tuscany, marsh grasses and salt water stretch across the Venetian Lagoon before you cross the causeway into Venice. As day-trippers return to the mainland, the city grows quieter and you catch the hollow knock of boats at their moorings from your hotel. Over dinner at a local restaurant, you taste Venetian cooking as your first night in the city unfolds beside the canals.

Aboard your private boat, you'll pass churches and palaces spanning seven centuries, their carved balconies, arched windows and layers of faded plaster mirrored in the wake. Along the waterfront, you catch sight of the enclosed Bridge of Sighs and the patterned Gothic stonework of the Doge’s Palace, where Casanova made his daring escape. Round the corner, St Mark’s Square stretches wide, with the basilica’s clustered domes and mosaic-lined arches commanding your gaze. From your seat in a traditional gondola, you travel beneath small bridges as a serenade echoes along the narrow canals. Later, heat radiates from the furnace at a Venetian glassblowing workshop as master glassmakers turn long iron rods, molten glass burning orange while practiced hands shape it using centuries-old techniques.

Across the Umbrian valley, Assisi climbs Mount Subasio before you in rose and cream, its bell towers lifting above the plain. In the valley, you see the Basilica of St Mary of the Angels, which shelters the Chapel of the Transitus where St Francis died in 1226. In the upper town, you enter the Basilica of St Francis with your Local Specialist, leaving Assisi’s pale streets for shadowed chapels washed in blue, gold and earth-red. Giotto’s frescoes spread across the walls of the Upper Basilica in tender, human scenes, their expressive faces and gestures a radical break from earlier European art. During free time, perhaps follow Via San Francesco, where savory aromas might drift from restaurants and bakeries as you browse keepsakes and locally crafted wares.

Traveling south, you pass Cassino, where Allied and German forces fought around Monte Cassino during one of the fiercest battles of the Second World War. The road then curls along the Sorrento cliffs, with the Bay of Naples widening below at each bend. Closer to the coast, you might catch the scent of citrus from hillside gardens as Mount Vesuvius anchors the far side of the bay. After checking in, the rest of the day is yours to explore the surroundings or enjoy the comfort of your hotel.

By boat, you’ll cross the Bay of Naples towards Capri, where great pale limestone cliffs descend into the Tyrrhenian Sea. The island’s admirers span 2,000 years, from Emperor Tiberius to Gracie Fields. High above Marina Grande, you join your Local Specialist in Capri town, where shaded lanes weave between whitewashed walls. The funicular carries you down the steep hillside to the port before your return to Sorrento. The rest of the day is yours, perhaps in Positano, where ochre, peach and rose houses line the Amalfi Coast above the water.

Beneath Vesuvius, you’ll explore Pompeii with your Local Specialist, following dark basalt streets through a Roman town preserved beneath ash in AD 79. At the Forum, columns break against the open sky, while you peer into shopfronts and patrician villas for traces of daily life in painted walls still standing after almost two millennia. The same volcano enriches the soil at Casa Barone, one of the few farms in the world to cultivate the endangered Piennolo tomato. During this MAKE TRAVEL MATTER® Experience, you meet the Barone family, learn how they farm sustainably and see the small, pointed tomatoes bound into hanging clusters to intensify their aroma and flavor. Taste them during a farm-to-table lunch before continuing to Rome, where dinner with local wine becomes an intimate setting for popular songs and arias from Italy’s best-loved operas.

As you leave Italy, its ancient cities, storied landmarks and changing landscapes remain vivid in your mind. So do the smaller moments: meals shared, flavors savored and the final notes of opera over dinner in Rome.