M A RT I N R A N D A L L T R AV E L
M A RT I N R A N D A L L T R AV E L A RT • A R C H I T E C T U R E • G A S T R O N O M Y • A R C H A E O L O G Y • H I S T O R Y • M U S I C
2019: 2nd edition
Martin Randall Travel Ltd Voysey House Barley Mow Passage London W4 4GF United Kingdom Tel +44 (0)20 8742 3355 info@martinrandall.co.uk www.martinrandall.com
Martin Randall Australasia PO Box 1024 Indooroopilly QLD 4068, Australia Telephone 1300 55 95 95 New Zealand 0800 877 622 Fax +61 (0)7 3371 8288 anz@martinrandall.com.au
North America Martin Randall Travel Ltd 1155 Connecticut Avenue NW Suite 300 Washington DC 20036, USA Telephone 1 800 988 6168 usa@martinrandall.com
Directors: Martin Randall (CEO), Fiona Charrington (COO), Alexa Berger (CFO), Sir Vernon Ellis (Chairman), Ian Hutchinson, Neil Taylor, William Burton. Registered office: Voysey House, Barley Mow Passage, London W4 4GF, United Kingdom. Registered Company no. 2314294. VAT no. 527758803. All staff were involved in writing and editing this brochure, and it was designed in-house by Jo Murray and Rosanna Reade. It went to print on 7 November 2018. Illustration: London, Paddington Station, hand-coloured copper engraving by Francis Hall after a painting by William Powell Frith RA, publ. 1866.
5085
Second edition
Britain’s leading provider of cultural tours
Leaders in the field At Martin Randall Travel we are committed to providing the best planned, the best led and altogether the most fulfilling and enjoyable cultural tours available.
artin Randall Travel is M Britain’s leading specialist in cultural travel. The focus is on art, architecture, music, archaeology, history, gardens or gastronomy. We operate in around fifty countries in Europe, Asia, the Americas and the Middle East. All tours are accompanied by expert speakers.
Excellent hotels and restaurants and comfortable travelling arrangements. We provide personal service and aim for faultless administration.
For thirty years we have been the most influential organisation in the field of cultural travel. Pioneering and innovative, we have led the way with ideas and itineraries and by setting the benchmarks for customer service and administration. Martin Randall Travel is one of the most trusted and respected travel companies in the world, among both travellers and within the tourism community.
Opposite, from top: Freiburg, 16th-century engraving; Beneath: engraving 1851 by Henry Winkles.
They are original and imaginative, well-paced and carefully balanced. Meticulous attention to practical matters ensures a smooth-running as well as an enriching experience. Special arrangements feature on nearly all our tours – for admission to places not generally open to travellers, for access outside public hours, for private concerts and extraordinary events. In innumerable ways, large and small, we lift our clients’ experience far above standards which are regarded as normal for tourists.
First-rate lecturers
Travelling in comfort
Expert speakers are a key ingredient in our tours and events. Academics, curators, writers, broadcasters and researchers, they are selected not only for their knowledge but also for their ability to communicate clearly and engagingly to a lay audience.
We select our hotels with great care. Not only have nearly all been inspected by members of our staff, but we have stayed in most of them. Hundreds of others have been seen and rejected.
Their brief is to enlighten and stimulate, not merely to inform – and they also have to be good travelling companions.
Illustration, above: engraving 1874, from a set of ethnographic studies of Peru.
Rooted in knowledge of the destination and of the subject matter of the tour, the outcome of assiduous research and reconnaissance, and underpinned by many years of thought and experience, our itineraries are second to none.
We select our lecturers through reputation, interview and audition, and provide them with guidance and training. Most of our tours are also accompanied by a trained tour manager who unobtrusively attends to administrative matters.
Obviously, comfort ranks high among our criteria, together with good service and warmth of welcome. We also set high priority on charm and style, and location is an important consideration. Most of the hotels we use are rated as 4-star, with some 5-star and a few 3-star (one is 2-star, but pleases every time).
19–27 Berlin, Potsdam, Dresden (mf 730) Dr Jarl Kremeier............................................... 92 Ancient Egypt at the British Museum 20 (lf 737) Lucia Gahlin..................................... 36 21–26 The Renaissance in Castile & León (mf 731) Dr Xavier Bray............................... 191 21–30 Classical Greece (mf 734) Dr Andrew Farrington.................................. 109 23–27 Dorset Churches (mf 736) Imogen Corrigan.............................................. 13 23–27 Country Houses of Kent (mf 746) Anthony Lambert............................................. 25 24–27 Food & Wine Archaeology (mf 735) Prof. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill...................... 154 25–29 Crécy, Agincourt & Waterloo (mf 733) Major Gordon Corrigan.................................. 54 26– 2 SACRED MUSIC IN SANTIAGO (mf 760)............................. 186 27– 2 Bauhaus Centenary (mf 762) Tom Abbott.. 95 29– 7 Gastronomic Crete (mf 767) Rosemary Barron .......................................... 110 30– 4 Arts & Crafts in the Lake District (mf 765) Janet Sinclair.................................................... 31 30– 5 Pompeii & Herculaneum (mf 768) Dr Nigel Spivey............................................... 153 30– 6 World Heritage Malta (mf 800) Juliet Rix.165 30– 6 Istanbul Revealed (mf 757) Jeremy Seal.... 206 30– 8 Aragón: Hidden Spain (mf 769) Dr Zahira Bomford........................................ 192
OCTOBER 2019 1– 6 Palladian Villas (mf 771) Dr Sarah Pearson........................................... 124 2– 6 Art in Madrid (mf 772) Gail Turner.......... 195 2–11 Albania: Crossroads of Antiquity (mf 770) Carolyn Perry................................................... 46 3– 7 The Venetian Hills (mf 774) Dr Carlo Corsato........................................... 122 4–11 Ancient & Islamic Tunisia (mf 777) Henry Hurst.................................................... 215 4–15 Samarkand & Silk Road Cities (mf 797).. 239 7–12 Friuli-Venezia Giulia (mf 775) Dr Carlo Corsato........................................... 123 7–14 Walking in Southern Tuscany (mf 776) Dr Antonia Whitley....................................... 140 8 Interwar Interiors (lf 784) Paul Atterbury.36 8–13 Bauhaus Centenary (mf 785) Tom Abbott . 95 8–21 Sacred China (mf 786) Jon Cannon........... 218 12–19 Romantic Agony: English Poets in Italy (mf 793) Dr Thomas Marks......................... 130 12–20 Moldavia & Transylvania (mf 787) Alan Ogden..................................................... 176 13–20 Courts of Northern Italy (mf 791) Dr Michael Douglas-Scott............................. 132 14–20 Romans in Western Iberia (mf 788) Prof. Simon Esmonde Cleary........................ 197 14–21 Bilbao to Bayonne (mf 792) Gijs van Hensbergen...................................... 189 14–22 Palestine, Past & Present (mf 789) Felicity Cobbing.............................................. 214 14–26 Civilisations of Sicily (mf 799) John McNeill................................................... 161 14–27 The Western Balkans (mf 790) Elizabeth Roberts............................................. 56 15–18 Houghton & Holkham (mf 805) Dr Andrew Moore............................................ 24 15–22 Mediaeval Alsace (mf 794) Dr Matthew Woodworth................................. 78
16–18 SYMPOSIUM: Medieval History, Art & Architecture........ 35 17–23 Modern Art on the Côte d’Azur (mf 816) Lydia Bauman.................................................. 83 17–26 New England Modern (mf 820) Prof. Harry Charrington............................... 254 17–29 China’s Silk Road Cities (mf 802) Dr Jamie Greenbaum..................................... 220 19–27 Le Corbusier (mf 806) Dr Richard Plant..... 75 20–26 Art in the Netherlands (mf 840) Dr Guus Sluiter.............................................. 167 21–26 Classic Catalan Wines (mf 807) Linda Hanks................................................... 193 21–31 Essential Andalucía (mf 848) Dr Philippa Joseph......................................... 198 23–27 Ravenna & Urbino (mf 809) Dr Luca Leoncini........................................... 131 24– 4 Myanmar: Ancient to Modern (mf 859) Dr John Clarke............................................... 237 24– 6 The Making of Argentina (mf 860) Chris Moss...................................................... 242 26– 1 Gastronomic Piedmont (mf 864) Marc Millon.................................................... 119 26– 3 Essential Jordan (mf 868) Sue Rollin & Jane Streetly............................. 209 26– 5 Oman, Landscapes & Peoples (mf 865) Dr Peter Webb................................................ 212 29– 4 Leonardo 500 (mf 766) Dr Michael Douglas-Scott............................. 138 30 Ancient Greece (lf 866) Prof. Antony Spawforth................................... 36 Art in Paris...................................................... 73 Verdi in Parma & Busseto........................... 135
NOVEMBER 2019 1– 3 THE THOMAS TALLIS TRAIL (mf 875).. 29 1– 4 Historic Musical Instruments (mf 873) Prof. Robert Adelson...................................... 120 4 Japanese Art in London (lf 874) Dr Monika Hinkel............................................ 36 5– 9 Venetian Palaces (mf 878) Dr Michael Douglas-Scott............................. 127 5–11 OPERA IN SOUTHERN SICILY (mf 876)................... 162 6–16 Californian Galleries (mf 881) Gijs van Hensbergen...................................... 251 8 Caravaggio & Rembrandt (lf 884) Dr Helen Langdon........................................... 36 10–22 Bengal by River (mf 880) Dr Anna-Maria Misra................................... 226 11–17 Art History of Venice (mf 882) Dr Susan Steer................................................ 126 11–17 Florence Revisited (mf 883) Dr David Rosenthal....................................... 138 11–18 Gastronomic Sicily (mf 885) Marc Millon.................................................... 163 12 The Italian Renaissance (lf 886) Dr Michael Douglas-Scott............................... 36 12–17 Palermo Revealed (mf 888) Christopher Newall........................................ 164 15 Islamic Art in London (lf 899) Prof. James Allen.............................................. 36 16–28 Mughals & Rajputs (mf 900) Dr Giles Tillotson........................................... 224 18–23 Palaces & Villas of Rome (mf 901) Dr Michael Douglas-Scott............................. 148 18–29 Art in Japan (mf 902) Dr Monika Hinkel.......................................... 234
19 The Golden Age of British Painting (lf 903) Patrick Bade...................................... 36 20–24 Ruskin’s Venice (mf 904) Christopher Newall........................................ 129 20– 3 Vietnam: History, People, Food (mf 906) Dr Dana Healy............................................... 240 21 The Genius of Titian (lf 907) Lucy Whitaker.................................................. 36 22 Ancient Egypt at the British Museum (lf 905) Lucia Gahlin..................................... 36 27 London’s Underground Railway (lf 910) Andrew Martin................................................ 36
DECEMBER 2019 The Golden Age of British Painting (lf 924) Patrick Bade...................................... 36 4 Caravaggio & Rembrandt (lf 925) Dr Helen Langdon........................................... 36 5 The Italian Renaissance (lf 355) Dr Antonia Whitley......................................... 36 5 Ancient Greece (lf 926) Prof. Antony Spawforth................................... 36 We usually offer eight or nine tours over Christmas and New Year. Please call us to register your interest, or e-mail alerts@martinrandall.co.uk
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JANUARY 2020 4–14 Oman, Landscapes & Peoples.................... 212
FEBRUARY 2020 1–12 Architecture of the British Raj (mg 988) Anthony Peers................................................ 232 8–24 Lands of the Maya (mg 100) David Drew. 247 16–25 Gastronomic Kerala (mg 105) Dr Elizabeth Collingham.............................. 231
MARCH 2020 15–28 Sacred India (mg 130) Asoka Pugal........... 229
APRIL 2020 19–26 The Ring in Chicago (mg 169) Barry Millington & Tom Abbott................... 258 24– 4 Baroque Music in the Bolivian Missions (mg 185) Jeffrey Skidmore............................ 245 New Orleans to Natchitoches .................... 255
MAY 2020
East Coast Galleries..................................... 259
JUNE 2020
Frank Lloyd Wright..................................... 256
JULY 2020 21–27 Oberammergau (mg 315) Tom Abbott...... 103
AUGUST 2020 18–24 Oberammergau (mg 340) Tom Abbott...... 103
SEPTEMBER 2020
Frank Lloyd Wright..................................... 256 West Coast Architecture ............................ 259
OCTOBER 2020 31–12 Textile Arts of Japan with HALI Alan Kennedy & Ben Evans.......................... 235 The American Revolution........................... 252
NOVEMBER 2020 16–27 Bengal by River (mg 580) Dr Anna-Maria Misra................................... 226 Art in Texas................................................... 252 Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
273
TOURS BY DATE
Meticulously-planned itineraries with special arrangements and privileged access.
We offer an unequalled range of tours and events focusing on art, architecture, music, archaeology, history, gardens and gastronomy. Our mission is to deepen your understanding and enhance your appreciation of the achievements of civilisations around the world.
Original itineraries, meticulously planned
Tours by date
We invest similar efforts in the selection of restaurants, menus and wines, aided by staff with a specialist knowledge of these areas. For flights and trains we try to choose the most convenient departure times. Rail journeys are usually in first-class seats. We can provide a holiday without international travel if you prefer, allowing you to make your own arrangements. It is also usually possible to make other variations to the package.
Small groups, and congenial company Most of our tours run with between 10 and 20 participants. We strictly limit numbers, specifying the applicable maximum in each tour description. The higher costs of smaller numbers are outweighed by the benefits of manoeuvrability, social cohesion and access to the lecturer. The small-group principle is diluted when there are private concerts or several speakers exclusively for our clients. Not the least attractive aspect of travelling with MRT is that you are highly likely to find yourself in congenial company, self-selected by common interests and endorsement of the company’s ethos.
Care for our clients, suppliers and employees We aim for faultless administration from your first encounter with us to the end of the holiday, and beyond. Personal service is a feature.
If anything does go wrong, we will put it right or compensate appropriately. We want you to come back again and again – as most of our clients do. We are a fair, inclusive company and we trust everyone who has dealings with Martin Randall Travel to treat our clients, suppliers and employees with courtesy, empathy and respect.
Travelling solo We welcome people travelling on their own, for whom our tours are ideal, as many of our clients testify. There are usually several solo travellers on a tour. On evenings when dinner is not included there is always the option of dining with the tour manager. Hotels usually charge a supplement for single occupancy of a room, but we never add anything to this – indeed, some of the supplements we charge are subsidised by ourselves, sometimes by hundreds of pounds. Where we are able to, we assign those travelling on their own to rooms which are normally sold as doubles. Tours exclusively for solo travellers. We have five departures in 2019 dedicated to people travelling on their own: Modern Art on the Côte d’Azur (March, p.83), Civilisations of Sicily (March, p.161), St Petersburg (September, p.179), Essential Jordan (October, p.209), Samarkand & Silk Road Cities (April, p.239). The price includes a contribution to what would usually be charged as a single supplement; some of it being absorbed by us. Of course, solo travellers are welcome on all other departures of these tours too.
Value for money, and no surcharges The price includes nearly everything, not only the major ingredients such as hotel, transport and the costs of the lecturer and manager but also tips, drinks with meals and airport taxes. We do not levy surcharges for fuel price increases, exchange rate changes, additional taxes or for any other reason. The price published here is the price you pay.
Tours A–Z by country
Britain & Ireland.............................................10–45 Mainland Europe..........................................46–208 Middle East & Africa..................................209–216 Asia..............................................................217–241 The Americas..............................................242–259
ALBANIA Albania: Crossroads of Antiquity............................ 46
ARGENTINA The Making of Argentina....................................... 242
ARMENIA Sacred Armenia......................................................... 47
AUSTRIA Connoisseur’s Vienna............................................... 49 MUSIC ALONG THE DANUBE............................ 50 Mozart in Salzburg.................................................... 53 Opera in Munich & Bregenz ................................. 108 Opera in Vienna........................................................ 51 The Schubertiade....................................................... 52 Vienna’s Masterpieces............................................... 50
BELGIUM Crécy, Agincourt & Waterloo.................................. 54 Flemish Painting........................................................ 55
BELIZE Guatemala, Honduras, Belize................................ 243
BOLIVIA Baroque Music in the Bolivian Missions.............. 245
BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA The Western Balkans................................................. 56
CHINA China’s Silk Road Cities.......................................... 220 Essential China........................................................ 217 Sacred China............................................................ 218
TOURS A–Z BY COUNTRY
CROATIA The Imperial Riviera............................................... 121 Sailing the Dalmatian Coast ................................... 58 The Western Balkans................................................. 56
CZECH REPUBLIC Connoisseur’s Prague................................................ 60 Great Houses of the Czech Lands........................... 62 Prague Spring............................................................. 61 Walking in Southern Bohemia................................ 63
DENMARK Danish Castles & Gardens........................................ 65 Puccini in Copenhagen............................................ 66
ENGLAND The Age of Bede......................................................... 15 AGE OF VICTORIA................................................. 34 Architecture of Bath.................................................. 33 Arts & Crafts in the Lake District........................... 31 At home at Weston Park........................................... 23 The Cathedrals of England....................................... 10 4
Country Houses of Kent........................................... 25 Country Houses of the North West........................ 21 Country Houses of the South West......................... 22 Dorset Churches........................................................ 13 Gastronomic West Country..................................... 30 Glyndebourne & Garsington .................................. 28 Great Houses of the North....................................... 20 Houghton & Holkham.............................................. 24 Literary England........................................................ 27 LONDON DAYS....................................................... 36 London Choral Day.................................................. 37 MEDIEVAL HISTORY, ART & ARCHITECTURE....................................... 35 Mediaeval Sussex & Hampshire.............................. 12 MID-WEEK & WEEKEND CHAMBER MUSIC.................................................. 35 Roman Southern Britain.......................................... 16 Shakespeare & his World.......................................... 12 The South Downs...................................................... 32 THE THOMAS TALLIS TRAIL.............................. 29 Tudor England........................................................... 26 Walking Hadrian’s Wall............................................ 18 The Welsh Marches................................................... 39 WEST COUNTRY CHORAL FESTIVAL.............. 29 Yorkshire Churches & Cathedrals........................... 14
ESTONIA Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania...................................... 67
FINLAND Opera & Ballet in Helsinki....................................... 68 Savonlinna Opera...................................................... 69 The Sibelius Festival.................................................. 69
FRANCE Art in Paris................................................................. 73 Cave Art of France.................................................... 82 Champagne: Vines, Cellars & Cuvées..................... 72 Châteaux of the Loire................................................ 80 Crécy, Agincourt & Waterloo.................................. 54 French Gothic............................................................ 77 Gastronomic Provence............................................. 84 Gardens of the Riviera.............................................. 85 Mediaeval Alsace....................................................... 78 Mediaeval Burgundy................................................. 81 Mediaeval Upper Normandy................................... 71 Modern Art on the Côte d’Azur.............................. 83 Monet & Impressionism........................................... 73 Music & Ballet in Paris............................................. 75 Le Corbusier............................................................... 75 Leonardo 500........................................................... 138 Poets & The Somme.................................................. 70 Romans in the Rhône Valley.................................... 86 Versailles: Seat of the Sun King............................... 74 Wine, Walks & Art in Alsace................................... 79
GEORGIA Georgia Uncovered................................................... 88
GERMANY Bauhaus Centenary................................................... 95 Berlin: New Architecture.......................................... 94
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Berlin, Potsdam, Dresden........................................ 92 Dresden Music Festival............................................. 97 Franconia.................................................................. 106 Hamburg: Opera & ‘Elphi’....................................... 91 Handel in Halle.......................................................... 98 The Hanseatic League............................................... 90 THE J.S. BACH JOURNEY.................................... 101 King Ludwig II......................................................... 107 Mediaeval Alsace..................................................... 105 Mediaeval Saxony...................................................... 95 Mitteldeutschland...................................................... 99 MUSIC ALONG THE DANUBE............................ 50 Music in Berlin.......................................................... 93 Oberammergau........................................................ 103 Opera in Munich & Bregenz.................................. 108 Organs of Bach’s Time............................................ 102 The Ring in Leipzig................................................... 96 Rhineland Masterpieces......................................... 105 Rhineland Romanesque.......................................... 104 Walking the Danube................................................. 50 When Bach went AWOL........................................ 100
GREECE Classical Greece....................................................... 109 Gastronomic Crete.................................................. 110 In Search of Alexander........................................... 113 Minoan Crete........................................................... 112
GUATEMALA Guatemala, Honduras, Belize................................ 243 Lands of the Maya................................................... 247
HONDURAS Guatemala, Honduras, Belize................................ 243
ICELAND Iceland’s Story.......................................................... 114
INDIA Architecture of the British Raj............................... 232 Bengal by River........................................................ 226 Essential India.......................................................... 221 Gastronomic Kerala................................................ 231 Indian Summer........................................................ 223 Mughals & Rajputs.................................................. 224 Sacred India.............................................................. 229 Textile Arts of India with HALI ............................ 228
ISRAEL Israel & Palestine..................................................... 209
IRELAND ‘A terrible beauty’....................................................... 42 Great Irish Houses..................................................... 41 West Cork Chamber Music Festival....................... 45 Western Ireland......................................................... 43
ITALY Art History of Venice.............................................. 126 Basilicata................................................................... 159 The Birth of Mannerism......................................... 137 Caravaggio................................................................ 115 Civilisations of Sicily............................................... 161
Tours A–Z by country
JAPAN
MALTA
SPAIN
Valletta Baroque Festival ....................................... 166 World Heritage Malta............................................. 165
Ancient Kingdoms of Castile & León................... 190 Aragón: Hidden Spain............................................ 192 Art in Madrid........................................................... 195 Barcelona.................................................................. 194 Bilbao to Bayonne................................................... 189 Classic Catalan Wines............................................. 193 Essential Andalucía................................................. 198 Gastronomic Andalucía.......................................... 200 Gastronomic Galicia............................................... 188 Granada & Córdoba................................................ 201 The Road to Santiago.............................................. 185 Romans in Western Iberia...................................... 197 The Renaissance in Castile & León....................... 191 SACRED MUSIC IN SANTIAGO........................ 186 A Schubertiade in Catalonia.................................. 193 Toledo & La Mancha............................................... 196 Walking to Santiago................................................ 187
MEXICO Lands of the Maya................................................... 247
MONTENEGRO The Western Balkans................................................. 56
MOROCCO Morocco.................................................................... 211
MYANMAR Myanmar: Ancient to Modern.............................. 237
NETHERLANDS Art in the Netherlands............................................ 167 Dutch Modern......................................................... 168 Dutch Painting......................................................... 168 Gardens & Landscapes of the Dutch Wave ......... 169
NORWAY Lofoten Chamber Music Festival.......................... 170
OMAN Oman, Landscapes & Peoples................................ 212
PALESTINE Israel & Palestine..................................................... 209 Palestine, Past & Present......................................... 214
PERU Peru: the Andean Heartland.................................. 248
POLAND Eastern Pomerania.................................................. 171 Kraków & Silesia...................................................... 172
PORTUGAL The Douro................................................................ 174 Gardens of Sintra..................................................... 175 Romans in Western Iberia...................................... 197
ROMANIA Enescu Festival Bucharest...................................... 178 Moldavia & Transylvania........................................ 176
RUSSIA
Art in Japan.............................................................. 234 Japanese Gardens..................................................... 236 Textile Arts of Japan................................................ 235 Understanding Japan.............................................. 235
Ballet in St Petersburg............................................. 180 Moscow & the Golden Ring................................... 181 Moscow & St Petersburg......................................... 183 St Petersburg............................................................ 179
JORDAN
SCOTLAND
Essential Jordan....................................................... 209
Orkney: 5000 years of culture.................................. 38
LATVIA, LITHUANIA
SERBIA
Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania...................................... 67
The Western Balkans................................................. 56
SLOVAKIA
SWEDEN Drottningholm & Confidencen............................. 204 Gastronomic Sweden.............................................. 203
SWITZERLAND Le Corbusier............................................................... 75 The Lucerne Festival............................................... 205
TURKEY Classical Turkey....................................................... 207 Istanbul Revealed.................................................... 206
TUNISIA Ancient & Islamic Tunisia...................................... 215
UZBEKISTAN Samarkand & Silk Road Cities............................... 239
VIETNAM Vietnam: History, People, Food............................. 240
WALES The Welsh Marches................................................... 39 Welsh National Opera............................................... 40
U.S.A The American Revolution...................................... 252 Art in Texas.............................................................. 252 The Boston Early Music Festival........................... 250 Californian Galleries............................................... 251 East Coast Galleries................................................. 259 Frank Lloyd Wright................................................. 256 New England Modern............................................. 254 New Orleans to Natchitoches................................ 255 The Ring in Chicago................................................ 258 West Coast Architecture......................................... 259 Our lecturers...............................................260–267 Booking details...........................................268–270 Tours by date...............................................271–273
Journey through Slovakia....................................... 184 Illustrations. Above left: L’Academie des Sciences et des Beaux Arts, mid-18th-century copper engraving. Above right: Japanese men aboard a ship, Japanese woodblock.
