The Art of France & Italy

Embark on an unforgettable artistic journey through France and Italy. Discover the masterpieces of the Musée d’Orsay and the iconic treasures of the Louvre in Paris. In Italy, walk the halls of the historic Accademia, explore Florence’s renowned Uffizi Gallery—home to works by Da Vinci—and stand in awe beneath Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel in the Vatican Museums. This immersive experience brings…

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The Art of France and Italy

https://worldstrides.com.au/itineraries/the-art-of-france-italy/

The Art of France & Italy

Embark on an unforgettable artistic journey through France and Italy. Discover the masterpieces of the Musée d’Orsay and the iconic treasures of the Louvre in Paris. In Italy, walk the halls of the historic Accademia, explore Florence’s renowned Uffizi Gallery—home to works by Da Vinci—and stand in awe beneath Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel in the Vatican Museums. This immersive experience brings…

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11-14 days

Destinations

France: ParisItaly: Rome, Sorrento, Florence

Your Adventure

1 Depart Australia
  • Board your flight Begin your journey to Paris, France.
2 Paris
  • Meet your tour director and check into hotel
  • Paris city walk Île de la Cité, Notre-Dame Cathedral, Île St. Louis, Latin Quarter
    This city was made for walking. Stroll grand boulevards with sweeping views of the city, pristine parks with trees planted in perfect rows, and narrow streets crowded with vendors selling flowers, pastries and cheese. Then head to the Île de la Cité, a small island in the Seine, to see Notre Dame Cathedral. Please note Notre Dame Cathedral is currently closed due to fire damage.
  • Dinner in Latin Quarter
3 Paris
  • Paris guided sightseeing tour Arc de Triomphe, Champs Élysées, Eiffel Tower, Les Invalides, Opera House
    What's that huge white arch at the end of the Champs-Élysées? The Arc de Triomphe, commissioned by Napoleon in 1806 after his victory at Austerlitz. Your licensed local guide will elaborate on this, and other Parisian landmarks. See some of the most famous sites, including the ornate 19th-century Opera, the Presidential residence and the Place de la Concorde, where in the center you’ll find the Obelisk of Luxor, a gift from Egypt in 1836. Spot chic locals (and tons of tourists) strolling the Champs-Élysées. Look up at the iron girders of the Eiffel Tower, built for the 1889 World's Fair to commemorate the centenary of the French Revolution. See Les Invalides (a refuge for war wounded) and the École Militaire (Napoleon's alma mater).
  • Louvre guided visit The world's largest art museum, the Louvre is housed in a Medieval fortress-turned-castle so grand it's worth a tour itself. You walk through the 71-foot glass pyramid designed by I.M. Pei and added in 1989, and step into another world--one with carved ceilings, deep-set windows, and so many architectural details you could spend a week just admiring the rooms. The Mona Lisa is here, as well as the Venus de Milo and Winged Victory (the headless statue, circa 200 BC, discovered at Samothrace). The Louvre has seven different departments of paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures and antiquities. Don't miss the Egyptian collection, complete with creepy sarcophagi, or the collection of Greek ceramics, one of the largest in the world. (Please note the Louvre is closed on Tuesdays.)
  • Crêperie dinner Tonight for dinner, enjoy a speciality from the Brittany region of France: crepes. Creperie restaurants are very popular in Paris and you will be able to choose from the variety of toppings (ham, cheese, egg, peppers, spinach, cream--or a combination!) to create your favorite savory crepe (called "galette") before you enjoy a local favourite: a sweet crepe served with chocolate, fruit or jam.
  • Seine River Cruise See the city from the water on an hour-long cruise along the River Seine. The Seine cuts right through Paris, dividing the city in half. See the Eiffel tower rising up on the Left Bank, the walls of the Louvre on the Right Bank. A guide will point out other monuments and architectural marvels as you pass, many of which are illuminated by clear white light at night.
4 Paris
  • Giverny guided excursion Claude Monet discovered this tiny farming village when he looked out the window of a stopped train. Impressed by its beauty, in 1883 he and his family moved into the pink stucco house where he spent the next 40 years planting his extensive gardens and creating some of the world's most beautiful Impressionist paintings. Spend some time wandering through the riot of natural colour in the Clos Normand and watching soft light shine on the delicate Japanese bridge and lush water lilies that inspired some of his most famous works. See Monet's studio, preserved just as he left it, with supplies and sketches scattered around. Neglected for years and badly damaged during WWII, the house and gardens took 10 years to restore, but are now back in their full glory. Which just leaves one question: With all that weeding and fertilizing, how did Monet have time to paint?
  • Montmartre tour director-led sightseeing Sacré Coeur, Place du Tertre, Moulin Rouge
    If you’re coming to Paris, you absolutely need to take a walk in Montmartre! This area will wake the artist in you up. Its narrow alleys, windmills, little details, and soul are some of the things that make Montmartre so unique. As you walk in Montmartre, you will quickly understand how it has inspired so many artists such as Picasso and Van Gogh. As you walk up the hill make sure to take in all that surrounds you, because in Montmartre you are likely to find surprises around every corner!