SLOVENIA The Imperial Riviera............................................... 121 Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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TOURS A–Z BY COUNTRY
Connoisseur’s Rome................................................ 150 Courts of Northern Italy......................................... 132 Dark Age Brilliance................................................. 133 Essential Puglia........................................................ 155 Essential Rome......................................................... 149 Florence.................................................................... 136 Florence Revisited................................................... 138 Food & Wine Archaeology.................................... 154 Footpaths of Umbria............................................... 145 Friuli-Venezia Giulia............................................... 123 Gardens of the Bay of Naples................................. 152 Gardens & Villas of Campagna Romana.............. 146 Gardens & Villas of the Italian Lakes.................... 117 Gastronomic Le Marche......................................... 142 Gastronomic Piedmont.......................................... 119 Gastronomic Puglia................................................ 158 Gastronomic Sicily.................................................. 163 The Heart of Italy..................................................... 143 Historic Musical Instruments................................ 120 The Imperial Riviera............................................... 121 Jonathan Keates’s Venice ........................................ 128 Leonardo 500........................................................... 138 Lombardy: Gastronomy & Opera......................... 116 Normans in the South............................................. 156 OPERA IN SOUTHERN SICILY.......................... 162 Palaces of Piedmont................................................ 118 Palaces & Villas of Rome........................................ 148 Palermo Revealed.................................................... 164 Palladian Villas........................................................ 124 Pompeii & Herculaneum........................................ 153 The Printing Revolution......................................... 151 Ravenna & Urbino................................................... 131 Roman Italy.............................................................. 147 Romantic Agony: English Poets in Italy............... 130 Ruskin’s Venice......................................................... 129 Trasimeno Music Festival....................................... 144 Tuscan Gardens....................................................... 139 The Venetian Hills................................................... 122 Verona Opera .......................................................... 125 Venetian Palaces...................................................... 127 Verdi in Parma & Busseto...................................... 135 The Via Emilia......................................................... 134 Walking in Southern Tuscany ............................... 140 Wines of Tuscany..................................................... 141
Tours by theme
Included in our prices —— The services of the lecturer and a tour manager – sometimes also local guides. —— Hotel accommodation. —— All admissions to museums, galleries and sites visited in the itinerary. —— If it is a music tour, good tickets to all included performances. —— Return air or rail travel between London and the destination for tours outside the UK (there are some exceptions – if flights are not included, this is always stated). —— Travel by private coach for all included excursions, and airport or railway station transfers (if we include flights or trains). —— All breakfasts. —— Most dinners and some lunches including wine or beer, water, soft drinks, tea or coffee. —— All tips for waiters, porters, drivers, and local guides. —— All state and airport taxes.
Amendments There is an amendment fee for changes to the basic package, such as moving the dates of flights, organising flight upgrades, or booking additional hotel nights.
ART & ARCHITECTURE
TOURS BY THEME
AGE OF VICTORIA................................................. 34 Albania: Crossroads of Antiquity............................ 46 Ancient Kingdoms of Castile & León................... 190 Aragón: Hidden Spain............................................ 192 Architecture of Bath.................................................. 33 Architecture of the British Raj............................... 232 Art History of Venice.............................................. 126 Art in Japan.............................................................. 234 Art in Madrid........................................................... 195 Art in the Netherlands............................................ 167 Art in Paris................................................................. 73 Art in Texas.............................................................. 252 Arts & Crafts in the Lake District........................... 31 At home at Weston Park........................................... 23 Barcelona.................................................................. 194 Basilicata................................................................... 159 Bauhaus Centenary................................................... 95 Berlin: New Architecture.......................................... 94 Berlin, Potsdam, Dresden........................................ 92 Bilbao to Bayonne................................................... 189 The Birth of Mannerism......................................... 137 Californian Galleries............................................... 251 Caravaggio................................................................ 115 6
The Cathedrals of England....................................... 10 Châteaux of the Loire................................................ 80 China’s Silk Road Cities.......................................... 220 Civilisations of Sicily............................................... 161 Connoisseur’s Prague................................................ 60 Connoisseur’s Rome................................................ 150 Connoisseur’s Vienna............................................... 49 Country Houses of Kent........................................... 25 Country Houses of the North West........................ 21 Country Houses of the South West......................... 22 Courts of Northern Italy......................................... 132 Danish Castles & Gardens........................................ 65 Dark Age Brilliance................................................. 133 Dorset Churches........................................................ 13 The Douro................................................................ 174 Dutch Modern......................................................... 168 Dutch Painting......................................................... 168 East Coast Galleries................................................. 259 Eastern Pomerania.................................................. 171 Essential Andalucía................................................. 198 Essential China........................................................ 217 Essential India.......................................................... 221 Essential Puglia........................................................ 155 Essential Rome......................................................... 149 Flemish Painting........................................................ 55 Florence.................................................................... 136 Florence Revisited................................................... 138 Franconia.................................................................. 106 Frank Lloyd Wright................................................. 256 French Gothic............................................................ 77 Friuli-Venezia Giulia............................................... 123 Gardens & Villas of Campagna Romana.............. 146 Gardens & Villas of the Italian Lakes.................... 117 Georgia Uncovered................................................... 88 Granada & Córdoba................................................ 201 Great Houses of the Czech Lands........................... 62 Great Houses of the North....................................... 20 Great Irish Houses..................................................... 41 The Hanseatic League............................................... 90 The Heart of Italy..................................................... 143 Houghton & Holkham.............................................. 24 Indian Summer........................................................ 223
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Jonathan Keates’s Venice ........................................ 128 Journey through Slovakia....................................... 184 King Ludwig II......................................................... 107 Kraków & Silesia...................................................... 172 Lands of the Maya................................................... 247 Le Corbusier............................................................... 75 Leonardo 500............................................................. 73 The Making of Argentina....................................... 242 Mediaeval Alsace....................................................... 78 Mediaeval Burgundy................................................. 81 MEDIEVAL HISTORY, ART & ARCHITECTURE....................................... 35 Mediaeval Saxony...................................................... 95 Mediaeval Sussex & Hampshire.............................. 12 Mediaeval Upper Normandy................................... 71 Mitteldeutschland...................................................... 99 Modern Art on the Côte d’Azur.............................. 83 Moldavia & Transylvania........................................ 176 Monet & Impressionism........................................... 73 Morocco.................................................................... 211 Moscow & the Golden Ring................................... 181 Moscow & St Petersburg......................................... 183 Mughals & Rajputs.................................................. 224 Myanmar: Ancient to Modern.............................. 237 New England Modern............................................. 254 New Orleans to Natchitoches................................ 255 Normans in the South............................................. 156 Palaces of Piedmont................................................ 118 Palaces & Villas of Rome........................................ 148 Palermo Revealed.................................................... 164 Palladian Villas........................................................ 124 The Printing Revolution......................................... 151 Ravenna & Urbino................................................... 131 The Renaissance in Castile & León....................... 191 Rhineland Masterpieces......................................... 105 Rhineland Romanesque.......................................... 104 Ruskin’s Venice......................................................... 129 Sacred Armenia......................................................... 47 Sacred China............................................................ 218 Sacred India.............................................................. 229 Sailing the Dalmatian Coast ................................... 58 Samarkand & Silk Road Cities............................... 239 The South Downs...................................................... 32 St Petersburg............................................................ 179 Textile Arts of India with HALI ............................ 228 Textile Arts of Japan................................................ 235 Toledo & La Mancha............................................... 196 Tudor England........................................................... 26 Understanding Japan.............................................. 235 The Venetian Hills................................................... 122 Venetian Palaces...................................................... 127 Versailles: Seat of the Sun King............................... 74 The Via Emilia......................................................... 134 Vienna’s Masterpieces............................................... 50 Vietnam: History, People, Food............................. 240 Walking in Southern Bohemia................................ 63 The Welsh Marches................................................... 39 West Coast Architecture......................................... 259 Wine, Walks & Art in Alsace................................... 79 Yorkshire Churches & Cathedrals........................... 14
Tours by theme
GARDENS
ARCHAEOLOGY
Danish Castles & Gardens........................................ 65 Japanese Gardens..................................................... 236 Gardens of the Bay of Naples................................. 152 Gardens & Landscapes of the Dutch Wave ......... 169 Gardens of the Riviera.............................................. 85 Gardens of Sintra..................................................... 175 Gardens & Villas of Campagna Romana.............. 146 Gardens & Villas of the Italian Lakes.................... 117 Tuscan Gardens....................................................... 139
Ancient & Islamic Tunisia...................................... 215 Basilicata................................................................... 159 Cave Art of France.................................................... 82 Civilisations of Sicily............................................... 161 Classical Greece....................................................... 109 Classical Turkey....................................................... 207 Essential Jordan....................................................... 209 Food & Wine Archaeology.................................... 154 Guatemala, Honduras, Belize................................ 243 In Search of Alexander........................................... 113 Israel & Palestine..................................................... 209 Istanbul Revealed.................................................... 206 Lands of the Maya................................................... 247 Minoan Crete........................................................... 112 Morocco.................................................................... 211 Myanmar: Ancient to Modern.............................. 237 Oman, Landscapes & Peoples................................ 212 Orkney: 5000 years of culture.................................. 38 Palestine, Past & Present......................................... 214 Peru: the Andean Heartland.................................. 248 Pompeii & Herculaneum........................................ 153 Roman Italy.............................................................. 147 Roman Southern Britain.......................................... 16 Romans in the Rhône Valley.................................... 86 Romans in Western Iberia...................................... 175 Samarkand & Silk Road Cities............................... 239 Walking Hadrian’s Wall............................................ 18 Western Ireland......................................................... 43 World Heritage Malta............................................. 165
GASTRONOMY & WINE Bilbao to Bayonne................................................... 189 Champagne: Vines, Cellars & Cuvées..................... 72 Classic Catalan Wines............................................. 193 Food & Wine Archaeology.................................... 154 Gastronomic Andalucía.......................................... 200 Gastronomic Crete.................................................. 110 Gastronomic Galicia............................................... 188 Gastronomic Kerala................................................ 231 Gastronomic Le Marche......................................... 142 Gastronomic Piedmont.......................................... 119 Gastronomic Provence............................................. 84 Gastronomic Puglia................................................ 158 Gastronomic Sicily.................................................. 163 Gastronomic Sweden.............................................. 203 Gastronomic West Country..................................... 30 Lombardy: Gastronomy & Opera......................... 116 Vietnam: History, People, Food............................. 240 Wine, Walks & Art in Alsace................................... 79 Wines of Tuscany..................................................... 141
LITERATURE & DRAMA
20TH-CENTURY & MODERN Art in Texas.............................................................. 252 Bauhaus Centenary................................................... 95 Berlin: New Architecture.......................................... 94 Californian Galleries............................................... 251 Dutch Modern......................................................... 168 Frank Lloyd Wright................................................. 256 Gardens & Landscapes of the Dutch Wave ......... 169 Le Corbusier............................................................... 75 Modern Art on the Côte d’Azur.............................. 83 New England Modern............................................. 254 West Coast Architecture......................................... 259
‘A terrible beauty’....................................................... 42 The Age of Bede......................................................... 15 AGE OF VICTORIA................................................. 34 Albania: Crossroads of Antiquity............................ 46 The American Revolution...................................... 252 Bengal by River........................................................ 226 Crécy, Agincourt & Waterloo.................................. 54 Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania...................................... 67 Georgia Uncovered................................................... 88 Iceland’s Story.......................................................... 114 The Imperial Riviera............................................... 121 In Search of Alexander........................................... 113 King Ludwig II......................................................... 107 The Making of Argentina....................................... 242 MEDIEVAL HISTORY, ART & ARCHITECTURE....................................... 35 Myanmar: Ancient to Modern.............................. 237 New Orleans to Natchitoches................................ 255 Palestine, Past & Present......................................... 214 Poets & The Somme.................................................. 70 Tudor England........................................................... 26 The Western Balkans................................................. 56 Western Ireland......................................................... 43 Vietnam: History, People, Food............................. 240
Many of our tours can be combined, usually with a day or two in between. In some cases we publish a price for the combined arrangements, including any additional hotel and transport costs (see the list below). The arrangements are pre-booked by us and we give you full details of these before departure, but you are unescorted. Where we have not published a combined price, we can still advise on the best way of linking two tours together. Please see the individual tour descriptions for recommendations and contact us for more information. The Cathedrals of England...................................... 10 with Mediaeval Saxony............................................ 95 Dorset Churches....................................................... 13 with Dark Age Brilliance....................................... 133 Châteaux of the Loire............................................... 80 with Tuscan Gardens.............................................. 139 Berlin: New Architecture........................................ 94 with Dutch Modern................................................ 168 Gardens & Villas of the Italian Lakes.................. 117 with Roman Italy................................................... 147 The Venetian Hills.................................................. 122 with Friuli-Venezia Giulia..................................... 123 Courts of Northern Italy....................................... 132 with Gastronomic Le Marche............................... 142 Civilisations of Sicily.............................................. 161 with World Heritage Malta................................... 165 Ballet in St Petersburg........................................... 180 with Moscow & the Golden Ring......................... 181
Tours for private groups A growing part of our activities is tours for private groups – for university alumni, supporters and friends of museums and for various associations and institutions. We welcome enquiries. With our knowledge of a wide range of destinations, our unparalleled skills at designing tours and our long experience of working with private clients, Martin Randall Travel is well qualified to be the partner for a travel venture. The manager of our private client business is Hannah Wrigley. Please get in touch with her if you would like to discuss a travel possibility: hannah.wrigley@martinrandall.co.uk.
Illustrations along top, left to right: ‘Le Concert á Madame La Comtesse de Saint Brison’, 18th-century engraving; Turkish design, from ‘The Grammar of Ornament’ by Owen Jones, 1865. Left: Kithograph of a cornice (partial) from a drawing by S. Burchell.
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TOURS BY THEME
Iceland’s Story.......................................................... 114 Literary England........................................................ 27 Oberammergau........................................................ 103 Poets & The Somme.................................................. 70 Romantic Agony: English Poets in Italy............... 130 Ruskin’s Venice......................................................... 129 Shakespeare & his World.......................................... 12
HISTORY
Combine our tours
Tours by theme
ADDED SINCE THE 1ST EDITION
Walking tours Tours which are billed as walking tours, with hikes through hilly countryside, require a different scale of fitness and agility. Please attend to the descriptions of these tours carefully. We use the following grading system to describe individual walks and also the tours as a whole: Easy. A short and mostly flat walk lasting 1–2 hours, on well maintained footpaths or roads, perhaps with short periods of gentle ascent or descent. An ‘easy’ tour will consist of mostly ‘easy’ walks, perhaps with a couple of ‘moderate’ ones. There might not be a walk every day. Moderate. A walk of 2–3 hours’ duration, with significant elevation gain, or stretches of rocky, gravelly or slippery paths. A ‘moderate’ tour will consist mostly of moderate walks, perhaps with a couple of easy or challenging ones too. There is likely to be a walk every day. Challenging. A walk that is longer than 3 hours, has steeper, longer or more frequent episodes of ascent and descent, or is tricky under foot. Tours graded as ‘challenging’ will consist mostly or entirely of this level of walk, perhaps with some moderate or easier walks too. Please see www.martinrandall.com/about-us for more detailed information.
WALKING Walking tours are graded from ‘easy’ to ‘challenging’ – see above:
TOURS BY THEME
Challenging: Walking to Santiago................................................ 187 Moderate (listed from most strenuous to least): Footpaths of Umbria............................................... 145 Walking in Southern Tuscany ............................... 140 The Schubertiade....................................................... 52 Walking Hadrian’s Wall............................................ 18 Walking the Danube................................................. 50 Wine, Walks & Art in Alsace................................... 79 When Bach went AWOL........................................ 100 Easy: Walking in Southern Bohemia................................ 63
BRITAIN & IRELAND WEST COUNTRY CHORAL FESTIVAL.... 29 THE THOMAS TALLIS TRAIL.................... 29 MID-WEEK & WEEKEND CHAMBER MUSIC......................................... 35 MUSIC ALONG THE DANUBE.................. 50 THE J.S. BACH JOURNEY.......................... 101 OPERA IN SOUTHERN SICILY................ 162 SACRED MUSIC IN SANTIAGO.............. 186
MUSIC & BALLET Ballet in St Petersburg............................................. 180 Baroque Music in the Bolivian Missions.............. 245 The Boston Early Music Festival........................... 250 Dresden Music Festival............................................. 97 Enescu Festival Bucharest...................................... 178 Glyndebourne & Garsington .................................. 28 Hamburg: Opera & ‘Elphi’....................................... 91 Handel in Halle.......................................................... 98 Historic Musical Instruments................................ 120 Lofoten Chamber Music Festival.......................... 170 Lombardy: Gastronomy & Opera......................... 116 London Choral Day.................................................. 37 The Lucerne Festival............................................... 205 Mozart in Salzburg.................................................... 53 Music & Ballet in Paris............................................. 75 Music in Berlin.......................................................... 93 Oberammergau........................................................ 103 Opera & Ballet in Helsinki....................................... 68 Opera in Munich & Bregenz ................................... 53 Opera in Vienna........................................................ 51 Organs of Bach’s Time............................................ 102 Prague Spring............................................................. 61 Puccini in Copenhagen............................................ 66 The Ring in Chicago................................................ 258 The Ring in Leipzig................................................... 96 Savonlinna Opera...................................................... 69 A Schubertiade in Catalonia.................................. 193 The Schubertiade....................................................... 52 The Sibelius Festival.................................................. 69 Trasimeno Music Festival....................................... 144 Valletta Baroque Festival ....................................... 166 Verdi in Parma & Busseto...................................... 135 Verona Opera........................................................... 125 Walking the Danube................................................. 50 West Cork Chamber Music Festival....................... 45 When Bach went AWOL........................................ 100
Country Houses of the North West..................... 21 Country Houses of the South West...................... 22 At home at Weston Park....................................... 23 Literary England................................................... 27 Glyndebourne & Garsington ............................... 28 Architecture of Bath............................................. 33 AGE OF VICTORIA............................................. 34
MAINLAND EUROPE Walking the Danube............................................. 50 The Schubertiade.................................................. 52 Prague Spring........................................................ 61 Savonlinna Opera................................................. 69 Hamburg: Opera & ‘Elphi’................................... 91 Dresden Music Festival......................................... 97 Handel in Halle..................................................... 98 When Bach went AWOL..................................... 100 Lombardy: Gastronomy & Opera...................... 116 Historic Musical Instruments............................ 120 Verona Opera...................................................... 125 Romantic Agony: English Poets in Italy............ 130 Palermo Revealed............................................... 164 Eastern Pomerania.............................................. 171 Enescu Festival Bucharest.................................. 178 Ballet in St Petersburg........................................ 180 Moscow & St Petersburg..................................... 183 Gastronomic Sweden additional departure........................................ 203 The Lucerne Festival........................................... 205 Istanbul Revealed................................................ 206
ASIA Bengal by River................................................... 226 Sacred India........................................................ 229 Gastronomic Kerala............................................ 231 Architecture of the British Raj........................... 232 Understanding Japan.......................................... 235 Samarkand & Silk Road Cities additional departure........................................ 239 Vietnam: History, People, Food additional departure........................................ 240
THE AMERICAS Lands of the Maya............................................... 247 The Boston Early Music Festival........................ 250 The Ring in Chicago........................................... 258 Illustration, along top: Florence, Piazza della Santissima Annunziata, copper engraving c. 1750.
What our clients say ‘ This is the fourth trip I have done with Martin Randall and once again the whole experience has been first class. I hope to be a regular over the coming years.’ 8
‘ Really, really excellent... an amazing number of activities were included. The balance and timing of free time was excellent. A stunning tour – I’m telling this to everyone who will listen to me!’
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‘ The tour far exceeded our expectations and gave us much greater insight than we expected.’ Read more at www.martinrandall.com/testimonials
More about our tours Fitness Ours are active holidays. Walking, stair-climbing and standing around for lengthy periods are unavoidable aspects of every tour. They should not present problems for anyone of normal fitness but they are not suitable for those who are slow, need support or are low on stamina. On many tours there is a lot of walking on streets that may be steep or poorly paved. On others you may need to scramble over fallen masonry and very uneven ground. More usually it is just a case of moving from one place to another, and getting on and off coaches several times a day. If you have a medical condition or a disability which may affect your holiday or necessitate special arrangements being made for you, please discuss these with us before booking – or, if the condition develops or changes subsequently, as soon as possible before departure. The tours are also group events. The presence of even one person who is not fit enough to cope can spoil the experience for everyone else. We therefore ask people wishing to join a tour to take the quick and simple self-assessment tests described here to ascertain whether they have an adequate level of fitness. By signing the booking form you are stating that you have passed these tests. (It is not necessary to take the tests to attend our music weekends and symposia in the UK.)
1. Chair stands. Sit in a dining chair, with arms folded and hands on opposite shoulders. Stand up and sit down at least eight times in thirty seconds. 2. Step test. Mark a wall at a height that is halfway between your knee and your hip bone. Raise each knee in turn to the mark at least sixty times in two minutes. 3. Agility test. Place an object 3 yards from the edge of a chair, sit, and record the time it takes to stand up, walk to the object and sit back down. You should be able to do this in under seven seconds. An additional indication of the fitness required, though we are not asking you to measure this, is that you should be able to walk unaided at a pace of 3 miles per hour for at least half an hour at a time, and to stand unsupported for at least 15 minutes. Walking tours are graded easy to challenging. Please see opposite for more information.
Gastronomy tours On a tour that focuses on food, wine and cooking traditions, we regret that participants with special diets may not have the same gastronomic experience as those with no restrictions. Please discuss your requirements with us before booking.
If during the tour it transpires you are not adequately fit, you may be asked to opt out of certain visits, or invited to leave the tour altogether. This would be at your own expense. Tours do vary, so please refer to the How strenuous? paragraph of each tour description.
Illustration: detail from ‘Departure from the Island of Cythera’ (1717), engraving by Nicolas-Henri Tardieu after the painting by Jean-Antoine Watteau.
Financial security
Many of our tours visit towns and villages off the beaten tourist trail, enabling you to experience local traditions and practices. We also strive to limit our impact on the environment. Our itineraries are designed to spend more time in places than on conventional tours; this often means there are days without travel.
AITO. Martin Randall Travel Ltd is a member of AITO, an association of specialist travel companies most of which are independent and ownermanaged. Admission is selective, and members are subject to a code of practice which prescribes high standards of professionalism and customer care. To contact the Association visit www.aito.com or call 020 8744 9280.
more information about financial protection and the ATOL Certificate go to www.caa.co.uk/ ATOLCertificate. In the unlikely event of our insolvency, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) will ensure that you are not stranded abroad and will arrange to refund any money you have paid us for an advance booking. See our booking conditions (page 268) for further details.
ABTA – The Travel Association. Martin Randall Travel Ltd is a Member of the Association of British Travel Agents (membership number Y6050). ABTA and ABTA members help holidaymakers to get the most from their travel and assist them when things do not go according to plan. We are obliged to maintain a high standard of service to you by ABTA’s Code of Conduct. For further information about ABTA, the Code of Conduct and the arbitration scheme available to you if you have a complaint, contact ABTA, 30 Park Street, London SE1 9EQ. www.abta.com.
Financial protection for holidays that do not include a flight is provided by a bond held with ABTA.
Martin Randall Travel offers you the option to pay a carbon offset donation every time you book a tour with us that includes flights. We also make a donation for every lecturer, tour manager or member of office staff travelling by air on company business. Through these donations, we support the India Solar Water Heating project, which provides in-house hot water supplies fuelled by renewable energy to homes, community buildings and small to medium-sized businesses throughout India. We are also proud to support the UK charity Action for Conservation, who work to inspire young people to become the next generation of nature conservationists, through workshops in deprived inner-city schools and on residential camps. www. actionforconservation.org Our full sustainable tourism policy is published on our website: www.martinrandall.com/ sustainable-tourism.
ATOL. All of the flight-inclusive holidays in this brochure are financially protected by the ATOL (Air Transport Operators’ Licence) scheme. When you make your first payment you will be supplied with an ATOL Certificate. Please check it to know what is covered in your booking. For Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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MORE ABOUT OUR TOURS
Sustainable Tourism
The Cathedrals of England Ely, Lincoln, Durham, York, Coventry, Gloucester, Bristol, Wells, Salisbury, Winchester 8–16 May 2019 (mf 505) 9 days • £2,790 Lecturer: Jon Cannon 18–26 September 2019 (mf 727) 9 days • £2,790 Lecturer: Jon Cannon A study of ten of England’s greatest buildings – their history, architecture, sculpture, stained glass and current life. Built between the Norman Conquest and Henry VIII’s Reformation, with Coventry Cathedral a moving exception. Organ recitals exclusively for us, and many other special arrangements. Five hotels and quite a lot of driving, but an uncrowded itinerary includes time for rest and independent exploration. Combine this tour with Medieval Saxony, 29 April–7 May 2019 (see page 95).
BRITAIN & IRELAND: England
This is an architectural journey that would be hard to equal for intensity of aesthetic delight. As a way into the minds and lives of the people of the Middle Ages, it would be difficult to surpass. Personalities of extraordinary capability and vision will be discovered, and the thought processes and techniques used by craftsmen of genius revealed and decoded. The tour ranges across England to see some of the most glorious medieval architecture to be found anywhere. Connoisseurs may carp at the omissions, but logistics exclude only a couple of cathedrals of comparable magnificence and interest. With an average of little over one cathedral a day, there is plenty of time to really assimilate, appreciate and contemplate each one. All but one are medieval, though there is huge variety in the building arts and historical circumstances encompassed by that long period. The time span between the earliest work we see to the latest, Norman Conquest to the Reformation, equals that from the Reformation to the present day. The one non-medieval cathedral is Coventry. Rebuilt after the Second World War, not only is it a treasure house of mid-twentiethcentury art but it is a moving monument to rebirth and reconciliation. There are many special arrangements to enable you to see more than most visitors, and organ recitals are organised for you at some cathedrals. There are also opportunities to hear some excellent choirs at Evensong. Cathedrals come with cities, and many of these were relatively little changed during the era of industrialisation and now rank among the loveliest in England. Much beautiful countryside is traversed as well. Left: York Minster, Archbishop Bowett’s Monument engraving c. 1815. Right: Lincoln, etching by Wilfred Ball, 1906.
What else is included in the price? See page 6 10
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Itinerary If combining this tour with Medieval Saxony, transfer from London Heathrow to the Ambassador Hotel in London by taxi. There is a taxi transfer to the start of The Cathedrals of England tour on day 1. Day 1: Ely. The coach leaves London at 9.30am for Ely, a surprisingly remote and rural location for one of England’s greatest cathedrals. The mighty Norman nave and transepts, with their thick walls, tiers of arches and clusters of shafts, lead to the crossing and its unique 14th-century octagonal lantern, a work of genius. The Lady Chapel in the Decorated style is the largest and perhaps the finest in the country; the Early English quire is a ravishing setting for the lost shrine to St Etheldreda. Overnight Lincoln. Day 2: Lincoln. Also largely by-passed by modern urban development, Lincoln’s hilltop site above the broad Witham valley renders this enormous cathedral even more imposing. Largely rebuilt from 1192, it has always been revered as one of the finest of Gothic cathedrals, its fascinations enhanced by myriad minor inconsistencies and variations which reveal the struggle for solutions at the frontiers of artistic fashion and technological capability. First of three nights in York. Day 3: Durham. By train to Durham, where topography and the riverside walk provide the most exciting approach to any English cathedral. Massive towers rise above the trees which cling to the steep embankment, a defensible bulwark in the frequently hostile North. Largely completed in the decades from 1093 and little altered since, the nave and quire with their great cylindrical pillars, distinguished by their engraved patterns, constitute one of the world’s greatest Romanesque designs. Overnight York. Day 4: York. York Minster is the largest of English medieval cathedrals. Above ground it is all Gothic, from Early English to Perpendicular but predominantly 14th-century, and demonstrating an exceptional knowledge of the latest French Rayonnant ideas. It is a treasure trove of stained glass, and the polygonal chapter house is without peer. The city retains its medieval walls and an exceptional quantity of historic buildings. Overnight York. Day 5: Coventry. Perhaps internationally Britain’s best-known 20th-century building, Coventry Cathedral was built to designs by Sir Basil Spence beside the ruins of its predecessor, destroyed in 1940. It is a showcase for some of the best art of the time (Graham Sutherland, John Piper, Jacob Epstein). A night is spent at Stratford-upon-Avon, which has retained many buildings Shakespeare would have known. Overnight Stratford. Day 6: Gloucester, Bristol. The procession of tall cylindrical pillars in Gloucester’s nave is unadulterated Norman, but, following the burial of Edward II in 1327, the eastern parts are exquisitely veiled in the first large-scale manifestation of Perpendicular architecture. The east window is one of the largest in Europe. Bristol cathedral is a much-overlooked gem with fine
' Jon Cannon was an exceptional guide, setting the scene for the building of our magnificent Cathedrals. He wore his extensive knowledge lightly. He was charismatic, very interesting and a joy to listen to.' C.D., participant on The Cathedrals of England in 2018.
work of every era, from the lavishly patterned walls of the Romanesque chapter house to G. E. Street’s great Victorian nave. But its highlight is the east end, among the most innovative and beautiful of early 14th-century buildings. First of two nights in Wells.
Day 8: Salisbury. One of the most uplifting experiences in English architecture, Salisbury is unique among the Gothic cathedrals in England in that it was built on a virgin site and largely in a single campaign. To homogeneity are added lucidity of design and perfection of detail. At 404 feet, the spire is the tallest medieval structure in Britain. The close is the finest in the country, and the town beyond has an extensive expanse of historic fabric. Overnight Winchester.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,790. Single occupancy: £3,140. Included meals: 1 lunch and 6 dinners with wine. Accommodation. The Castle Hotel, Lincoln (castlehotel.net): a 4-star, historic building close to the cathedral. The Grange, York (grangehotel. co.uk): 4-star, also in an historic building with a new wing, within walking distance of the city centre. The DoubleTree by Hilton, Stratfordupon-Avon (doubletree3.hilton.com): a 4-star hotel, located on the edge of the historic centre of the town. The Swan, Wells (swanhotelwells.
co.uk): 3-star, in a building of 15th-cent. origin in a narrow street close to the cathedral. The Wessex, Winchester (mercure.com): 4-star, excellently located overlooking the cathedral in a 1960s building. Rooms at all the hotels, being city-centre historic properties, vary in size and outlook. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking on the tour and a lot of steps and uneven surfaces. You ought to be able to walk at about three miles an hour for up to half an hour. Roof and tower visits are optional of course, but at Salisbury there are 332 stairs to climb. Two of the hotels do not have lifts. There are three days without any coach travel, but there is an average on the remaining five days of 73 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Price, Medieval Saxony and The Cathedrals of England combined (May 2019 only). Two sharing: £5,720 or £5,600 without flights. Single occupancy: £6,420 or £6,300 without flights. This includes extra accommodation in London (1 night) and a taxi transfer from Heathrow to the hotel, and again the next morning to the start of The Cathedrals of England tour. These arrangements are pre-booked but are unescorted. Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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BRITAIN & IRELAND: England
Day 7: Wells. Wells has much of charm and interest including a fortified bishop’s palace and 14th-century houses of the Vicars Choral. The cathedral was one of the first in England to be built entirely in Gothic style. Its screened west front, eastward march of the nave, sequence of contrasted spaces of the Decorated east end and Perpendicular cloisters all contribute to its exceptional allure. The arches supporting the sagging tower are among the great creations of the Middle Ages. Overnight Wells.
Day 9: Winchester. Winchester Cathedral is one of Europe’s longest churches, reflecting the city’s status intermittently from the 9th to the 17th centuries as a seat of English government. The transepts are unembellished early Norman, raw architecture of brute power, whereas the mighty nave was dressed 300 years later in suave Perpendicular garb. The profusion of chantry chapels constitutes an enchanting collection of Gothic micro-architecture. Wall paintings, floor tiles, the finest 12th-century Bible. Return to central London by 4.00pm.
Mediaeval Sussex & Hampshire Mediaeval art and architecture in the South East That said, the tour develops around three overlapping themes. The first concerns the effects of the Norman Conquest – the creation of great fortifications at Portchester and Arundel, the move of the See of Sussex from Selsey to Chichester, and the establishment of a new type of great church architecture in Chichester and Winchester cathedrals. The second of these themes is aesthetic and concerned with the type of architecture that developed towards the end of the twelfth century. As with much of south-east England, Hampshire and West Sussex experienced largescale rebuilding during the period c. 1150–1220, the greatest evidence for which is to be found at Steyning, Bosham, New Shoreham and Boxgrove. Distinctive approaches to the late Romanesque and early Gothic interior are a great feature of Sussex churches, immeasurably enhanced by the subtle juxtaposition of creamy limestone and polished dark marble colonettes. The last of the tour’s main themes is commemorative. At around the date that the first of Winchester cathedral’s chantry chapels was created, the chancel of the parish church at Arundel was made collegiate, and effectively brought within the castle wall. The result was to turn the east end of Arundel into an aristocratic mausoleum, while Winchester developed the most impressive series of episcopal chantries to survive in Europe. Taken together, the two afford an exceptional insight into English latemedieval tomb design.
Itinerary Day 1: Chichester. Leave Chichester railway station on foot at 2.15pm for the short walk to Chichester cathedral, Ian Nairn’s ‘well-worn, wellloved, comfortable fireside chair of a cathedral’, and a building best approached as a series of quirky set-pieces woven around an Anglo-Norman core, complete with retrochoir, eccentric cloister, and superb late medieval furnishings.
BRITAIN & IRELAND: England
29 April–3 May 2019 (mf 501) 5 days • £1,540 Lecturer: Dr James Cameron Well-balanced survey of the outstanding medieval monuments of West Sussex and Hampshire. Beautiful drives through the stunning scenery of the South Downs. Stay in one hotel throughout. Famed for its seaside churches and the quality and virtuosity of its Romanesque architecture, the area at the western end of the South Downs, essentially West Sussex and East Hampshire, boasts one of the richest collections of medieval churches to survive in southern England. It is also, unusually, an area where one might pick out examples from every important phase of church building in medieval England – from the early Anglo-Saxon tower at St Peter’s, Titchfield, to Richard Fox’s magnificent early-sixteenth-century remodelling of the presbytery at Winchester cathedral. 12
Day 2: Shoreham, Sompting, Steyning, Arundel. A gentle drive west beneath the South Downs to Old and New Shoreham, whose juxtaposition of an aisleless cruciform church on high ground (Old Shoreham), and a magnificent early 13thcentury quayside aisled parochial chancel (New Shoreham), should open the day. Thence to a great pair of 11th- and 12th-century Sussex churches, Sompting and Steyning, before rounding off the day at mighty Arundel Castle. Day 3: Winchester, Romsey. A perfect opportunity to slip west into Hampshire, with Winchester cathedral the day’s principal objective; library, monastic precinct, chantry chapels, crypt and all. An afternoon walk through the flood meadows to the great hospital of St Cross, whose 15thcentury almshouses and hall survive more or less intact, and on to the former royal nunnery at Romsey Abbey, possessor of the best preserved Romanesque east end in England. Day 4: Portchester, Netley, Titchfield, Boxgrove. A day of local horizons, starting with the extraordinary late-Roman Saxon shore fort at Portchester, home to an important Augustinian
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church and royal castle, and progressing via two great monastic ruins, Cistercian Netley and 13th-century Titchfield. Lunch is included in Titchfield, after which we will continue to its stunning little parish church and the magnificent former priory at Boxgrove. Day 5: Bosham, Fishbourne, Chichester. Begin with the loveliest of the harbour churches at Bosham. A gentle drive along the northern shore of Chichester Harbour to Fishbourne, site of perhaps the greatest Roman villa to have been constructed in England and one of the greatest north of the Alps. Then back into Chichester for a visit to the important late medieval foundation of St Mary’s Hospital, famed for its superb late-medieval choir stalls. The coach returns to Chichester railway station by 3.30pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,540. Single occupancy: £1,780. Included meals: 1 lunch and 3 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Harbour Hotel, Chichester (chichester-harbour-hotel.co.uk): smart boutique hotel in the centre of town. This 4-star hotel is within walking distance of the Cathedral and Pallant Gallery. How strenuous? This tour involves quite a lot of getting on and off coaches and standing around and should not be attempted by anyone who has difficulty with everyday walking and stair-climbing. Average distance by coach per day: 49 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Ravenna & Urbino, 24–28 April 2019 (p.131); Classical Greece, 4–13 May 2019 (p.109). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and travel.
Shakespeare & his World July 2019 Full details available in January 2019 Please call us to register your interest, or e-mail alerts@martinrandall.co.uk
What else is included in the price? See page 6 For lecturers' biographies See pages 260–267
Illustration: Tower of Ambulatory, Hospital of St Cross, Winchester, watercolour by W. Ball, publ. 1909.
Dorset Churches Parish churches, abbeys and minsters 23–27 September 2019 (mf 736) 5 days • £1,270 Lecturer: Imogen Corrigan A range of architectural interest, including murals, fonts and memorials. Almost exclusively exquisite parish churches. Beautiful drives through idyllic English countryside. Stay in Blandford Forum throughout, a charming market town. Option to combine this tour with Dark Age Brilliance, 15–22 September 2019 (see page 133).
Itinerary If combining this tour with Dark Age Brilliance, return to London on the group flight, overnight at Sofitel London Heathrow. Taxi to London Waterloo and train to meet the group in Salisbury. Day 1: Salisbury, Cranborne, Tarrant Hinton, Blandford Forum. The coach leaves Salisbury railway station at 2.00pm for the drive across the Dorset border to the church of St Mary and St Bartholomew in Cranborne. This sets the tone
Day 2: Bere Regis, Wareham, Studland. Head for the coast, stopping at Bere Regis to admire an outstanding hammerbeam roof. Wareham has two churches of great antiquity and charm. One of them, St Martin’s-on-the-walls, contains an effigy of TE Lawrence by Eric Kennington, originally destined for St Paul’s Cathedral. Free time in Wareham precedes a visit to the beautifully preserved Norman church of St Nicholas at Studland, which has some remarkable, explicit stone carvings.
Price, Dark Age Brilliance and Dorset Churches combined. Two sharing: £3,750 or £3,550 without flights. Single occupancy: £4,210 or £4,010 without flights. This includes accommodation at Heathrow (1 night), taxi to London Waterloo and a train to Salisbury. These arrangements are prebooked but unescorted. Other possible combinations: Walking Hadrian's Wall, 16–22 September 2019 (p.18); Gastronomic Crete, 29 September–7 October 2019 (p.110). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and travel. Illustration: Sherborne Abbey, wood engraving c. 1880.
Day 3: Winterbourne Whitechurch, Puddletown, Dorchester, Upwey, Toller Fratrum. A day of quintessential Wessex villages, each with a church of distinction, punctuated by free time in the county town of Dorchester. St Mary’s at Winterbourne Whitechurch has a fine fifteenthcentury font carved with a vine scroll ornament. The church at Puddletown has strong Thomas Hardy connections. St Lawrence’s at Upwey features two painted Tudor roses. The tiny church with the unusual dedication of St Basil at Toller Fratrum has a Norman relief of Mary Magdalene washing Christ’s feet. Day 4: Melbury Bubb, Sherborne, Bradford Abbas, Trent. Explore Sherborne Abbey and the north of the county, with private time in Sherborne itself. The Abbey, among its many splendours, has England’s earliest fan-vaulted roof and arguably its finest. St Mary’s at Melbury Bubb has an Anglo-Saxon font carved from the base of a cross, St Mary’s, Bradford Abbas is notable for its fourstorey Perpendicular tower and St Andrew’s, Trent for its medieval spire, one of only three in Dorset. Day 5. Wimborne, Salisbury. With two towers, one Norman and one Perpendicular, Wimborne Minster was originally a Saxon nunnery. It has a fine Norman font, a Gothic east end and Decorated aisles. The tour finishes at Salisbury Railway Station by 2.00pm.
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Yorkshire, says Pevsner, is known for the ‘Norman exuberance’ of its churches, Somerset for its church towers. Dorset churches have not been considered in the first rank. ‘Yet when one sets down all one has seen of [them] … one suddenly realises how much one has enjoyed.’ Not just enjoyed but admired, been surprised by, one might further aver. What the county’s churches lack in scale and self-importance they make up for in character, charm and exquisite detail, enhanced in many cases by their setting in conserved villages of honeyed limestone and reed thatching. Sherborne Abbey steals all their thunder – ‘the largest Anglo-Saxon church we know,’ says Pevsner. Founded by St Aldhelm, new bishop of the West Saxons, in the early eighth century, it served as a Benedictine house until the Reformation and retains early features such as the Saxon doorway in the north-west corner and long-and-short-Saxon quoining. This latter detail is also found at St Martin’s-on-the-walls in Wareham, said to be Dorset’s most complete Anglo-Saxon church. Wareham’s other historic church, of Lady St Mary, has a greater number of Saxon inscriptions than any other English building – five in all, dating from the seventh to the ninth centuries. Intriguing examples of medieval wall paintings and decorative wooden carvings are other notable features of the county’s churches. St Mary’s and St Bartholomew’s in Cranborne has a rare depiction of a Tree of the Seven Virtues. Red stars painted on one wall of St Martin’s-on-the-walls are said to represent plague victims. The twelve protruding roof beams at St John the Baptist, Bere Regis are carved into robed figures that may represent the apostles, while in St Andrew’s at Trent the sixteenth-century bench ends are carved in a variety of figures, animals and flowers.
for our tour – an unspoilt village and a delightful church of Norman origin with striking features that include fourteenth-century wall paintings. Our next church, St Mary’s at Tarrant Hinton, has a rare sixteenth-century Easter Sepulchre.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,270. Single occupancy: £1,410. Included meals: 3 dinners with wine. Accommodation. The Crown, Blandford Forum (crownhotelblandford.co.uk): 4-star hotel located in a market town. Rooms are comfortable with a traditional décor, in keeping with the nature of the 18th-century building. There is a bar and restaurant well-used by the local community. How strenuous? The tour involves a lot of walking where coach access is restricted, and a lot of standing in churches. Uneven ground and irregular paving are standard. A good level of fitness is essential. You will be on your feet for lengthy stretches of time. Average distance by coach per day: 52 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Yorkshire Churches & Cathedrals Abbeys, cathedrals and parish churches
10–14 June 2019 (mf 572) 5 days • £1,530 Lecturer: Jon Cannon Short but comprehensive survey of medieval ecclesiastical building in Yorkshire. Based in York throughout. Monastic ruins across the North Yorkshire Moors at Lastingham, Rievaulx and Byland.
BRITAIN & IRELAND: England
Famed for its Cistercian ruins and the quality and virtuosity of its fourteenth-century architecture, Yorkshire boasts the richest collection of medieval churches to survive in northern England. Unusually, it is also an area where one might pick out examples from every important phase of church building in medieval northern England – from the early Anglo-Saxon crypt surviving from Wilfrid’s Ripon to Marmaduke Huby’s magnificent early sixteenth-century tower at Fountains Abbey. That said, the tour develops around two overlapping themes. The first is monasticism, or at least the type of monasticism that was re-established in northern England, at Lastingham, following the Norman Conquest. This monasticism took a dramatic turn in the twelfth century with the establishment of the great Cistercian houses of Yorkshire. We visit the three most significant abbeys, Rievaulx, Byland and Fountains. The second tour theme is aesthetic and concerned with the type of architecture that developed in the later Middle Ages. As with much of eastern England, Yorkshire experienced a large-scale rebuilding during the period c. 1290–c. 1420, the greatest evidence for which is to be found in the churches of York, Beverley, Howden and Selby. Distinctive approaches to the ‘Decorated’ interior are a great feature of Yorkshire 14
churches, immeasurably enhanced by the survival of considerable quantities of stained glass. Good examples of glass are encountered in profusion at York Minster and survive in a number of the smaller parish churches.
Itinerary Day 1: York. The coach leaves at 1.30pm from York railway station for the short drive to York Minster, the largest of English medieval cathedrals. Above ground it is all Gothic, from Early English to Perpendicular but predominantly 14th-century, and demonstrating an exceptional knowledge of the latest French Rayonnant ideas. It is a treasure trove of stained glass, and the polygonal chapter house is without peer. Day 2: Lastingham, Rievaulx, Byland. Venture up into the North Yorkshire Moors to Lastingham, and an exquisitely sited small monastery with a tiny early Romanesque crypt. In Rievaulx, see the major Cistercian monastery whose choir still rises majestically above the River Rye. The second of the day’s Cistercian ruins, in Byland, has enthralling remnants of an early Gothic choir and west front. Day 3: Howden, Selby, York. Howden is an important late thirteenth-century collegiate church and Selby, a wonderfully rangy and ramshackle Benedictine abbey church. As befits a major medieval city, York played host to a plethora of monasteries and parish churches over and above its Minster. Two of these form the afternoon: Holy Trinity, Goodramgate and All Saints, North Street. Day 4: Beverley. Beverley Minster’s magnificent marble-enriched choir acts as a superb foil for the extravagances of the later Middle Ages. See the Percy Tomb, stalls and famously historicising nave. St Mary’s, Beverley, is an ambitious giant of a parish church – some free time in York.
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Day 5: Fountains Abbey. A morning to the west of York at Fountains Abbey, a monastery originally founded by a dissident community of monks from St Mary’s, York. By the Dissolution, it had grown to become the richest Cistercian house in Britain – quite simply the greatest of all English medieval ruins – the coach returns to York station by 3.00pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,530. Single occupancy: £1,760. Included meals: 3 dinners with wine. Accommodation. The Grange Hotel, York (grangehotel.co.uk): 4-star hotel in a converted Regency townhouse a short walk from the Minster and just outside the medieval walls. Rooms are elegantly decorated, but some are not large. Some rooms are noisy from passing traffic and there is no lift. Dinners are in the hotel restaurant or at good restaurants within walking distance. How strenuous? The tour involves a lot of walking where coach access is restricted, and a lot of standing in churches. Uneven ground and irregular paving are standard. A good level of fitness is essential. You will be on your feet for lengthy stretches of time. Average distance by coach per day: 47 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Palaces of Piedmont, 4–9 June 2019 (p.118); Connoisseur’s Vienna, 17–23 June 2019 (p.49). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration: York Minster Chapter House, engraving from 'Britton's Cathedral Antiquities', c. 1830.
The Age of Bede Anglo-Saxon Northumbria 14–17 September 2019 (mf 712) 4 days • £1,040 Lecturer: Imogen Corrigan Examines the remarkable efflorescence of culture and learning in Anglo-Saxon northern England. Jarrow, Monkwearmouth, Holy Island, Hexham and other Anglo-Saxon sites. Studies Durham Cathedral, perhaps the greatest Romanesque building in Europe, with private visits by special arrangement.