  • Dinner in Montmartre
5 Paris
  • Loire Valley châteaux guided excursion Château de Chambord photo stop, Château de Chenonceau visit, Château d'Amboise visit France’s aristocrats began building defensive castles in the Loire Valley in the 11th century. A few hundred years later, their descendants created pleasure palaces among the lush green forests and wandering waterways. Today, sumptuous Renaissance castles stud the banks of the silvery Loire River, the longest in France.
6 Paris - Florence
  • Musée d’Orsay visit Visit the Musée D'Orsay, which is housed in a former railway station. It features mainly French art from 1848-1915, and is best known for its impressionist masterpieces by Monet, Degas, Renoir, and Cezanne.
  • Fly to Florence
7 Florence
  • Florence guided walking sightseeing tour with Whisper headsets Palazzo Vecchio, Piazza della Signoria, Chiesa di Santa Croce, Ponte Vecchio, Duomo, Leather Workshop, Gates of Paradise, Giotto’s Bell Tower, Dante's House
    Immerse yourself in the charms of old-world Firenze. The birthplace and focal point of the Italian Renaissance, Florence still has the masterpieces to prove it. Brunelleschi’s monumental cuploa (dome) atop the city's renowned Duomo dominates the skyline. Your local licensed guide will take you to Giotto's Bell Tower and the aptly named Gates of Paradise, the bronze east doors of the Baptistery that spurred the burgeoning Renaissance. Don’t overlook the tombs of Michelangelo, Galileo, and Machiavelli at the Chiesa di Santa Croce, or Florence’s amazing leather goods. You can check them out when you visit one of the area’s famed workshops!
  • Accademia Gallery visit Founded in 1563, the Accademia was the first school in Europe established to teach drawing, painting, and sculpting. Michelangelo's David (the biblical hero who slayed Goliath) is the most famous work on display.
  • Traditional Italian pizza dinner
8 Florence
  • Uffizi Gallery guided visit Today you will visit one of Italy's most famous museums. The Ufizzi Gallery was originally built in 1560 as an administrative centre for the Florentine State. It now houses the largest collection of Italian Renaissance paintings. You will view the famous 'Birth of Venus' by Botticelli and 'The Baptism of Christ' by Da Vinci and many other works of art.
  • Pisa guided excursion Baptistery visit, Leaning Tower
    Stop in Pisa to see the famous leaning bell tower. It was already partly finished when builders realized that -- surprise! -- the ground beneath was too soft to support it. They tried to correct the tilt by putting a slight bend in the structure, but the extra weight just made it tilt more. Famous as it is, the leaning tower is just one component of Pisa’s Campo dei Miracoli (Field of Miracles). Rising from an immaculate green lawn, the baptistery, duomo, and tower are fine examples of Pisan Romanesque architecture. All three are clad in intricately carved black and white marble, and on bright summer days their brilliance can be blinding.
9 Florence - Rome
  • Travel to Rome
  • Ancient Rome guided walking sightseeing tour with Whisper headsets Colosseum visit, Forum Romanum visit, Piazza Venezia
    The ultimate symbol of Ancient Rome, the Colosseum still dominates the modern city. Tour the amphitheatre with your local licensed guide. Built by the emperor Vespasian in A.D. 72, the structure held almost 50,000 spectators but was so well organized that the entire place could be emptied within 15 minutes. Inside, the spectacles varied from gladiator battles to immense naval contests to wild beast shows, in which thousands of exotic animals like giraffes and ostriches were popped into the stadium through trap doors and left to fight Roman hunters. See the system beneath the floor that operated the trap doors and housed the animals, then continue on to the relative calm of the Forum. Ancient Rome’s commercial, religious and political center, the Forum held markets, temples and the Senate House. Near the Rostra, or speaker’s platform, you can still see game boards scratched into the marble by bored politicians--anyone up for a game of tic tac toe?
10 Rome
  • Vatican City guided walking sightseeing tour with Whisper headsets Vatican Museums & Sistine Chapel visit, St. Peter’s Basilica visit
    Visit St. Peter’s Basilica where from the outside, the church has four rows of columns that radiate out like welcoming arms; inside, the church seems enormous enough to embrace the entire world. The dome, partially designed by Michelangelo, rises 452 feet above the ground. Michelangelo’s mark is everywhere here, from the costumes worn by the Swiss Guards to his exquisite “Pietà” sculpture (the only sculpture he ever signed) to the amazing frescoes of the Sistine Chapel. Because he considered himself a sculptor and not a painter, Michelangelo hated working on these paintings, now considered masterpieces.
  • Rome city walk Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, Pantheon, Piazza Navona
    Take a walk past Rome's most beautiful and unusual Baroque fountains. At the foot of the Spanish Steps, elegant cafes surround the central fountain. The water pressure here was so low that the artist had to sink the fountain into the ground to get any water going through it, so he went ahead and designed the fountain to look like a sinking ship. There's no shortage of water pressure at the nearby Trevi Fountain, a Baroque extravagance designed by master sculptor Bernini.
  • Authentic trattoria dinner
11 Depart Italy or start tour extension