Itinerary Day 1: Jarrow and Monkwearmouth. The tour begins with a lecture in the hotel in Newcastle (where all three nights are spent) at 1.30pm. The monasteries at Monkwearmouth and Jarrow, ten miles apart but one institution, were founded in 674 and 681 by Benedict Biscop, whose five journeys to Rome resulted in a unique network of international contacts and awareness of European artistry. Parts of the original chapels survive, with stained glass and stone carvings. Day 2: Yeavering, Holy Island. On the journey to Lindisfarne the tour visits Yeavering, evocative site of a royal settlement. The monastery on the little island of Lindisfarne (later ‘Holy Island’) was founded in ad 635 by an Irish monk from Iona, St. Aidan, and became an important centre for scholarship and missionary activity. A place of
remarkable charm and tranquillity, there are Anglo-Saxon fragments, ruins of the Norman priory, and a castle, turned into a home by Edwin Lutyens.
Practicalities
Day 3: Durham. All day is spent in and around Durham Cathedral, one of the greatest Romanesque churches in Europe and one of the most impressive of English cathedrals. Mighty towers rise above the encircling river Wear, while the interior cannot but move with its power and piety. The bulk of the building is little altered since the forty-year building campaign begun in 1093. There is the opportunity to attend Evensong or Evenprayer here.
Included meals: 2 dinners with wine.
Day 4: Escomb, Hexham. The tiny Saxon church at Escomb was built c. ad 675, a rare survival. A lovely market town on a bluff above the Tyne, Hexham grew around a monastery founded in 671 by St Wilfrid. The magnificent medieval church is post-Conquest except for the crypt, the largest surviving expanse of Anglo-Saxon architecture in England. The coach sets down at Newcastle Central Railway station by 3.00pm.
Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,040. Single occupancy: £1,210. Accommodation. The Crowne Plaza, Newcastle (crowneplaza.com): new, stylish, comfortable 4-star hotel overlooking Newcastle railway station. How strenuous? The tour involves a lot of walking, where coach access is restricted, and a lot of standing in churches and on site. Uneven ground and irregular paving are standard. A good level of fitness is essential. Unless you enjoy entirely unimpaired mobility, cope with everyday walking and stair-climbing without difficulty and are reliably sure-footed, this tour is not for you. Average distance by coach per day: 64 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Sacred Armenia, 5–13 September 2019 (p. 47); The Cathedrals of England, 18–26 September 2019 (p.10). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration: Lindisfarne, Holy Island, engraving c. 1880.
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For a few decades around ad 700, a handful of monasteries in Northumbria became beacons of culture and learning in a Britain that was largely tribal, warlike and unstable. Within a century Viking raiders extinguished these fragile flickers of civilisation, and destruction and division again ruled the land. England – as it can now be called – steadily recovered, and on the eve of the Norman Conquest had become one of the best-governed and most prosperous territories in Europe. The tour visits some of the most significant Anglo-Saxon remains in the area – Jarrow and Monkwearmouth, the two-campus monastery to which Bede was given as a child oblate and where he became a monk; church architecture at Escomb and Hexham; and sites of powerful resonance – the royal court at Yeavering and Lindisfarne, now known as Holy Island. The tour introduces a cast of remarkable men – Benedict Biscop, Aiden, Cuthbert, Wilfrid and Bede, characters of extraordinary tenacity, learning, piety and courage. One of the great intellectuals of the Middle Ages, the Venerable Bede (c. 673–735) wrote on science and the measurement of time and on languages and literature as well as compiling a work of inestimable value, The Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Durham Cathedral is the last resting place of Cuthbert and Bede. In the opinion of some the finest Romanesque church in Europe, its massive size and defensibility express the often tenuous hold on the region by institutions representing southern-based royal government.
Roman Southern Britain A most wealthy island 14–21 May 2019 (mf 522) 8 days • £2,560 Lecturer: Professor Simon Esmonde Cleary A testament to the extraordinary level of civilisation and culture attained in the South and East of Roman Britain. Rich villas of Chedworth, Fishbourne and North Leigh with fine mosaics. Impressive military architecture; forts that secured the coasts at Pevensey, Portchester and Richborough, defensive walls at Caerwent and Silchester. Some of Britain’s most historic towns and beautiful rural settings. ‘A most wealthy island’ (opulentissima insula), is a view of Roman Britain which contrasts strongly with the more usual image of a land on the margins of empire, beset by enemies and dominated by the efforts of the Roman army to subdue and defend it. Over the four centuries that Britain was part of the Roman empire many features of Mediterranean civilisation took hold in the province, especially in the southern part of the island. Cities above all displayed the impact of Roman ways in Britain. As well as being centres for administration and taxation they were also places where local aristocrats demonstrated their loyalty
and showed off their wealth by paying for typically ‘Roman’ monuments such as forums, public baths, amphitheatres and theatres. They were economic centres where goods from across the empire such as wine or olive oil were brought to market, where craftsmen and specialists could be found and where the local farming population could obtain goods and services. Verulamium or St Albans was destroyed by Boudicca but grew to be one of the most important cities of Britain and the site of the execution of the first martyr of Britain, Alban. Like Verulamium, the cities of Caerwent in south Wales and Silchester in Hampshire were important local centres but were both abandoned by later generations, leaving their impressive city walls. The rich also displayed their wealth in their country residences, the villas. Absolutely exceptional for its early date, its size and its luxury was the villa or ‘palace’ at Fishbourne outside Chichester with its extraordinary suite of mosaics of the late first century. It was the Cotswolds that saw many of the greatest villas of later Roman Britain, the fourth century, including Chedworth, with one of the largest collections of Roman mosaics from Britain on display, and North Leigh, another major country residence. The agricultural wealth which paid for these villas and for the public buildings and monuments of the cities was important for sustaining the armies in Britain and on the Rhine. To ensure its safety as threats from across the North Sea grew, the Roman authorities constructed a chain of
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fortifications around the south-eastern coasts of the island, from the Wash to Portsmouth Harbour. Some of these remain amongst the best examples of late Roman military architecture anywhere, with the walls at sites such as Pevensey, Portchester and Richborough still standing up to thirty feet high. Richborough might well also have been the beachhead for the invasion under Claudius in ad 43, the one site witnessing the entire four hundred years of Roman rule in Britain.
Itinerary Day 1: London. The tour begins at 1.00pm in central London with a visit to the Mithraeum, a temple dedicated to one of the most mysterious Roman cult figures, Mithras the bull-slayer. Exhibits include a wooden tablet with the oldest record of a financial transaction from Britain. Further artefacts from the original excavations of the site in the 1950s are on display at the Museum of London. Drive to Canterbury for the first of two nights. Day 2: Richborough, Dover. Massive walls survive from the principal Roman port of Richborough, whose amphitheatre formed part of the civilian town. Dover (Dubris) was the leading naval base and gateway to Roman Britannia and Dover Castle is home to one of the best preserved Roman lighthouses in Europe. Dover Roman Painted House, whose murals depict scenes relating to Bacchus, formed part of a large mansio or official hotel for travellers crossing the English Channel.
Day 3: Pevensey, Chichester. Pevensey Castle was one of the last and strongest of the Roman Saxon Shore forts, where two-thirds of the original towered walls still stand. The Novium Museum contains the remains of Chichester’s Roman bath house. First of two nights in Chichester. Day 4: Fishbourne, Bignor. Fishbourne Roman Palace is perhaps the greatest Roman villa to have been constructed in England, whose floor mosaics rank among the finest in Europe. Further intricate mosaics are found at Bignor Roman Villa, likely home to a wealthy farming family. End the day at Portchester Castle, the best preserved Roman fort north of the Alps occupying a commanding position at the head of Portsmouth’s huge harbour. Day 5: Silchester, Bath. Morning visit to Silchester, a rare case of a Roman town becoming completely abandoned with the result that the plan is known in detail. Continue to Bath and its huge Roman bathing complex that developed around natural springs, named after the Celtic-Romano goddess of the springs, Sulis Minerva. First of two nights in Burford, a picturesque town in the heart of the Cotswolds. Day 6: Chedworth, Caerleon, Caerwent. Ongoing excavations at Chedworth Roman Villa have revealed extensive mosaic floors, hypocaust systems and bathhouse rooms. Cross the Welsh border and on to Caerleon, the site of Isca, a legionary fortress where substantial remains of the military amphitheatre as well as barracks can be seen. The living quarters are reconstructed in the National Roman Legion Museum. Caerwent, named Venta Silurum following the defeat of the Silures tribe, was the neighbouring civilian town.
Day 8: London. The tour culminates at the British Museum where a wealth of objects and artworks illustrates the merging of Roman and Iron Age cultures to form a Romano-British identity. Explore also artefacts from the Empire as a whole. Finish here at c. 2.00pm after an included lunch.
Practicalities Price per person. Two sharing: £2,560. Single occupancy: £3,020. Included meals: 5 dinners with wine. Accommodation. The Abode Hotel, Canterbury (abodecanterbury.co.uk): luxury hotel on the pedestrianised high street. Harbour Hotel, Chichester (chichester-harbour-hotel.co.uk): smart, boutique hotel in the centre of town. The Lamb, Burford (cotswold-inns-hotels.
co.uk): comfortable and charming village hotel. St Michael’s Manor Hotel, St Albans (stmichaelsmanor.com): country manor style hotel with gardens and smart rooms. How strenuous? The tour involves a lot of walking in town centres on the rough ground of archaeological sites, and a lot of standing in museums. Average distance by coach per day: 90 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Classical Greece, 4–13 May 2019 (p.109); Toledo & La Mancha, 6–13 May 2019 (p.196); Footpaths of Umbria, 6–13 May 2019 (p.145); Tudor England, 8–13 May 2019 (p.26). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
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Day 7: North Leigh, St Albans. Drive from the Cotswolds to Oxfordshire, where a 3rd-century mosaic tiled floor survives at North Leigh Roman Villa. Continue to St Albans, the third largest town in Roman Britain. The collection of the Verulamium museum includes coins from the Sandridge Hoard, one of the largest collections of Roman gold coins found in the UK, dating from the late 4th to early 5th cents. They would have been used for large transactions such as buying land or goods by the shipload. Overnight in St Albans.
Professor Simon Esmonde Cleary Archaeologist specialising in the western Roman Empire and Emeritus Professor of Roman Archaeology at the University of Birmingham. He remains an active researcher and has conducted fieldwork in the UK and France and written books on Gaul and Spain in late antiquity and on Roman Britain. See page 260 for all lecturers' biographies. Illustration, left: Pevensey Castle, engraving 1737. Above: Julius Caesar, engraving c. 1780.
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Walking Hadrian’s Wall Roman civilisation at the edge of an Empire power, Hadrian’s Wall ranks among the most extraordinary of all Roman achievements. A study of the Wall leads to an examination of practically every aspect of Roman civilisation, from senatorial politics in Rome to the mundanities of life for ordinary Romans – and Britons – who lived in its shadow. But the Wall itself remains the fascinating focus, and the subject of endless academic debate. For the modern-day visitor the Wall has the further, inestimable attraction of passing some of the most magnificent and unspoilt countryside in England. Happily, archaeological interest is greatest where the landscape is at its best, and it is on this central section that the tour concentrates. The principal excavated sites can be visited with no more exertion than on an average sightseeing outing, but to see the best surviving stretches of the Wall there is no substitute for leaving wheels behind and walking along its course.
Itinerary
14–20 May 2019 (mf 538) 7 days • £2,060 Lecturer: Graeme Stobbs 16–22 September 2019 (mf 683) 7 days • £2,060 Lecturer: Graeme Stobbs The archaeology and history of the largest Roman construction in northern Europe. As the most spectacular stretches are accessible only on foot, this is of necessity a walking tour.
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Coach excursions enable the inclusion of all the major Roman sites and relevant museums. The lecturer is Graeme Stobbs, curator for the Hadrian’s Wall Museums. Traversing England from the Tyne estuary to the Solway Firth, the Wall was conceived and ordered by Emperor Hadrian in ad 122 to mark and control the northernmost limit of the Roman Empire. The ambition was extraordinary, its fulfilment – far from the pool of skills and prosperity in the Mediterranean heartlands of the Empire – astonishing: a fifteen-foot-high wall 73 miles long through harsh, undulating terrain, with 80 milecastles, 161 intermediate turrets and flanking earthwork ditches and ramparts. Fifteen or sixteen forts, many straddling the Wall, housed a garrison of 12–15,000 soldiers from radically different climes elsewhere in the Empire, including Syria, Libya, Dalmatia, Spain and Belgium. A populous penumbra of supply bases and civilian settlements grew up nearby. As a feat of organisation, engineering and will18
Day 1: Housesteads. The coach leaves Newcastle Central Station at 2.15pm (or from the hotel, Matfen Hall, at 1.30pm) and takes you straight out to Housesteads. With standing remains of up to 10 feet, this is the best preserved of the Wall’s forts and evocatively reveals the usual panoply of perimeter walls and gateways, headquarters building, commander’s palatial residence, granaries, hospital, latrines. Remote and rugged, there are superb views. Day 2: walk Steel Rigg to Cawfields; Corbridge. A thrilling but challenging walk, c. 3 miles, c. 3 hours. Terrain is perhaps the most consistently rugged and undulating, sometimes quite steeply. It follows long, well-preserved stretches of the Wall through moorland above the cliffs of the Whinsill Crag, the Wall’s highest point. Pub lunch. Corbridge began as a fort in the chain built in c. ad 85 but left to the south by Hadrian’s Wall it became a large civilian town. Day 3: walk Housesteads to Steel Rigg; Chesters. Another challenging walk that, for much of the route, rides the crest of the faultline of dolerite crags, dipping and climbing: c. 3 miles, c. 3 hours. There are spectacular stretches, excellently preserved milecastles, staggering views: moorland, lakes, conifer forests to the north, richly variegated greens, plentiful livestock, distant vistas to the south. Pub lunch. Chesters, the most salubrious of the forts (lavish bath house), built for 500 Asturian cavalrymen, in enchanting river valley setting. Day 4: Vindolanda; Brocolitia, Chesters. The fort and town of Vindolanda is the site of ongoing excavations which are revealing everyday artefacts including, famously, the ‘postcard’ writing tablets which uniquely document details of everyday life. Drive to a couple of archaeological remains, the Mithraic temple at Brocolitia and the bridge abutments across the river from Chesters. Day 5: walk Gilsland to Birdoswald; Newcastle. An easy walk through low-lying and pretty farmland with streams and wild flowers: c. 2 miles, c. 2 hours. Included is the only mile with both milecastles and turrets visible, and good lengths
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of Wall. In Newcastle, the Great North Museum has the best collection ofobjects excavated along the Wall. Day 6: walk Walltown to Cawfields; Carlisle, Bowness-on-Solway. The final walk is graded moderate and is spectacularly varied, from rocky hilltops to lowland pasture: c. 5 miles, c. 2½ hours. Great Chesters fort has good remains of gates and other structures, with lengths of the Wall up to two metres high. Drive to Carlisle to see the Wall collections in the Tullie House Museum, and continue to the evocative estuarial landscape of the Solway Firth. The Wall ended at the remote village of Bowness-on-Solway. Day 7: South Shields, Wallsend. At South Shields, Arbeia is a fine reconstruction of a fort gateway, as well as reconstructions of a soldier’s barrack block and an opulent house belonging to the Commanding Officer. At aptly named Wallsend and now engulfed in the Tyneside conurbation, Segedunum was the most easterly of the forts, the layout clearly seen from a viewing platform. The coach takes you to Newcastle railway station by 2.30pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,060. Single occupancy: £2,200. English Heritage members (with cards) will be refunded c. £28. Included meals: 3 lunches, 5 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Matfen Hall Hotel (matfenhall. com): 19th-century Jacobean-style mansion, Matfen Hall is a fine country house hotel offering excellent service. How strenuous? This is a walking tour, graded moderate (see page 8). There are 4 walks over 5 days, lasting between 2 and 3 hours and covering up to 5 miles. Terrain is rough and there are periodic rises and falls, sometimes quite steep. It is essential for participants to be in good physical condition and to be used to country walking with uphill and downhill content. Strong knees are essential, as are a pair of well-worn hiking boots with good ankle support. Average distance by coach per day: 60 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. In May, combine this tour with: Classical Greece, 4–13 May 2019 (p.109); Footpaths of Umbria, 6–13 May 2019 (p.145); Tudor England, 8–13 May 2019 (p.26). Or in September, with: Country Houses of Kent, 23–27 September 2019 (p.25); Dorset Churches, 23–27 September 2019 (p.13). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration: Hadrian’s Wall near Housesteads, engraving 1888.
What else is included in the price? See page 6
ENGLISH COUNTRY HOUSES The country house is England’s most distinctive contribution to the world’s cultural heritage. Other countries have them of course, but none in such profusion, such variety, and in such a state of completion and preservation. A first-rate country house is more than a house. Clustering around are gardens, auxiliary buildings and a park, and beyond lie working farms and enterprises of all sorts. And of course inside the house there are furnishings and works of art and gadgets and utensils and curios: in many of the houses on this tour these moveables are of a quality and a quantity which surpass the collections of all but a couple of dozen of England’s museums. Why is England the locus classicus of the country house? Wealth is a precondition of their erection in the first place, and by and large there was a sufficiency; geography has been kind in allowing agricultural prosperity, and Britain’s precocious primacy in trade and industry fed into stately piles. Relative peace and absence of foreign occupation, preference for primogeniture, a reluctance to revolt, a fruitful balance between the power of the monarch and the rights of the nobles: all these have been factors in the creation and maintenance of country house culture. Many of the houses on our tours have been in the same family for several generations.
One feature of the English country house is that it usually resides in the country; on the Continent the town often presses around the forecourt. Some of the countryside through which thes tours pass has a bleak and rugged beauty – the moorland of the Peak District and the uplands of Northumberland. But most is gently rolling farmland with green fields, ancient hedges, majestic trees and contented livestock, remote from urban sprawl and seemingly remote in time. Many of the houses have brilliant gardens; space precludes mentioning them in the tour descriptions, but there is usually plenty of time for enjoying them. The pace of our tours is fairly leisurely, a distinctive feature which sets them apart from many others. Time is allowed for relaxation and reflection and exploring on ones own. Special arrangements comprise another significant feature, including out-ofhours opening, access to parts not normally seen by visitors and, not infrequently, tours with the owner.
OUR COUNTRY HOUSE TOURS: Great Houses of the North Page 20 Country Houses of the North West Page 21 Country Houses of the South West Page 22 At home at Weston Park Page 23 Houghton & Holkham Page 24 Country Houses of Kent Page 25 Illustration: Castle Howard, engraving from Colen Cambell’s 'Vitruvius Britannicus', 1720s.
' I was very impressed and also touched by the way all the local guides identified so strongly with the houses they talked about. They weren't just repeating facts – they wanted us to know about the history and greatness of the houses and to see them through enlightened eyes.' D.J., participant on Country Houses of Kent in 2017.
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Great Houses of the North Derbyshire, Yorkshire, Co. Durham, Northumberland House was rebuilt in the 1690s with the scale and sumptuousness of a palace and further augmented in the 1820s. The steady acquisition of fine furniture, sculpture and pictures created one of the finest private art collections in the world. ‘The most perfect English house to survive from the Middle Ages’, Haddon Hall evolved from c. 1370 to the 17th century after which nearly 300 years of disuse preserved it from alteration. The gardens are exceptionally lovely. Day 3: Hardwick, Bolsover (Derbys). Hardwick Hall (1590) is the finest of all Elizabethan great houses, a highpoint of the English Renaissance, the façade famously more glass than stone. The unaltered interiors are decorated with stucco reliefs and filled with contemporary textiles and furniture. Bolsover Castle is an elaborate Jacobean folly, a splendid late-Renaissance sequence of rooms in medieval fancy dress. Day 4: Harewood (W Yorks). Harewood House is one of the grandest, most beautiful of English country houses, architecture by John Carr (1772) and Charles Barry (1843), interiors by Adam, furniture by Chippendale, park by ‘Capability’ Brown, excellent paintings – Italian Renaissance to modern. First of three nights in York.
21–30 June 2019 (mf 588) 10 days • £3,590 Lecturer: Gail Bent The finest country houses and gardens in northern England, from medieval to Victorian, with an emphasis on the eighteenth century. All aspects of the country house are studied – architecture, furniture, decoration, works of art; gardens and parks; historical context and daily life; conservation and custodianship. Unrushed: there is plenty of time to rest, relax and absorb. Only two hotel changes.
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Some of the most glorious countryside in England, plus a few items other than houses.
Itinerary Day 1: Kedleston (Derbys). The coach leaves Derby railway station at 1.45pm. One of the supreme monuments of Classical architecture and decoration in England, recreating the glories of Ancient Rome in the foothills of the Peak District, Kedleston Hall (1759–65) was the creation of Sir Nathaniel Curzon and, initially, three architects, of whom Robert Adam emerged the victor. The sequence of grand rooms for entertainment and show are homogeneous and complete (with furnishings designed by Adam), an impeccable manifestation of aristocratic wealth, education and taste. Spend the first of three nights near Chatsworth. Day 2: Chatsworth, Haddon (Derbys). The home of the Duke of Devonshire, Chatsworth 20
Day 5: Burton Agnes (E Yorks), Castle Howard (N Yorks). Burton Agnes Hall is a final flourish of the Elizabethan age, red brick and cream stone, topiary, marvellous carving and plasterwork, Impressionist and modern paintings: ‘the perfect English house’. Designed by John Vanbrugh in 1699, Castle Howard is one of the few major Baroque buildings in England and the most palatial house on the tour. Excellent works of art and park with famous temples and follies. Day 6: Newby, York (N Yorks). A William-andMary house (1693), Newby Hall was subject for the next two centuries to refurbishment and extension of the highest quality, one set of rooms (by Adam) designed to house a collection of Roman sculpture. 25 acres of fine gardens. Some free time in York. Private dinner at Fairfax House in York, a Georgian town house (to be confirmed). Day 7: Raby, Bowes Museum, Rokeby Park (Co. Durham). Within the formidable 14th-century fortifications of Raby Castle are suites of rooms of the 18th and 19th centuries. There are good paintings, furniture and Meissen animals and a deer park. Excellent art collections in a vast building in the guise of a French château make the Bowes Museum one of the surprises of the north. Built in 1725, Rokeby Park’s exterior remains virtually unaltered. A variation on a formal Palladian theme, the towers are borrowed from Pliny’s Tuscan villa and unique in England. First of three nights in Newcastle. Day 8: Belsay, Wallington (Nthumb). After Sir Charles Monck’s return from Greece in 1805 he built Belsay Hall in a severely Grecian style. Delightful woodland gardens lead to a medieval castle. Wallington Hall dates to 1688 but was refurbished in the mid-18th and mid-19th centuries, the latter resulting in an arcaded twostorey hall with scenes of Northumbrian history painted by William Bell Scott.
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Gail Bent Expert on British architectural history and historic interiors. She studied at Toronto and Leeds universities, where she has also taught, and Edinburgh College of Art. She lectures for The Art Fund, The National Trust, The Arts Society and at Christ Church, University of Oxford Summer Programme. She has acted as an expert on country houses for the BBC. See page 260 for all lecturers' biographies. Day 9: Seaton Delaval, Cragside (Nthumb). On a cliff-top site outside Newcastle, Seaton Delaval was the last of Vanbrugh’s magnificent mansions. Innovatory management has followed its acquisition by the National Trust in 2009. A wonderful sequence of late-Victorian taste and technology, Cragside is a romantic Tudor-style pile (1869–84) designed by Norman Shaw for William Armstrong, inventor and manufacturer. Day 10: Alnwick (Nthumb), Newcastle. Since 1309 the seat of the Percys, Dukes of Northumberland, Alnwick Castle externally remains a striking medieval fortress while the interiors are a lavish exercise in Victorian medievalism. There is a superb painting collection and a new 12-acre garden. The coach takes you to Newcastle railway station by 3.30pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,590. Single occupancy: £4,070. National Trust members with cards will be refunded c. £53. English Heritage members with cards will be refunded c. £21. Included meals: 7 dinners with wine. Accommodation. The Cavendish Hotel, near Chatsworth (cavendish-hotel.net): located on the Chatsworth Estate it has been an inn for centuries. The Grange, York (grangehotel. co.uk): ten minutes on foot from the Minster, it has been beautifully converted from a Georgian town house. Jesmond Dene House, Newcastle (jesmonddenehouse.co.uk): 19th-century mansion in a quiet wooded suburb. How strenuous? Unavoidably there is quite a lot of walking; the tour would not be suitable for anyone with difficulties with everyday walking and stairclimbing. Coaches can rarely park near the houses, many of the parks and gardens are extensive, the houses visited don’t have lifts (nor do all hotels). Average coach travel per day: c. 60 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Hawksmoor, 20 June 2019; Danish Castles & Gardens, 1–7 July 2019 (p.65); Western Ireland, 1–7 July 2019 (p.43). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transoport. Illustration: Haddon Hall, painted by E.W. Haslehurst, c. 1910.
Country Houses of the North West Tudor and Stuart architecture in Cheshire, Lancashire and Cumbria 29 July–3 August 2019 (mf 635) 6 days • £2,180 Lecturer: Gail Bent Some medieval parts and a few 18th and 19thcentury extensions and embellishments, but Tudor and Stuart architecture predominates. The craftsmanship of masons and carpenters, gardens and parks, spectacular landscape, fascinating collections, charm and beauty. Most remain private homes, and there are several special arrangements including owner-led visits and lunch in one of the houses.
Itinerary Day 1: Manchester, Lyme. The tour leaves Manchester Piccadilly Railway Station at 2.00pm. Located in the Peak District and the largest country house in Cheshire, Lyme Park is fundamentally Elizabethan but Classical grandeur was added in the 1720s by Giacomo Leoni in a style between Baroque and Palladian. Continue to Nantwich for the first of two nights. Day 2: Little Moreton Hall, Capesthorne Hall. Half-timbered and moated, and so enchantingly pretty as to strain credibility, Little Moreton Hall was built in stages over a hundred years from the beginning of the 16th century. It has hardly been touched since and sits in a recreation of an Elizabethan garden. Capesthorne Hall keeps to the theme of the tour in being Jacobean, but in a historicist revival of the style, created by the architects Blore in the 1830s and Salvin in the 1860s.
Day 3: Speke Hall, Browsholme Hall. Speke ranks with Moreton as one of the best wood-framed Tudor mansions in the country, and again is little altered. The Parker family has lived at Browsholme Hall in Ribble Valley since 1507, when the house was begun. A wing was added during the Regency. A remarkable collection of works of art and artefacts has been accumulated over fourteen generations. Overnight Mitten Hall.
coach continues to Carlisle train station where the tour ends by 2.45pm.
Day 4: Stonyhurst, Hoghton Tower. Stonyhurst College is a Jesuit school which was founded in 1593 and moved 200 years later into the present site, a country house built largely in the 17th century. There are important collections. On a hilltop site with magnificent Lancashire countryside all round, Hoghton Tower dates to the 12th century but was largely rebuilt in 1565 while retaining the appearance of a medieval fortress. First of two nights in Ambleside.
Included meals: 1 lunch and 5 dinners with wine.
Day 5: Sizergh Castle, Levens Hall. Sizergh is a Tudor house incorporating a medieval tower and additions from the 17th century, still lived in by the Strickland family though recently ceded to the National Trust. There are fine paintings, outstanding original panelling and gardens. Levens Hall is an exceptionally attractive house which was first occupied in 1350 though most is Elizabethan. The gardens have a wonderful display of topiary. The Bagot family has lived here for over 400 years. Day 6: Naworth Castle, Carlisle. The tour slips back to the Middle Ages for the final visit: Naworth Castle is a 14th-century castle in Cumbria, restored and made comfortable in the 17th and sensitively refurbished in the 19th. A branch of the Howard family has occupied it for 400 years. The
Some appointments cannot be confirmed until January 2019.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,180. Single occupancy: £2,480 Accommodation. Rookery Hall Hotel & Spa (handpickedhotels.co.uk): 4-star country house hotel in the Cheshire countryside. Our rooms are in the Old Hall which retains some period charm. Mitton Hall (mittonhallhotel.co.uk): small 4-star country house hotel in the Ribble Valley countryside. Rooms vary widely in size and design. Waterhead, Ambleside (englishlakes.co.uk/ hotels): 4-star modern, comfortable hotel on the shore of Lake Windermere. How strenuous? The tour involves a lot of walking around historical houses and gardens. Uneven ground, irregular paving, steps and hills are standard. A good level of fitness is necessary. It should not be attempted by anyone who has difficulty with everyday walking and stairclimbing. There are two hotel changes and some days involve a lot of driving. Average distance by coach per day: 66 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
Illustration: Little Moreton Hall, engraving 1835.
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Country Houses of the South West Great houses in Somerset and Devon
4–7 July 2019 (mf 613) 4 days • £1,240 Lecturer: Anthony Lambert Country houses, historic gardens and parks in Somerset and Devon. Many houses contain outstanding picture collections and exceptional furniture.
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Special arrangements and out-of-hours visits. Option to combine this tour with West Country Choral Festival, 7–11 July 2019 (see page 29). The landscapes on this tour range from the enchanting patchwork fields and wild moors of Devon to the verdant hidden valleys of Exmoor. The houses and their families reflect deep attachment to place: eighteen generations of the Luttrell family have clung to their castle turned country house at Dunster; Montacute was home to the Phelips family for three centuries. The beautifully situated house at Crowcombe combines Baroque and Palladian influences, while the eighteenth century is also wonderfully exemplified by the delicious Adam interiors at Saltram. The severe Palladianism of Claverton is home to a unique collection of American interiors, and Edwardian eccentricity is demonstrated by Lutyens’s faux fortress at Castle Drogo. 22
Itinerary Day 1: Montacute. The coach leaves The Castle Hotel at 1.10pm and Taunton Railway Station at 1.30pm. Drive to Montacute, one of the loveliest and least changed of Elizabethan country houses, with the longest long gallery in England. An outstation of the National Portrait Gallery, it is hung with 16th- and 17th-century pictures. Day 2: Saltram, Castle Drogo. Drive across Devon to Saltram, a largely 18th-century house with lavish Robert Adam interiors, rooms of fine Chinese wallpapers and pictures, books and furnishings. Among the paintings are works by Reynolds, Stubbs, Rubens, Brueghel, and Pieter de Hough. A rugged Dartmoor setting matches Sir Edwin Lutyens’s imaginative exercise in medievalism at Castle Drogo, which is nearing the end of a six-year restoration programme. Though equipped with a working portcullis, the castle incorporates all the latest early 20th-century comforts. Day 3: Crowcombe Court, Dunster Castle. Crowcombe is a beautiful 18th-century house with fine Italian plasterwork. Edward Barry added a ballroom in exuberant Victorian style. Drive between the Quantocks and Exmoor to the picturesque village of Dunster. Atop a wooded hillock, the defensive features of the Norman castle were long ago domesticated, notably in the Carolean and Victorian ages.
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Day 4: Claverton Manor. Built in 1819–20, this Neo-classical villa was designed by Jeffry Wyatt. Today it houses a remarkable collection of rooms transported from America, including Shaker and Mexican Indian examples. Part of the garden is a copy of Mount Vernon outside Washington. The tour ends at the festival hotels in Bath by 2.00pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,240. Single occupancy: £1,400. Included meals: 2 dinners with wine. Accommodation. The Castle Hotel, Taunton (the-castle-hotel.com): award-winning family-run 4-star hotel with excellent service. How strenuous? Unavoidably, there is quite a lot of walking; the tour would not be suitable for anyone who has difficulties with everyday walking and stair-climbing. Coaches can rarely park near the houses, some of the parks and gardens are extensive, the houses visited don’t have lifts. Average distance by coach per day: c. 75 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: West Country Choral Festival, 7–11 July 2019 (p.29); Interwar Interiors, 8 July 2019. We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport. Illustration: Montacute House, Somerset, lithograph 1842.
At home at Weston Park Historic houses in Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Staffordshire and Shropshire 25–30 June 2019 (mf 602) 6 days • £2,960 Lecturer: Anthony Lambert Stay in a 16th-century coaching inn and then as guests at Weston Park, a 17th-century house set in 1,000 acres of ‘Capability’ Brown landscape. Country houses, gardens and parks in four counties in the West of England. Important examples of a range of styles from the twelfth to twentieth centuries, many with fine pictures, furniture, silver and porcelain. Special arrangements and out-of-hours visits.
Itinerary Day 1: Eastnor Castle. The coach leaves Gloucester Railway Station at 12.00 noon. Spectacularly situated above a lake, early-19thcentury Eastnor is a splendid example of the Norman and Gothic revival, with a drawing room by Pugin. The sumptuous and beautifully restored interiors are hung with paintings by Van Dyck, Reynolds, Romney and Watts. First of two nights in Broadway.
Day 2: Hellens, Madresfield Court. Transformed from a monastery into a fortress in 1292 by Mortimer, Earl of March, Hellens has been lived in ever since by his descendants. Edward the Black Prince dined in the stone-flagged hall and the Tudor, Jacobean and Stuart additions contain paintings and heirlooms from the Civil War, fine 17th-century woodwork and Cordoba leather wall hangings. The novelist, Evelyn Waugh, was a frequent guest at Madresfield, where the oldest part is the 12th-century Great Hall. Rebuilt in the 16th, 19th and 20th centuries, the house is famous for its Arts & Crafts chapel and library. Day 3: Ragley Hall, Hanbury Hall. Of several great houses designed by the scientist and architect Robert Hooke, Ragley is the sole survivor, though it was not completed until long after his death with additions by James Gibbs and James Wyatt. Described as ‘every Englishman’s idea of a substantial squire’s red brick home of the age of Wren’, Hanbury was built c. 1700 and decorated with wall- and ceiling-paintings by Sir James Thornhill. The garden and orangery were designed by George London. First of three nights at Weston Park. Day 4: Weston Park. Today is spent at Weston Park with its curator, Gareth Williams. The predominantly 17th-century house has an excellent picture collection, outstanding furniture, including choice pieces by Chippendale. An indepth tour includes items not usually on display. There is time also to explore at leisure and walk in the ‘Capability’ Brown park. Day 5: Wightwick Manor, Shugborough. Wightwick Manor is one of the finest examples of the Victorian penchant for an ‘Old English’ amalgam of stone, brick, half-timbering and tile-hanging, but it is also distinguished by its collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings and William Morris furnishings. Shugborough has all the elements of a substantial country estate: a magnificent Georgian house with a fine collection of paintings, silver and ceramics; Grade I-listed
parkland peppered with classical monuments; a working model farm; and a lively family history. Day 6: Attingham Park. Set in parkland designed by Humphry Repton, Attingham has magnificent Regency interiors and one of the first picture galleries to be built in a country house. It is filled with the collection of Italian furniture, paintings and silver formed by the diplomatist 3rd Lord Berwick. The tour ends at Shrewsbury Railway Station by 3.20pm and at Wolverhampton Railway Station by 4.30pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,960. Single occupancy: £3,120. Included meals: 3 lunches, 4 dinners, with wine, Accommodation. The Lygon Arms, Broadway (lygonarmshotel.co.uk): 16th-century coaching inn; some parts date back to the 14th century. Situated in the high street of Broadway. Weston Park, Weston-under-Lizard (weston-park.com): set in 1,000 acres of ‘Capability’ Brown parkland. A country house where one may stay, rather than a hotel, offering the experience of being a guest while the family is away. How strenuous? Unavoidably, there is quite a lot of walking; this tour would not be suitable for anyone who has difficulties with everyday walking and stair-climbing. Coaches can rarely park near the houses, many of the parks and gardens are extensive and the houses visited don’t have lifts. Average distance by coach per day: c. 47 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Connoisseur's Vienna, 17–23 June 2019 (p.49); Danish Castles & Gardens, 1–7 July 2019 (p.65); French Gothic, 1–7 July 2019 (p.77); Western Ireland, 1–7 July 2019 (p.43). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport. Illustration: Eastnor Castle, chromolithograph c. 1880.
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Along the Welsh borders are some of the most enchanting landscapes in Britain, largely unspoilt thanks to being beyond the reach of metropolitan commuters. Its agriculture remains small in scale, family farms and artisan food producers maintaining earlier field systems with hedges and an abundance of trees. The houses visited illustrate the evolution of taste over many centuries. Hellens perfectly demonstrates the adaptation of a small monastery into one of Britain’s most atmospheric houses, deeply rural yet playing its part in national affairs. Ragley is the only surviving example of a country house designed by the polymath Robert Hooke, colleague of Sir Christopher Wren. Classicism shaped Hanbury, Shugborough and Attingham. Eastnor combines Norman and Gothic Revival elements while Madresfield’s many reconstructions have produced a house resembling a moated Elizabethan mansion but, like Wightwick, it is celebrated for its Arts & Crafts interiors. Important parks surround some of the houses: Weston Park has one of the few remaining ‘Capability’ Brown pleasure grounds, several are by Repton and the magnificent group of mostly Greek-inspired monuments in the park at Shugborough is a landmark in eighteenth century architecture. A very special feature of this tour is that participants stay for three of the five nights in one of these houses. Weston is in essence a late seventeenth-century mansion filled with fine paintings – Holbein, Van Dyck, Gainsborough, Reynolds, Stubbs – and furniture and other arts. Formerly the property of the Earls of Bradford, it belongs to a private charitable trust. It is not a hotel, but caters for high-end special events. Our group has exclusive access, and while there this great country house is your home. You are free to wander through the house and grounds at leisure.
Houghton & Holkham Four great Norfolk Whig houses 15–18 October 2019 (mf 805) 4 days • £1,470 Lecturer: Dr Andrew Moore Examining the social and political impact of Sir Robert Walpole’s country palace, Houghton Hall, upon Norfolk and the wider national landscape. Private visits of four of the finest country houses and gardens in East Anglia, all still in private ownership. Led by Dr Andrew Moore, a specialist in the study of the country house and author of A Capital Collection, a work dedicated to the paintings in Walpole’s collection. ‘Taste, expense, state and parade’ Lord Hervey to the Prince of Wales, 14 July, 1731. The story of the building of Sir Robert Walpole’s palace in the countryside in the 1720s was the cause of celebration, and some notoriety, due to the extraordinary cost of creating both the house and the collection of Old Master paintings. These were gathered first at 10 Downing Street in London and then shipped to Houghton Hall on Walpole’s retirement. House and collection
together provided a powerful statement of taste and prestige for Walpole, England’s first ‘prime’ minister. Some thirty years after his death, his grandson notoriously sold the collection to Catherine the Great for display in her Hermitage in 1779. Today the house is once again filled with magnificent works of art and remains in private ownership. All four houses are near neighbours. Raynham Hall was renovated in the 1720s by Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend and Sir Robert’s brother-in-law, and Secretary of State for the Northern Department (Foreign Affairs) and is still in the ownership of the Townshend family; Holkham Hall and Park, was developed over some thirty years by Walpole’s Postmaster General, Thomas Coke, later 1 st Earl of Leicester. Together with Houghton these houses feature the key influence of William Kent: as interior designer at Houghton and Raynham; as architect, landscape and interior designer at Holkham. The comparatively little known Wolterton Hall was built on behalf of Robert Walpole’s brother Horatio, who served as Minister Plenipotentiary to The Hague. Horatio’s architect was Thomas Ripley, who also was responsible for modernising Raynham and completing Houghton.
This is an astonishing group of early eighteenth-century, Whig-dominated powerhouses of taste and parade, a little visited group of great Norfolk neighbouring houses. All four houses present some of the most important intact NeoPalladian architectural ensembles in Britain and feature original furnishings and collections, while bringing their architectural heritage triumphantly into the 21st century.
Itinerary Day 1: Wolterton Hall. The coach leaves Norwich railway station at 2.00pm. Built in the 1720s for Sir Robert Walpole’s brother, Horatio, Wolterton is arguably Ripley’s finest creation, its Neo-Palladian architecture admirably answering the modern requirement for ‘commodious’ architecture. Day 2: Houghton. The grandest monument of English Palladianism, Houghton Hall was built for Sir Robert Walpole. There are outstanding artworks, a spectacular walled garden and an extensive park. Day 3: Holkham. With Holkham Hall (1730s) the English country house reached a moment of perfection, the serene Palladian edifice contrasting with the ‘natural’ layout of the deer park. Within are magnificent classical halls and a collection of paintings, sculpture and furniture of staggering richness. Day 4: Raynham. One of the finest houses in Norfolk, Raynham Hall is still very much a private home with a wonderful collection of a family with strong historical links with Britain and the USA. The coach takes you to Norwich railway station by 2.45pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,470. Single occupancy: £1,590. Included meals: 1 lunch and 3 dinners with wine.
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Accommodation. The Hoste Arms, Burnham Market (thehoste.com): located in an attractive village in north Norfolk, and housed in a former coaching inn and assorted outbuildings. Bedrooms have a largely traditional décor with contemporary twists and contain all mod cons. There is an excellent restaurant and a spa. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking on this tour and it would not be suitable for anyone with difficulties with everyday walking and stairclimbing. Coaches can rarely park near the houses, and gardens are extensive. Average distance by coach per day: c. 41 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Walking in Southern Tuscany, 7–14 October 2019 (p.140); Le Corbusier, 19–27 October 2019 (p.75).
Illustration: Houghton, entrance hall, after a drawing by F. G. Kitton in ‘The Art Journal’ 1887.
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Country Houses of Kent Medieval, Tudor, Stuart and more 23–27 September 2019 (mf 746) 5 days • £1,790 Lecturer: Anthony Lambert A wonderfully varied selection of country houses, from the 12th to the 20th centuries. Inhabited medieval castles, Tudor palaces, Stuart manor houses and properties improved in the last great age of country house building. Among the special arrangements are two dinners and a lunch in houses visited. ‘The Garden of England’, known for orchards, hops and oast houses, still has remarkably unspoilt landscapes and villages. One hotel throughout, a characterful 17th-century country house in 22 acres of parkland.
Itinerary Day 1: St Clere. Leave central London by coach at 11.15am. St Clere, influenced by Inigo Jones though with two rather anomalous Jacobean octagonal turrets, was built 1628–33 for the Parliamentarian Sir John Sedley. It has been in the current family since 1878 when acquired by the Governor of the Bank of England. Lunch precedes a tour of the house and garden which provides insight into the challenge of making a country house earn its keep. Day 2: Knole, Ightham Mote, Boughton Monchelsea Place. Knole sprawls around halfa-dozen courtyards. Built by an Archbishop of Canterbury, it was briefly one of Henry VIII’s palaces before being granted to the Sackville family who have lived here ever since. One of England’s most picturesque moated medieval manor houses, the rooms of Ightham Mote range from the Great Hall with stained glass to the drawing room with Chinese wallpaper. Dinner is at Boughton Monchelsea Place, largely Tudor but a perfect example of the delights of gradual accretions and alterations to a medieval core.
Day 4: Leeds Castle, Squerryes Court. One of Britain’s most idyllically sited houses, Leeds Castle was the strategic fortress of medieval queens and palatial enough to host the Holy Roman Emperor. The Anglo-American heiress Olive, Lady Baillie, employed French designers and introduced Flemish tapestries and Impressionist paintings. Squerryes Court is a fine brickwork William and Mary mansion containing artworks collected by the family since 1731. The estate produces wine, and there is a visit to the vineyard. Dinner here.
Historian, journalist and travel writer, he has worked for the National Trust for many years. His books include Victorian & Edwardian Country House Life, he writes regularly for the Historic Houses Association’s magazine, and he has written several travel and guide books, including over 20 on railway history and travel. See page 260 for all lecturers' biographies. Day 5: Chilham Castle. The foundations of Chilham date from the 11th century, while the red-brick Jacobean house now on the site has the peculiar plan of five sides of a hexagon. The tour visits the garden as well as the principal rooms. There is some free time in the highly attractive village before returning to central London by 4.30pm. Illustration: The Great Hall at Penshurst, engraving from 'Famous Great Homes of Britain', 1900.
Practicalities Prices, per person. Two sharing £1,790. Single occupancy: £1,950. Included meals: 1 lunch and 3 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Chilston Park Hotel, Lenham (handpickedhotels.co.uk/chilstonpark): an extended 17th-century manor house set in 22 acres of parkland. Each bedroom is decorated in an individual style; public rooms have an elegant, country house ambiance. How strenuous? The tour involves a lot of walking, where coach access is restricted, and a lot of standing in houses. A good level of fitness is essential. Unless you enjoy entirely unimpaired mobility, cope with everyday walking and stairclimbing without difficulty and are reliably surefooted, this tour is not for you. Average distance by coach per day: c. 80 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Dark Age Brilliance, 15–22 September 2019 (p.133); Walking Hadrian's Wall, 16–22 September 2019 (p.18). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport. Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Day 3: Hever Castle, Penshurst Place. The castle where Henry VIII wooed Anne Boleyn had become a decrepit farm by the time William Waldorf Astor applied his fortune to its renovation. Now it has sumptuous interiors, outstanding tapestries, Tudor portraits and a mock-Tudor village for guests. For Nikolaus Pevsner, ‘there is no finer or more complete 14th-century manor house than Penshurst Place’. The ancestral home of the Sidney family has fine contents and a garden restored in the 1860s to its appearance around 1700.
Anthony Lambert
Tudor England Monarchs and subjects, bridging medieval and modern medieval, classical and pseudo-classical styles. Kirby was completed with precocious classicism by Sir Christopher Hatton; though now partly ruined, it remains extraordinarily impressive. The handsome Cecil funerary monuments are in St Martin’s Church, Stamford. Overnight Rutland. Day 3: Gainsborough Old Hall, Ellys Manor. Dating from the mid-15th century, Gainsborough Old Hall played host to Richard III in 1483 before the owner, Sir Thomas Burgh, switched allegiance to Henry Tudor. Sources suggest that Henry VIII may also have spent a night here. In addition to the formal rooms a remarkably intact suite of service interiors has survived. Built by an international wool merchant in the late-15th century, Ellys Manor has continental influences throughout and exceptional 16th-century wall paintings, ‘a rare English interpretation of French verdure tapestries’ (Pevsner). Overnight Rutland.
8–13 May 2019 (mf 515) 6 days • £1,810 Lecturer: Professor Maurice Howard obe Tudor England studied through a variety of architecture, artefacts and artworks. Dynastic houses and rustic cottages, seats of learning and merchants’ mansions, artisan plasterwork and world-beating stained glass. Accompanied by a leading Tudor specialist, historian and art historian Professor Maurice Howard.
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The defeat of Richard III by Henry Tudor in a Leicestershire field on August 22, 1485, heralded a glorious age over which the Tudor monarchs would preside for the next 118 years. Out of the turmoil of the Wars of the Roses a new social and economic order emerged: an age of discovery, trade and commerce, in which the old medieval aristocracy was joined by a prosperous new class of bureaucrats at court and a wealthy merchant class in towns and cities. This tour explores the legacy and interests of the Tudor gentry and nobility through the prism of some of their finest surviving monuments in the south-eastern counties. Many of them owe their existence to the flourishing wool trade. Under Henry VIII vast estates of the monasteries passed into new hands; housebuilding was now dominant rather than lavish spending on churches. The ambition to demonstrate wealth through these buildings is clear from all levels of society down to even the 26
lesser gentry. Gainsborough Old Hall is one of the largest and most complete brick and timberframed manor houses in England; Ellys Manor House contains rare survivals of sixteenth-century interior decoration; the immense gatehouse at Layer Marney has delicate Renaissance ornament in the form of its windows. The list goes on. The visual arts were complemented by a great flourishing of the musical and literary arts that have made some of the great works of the latesixteenth century stand out as the quintessential products of the Elizabethan age. The achievements of John Caius at Cambridge, manifest in a series of gateways to his college, mark the absorption of new approaches to classical learning into English education, while the great house at Burghley, completed by William Cecil, uses tradition and innovation in design and ornament fit for Elizabeth’s first minister and ready to receive the Queen herself.