Extension to Sorrento

11 Depart Italy
  • Travel to Sorrento
  • Cameo demonstration Cameos, oval in shape and consisting of a portrait in profile carved in relief on a background of a different color, are often worn as jewelry. Stone cameos of great artistry were made in Greece dating back as far as the 3rd century BC, the oldest being the Hellenistic piece the Farnese Tazza. They were very popular in Ancient Rome, especially in the family circle of Augustus. Stop by a modern-day cameo studio and watch artisans carve them up close.
  • Pompeii guided excursion Stop to see the city where time stood still, literally. Once an important Roman city with 20,000 residents, Pompeii was frozen in time nearly 2000 years ago, when Mount Vesuvius erupted and buried the city under 30 feet of mud and volcanic ash. Forgotten for centuries after the eruption, Pompeii was discovered in the 1600’s and is now completely excavated. On your tour you will learn how Romans of all classes lived their lives--not only from large public structures, but from details like political graffiti, bars, and street signs.
12 Sorrento
  • Italian Gelato making class Join classmates in a one hour Italian gelato making class, where you'll make traditional gelato from fresh fruits and local dairy. You'll learn the ins and outs of this delicious treat and then enjoy tasting your creations. Buon appetito!
13 Sorrento - Rome
  • Capri & Blue Grotto excursion From the Bay of Naples the island of Capri is less than an hour away by boat. Weather permitting, you will take a boat to the Blue Grotto, where sunlight reflected from beneath the water bathes the cave in a silver-blue light.
  • Travel to Rome
14 Depart Italy

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