Itinerary Day 1: Hatfield. Leave London at 10.15am. Henry VIII’s three children spent much of their childhoods at Hatfield, and of the palace the great hall survives. A collection of Tudor portraits reveals the creation of a dynasty. First of three nights in Rutland. Day 2: Kirby Hall, Burghley House. In taste and ambition these great houses, owned by two of Elizabeth I’s closest and most powerful courtiers, epitomise the standing achieved by the Queen’s favourites. Magnificent Burghley House, perhaps the finest Elizabethan house in England, was built by William Cecil in a palatial compound of
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Day 4: Cambridge. Though begun in 1446 by Henry VI, King’s College Chapel acquired its present form during the reign of Henry VIII. Combining the very best of Tudor era architecture, stained glass, sculpture and furnishings, this is one of the world’s greatest buildings. The three splendid gateways created in the 1550s–70s at Gonville & Caius College are remarkable for their Renaissance design and symbolism. Trinity was founded by Henry VIII in 1546; the university’s largest and wealthiest college was endowed with land from dissolved monasteries. (Visits on this day are subject to change as Cambridge colleges may close to the public at short notice). First of two nights in Lavenham. Day 5: Coggeshall, Paycocke’s House, Layer Marney. The village of Coggeshall, Essex, has many fine Tudor buildings of which Paycocke’s House (1509–10) is the most impressive; fine beamwork, panelling and other rare survivals. The abbey was granted to Sir Thomas Seymour, brother to Jane, by Henry VIII, and the 16thcentury manor house incorporates elements of the monastic complex. Had it been completed, Layer Marney would have rivalled Hampton Court in splendour. The spectacular Tudor gatehouse with its Italianate decoration is the tallest in England. Henry VIII and Elizabeth both visited. Overnight Lavenham. Day 6: Otley Hall. Beautiful, moated Otley Hall was the seat of Bartholomew Gosnold, who rallied support to plant an English colony in north Virginia; in 1602 he landed on Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard, named after his deceased daughter. Set in 10 acres of gardens, Otley’s exterior has splendid chimneys, brickwork and vine leaf pargetting. Inside, wall paintings commemorate a marriage of 1559, and the Great Hall and Linenfold Parlour are unequalled in Suffolk. The tour finishes at Ipswich Railway Station by 1.00pm.
Illustration: Cambridge, Trinity College, etching 1879 by H Toussaint.
Literary England Where writers lived and worked Professor Maurice Howard obe Professor Emeritus of Art History at the University of Sussex. His books include The Building of Elizabethan & Jacobean England. He has worked for the V&A and the National Portrait Gallery, is a former President of both the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain and the Society of Antiquaries of London. See page 260 for all lecturers' biographies.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,810. Single occupancy: £2,100. Included meals: 5 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Barnsdale Lodge Hotel, Rutland (barnsdalelodge.co.uk): housed in an extended old farmhouse close to Rutland Water. Public rooms and bedrooms are arranged around a courtyard and have a traditional, country décor. The Swan, Lavenham (theswanatlavenham. co.uk): dating from the 15th century, The Swan has been an inn since 1667; rooms have been recently renovated yet retain their historical character; excellent restaurant. How strenuous? Unavoidably, there is quite a lot of walking on this tour and it would not be suitable for anyone who has difficulties with everyday walking and stair-climbing. Coaches can rarely park near the houses, many of the parks and gardens are extensive and the houses visited don’t have lifts. Average distance by coach per day: c. 77 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
8–16 September 2019 (mf 684) 9 days • £3,030 Lecturer: Professor Andrew Sanders Dig deeper into English Literature by visiting the homes, schools and formative environments of some of our greatest writers. From workers’ cottages to stately homes, several of the best-preserved and most illuminating places are included. Many special arrangements including out-of-hours visits and places not usually accessible. An itinerary that is as comprehensive as is possible within nine days, while allowing ample time at each place visited.
Itinerary Day 1: Lancashire. The coach leaves Piccadilly Station, Manchester at 2.00pm. Elizabeth Gaskell lived with her family in a Regency villa in Plymouth Grove for the last fifteen years of her life, 1850–65, and wrote most of her books here. The house re-opened in 2014 after comprehensive restoration and is fully furnished as a home of the period with some of Gaskell’s belongings. Overnight Halifax. Day 2: Yorkshire, Derbyshire. The Brontë family came to live in Haworth parsonage in 1820. The austere gritstone building in a moody moorland setting became the scene for the literary outpourings of Charlotte, Emily and Anne. As a backdrop to a trio of creative siblings, Renishaw Hall could hardly be more different: a large and colourfully opulent country house with extensive gardens. Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell were brought up here and considered it home for the rest of their lives. First of two nights in Nottingham.
Day 5: Buckinghamshire, Berkshire. John Milton rented a cottage in Chalfont Saint Giles in 1665 to escape the plague ravaging London; here he completed Paradise Lost and began Paradise Regained. It houses an important Milton collection of rare books, prints and paintings. Eton College was founded by Henry VI in 1440, and the library has accumulated extraordinary collections relating to some of its more talented pupils, such as Shelley and Orwell, and to English literature generally. First of three nights in Winchester.
What else is included in the price? See page 6 For lecturers' biographies See pages 260–267
Day 4: Warwickshire, Hertfordshire. During the headmastership of Thomas Arnold 1828–41, Rugby became the model for the English public school. Our visit focuses on alumni Matthew Arnold (son of the headmaster), Thomas Hughes and Rupert Brooke. George Bernard Shaw lived in an Arts and Crafts rectory in Ayot St Lawrence 1906–50; it remains as he left it. He wrote in the garden in a hut which swivelled to face the sun. Overnight St Albans.
Illustration, top: Lord Byron on his 19th birthday, engraving by E. Shuler c. 1808. Above: George Bernard Shaw, from 'Ye Madde Designer', c. 1935.
Day 6: Hampshire. Jane Austen lived in a house in Chawton with her mother and sister Cassandra 1809–17. The few alterations since have been reversed. Here she revised Sense & Sensibility and Pride & Prejudice and wrote Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion. Cassandra lived here until 1845 and the house became a museum in the 1940s. Visit Winchester to see the house where Austen died and her tomb in the cathedral. Free time in the afternoon. Overnight Winchester. Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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BRITAIN & IRELAND: England
Combine this tour with: The Tudors, 7 May 2019; The South Bank Walk, 14 May 2019; The Fitzwilliam String Quartet, 14–16 May 2019 (p.35); Roman Southern Britain, 14–21 May 2019 (p.16); Barcelona, 14–18 May 2019 (p.194); In Search of Alexander, 14–20 May 2019 (p.113); Walking Hadrian's Wall, 14–20 May 2019 (p.18). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Day 3: Nottinghamshire. Newstead Abbey became the Byron family home in 1540, but when it was inherited by George Gordon, 6th Lord Byron, it was dilapidated and denuded. The poet patched it up and lived here for six years, but after he left England he sold it to a school friend – to whom he also left many of his belongings. The son of a coal miner, D.H. Lawrence was born in a tiny terraced house in Eastwood, now furnished as in 1885, with museum adjacent.
Literary England continued
Glyndebourne & Garsington Le damnation de Faust, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Don Giovanni
Day 7: Dorset. The cottage at Higher Brockhampton in which Thomas Hardy was born had been built by his grandfather; the writer was descended from a line of stonemasons. He trained as an architect, and when literary success enabled him, in 1885, to build a house outside Dorchester, named Max Gate, he irked the builders – his family – with his obsessive attention to detail. Here he wrote the majority of his novels and poems until his death in 1928. Overnight Winchester.
fabulous international stars Allan Clayton (Faust) and Christopher Purves (Méphistophélès), with Glyndebourne’s musical director Robin Ticciati conducting, this scenic roller-coaster certainly promises to be a fantastic start to our tour. Smaller scale but equally heady, Rossini’s Commedia, Il barbiere di Siviglia, is the world’s most popular comic opera. This colourful and modern 2016 production by Annabel Arden received enthusiastic reviews for its lightness and fun, and we have the bonus of the great baritone Alessandro Corbelli in the role of Dr Bartolo, Rosina’s jealous guardian who tries to thwart the Barber’s wiles. We shall then continue to Garsington to see their new version of Don Giovanni. It will be fascinating to see a brand new take on another of the top ten great operas by Michael Boyd, former artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Garsington has received glowing plaudits for its recent Mozart productions so this is certainly something to look forward to. Accompanied by musician and writer, Amanda Holden, there are daily talks on all three operas.
Day 8: Hampshire, Sussex. Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth in 1812 and spent his early years in this maritime city. The birthplace is now a museum. In 1919 Leonard and Virginia Woolf bought Monk’s House, a weatherboarded cottage in the South Downs. They created a garden and built a shed in which Virginia wrote. She walked from here to her death in 1941; Leonard remained until he died in 1969. The ashes of both are buried in the garden. Overnight near Uckfield. Day 9: Sussex. Rudyard Kipling bought the substantial Jacobean manor house in the Sussex Weald, Bateman’s, in 1902 as a sanctuary from the intrusions which come with fame. Most of his works from Kim onwards were written here. The house has been in the care of the National Trust since the author’s death in 1937, and the rooms, with plentiful Indian artefacts, have scarcely changed. The tour ends in central London by 4.00pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,030. Single occupancy: £3,330. Included meals: 2 lunches, 5 dinners, with wine.
BRITAIN & IRELAND: England
Accommodation. Holdsworth House, Halifax (holdsworthhouse.co.uk): 4-star, a small Jacobean manor hotel, rooms vary in size due to the historic nature of the building. Hart’s Hotel, Nottingham (hartsnottingham.co.uk): 4-star, centrally located with contemporary rooms. The Wessex, Winchester (mercure.com): 4-star, excellently located overlooking the cathedral in a 1960s building. St Michael’s Manor Hotel, St Albans (stmichaelsmanor.com): country manor-style hotel with gardens and smart rooms. Horsted Place, Uckfield (horstedplace.co.uk): 4-star, traditional hotel in the countryside. Rooms vary in size. How strenuous? The tour involves various hotel changes and days with lots of driving. There is a lot of standing in museums and churches. A good level of fitness is essential. You will be on your feet for lengthy stretches of time. Average distance by coach per day: 83 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Music Along the Danube, 31 August–7 September 2019 (p.50); The Cathedrals of England, 18–26 September 2019 (p.10). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
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Itinerary 27–30 June 2019 (mf 604) 4 days • £2,710 (Including tickets to 3 performances) Lecturer: Amanda Holden Three operas at two of England’s highest quality country-house opera festivals – Glyndebourne and Garsington. La damnation de Faust (Berlioz), Don Giovanni (Mozart), and Il barbiere di Siviglia (Rossini). Staying on the banks of the Thames in Marlow and in a quiet country house hotel set in beautiful gardens. When landowner John Christie built a small opera house for his professional soprano wife in the rolling Sussex Downs, he unwittingly founded Country House Opera. The Glyndebourne Festival started there in 1934 with two Mozart operas, and since then its popularity has inexorably grown. Today, Glyndebourne epitomises the English summertime. Several other venues have followed Glyndebourne’s example and Garsington, now celebrating its 30th anniversary, has also established a sterling reputation for the worldclass standard of its opera festival. Founded in 1989 by the owner of Garsington Manor, an estate near Oxford where the Bloomsbury Group often congregated during the 1920s, the Festival moved in 2011 to a purpose-built theatre at nearby Wormsley Park, the home of Mark Getty in Buckinghamshire. The tour begins at Glyndebourne with this year’s must-see new production – it’s first ever staging of Berlioz’s La damnation de Faust. Based on Goethe’s classic play, Faust was designated a légende dramatique rather than an opera and stagings are still comparatively rare. But in the hands of the great director Richard Jones, and with
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Day 1: Horsted, Glyndebourne. The coach leaves Lewes station at 1.30pm for the short drive to the hotel. After a talk, leave in the afternoon for Glyndebourne; La damnation de Faust (Berlioz): Robin Ticciati (conductor), Richard Jones (director), Allan Clayton (Faust), Christopher Purves (Méphistophélès), Julie Boulianne (Marguerite), Ashley Riches (Brander). The performance begins at 5.00pm. Dinner is served during the long interval. First of two nights in Horsted. Day 2: Horsted, Glyndebourne. In the morning there is a guided walk around Lewes. In the afternoon, attend a talk and drive to Glyndebourne. Martin Randall Travel has arranged a drinks reception before the performance of Il barbiere di Siviglia (Rossini): Rafael Payare (conductor) Annabel Arden (director), Andrey Zhilikhovsky (Figaro), Hyesang Park (Rosina), Alessandro Corbelli (Bartolo), Levy Segkapane (Count Almaviva), Janis Kelly (Berta), Adam Palka (Basilio). The performance begins at 5.00pm. A picnic dinner is served during the long interval. Second of two nights in Horsted. Day 3: Horsted, Cliveden, Garsington. By coach from Horsted to Cliveden. Cliveden’s magnificent formal gardens and woods beside the Thames have been admired for centuries. A lecture in the afternoon is followed by Don Giovanni (Mozart): Douglas Boyd (conductor) Michael Boyd (director), Garsington Opera Orchestra & Chorus. Jonathon McGovern (Don Giovanni). Dinner is served in the interval. Overnight in Marlow. Day 4. Leave when you wish. Taxis to Marlow railway station are provided.
Illustrations. Above left: courtesy of Glyndebourne, 'Glyndebourne Gardens' ©Charlotte Boulton. Right: from ‘The Foreign Tour of Messrs Brown, Jones & Robinson’ by Richard Doyle, Publ. 1854.
Amanda Holden Musician and writer. She has written over 60 translations for the musical stage. Those recently heard at ENO include Partenope, Don Giovanni and La Bohème; her Castor & Pollux by Rameau received an Oliver nomination. Amanda is founding editor of the Penguin Opera Guides. See page 260 for all lecturers' biographies.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,710. Single occupancy: £2,970. Included meals: 3 dinners (including one picnic dinner) with wine. Music: three tickets are included costing c. £705. Accommodation. Horsted Place, Little Horsted (horstedplace.co.uk): a fine country house hotel in a Victorian Gothic revival mansion offering very good service. (4-star). The Compleat Angler, Marlow (macdonaldhotels.co.uk): comfortable hotel, well-positioned beside the Thames with excellent views (4-star).
The Thomas
Tallis Trail
1–3 NOVEMBER 2019 CELEBRATING MUSIC AND PLACE Three days of performances by The Tallis Scholars, directed by founder Peter Phillips.
Accommodation for two nights in Canterbury is also included in the price, as are coach travel, most meals, and talks.
Five concerts, all at places where Thomas Tallis (c. 1505–85) is known to have worked: Waltham Abbey, St-Mary-atHill (London), Dover Priory, Canterbury Cathedral and Hampton Court.
Please contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com/festivals
How strenuous? The tour would be a struggle for anyone whose walking is impaired. There is a short walk from the coach park to the opera house. Average distance by coach per day: 35 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Danish Castles & Gardens, 1–7 July 2019 (p.65); French Gothic, 1–7 July 2019 (p.77); Western Ireland, 1–7 July 2019 (p.43). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
West Country
BRITAIN & IRELAND: England
Choral
Festival
7–11 JULY 2019 CELEBRATING MUSIC AND PLACE Cathedrals and churches in Gloucestershire, Somerset and Devon – eight concerts, eight outstanding choirs.
The audience is based in a selection of hotels in Bath, location of three of the concerts.
Some of Britain’s leading vocal ensembles performing in some of the greatest cathedrals and churches in the land.
What else is included in the price? See page 6
Repertoire from the Renaissance to the present day, from England to Italy, Estonia Please contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com/festivals to Spain. Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Gastronomic West Country ‘The best larder in all of Europe’ Day 3: Quicke’s Cheese, Pipers Farm. Cheese masterclass and tasting at Quicke’s, awardwinning producer of cloth-wrapped traditional farmhouse cheddar. Visit to Pipers Farm to meet the animals, then lunch on hay bales around the fire pits. Dinner at The Pig at Combe, with a menu of foods sourced locally within a 25-mile radius. Day 4: Haytor, St Austell. A walk on Dartmoor to Haytor Rocks is followed by a picnic lunch of local food and drink. Continue to Padstow, where the next three nights are spent. Dinner at Rick Stein’s Seafood Restaurant. The well-known TV chef’s acclaimed restaurant is considered one of the best in the country for seafood. Day 5: Tregothnan Estate, Padstow. Tregothnan Estate is home to one of the UK’s only tea plantations. See how tea is grown in sub-tropical conditions and enjoy a masterclass in tea tasting. Lunch at a nearby restaurant on the Roseland peninsula, overlooking the south Cornish coast. Return to Padstow for an early-evening seafood cooking demonstration and tasting at Rick Stein’s Cookery School.
8–14 July 2019 (mf 616) 7 days • £3,230 Lecturer: Marc Millon Most visits possible by special arrangement only and the lecturer’s personal contacts. Encompasses both a study of artisan food and drink production and outstanding restaurants. Takes place amid some of the loveliest landscapes in Britain.
BRITAIN & IRELAND: England
The gastronomic renaissance that has been taking place all over the United Kingdom has profound roots in the West Country, notably in the counties of Devon and Cornwall. Climatically the mildest areas of the country (Devon’s so-called English Riviera boasts palm trees, while south Cornwall features foliage and plantings that are positively sub-tropical), this region has long been the source of some of the finest things to eat and drink: organic vegetables from the South Hams; rich dairy products such as traditional farmhouse cheeses, clotted cream, farm ice cream; an outstanding catch of fish and shellfish landed at Exmouth, Brixham, Newlyn and Padstow; meats from local breeds such as Red Ruby cattle and Exmoor sheep; English wines, regional and craft beers, and farmhouse ciders; and much more. A supportive and virtuous circle of farmers, fishermen, cheesemakers, artisan producers, some of the country’s most talented and high-profile chefs, and appreciative and knowledgeable consumers and diners has resulted in a food scene that is squarely local, varied and at all levels, never less than deliciously vibrant. Gastronomic West Country goes direct to the source to discover, learn, taste and enjoy. We meet some of the inspirational people who work so hard to produce such good things to eat and drink. We enjoy a lunch of just-picked organic vegetables and local meat in a ‘field kitchen’. We dine, seated 30
on hay bales, on a feast of the best meat you will ever eat, expertly cooked over fire pits by the farmer himself. We learn about the mysteries of tea at a sub-tropical plantation that has climatic conditions similar to Darjeeling. And we visit the National Lobster Hatchery to understand how this delicious crustacean can be sustainably raised. A cream tea is obligatory of course – but does the cream or the jam go on first? Other highlights include a picnic on Dartmoor, pub lunches, a visit to a vineyard, a cheese tasting masterclass, and a splendid seafood feast in the most famous fish restaurant in the country, Rick Stein’s Seafood Restaurant. ‘The West Country has the best larder not just in the UK but in all of Europe,’ says Michael Caines, the inspirational and highly acclaimed two-star Michelin chef. The tour concludes with lunch at Lympstone Manor, Michael’s newly-opened country house hotel overlooking the Exe estuary.
Itinerary Day 1: Topsham. The coach leaves Exeter St David’s Railway Station at 12.30pm. Take a boat on the Exe estuary from Topsham to the Turf Hotel (accessible only by boat, walking or cycling) for a simple lunch. Transfer to the Deer Park Country House Hotel near Honiton for the first of three nights. Day 2: Riverford Farm, Sharpham Vineyard. Guy Watson’s Riverford Farm is the source of organic vegetables delivered in ‘boxes’ all around the country. Farm visit followed by lunch of organic vegetables and local organic meats in the ‘field kitchen’. Visit and tasting at the Sharpham Vineyard, beautifully situated above a sharp bend in the River Dart, where award-winning wines and cheeses made from rich Jersey milk are produced. Dinner includes a tasting of housesmoked foods and beer from the local Otter Brewery at The Holt, Honiton.
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Day 6: Padstow. Learn about the life cycle of lobsters and what can be done to help them to reproduce sustainably at the National Lobster Hatchery. Free afternoon in the utterly charming port town of Padstow, with an optional ferry trip to Rock and a walk to St Enodoc Church, where the poet laureate Sir John Betjeman is buried. Day 7: Lympstone Manor. Michael Caines held two Michelin stars at Gidleigh Park for 18 years. His country house hotel which opened in 2017 won a Michelin star only six months after opening. Michael has devised a special lunch menu for us to highlight and showcase places and producers visited during the week. Finish at Exeter St David’s Railway Station by 4.45pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,230. Single occupancy: £3,640. Included meals: 6 lunches, 5 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Deer Park Country House Hotel, near Honiton (deerparkcountryhotel. co.uk): charming country house hotel set in beautiful grounds in the Devon countryside. The Metropole, Padstow (the-metropole.co.uk): friendly 4-star hotel, every room reserved for this tour has an excellent view over the estuary. How strenuous? There is a lot of walking on tracks in vineyards and farms; you must be steady on your feet and able to walk unaided over rough ground in order to fully enjoy the tour. There is quite a lot of driving, often in two minibuses as access is limited at many of the special sites visited. Average distance by coach per day: 75 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Country Houses of the South West, 4–7 July 2019 (p.22); Architecture of Bath, 6–7 July 2019 (p.33). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport. Illustration: Cornwall, watercolour by D. Maxwell, publ. 1930.
Arts & Crafts in the Lake District Churches, houses and museums 30 September–4 October 2019 (mf 765) 5 days • £1,790 Lecturer: Janet Sinclair Fine examples of the Arts & Crafts movement in situ. Includes visits to Naworth Castle, Blackwell and Brantwood. See some of the most striking and unspoilt landscape in the country. Stay all four nights in one hotel on the shore of Lake Windermere. A century after the aesthetic ‘discovery’ of the English Lakes by an elite generation of Romantic travellers, its beauty and cultural history became a magnet and an escape from the effects of industrialisation for a wider cohort of tourists, creators and patrons carried by railway, bicycle and lake steamers. Hitherto hidden hamlets developed into resort towns catering for this wealthy leisured class, who both delighted in the quaint crafts and culture of a remote and unspoilt region, and raised concerns for their conservation that remain today. These concerns became moral imperatives, rooted in Wordsworth’s influence on John Ruskin’s belief in the importance of nature and the arts for the social well-being of mankind. Ruskin’s philosophy was central to early exponents of the Arts & Crafts movement, whose work articulated
a celebration of the rural vernacular, reverence for traditional crafts and methods, and respect for ‘honest’ making. Ruskin, inspiration to William Morris, Philip Webb and a generation of architects, designers and artists, bought Brantwood by Coniston in 1871. Morris’s ‘Firm’ supplied stained glass and decoration in great houses and numerous churches for landowners such as George Howard, who commissioned remarkable work from Webb and Burne-Jones at Brampton. According to tradition, Morris came to the Lakes on a fishing holiday with Ford Madox Brown while BurneJones was working on the East Window of Troutbeck Church, and contributed to the creation of this minor masterpiece. Northern industry, not land, provided wealth to newer patrons whose Lakeland holiday houses were created by a younger generation of cuttingedge designers such as Voysey and Baillie Scott. Their joy in local materials, craftsmanship and landscape is seen spectacularly at Broad Leys, and Blackwell on Windermere built for brewery magnate Sir Robert Holt. The Lake District saw the foundation of the National Trust in the 1890s by Canon Rawnsley, founder of the Keswick School of Industrial Arts and mentor of naturalist and author Beatrix Heelis, née Potter. It became Britain’s first National Park in 1951 as the Festival of Britain celebrated national creativity and consciousness. This tour presents the Arts & Crafts through houses, churches and museums within the incomparable landscape that survives thanks to conservationists of many generations.
Itinerary Day 1: Penrith, Hutton in the Forest. The coach leaves Penrith Railway station at 1.30pm. Hutton in the Forest is a fascinating family home with medieval origins, encompassing the changing aspirations and fortunes of the region in its architecture and decoration, including Arts and Crafts interiors of the 1870s. Day 2: Warwick Bridge, Carlisle, Naworth. Our Lady & St Wilfrids is Pugin’s only church in Cumbria, and in the words of Pevsner: ‘it is here and more or less precisely in 1841 that archaeological accuracy begins in English church design’. Carlisle’s Tullie House museum holds a significant collection of Pre-Raphaelite art. Philip Webb worked at Naworth Castle which is still a private ancestral home of the Howard family. Nearby St Martin’s Church, designed by Webb with windows by Burne-Jones, is a magnificent outcome of this relationship. Day 3: Troutbeck, Staveley, Wreay, Keswick. Two small Cumbrian churches at Troutbeck and Staveley contain beautiful windows designed by Burne-Jones, and made by Morris and Co. In contrast, the church of St Mary’s, Wreay is an eccentric forerunner of many Arts & Crafts principles in its inspiration from nature and use
Illustration: Ruskin’s house at Brantwood, wood engraving c. 1880 after a drawing by L.J. Hilliard.
BRITAIN & IRELAND: England
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Arts & Crafts in the Lake District continued
The South Downs Great houses and gardens
of the local vernacular. Keswick Museum & Art Gallery celebrates the Keswick School of Industrial Art set up by Canon and Mrs Hardwicke Rawnsley, as a social enterprise that also marketed local craftsmanship to growing numbers of middleclass tourist. Resort towns developed to serve these visitors, some of whom commissioned holiday houses along the shores of Lake Windermere.
Changing attitudes to conservation are illustrated by the contrasting fortunes of Midhurst’s Cowdray Ruins, magnificently restored Uppark, and rebuilt Stansted House – each destroyed a century apart by disastrous fires and reborn in a new context. Two thousand years of history, taste and politics survive, including the most important collections of fine art in the care of the National Trust at Petworth and Uppark. Exquisite medieval sculpture at Boxgrove and Chichester, the unique Stansted Chapel and High Victorian Gothic at Arundel are highlights of religious patronage. Splendid historic houses that are still private homes reflect the tastes and fortunes of royal Dukes, Earls and Lords of church and country. The story of the English country house would not be complete without an exploration of life ‘downstairs’. At both Petworth and Stansted these stories are vividly brought to life. Contemporary patronage can be enjoyed in Chichester Cathedral and in England’s oldest continuously occupied castle at Arundel, where the seventeenth-century Collector Earl was recently commemorated in a wonderful modern garden commission by the Duke of Norfolk. Modern art sits in a striking contemporary setting alongside one of the finest eighteenth-century houses in Chichester at Pallant House.
Day 4: Urswick, Barrow in Furness, Bowness, Broad Leys, Blackwell. Urswick’s church of St Mary and St Michael is unusual in containing work by Alec Miller, of the Guild of Handicraft based in the Cotswolds. Nearby Abbey House by Lutyens was built in 1914 for Vickers Ltd as a residence for their Managing Director to entertain ministers and heads of state for the purpose of selling warships and armaments. The ancient parish church of St Martin’s in Bowness on Windermere has a fine collection of medieval glass in its east window, set off by a unique Arts & Crafts decorative scheme from the 1870s. Along the lake and commanding spectacular views is Broad Leys, a superb example of domestic design by Voysey. Its contemporary and neighbour, Blackwell by Baillie Scott, has been recently restored to a high standard. Day 5: Coniston, Brantwood, Oxenholme. Drive to the pier at Coniston for the passenger ferry across Lake Coniston, the setting for Arthur Ransome’s novel Swallows and Amazons, and the best way to arrive at John Ruskin’s home from 1872 to 1900, Brantwood. The house has an extensive literary history and a major collection of Ruskin’s drawings, paintings, and scientific collections; it also contains his original furniture and his boat and Brougham carriage are displayed in outhouses. Return to Oxenholme train station by 2.15pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,790. Single occupancy: £2,030. Included meals: 2 lunches, 3 dinners, with wine.
BRITAIN & IRELAND: England
Accommodation. Waterhead, Ambleside (englishlakes.co.uk/hotels): 4-star, modern, comfortable hotel on the shore of Lake How strenuous? The tour involves a lot of walking where coach access is restricted, and a lot of standing in museums, houses and churches. Uneven ground and irregular paving are standard. A good level of fitness is essential. You will be on your feet for lengthy stretches of time. Average distance by coach per day: 73 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Country Houses of Kent, 23–27 September 2019 (p.25); Dorset Churches, 23–27 September 2019 (p.13); Crécy, Agincourt & Waterloo, 25–29 September 2019 (p.54). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
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16–21 May 2019 (mf 542) 6 days • £2,040 Lecturer: Janet Sinclair The stunningly beautiful landscape of the West Sussex Downs. Great country houses and landscaped parks, charming country towns, inspiring upland and lowland countryside. Special arrangements and private openings are a feature. One hotel throughout. The chalk ridge of the South Downs runs 80 miles from Hampshire to meet the sea at Eastbourne. With spectacular viewpoints, unique natural history and ease of access, it also contains a glittering string of great stately homes, housing personal collections that reflect changing national fortunes as well as personal tastes and triumphs. For successive generations of settlers and great builders, the strategic importance of the South Downs overlooking the Channel was gradually replaced by the attraction of their spectacular beauty. Be inspired by histories of fortifications and pleasure palaces: repositories of treasured collections as symbols of power, and places of leisure and entertainment. Exploitation of natural resources, from flintmining, charcoal burning and iron-smelting to sheep-farming and forestry, shaped the Downland landscape. The great family estates helped to create and conserve this area of outstanding natural beauty, now protected and sustainably managed as Britain’s newest National Park.
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Itinerary Day 1: Chichester, Stansted Park. The coach leaves Chichester railway station at 2.00pm. Chichester Cathedral houses an extraordinary range of modern religious commissions, as well as nationally important Tudor panel paintings. Pallant House is a unique combination of a Queen Anne townhouse with a recent award-winning extension, which holds one of the best collections of 20th-century British art in the country. Day 2: Pulborough, Petworth, Woolbeding. Bignor Roman Villa in Pulborough has fine mosaic floors in a beautiful Downland setting. In one of ‘Capability’ Brown’s most poetic landscapes, immortalised by Turner, Petworth is an impressive ducal palace of the 17th century. It contains major works by Turner, van Dyck and Blake. Woolbeding Gardens are one of the South Down’s hidden gems. A horticultural haven, the 26-acre garden was created by Simon Sainsbury and Stewart Grimshaw with garden designers Lanning Roper in the 1980s and the Bannermans in the late 1990s. Day 3: Arundel, Boxgrove. Home to the Duke of Norfolk, England’s premier duke, Arundel Castle has Norman origins, later medieval parts and 18th- and 19th-century embellishments. The totality is splendid, the art collection outstanding. The picturesque and unspoilt little town of Arundel is capped by a soaring 1870s Catholic cathedral in Gothic style. At medieval Boxgrove Priory, the remains include a vaulted Gothic choir of cathedral-like proportions. Day 4: Goodwood, West Dean, Uppark. Goodwood House, seat of the Duke of Richmond, is a magnificent late Georgian country house with excellent furniture and paintings by Stubbs, Canaletto and van Dyck. The Edward
Architecture of Bath Queen of Georgian cities Janet Sinclair Art historian, curator and lecturer. She studied at the Courtauld and the Barber Institute, Birmingham. She has held senior management posts at significant heritage sites including Petworth House, Sussex. She she is a tutor on the MA Collections Care & Conservation Management course at West Dean (University of Sussex). See page 260 for all lecturers' biographies. James Foundation at West Dean has extensive, beautifully-kept gardens. Uppark enjoys extraordinary views over rolling Downland and to the Solent and the Isle of Wight. A perfect late17th-century mansion with a splendid Grand Tour collection, it is also a masterpiece of restoration after a fire in 1989. Day 5: Weald and Downland, Cowdray, Stansted. The Weald and Downland Museum at Singleton is an assembly of rescued and re-erected vernacular buildings from the 14th to the 19th centuries, including two hall-houses. Cowdray Ruins are the dramatic remains of a noble and extensive Tudor palace. Stansted Park provides a fascinating insight into the social history of an English country house in its Edwardian heyday. Day 6: Parham, Chichester. One of the loveliest of Elizabethan buildings, Parham House has an extensive collection of 16th- and 17thcentury portraits and tapestries, and a clutch of award-winning gardens. The coach takes you to Chichester railway station by 3.30pm before returning to the hotel.
Practicalities
6–7 July 2019 (mf 614) 2 days • £420 Lecturer: Dr Geoffrey Tyack A survey of Bath’s architectural landmarks and some lesser-known gems. Led by architectural historian, Dr Geoffrey Tyack. The tour can be combined with our West Country Choral Festival, 7–11 July 2019 (see page 29). Bath first became a resort town in Roman times, but its modern reincarnation dates from the eighteenth century. It was then that a succession of architects and entrepreneurs, most of them from the city itself, succeeded in creating one of the supreme achievements of European architecture and urban design, inspired by the memory of the Roman past but adapted to satisfy the taste and desires of the Georgian aristocracy and merchant classes. The city owes much of its character to its riverside situation, within a bowl of limestone hills from which the honey-coloured stone of its eighteenth-century buildings was quarried. Several of the finest of these buildings will be visited Queen Square, the Circus and the Royal Crescent; Great Pulteney Street with the recently-expanded Holburne Museum at its far end; the Pump Room and Assembly Rooms – and we will also explore some of the lesser-known but equally attractive corners of this most fascinating of cities.
Itinerary Day 1. Meet outside Bath Abbey at 1.30pm. Bath Abbey is one of the handful of great late-medieval religious buildings completed in the first thirty years of the 16th century. Visit the Abbey focusing particularly on its 18th-century monuments. No.1 Royal Crescent (interior), then the Circus and
Assembly Rooms (interior: Ballroom, Card Room and Tea Room). Walk via Great Pulteney Street and Pulteney Bridge to the hotel. Day 2. Walk through Sydney Gardens, the only remaining 18th-century pleasure gardens in the country. Visit the Holburne Museum home to Sir William Holburne’s excellent 18th-century collection of fine and decorative arts. Continue to the Circus, glancing briefly at the restored garden of one of the houses here. Walk through Victoria Gardens to Queen Square then the Theatre Royal (exterior) and the Cross Bath (exterior) via Kingsmead Square. Finish at the Guildhall at c. 1.30pm. The rest of the day is free before the festival begins in the Assembly Rooms at 3.30pm. Notes that some appointments cannot be confirmed until early 2019.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £420. Single occupancy: £480. Included meals: 1 dinner with wine. Accommodation. Macdonald Bath Spa (macdonaldhotels.co.uk): attractive amalgam of Georgian, Victorian and modern buildings set in an expansive landscaped grounds with views across the city. The hotel is a picturesque 20-minute walk to the city centre through the grounds of the Holburne Museum. Rooms are spacious and recently renovated. Good restaurant, bar, lounges, swimming pool, spa facilities. How strenuous? Most of the tour is spent outside and on foot, both standing and walking. Unless you enjoy entirely unimpaired mobility, cope with everyday walking and stair-climbing without difficulty and are reliably sure-footed, this tour is not for you. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,040. Single occupancy: £2,310. Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine.
BRITAIN & IRELAND: England
Accommodation. Harbour Hotel, Chichester (chichester-harbour-hotel.co.uk): smart, boutique hotel in the centre of town. This 4-star hotel is within walking distance of the Cathedral and Pallant Gallery. How strenuous? The tour involves a lot of walking in town centres, where coach access is restricted, and a lot of standing in museums and churches. Uneven ground and irregular paving are standard. A good level of fitness is essential. You will be on your feet for lengthy stretches of time. Average distance by coach per day: c. 25 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Great Railway Termini, 22 May 2019. We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport. Illustrations. Left: Chichester Cathedral, engraving from 'The English Provinces' 1888. Right: Bath, watercolour by E.W. Haslehurst, publ. c. 1920.
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Age of Victoria A weekend symposium in Taunton Itinerary Friday 8th February Afternoon (session 1) 3.00pm–6.00pm. Paul Atterbury A Victorian Vision – the Painters’ View of Society and Social Change in 19th-century Britain. Professor Kathryn Hughes George Eliot’s Hand: or why you can always tell a lady by the size of her gloves. Refreshment break. Christopher Newall John Ruskin 200 Years On. Drinks reception and dinner.
Saturday 9th February Morning (session 2) 9.30am–1.00pm. Dr Steven Brindle Sir William Armstrong at Newcastle and Cragside. Paul Atterbury The Great Exhibition of 1851 – Myth or Masterpiece. Refreshment break. Dr Roland Quinault Gladstone and Disraeli, a reappraisal of their relationship. Plenary. Afternoon (session 3) 2.45pm–6.30pm. Dr Ruth Richardson Charles Dickens and the Workhouse. Dr Steven Brindle Brunel and the Great Western Railway. Refreshment break.
8–10 February 2019 (mf 417) From £760 per person
Professor Kathryn Hughes Charles Darwin’s Beard: or the secrets of Victorian facial hair. Rosemary Hill ‘Part and Parcel of the Intellect of the Age’: Pugin and the Palace of Westminster.
BRITAIN & IRELAND: England
Fourteen 40-minute talks, question and answer sessions and a panel discussion.
Dinner.
Esteemed historians speak on Victorian art, technology, literature, politics and society.
Sunday 10th February
Based at the ever-welcoming Castle Hotel in Taunton. The latest in our renowned series of symposia celebrates the achievements of the Victorian age and marks Queen Victoria’s bicentenary in 2019 – an anniversary that is also shared with Prince Albert, George Eliot and John Ruskin. Indeed the latter’s birthday falls on 8th February and will be duly honoured. Bringing together leading historians of the 19th century, the symposium will explore themes and subjects through the prism of several eminent Victorians. Over the weekend the respected scholars will each give two talks that are designed both to entertain and inform. The venue is the perennially charming Castle Hotel in Taunton, with a well-equipped meeting room and an excellent restaurant. 34
Morning (session 4) 9.30am–1.00pm. Dr Roland Quinault Victorian Prime Ministers and Ireland. Dr Ruth Richardson Victoria, Albert and Tennyson. Refreshment break. Christopher Newall Edward Burne-Jones and the Victorian Renaissance. Rosemary Hill ‘One hardly knows whether to laugh or shudder’: Lytton Strachey and the Victorians. Finish 1.00pm.
book online at www.martinrandall.com
Speakers Paul Atterbury is a lecturer, writer and broadcaster specialising in the art, architecture and design of the 19th and 20th centuries. He has published widely on pottery, porcelain, canals, railways and the Thames. He curated the V&A exhibitions Pugin and Victorian Vision and is an expert on BBC’s Antiques Roadshow. Dr Steven Brindle is Senior Properties Historian for English Heritage. His publications include Paddington Station, its History and Architecture (2004, 2013) and Brunel, the Man who built the World (2005). He was formerly Inspector of Ancient Monuments for Greater London and his latest book is Windsor Castle: a Thousand Years of a Royal Palace (2018). Rosemary Hill is a writer and historian specialising in the history of art and ideas in the long 19th century. Her biography of A.W.N Pugin, God’s Architect (2007), won the Wolfson History Prize and the James Tait Black Award. She is a contributing editor at the London Review of Books, sits on English Heritage’s Blue Plaques Panel and is a Quondam fellow of All Souls College Oxford. Professor Kathryn Hughes is a historian and critic specialising in the 19th century. Educated at Oxford, she holds a PhD in Victorian Studies and is currently Professor of Life Writing at the University of East Anglia. She is author of prizewinning biographies of Mrs Beeton and George Eliot, both of which were filmed by the BBC. Her most recent book, Victorians Undone, explores five famous Victorians through their striking body parts. She is a critic and columnist for the Guardian and a regular broadcaster for BBC radio and television. Christopher Newall is a specialist in 19th-century British art. A graduate of the Courtauld Institute, he has organised various exhibitions including Pre-Raphaelite Vision: Truth to Nature (Tate Britain 2004), John Ruskin: Artist & Observer at the National Gallery of Canada and Scottish National Portrait Gallery (2014) and Pre-Raphaelites: Beauty and Rebellion at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool (2016). His interest in John Ruskin led to our tour, Ruskin’s Venice. Dr Roland Quinault was educated at Oxford where he was a scholar at Magdalen and a research fellow at Merton. He was subsequently Honorary Secretary of the Royal Historical Society and is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. His main area of research is British political leadership in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Dr Ruth Richardson is Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Life-Writing Research, King’s College London and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She has been a Research Fellow at the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine at University College London and is a Past President of the Dickens Society. Her books include Death, Dissection & the Destitute (1987); The Making of Mr Gray’s Anatomy (2008) and Dickens & the Workhouse (2012).
' Thank you for organising such an outstanding event. I feel so lucky to have been part of the audience to heat so many thought provoking talks.' R.S., participant on Scotland: History & Identity (a UK Symposium) in 2017.
Practicalities Prices, per person. Two sharing: standard double or twin £760; garden room £840. Single occupancy: single room (single bed) £760. Depending upon availability, we may be able to offer double rooms for sole use at around 10 weeks prior to the weekend at £810 – please let us know on your booking form if you would be interested in upgrading should the opportunity arise. Included meals: 2 dinners with wine. Accommodation. The Castle Hotel, Taunton (the-castle-hotel.com): family-run hotel renowned for its excellent service, for comforts traditional and modern and for its superb catering. It has been owned and run by the Chapman family for over 60 years. The hotel’s 44 bedrooms are individually and charmingly decorated and well equipped. The largest – the Garden Rooms – are in the remains of the 12th-century castle overlooking the garden, and are the equivalent of Junior Suites, with a sitting area and separate dressing room. Doubles and twins are mainly of a good size and vary in outlook. Single rooms, while comfortable, are small and generally less well appointed with single beds – for this reason we do not charge a single supplement for them. The majority of rooms have a bath with a shower fitment. The hotel has a lift, though some bedrooms do then involve some step access. There are no bedrooms on the ground floor. The Music Room is on a mezzanine level, which can only be reached via a flight of stairs from the lobby – there is provision for wheelchair users (if you think you will need this, please let us know in advance). Group size: maximum 76 resident participants
Talks only
Medieval History, Art & Architecture A midweek symposium in Suffolk 16–18 October 2019 At the Swan Hotel in Lavenham A series of talks by eight expert speakers, two dinners and two nights bed and breakfast.
Chamber Music
JANUARY–MAY 2019 Hear great Classical music performed by outstanding musicians and ensembles of international repute.
THE FITZWILLIAM STRING QUARTET 14–16 May 2019 at The Swan Hotel, Lavenham Optional extension with excursions starting 13 May 2019 Alan George viola Sally Pendlebury cello Lucy Russel violin Marcus Barcham Stevens violin
Enjoy the intimacy and intensity of a recital hall little bigger than a large drawing room. Mingle with the musicians and with like-minded fellow music lovers. Listen to pre-concert talks by a musicologist or by the musicians. Stay in comfotable hotels and enjoy great food. Our package includes accommodation, sumptuous afternoon teas and dinners, and admission to all concerts and talks.
The Fitzwilliam Quartet is one of the longest established string quartets in the world – it celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2018. Optional excursions to outstandingly attractive nearby towns and villages
with medievalist Dr James Cameron (part of a package that includes an extra night). Exclusive use of the historic Swan Hotel in Lavenham – concerts and dinners take place in its half-timbered hall, which seats 90.
Tickets for individual concerts are also available.
Please contact us for full details, or visit www.martinrandall.com/ music-and-history-weekends
RISING STARS
THE NASH ENSEMBLE
THE HEATH QUARTET
25–27 January 2019 The Castle Hotel, Taunton
1–3 March 2019 The Castle Hotel, Taunton
5–7 April 2019 The Castle Hotel, Taunton
BRITAIN & IRELAND: England
If you wish to participate in the talks only, without accommodation, tickets are priced at £30 for session 1; £40 each for sessions 2, 3 and 4, or £150 for all four sessions combined. Refreshments during breaks are included, but not lunches or dinners.
Midweek & weekend
Full details available in Spring 2019 Please call us to register your interest, or e-mail alerts@martinrandall.co.uk Illustration: Queen Victoria, wood engraving 1887.
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LONDON DAYS ‘Dear, damn’d, distracting town’ – Alexander Pope To receive our fortnightly e-mail updates on the latest range of London Days. Send an e-mail to info@martinrandall. co.uk, or call 020 8742 3355
London Days are all-inclusive, non-residential tours opening doors in the capital to its wonderful art, architecture and history. They are led by carefully-chosen experts who enthuse, interpret and inspire, bringing to life each specialist theme. Radio guides enable lecturers to talk in a normal conversational voice while participants can hear without difficulty whether in a museum or on a main road. The itinerary is detailed and meticulously planned with special arrangements and privileged access significant features. Refreshments and lunches are included and planned in appropriate settings for sustenance, conversation and reflection. These are active, fulfilling days, often with a lot of walking and standing. Travel is mainly by Underground, sometimes taxi, occasionally by private coach or bus.
Making a booking There is no booking form for London Days. You can book over the phone, or online at www.martinrandall.com. If booking by phone, we will need to know: •
Name and date of the London Day(s) you are booking.
• •
London Days by date Please contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com/london-days December 2018
July 2019
4: Japanese Art in London
2: The Ever Changing City Skyline
5: Ancient Greece at the British Museum
8: Interwar Interiors
6: Roses and Nightingales
September 2019
10: Mantegna & Bellini
3: London's Underground Railway
11: Golden Age of British Painting
20: Ancient Egypt at the British Museum
January 2019
October 2019
10: Venetian Art in London
8: Interwar Interiors
23: Ancient Greece at the British Museum
30: Ancient Greece at the British Museum
30: The Genius of Titian 31: Islamic Art in London
4: Japanese Art in London
BRITAIN & IRELAND: England
February 2019
8: Caravaggio & Rembrandt
Your name(s), as you would like it/them to appear to other participants.
6: Ashurbanipal: King of the World
12: The Italian Renaissance
7: The Golden Age of British Painting
Your address, telephone number and email address (if you have one).
15: Islamic Art in London
8: Ancient Egypt at the British Museum
19: The Golden Age of British Painting
14: The Golden Age of Dutch Painting
21: The Genius of Titian
15: London's Underground Railway
22: Ancient Egypt at the British Museum
22: The Italian Renaissance
27: London's Underground Railway
March 2019
December 2019
6: Japanese Art in London
3: The Golden Age of British Painting
11: Arts of India
4: Caravaggio & Rembrandt
12: Spanish Art in London
5: The Italian Renaissance
13: Ancient Greece at the British Museum
5: Ancient Greece at the British Museum
Any special dietary requirements and your contact details for the night prior to the day. Payment. If by credit or debit card, give the card number, start date and expiry date (but for security not in an e-mail). There is no charge for using either a credit or debit card. Confirmation will be sent to you upon receipt of payment. Further details including joining instructions will be sent about two weeks before the day. Cancellation. We will return the full amount if you notify us 22 or more days before the event. We will retain 50% if cancellation is made within three weeks and 100% if within three days. Please put your cancellation in writing to info@martinrandall. co.uk. We advise taking out insurance in case of cancellation and recommend that overseas clients are also covered for possible medical and repatriation costs.
19: The Italian Renaissance 20: The Golden Age of British Painting
London Days gift vouchers
21: Roses and Nightingales
Since its inception in 2012 our London Days programme has opened doors and minds to the wonders of the capital, and has continued to grow in breadth and popularity. The launch of our London Days gift vouchers offers the opportunity to share the experience of a cultural day out in the capital and are an ideal gift for occasions, from birthdays to anniversaries. Gift vouchers can be purchased to any value, or for a specified London Day. Please contact us for more information.
29: Ancient Egypt at the British Museum April 2019 2: Ever Changing City Skyline 8: Interwar Interiors 9: London's Underground Railway May 2019 7: The Tudors
Photograph: The City from Tate Modern, ©Rosanna Reade.
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November 2019
10: The London Backstreet Walk
book online at www.martinrandall.com
London Choral Day Lambeth Palace and Westminster Friday 7 June 2019 (lf 566) Price: from £215 Our London Choral Days put outstanding and exciting choral ensembles in some of the most beautiful buildings in the capital. They take the form of a day-long sequence of performances, talks, lunch and refreshments, the audience moving between the venues on foot. The days are conceived not as three discrete concerts but as an integrated, overarching musical experience in which the individual parts illumine and enlarge upon what has gone before. Usually there is some connection between the venues and the music performed in them, which may be chronological – music of the same period as the building – or associational: a specific historical link between music and building. After the great successes of Chelsea and Marylebone, the next London Choral Day begins in the shadow of Westminster Abbey and progresses across the river to Lambeth. Here, beside the Thames and enclosed within high brick walls, lies a clutch of highly important historic buildings: Lambeth Palace, residence, offices and library of the Archbishop of Canterbury. As both home and workplace, access is restricted; perhaps this is the least visited of London’s major architectural precincts, and we are grateful to have been accorded the privilege of presenting two concerts and a lecture in three different spaces within the complex.
The Programme St Margaret's Westminster Choir of St Margaret's Beginning life in the twelfth century as the parish church of Westminster, St Margaret’s stands on a site which once lay within the precincts of Westminster Abbey; the formidable bulk of the abbey church rises only a few yards to the south. One of the very few pre-Reformation churches to survive in London, its current form dates largely to a rebuilding completed in 1523, though there have been frequent interventions for restoration and embellishment. The stained glass is of particular interest. The superb professional choir of St Margaret’s is one of the finest liturgical choirs in the country. Aidan Oliver, Director of Music at St Margaret’s since 2003, is one of the UK’s leading choral directors, working across the whole spectrum of symphonic, liturgical, operatic and contemporary music. Today’s programme juxtaposes works from the period following the church’s rebuilding in 1523, including Gibbons, Weelkes, Tomkins and Byrd. To this is added 20th-century and contemporary works showcasing the current Illustration: St Margaret's, Westminster after a drawing by G M Elmwood, publ. 1911 in 'Some London Churches'.
vibrant musical tradition of St Margaret’s – Dove, Macmillan, Grier and others. Lambeth Palace, the Chapel Gesualdo Six The beautiful chapel, Early Gothic in style, dates to c. 1230, though a combination of Puritanism and World War Two bombing has necessitated fairly extensive (if sympathetic) restoration. Its small size requires the concert here to be repeated; the other half of the audience attends a talk in the Guard Room, which has a fourteenth-century roof with braces of traceried timber. The Gesualdo Six comprises some of the UK’s finest young consort singers, most of whom cut their chorister teeth in the cathedral or college systems. Formed in 2014, they have rapidly established themselves as an exceptional ensemble, travelling widely abroad as well as in the UK. The director is Owain Park, who is also a prominent composer. Lambeth Palace, Great Hall Choir of Royal Holloway ‘Londoners and strangers do not usually appreciate the fact that London possesses in the palace a complex of domestic buildings largely medieval and wholly picturesque which is of the greatest interest and merit.’ This verdict remains as true today as when Nikolaus Pevsner wrote it seventy years ago. The magnificent Great Hall was rebuilt 1660–3, the style deliberately archaic to assert continuity after the turmoil of the Interregnum; it can plausibly be designated as the first instance of the Gothic Revival. Recently restored and emptied, this is a spectacular space for the final concert.
Practicalities Start: 11.30am at St Margaret’s Westminster. Doors open at 11.10am. Finish: c. 5.45pm at Lambeth Palace. Walking: for those who do not choose the vehicular option, there are walks at a leisurely pace of, at most, 20 minutes, (waiting at pedestrian crossings included). There is the option of signing up in advance for taxis to avoid the walks at a cost of £20 per person. Price: £215 (with taxis £235). This includes lunch and afternoon refreshments as well as exclusive admission to the three concerts and the lecture. Lunch and refreshments: lunch in good restaurants; the audience is split between several. Refreshments are served in the afternoon between the concerts. Audience size: c. 100–160. Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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BRITAIN & IRELAND: England
The Choir of Royal Holloway, under their director Rupert Gough, is considered one of the finest mixed-voice collegiate choirs in the country. The 24 choral scholars undertake a busy schedule of services, concerts and tours and have recorded for Hyperion Records. Their programme includes early Tudor music from the Lambeth Choirbook, one of the palace’s greatest treasures, through to Tallis and Byrd and on to Blow and Purcell.
Orkney: 5000 years of culture Neolithic, Iron Age, Viking, present day Day 4: Rousay. Board the morning ferry to the island of Rousay. From here view a series of Neolithic chambered cairns including the double-decker Taversoe Tuick. It is a short walk from the road down to the coast to view Midhowe Cairn, one of the largest tombs in Orkney and the impressive Iron Age Midhowe Broch with its immense defensive walls. Day 5: Stromness. View the Stromness museum before walking through Stromness to the Pier Arts Centre, home to Margaret Gardiner’s collection of art that includes works by Barbara Hepworth, Terry Frost and Naum Gabo, as well as contemporary works by Anish Kapoor. After some free time in Stromness proceed to the Ness of Brodgar, a working archaeological site, which is unearthing some surprising insights into Neolithic ceremonial life. Tour the site with Nick Card, the director of the dig.
27 July–2 August 2019 (mf 636) Very few spaces remaining 7 days • £1,890 • Flights not included Lecturer: Caroline Wickham-Jones Study the ‘Heart of Neolithic Orkney’, a unesco World Heritage Site. Includes a private tour of the Ness of Brodgar dig with Nick Card, director of the dig. Neolithic, Iron Age, Viking and twentiethcentury sites with plenty of time to explore picturesque Kirkwall.
BRITAIN & IRELAND: SCOTland
The archipelago of Orkney has been inhabited for 10,000 years. Down the millennia, the mild climate and fertile soils have nurtured a creative community here. The collection of 67 islands is home to some of the best preserved archaeological sites in the United Kingdom, conserving an unusual amount of detail, to provide a rare and intimate glimpse of life in the past. Central to Orkney’s archaeological significance is the unesco World Heritage Site, Heart of Neolithic Orkney, comprising four locations that give a unique insight into life on the islands for the first farming communities, 5,000 years ago. They are among the most important Neolithic sites in Western Europe and include Skara Brae – a wellpreserved village of prehistoric houses, the great stone circles of the Ring of Brodgar and Stones of Stenness, and the newly discovered ceremonial site of Ness of Brodgar. Neolithic chambered tombs can be found across the archipelago and are striking features punctuating the windswept rolling hills and dramatic sea cliffs. The islands came under Viking rule in the ninth century and remained a Scandinavian settlement and, indeed, part of Norway, until the end of the fifteenth century. The Vikings left their distinctive mark on Orkney: the magnificent cathedral of St Magnus was built by Earl (later Saint) Rognvald and the Neolithic tomb of Maeshowe features the largest collection of Viking runes outside of Scandinavia. Orkney is unique in Scotland in having its own Icelandic saga, 38
documenting the semi-mythical history of the islands and the earls who ruled them. Twentieth-century Orkney felt the significant impact of both World Wars, when thousands of troops were stationed on the islands, as well as many Prisoners of War. The remains of this period form a new addition to the long history of archaeology here. Post-war, the collector and artist Margaret Gardiner had a long-standing connection with the islands and several of her works and those of her friends, including Barbara Hepworth, can be seen in Stromness, a town that is home to a thriving artistic community. From vast standing circles that predate Stonehenge and the evocative poetry of the Viking earls, to the scars of modern-era conflict and the rich cultural tapestry of the twentieth century, Orkney’s history and stunning natural landscape offers much to stimulate the intellect and stir the soul.
Itinerary Day 1: Kirkwall. Arrive at Kirkwall independently (see ‘Practicalities’). Hotel rooms are available to check in from 2.00pm. Leave the hotel at 3.45pm for a visit to the Orkney Museum in Kirkwall and an overview of the history of the islands. Day 2: Heart of Neolithic Orkney. Visit the sites that make up the unesco World Heritage ‘Heart of Orkney’. Skara Brae, the stone-built Neolithic village, followed by the impressive Standing Stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar and the incredible chambered Cairn of Maeshowe. Day 3: Tomb of the Eagles, Italian Chapel, Churchill Barriers. Drive through Mainland across the Churchill Barriers to Burray and down to the tip of South Ronaldsay where The Tomb of the Eagles, a well-preserved Neolithic chambered cairn perches on the clifftops. Return to Mainland via the tiny, beautiful Italian Chapel, erected in two Nissen huts by Italian Prisoners of War in 1943. Also view the Churchill Barriers, built to prevent any further attacks on the fleet stationed in Orkney after the sinking of HMS Royal Oak in 1939.
book online at www.martinrandall.com
Day 6: Birsay. Cross the tidal causeway from Mainland to Birsay to explore Pictish, Norse and medieval remains on this dramatic, uninhabited island. Visit the 16th-century Earl’s Palace in Birsay, and Kirbuster Museum, a small farm museum that houses the only surviving unaltered ‘firehoose’ in Northern Europe. Broch of Gurness is an Iron Age complex on the edge of Eynhallow Sound, affording beautiful views of Rousay. Day 7: Kirkwall. Visit the 17th-century Earl’s and Bishop’s Palaces in Kirkwall. The tour ends at the hotel at c.11.00am. From here the coach takes you to Kirkwall Airport by 2.45pm and Stromness ferry terminal by 3.45pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,890. Single occupancy: £2,010 Included meals: 4 lunches, 4 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. The Ayre Hotel, Kirkwall (ayrehotel.co.uk): 3-star hotel located in the centre of town. Comfortable rooms, and willing service. It is the best available in the locality. Transport to Orkney is not included in the price of the tour. It is possible to fly to Kirkwall from London with LoganAir via Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Glasgow or Manchester. It is also possible to get the ferry from Aberdeen to Kirkwall or Scrabness to Stromness. We will send the recommended flight and ferry options when they are available to book, by September 2018, and ask that you make your own reservation. Transfers will be provided for these recommended flights and ferries. How strenuous? There is a lot of walking or scrambling over archaeological sites. This tour should not be undertaken by anyone who is not sure-footed. You are outside on exposed sites for much of the time. Average distance by coach per day: 25 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
Illustration: Kirkwall, Orkney, steel engraving c. 1850.
The Welsh Marches Castles, abbeys and parish churches 24–28 June 2019 (mf 600) 5 days • £1,340 Lecturer: John McNeill Well-balanced survey of the outstanding medieval monuments of the Welsh Marches. Churches and castles from Norman to late Perpendicular. Beautiful drives through rolling verdant landscapes. Led by John McNeill, architectural historian and specialist in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The Welsh Marches possess one of the richest collections of medieval monuments to survive in England – an area where one can pick out examples from every important post-Conquest phase of castle and church building, from the exceptionally early great hall at Chepstow castle to Sir William Herbert’s stunning late fifteenthcentury remodelling of Raglan. As conceived by William the Conqueror, the March consisted of three earldoms – Herefordshire, Shropshire and Cheshire – with William Fitz-Osbern, Earl of Hereford and Roger de Montgomerie in Shropshire being initially the most active of the earls. The Normans settled this land by creating an interlocking series of castles, markets and churches, exemplified in
the great new towns such as Chepstow, along with a complementary network of monasteries at sites such as Monmouth, Brecon and Abergavenny. By the early twelfth century, smaller castellans – sub-tenants like Hugh the Forester at Kilpeck and the Lacy family at Kempley – were beginning to build stone parish churches, the survival of which constitutes one of the great glories of Herefordshire. The tour concentrates on the southern March – namely Herefordshire, Monmouthshire and the Severn Valley – though a significant element of the tour is aesthetic, and concerned with the type of architecture developed by the new Norman settlers. As with much of southern England, the Welsh Marches experienced a largescale rebuilding during the period c. 1080–c. 1200 – but the evidence is much stronger here than in, say, East Anglia. Indeed, the monastic churches of Gloucester and Tewkesbury, along with Hereford cathedral, constitute some of the most inventive buildings of medieval England, immeasurably enhanced by the remarkable survival of their secular counterparts in the castles and manor houses of Chepstow, Goodrich, Raglan and Tretower.
Itinerary Day 1: Gloucester, Abergavenny. The tour leaves from Gloucester railway station at 1.40pm. The procession of tall cylindrical pillars in Gloucester
Cathedral’s nave is unadulterated Norman, but, following the burial of Edward II in 1327, the eastern parts are exquisitely veiled in the first large-scale appearance of Perpendicular architecture. The east window, which retains its medieval stained glass, is one of the largest in Europe. Day 2: Monmouth, Chepstow, Tintern, Raglan. A day along the river Wye beginning with Monmouth before moving on to mighty Chepstow whose planning crystallises the classic pattern of Norman conquest and settlement – a magnificently fortified castle towering over the priory and town. The afternoon juxtaposes Tintern – a dazzling amalgam of piers, tracery, dwarf walls and dispersed stonework – and Raglan, the most enthralling of late medieval Welsh castles. Day 3: Tretower, Brecon, Abbey Dore, Rowlstone. Drive towards the Black Mountains to the delightful castle and manor house at Tretower Court. Thence to Brecon Priory (now cathedral), Bernard of Newmarch’s western bulwark and the first of the Norman Welsh churches. Return via the stunning choir at the Cistercian abbey at Abbey Dore and end the day with the tiny jewel-like Romanesque parish church at Rowlstone. Day 4: Kilpeck, Hereford, Castle Frome, Dymock, Kempley. A great day for Herefordshire Romanesque, starting with perhaps the best known of all English Romanesque parish churches
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The Welsh Marches continued
Welsh National Opera Roberto Devereux and The Magic Flute
John McNeill Architectural historian of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. He lectures for Oxford University’s Department of Continuing Education and is Honorary Secretary of the British Archaeological Association. Publications include articles in learned journals and guidebooks to Normandy and the Loire Valley. See page 260 for all lecturers' biographies.
at Kilpeck. Hereford Cathedral was substantially remodelled in the 13th and 14th centuries, during which time it acquired its famous Mappa Mundi. An afternoon of contrasts, with the greatest of the Herefordshire fonts at Castle Frome a wonderful foil to the Romanesque wall paintings and sculpture at Dymock and Kempley. Day 5: Goodrich, Tewkesbury. Start with the arrestingly-sited sandstone castle at Goodrich before winding down to the Severn at Tewkesbury. Long recognised as Gloucester’s architectural twin, Tewkesbury is a fitting finale. Its stunning Norman nave and transept ravishingly transformed by 14th-century vaults. End at Gloucester railway station by 3.00pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,340. Single occupancy: £1,540. Members of English Heritage (with cards) will be refunded c. £33. Included meals: 3 dinners with wine. Accommodation. The Angel Hotel, Abergavenny (angelabergavenny.com): former Georgian coaching-inn, now a 4-star hotel with comfortable rooms and excellent restaurant.
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How strenuous? A good level of fitness is essential. You will be on your feet for lengthy stretches of time. The tour involves a lot of walking, sometimes where coach access is restricted, and a lot of standing in churches. Uneven ground and irregular paving are standard. There is also a lot of driving on narrow lanes; average distance per day: 69 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Walking to Santiago, 11–22 June 2019 (p.187); Connoisseur's Vienna, 17–23 June 2019 (p.49). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration, previous page: Hereford Cathedral, wood engraving from 'Picturesque England' 1891.
What else is included in the price? See page 6 40
27 February–1 March 2019 (mf 423) 3 days • £820 (Including tickets to 2 performances) Lecturer: Simon Rees The Welsh National Opera in their home theatre, the acoustically and architecturally excellent Wales Millennium Centre. Excursions and talks with Simon Rees, writer, lecturer and former dramaturg of Welsh National Opera. Stay in a 5-star hotel 15 minutes on foot from the opera house, and see some of the highlights of Cardiff ’s arts and heritage. In its programming and productions WNO strives to combine adventurousness with accessibility, and commitment to developing new audiences with musical and dramatic integrity. The company punches far above its weight and it is one of the most admired centres of operatic excellence in Europe. In 2019, Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux tells the story of the love between the elderly Queen Elizabeth and the young courtier Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, and its tragic end as the Queen loses trust in Robert and does not intervene to prevent his execution for treason. Directed by Alessandro Talevi and designed by Madeleine Boyd, the production fuses Tudor references with contemporary imagery on a sparse, menacing set with costumes of great imaginative power and wit. The Magic Flute was Mozart’s last opera, written for a small theatre in the Viennese suburbs. Dominic Cooke’s production refers to Magritte’s paintings as an effective way of finding a truly magic location for Mozart’s enchanting comedy. In 2004 WNO moved into their current home, the Wales Millennium Centre. The architectural brief was to build something ‘unmistakably Welsh and internationally outstanding.’ The winning firm, Percy Thomas, came up with a monumental yet accessible structure of slate, glass, steel and timber built to withstand the lashings of the elements on its coastal location.
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Itinerary Day 1. The tour begins at 4.00pm with a short walk from the hotel across the Cardiff Bay development to the Wales Millennium Centre (WMC) for a lecture, pre-opera dinner and opera. The Magic Flute (Mozart). Day 2. Take the boat from Cardiff Bay to the National Museum of Wales which has one of the finest collections of Impressionist paintings in the UK. Return to the WMC for a lecture, pre-opera dinner and opera: Roberto Devereux (Donizetti). Day 3. A guided tour of the Wales Millennium Centre is followed by Cardiff Castle – a medieval keep, a Victorian recreation of the perimeter wall of the Roman Fort and a residence with wonderful Gothic Revival interiors created by Burgess for the Marquess of Bute. The tour finishes at Cardiff Central Station by 2.30pm and at the hotel shortly after that.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £820. Single occupancy: £930. Included meals: 2 dinners with wine. Accommodation. St David’s Hotel & Spa, Cardiff (thestdavidshotel.com): a striking building on the waterfront at Cardiff Bay, 15 minutes on foot from the opera house. The AA gives it a 5-star rating, rooms are pleasingly contemporary in design and service is excellent. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking on this tour. A good level of fitness is necessary. It should not be attempted by anyone who has difficulty with everyday walking and stair-climbing. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
Illustration: Cardiff Castle, wood engraving from ‘Historic Houses of the United Kingdom’, 1892.
Great Irish Houses Country houses both sides of the border 27 May–4 June 2019 (mf 553) 9 days • £3,870 • Flights not included Lecturer: Anthony Lambert Includes many of the finest country houses in Ireland, both north and south of the border, selected with a bias towards the Georgian era. Outstanding architecture and decoration, excellent furniture and pictures, fine gardens and fascinating historical context. Special arrangements at nearly every house (several are still private homes), from out-of-hours openings to dinners in state rooms. Exceptional countryside accommodation including two nights at a stately home. An itinerary that is full, but with time to absorb, rest or explore independently.
Itinerary Day 1: Marino Casino. The coach leaves Dublin Airport at 2.15pm. As many flights are available from the UK and elsewhere, we do not include them. Designed by Sir William Chambers in 1757, the Casino at Marino is one of the most intriguing and beautiful houses of its time, Europe-wide. The hotel for the first three nights is Cliff at Lyons, a refurbished estate village in rural Co. Kildare. Day 2: Russborough, Castletown. Both are among the finest and best-preserved Palladian houses in the British Isles, with the classic composition of central range linked to lower side pavilions by quadrant colonnades. Both are encrusted internally with magnificent stucco sculpture, and both, having suffered denuding and neglect, are again well stocked with excellent and appropriate furniture and paintings. Castletown is the larger, with a façade more Roman Baroque than Palladian, a breathtaking double-height hall, brass balustrade and a splendid long gallery.
Day 4: Anonymous, Beaulieu. We hope to see a major house that is currently unoccupied; another property has been lined up for Plan B. Beaulieu is an utterly charming house from the beginning of the 18th century, hipped roof, carved red brick window surrounds and a walled garden which runs down to the fields beside the Boyne estuary. Inside there is the lived-in patina unique to family homes and a couple of outstanding paintings. Cross into Northern Ireland for the first of three nights at Belle Isle Castle, Co. Fermanagh.
Day 6: Castle Coole, Crom. A superb 1790s NeoClassical house, Castle Coole is the masterpiece of English architect James Wyatt, and has scarcely changed since its completion for a royal visit in 1821. After a few hours of free time at Belle Isle, drive to Crom Castle, where we stay for a dinner hosted by Lord Erne. Splendidly sited overlooking Lough Erne, and again in the same family as its original patron, Crom was begun in 1834 in a Gothic Revival style by Edward Blore. The interiors include a cathedral-like stair hall. Day 7: Hillsborough, Ballywalter. Hillsborough Castle is the Northern Ireland base for the Secretary of State and visiting royalty. Largely 18th-century, the handsome two-storey L-plan building has pictures from the Royal Collection and 96 acres of magnificent gardens. We continue to the Ards Peninsula in Co. Down and reach Ballywalter Park for tea and a tour. For the next two nights we stay here as guests of Lord and Lady Dunleath. Ballywalter has a 1730s core but was enlarged in a final flourish of grand Italianate classicism in the 1840s. Dinner at Ballywalter. Day 8: Mount Stewart, Castle Ward. The National Trust has invested heavily in Mount Stewart, an early 19th-century mansion which is amply furnished, has good paintings and extensive formal and woodland gardens. Castle Ward, begun 1762, is distinguished by being conventional Classical one side and rather risqué Gothick the other, internally as well as on the façade; marital disagreement resolved by innovative compromise. The charming result is enhanced by an excellent site on Strangford Lough. Dinner and second night at Ballywalter. Day 9: Grey Abbey. Grey Abbey House, also built in 1762, remains in the family which has owned the estate since 1607. The temperate climate in the environs of Strangford Lough allows a wide variety of flora to flourish in the gardens. We have lunch here before driving to Belfast City Airport, arriving by 3.15pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,870. Single occupancy: £4,230. Included meals: 3 lunches, 7 dinners, with wine (of these, 3 lunches and 3 dinners take place in private houses). Flights. Several airlines link Dublin and Belfast with the UK and elsewhere. You are free to choose flights which are the most convenient for you. Accommodation. Cliff at Lyons (cliffatlyons.ie) is a hotel installed in the disparate buildings of an estate village. There are between two and six bedrooms and sitting areas in each house, and a restaurant, spa and other facilities are scattered through well-tended grounds. Belle Isle Castle (belle-isle.com) is a pair of adjoining houses dating to c. 1900 and earlier on the shore of Lough Erne. It is not a hotel but has been beautifully converted for private hire and features very comfortable bedrooms, lounges and dining room. Ballywalter Park (ballywalterpark.com) is a stately home (see above), and our residence here is as guests of the resident owners – it is very much not a hotel! Bedrooms are very comfortable and have en suite facilities (bath, not shower). Being historic properties, none of the accommodation on this tour has lifts. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking on this tour – walking from drop-off points, touring the houses and enjoying the gardens. Stairs are unavoidable as only one of the places visited has a lift. Average distance by coach per day: 70 miles.
What else is included in the price? See page 6
Group size: between 10 and 21 participants.
For lecturers' biographies See pages 260–267 Illustration: Castle Coole, chromolithograph c. 1880.
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Day 3: Emo Court, Abbey Leix, Carton. James Gandon and Lewis Vulliamy were the architects in the 1790s and 1830s of Emo Court, a Neo-Classical masterpiece with a spectacular circular salon. Abbey Leix is an enchanting mid-size Palladian mansion which has undergone exemplary reinstatement as a family home and been filled with choice pictures and furniture. Visit by kind permission of the owner, Sir David Davies, with lunch in the dining room. Dinner is at Carton House, now a hotel, which has superbly decorated state rooms with figurative plasterwork by the Lafranchini brothers (subject to confirmation).
Day 5: Baronscourt. Deep in County Tyrone, Baronscourt is perhaps as remote as any major house in the UK. Still occupied by the family who commissioned it in 1779, the leisurely visit is by kind permission of the Duke and Duchess of Abercorn. There are talks by estate managers, and lunch is in the salon. The sequence of superb rooms was brilliantly redecorated by David Hicks in the 1970s, and the picture collection is among the finest of any house in Ireland (Lawrence, Reynolds, Van Dyck).
‘A terrible beauty’ Ireland and the Troubles 1916–1998 9–14 July 2019 (mf 620) 6 days • £1,810 • Flights not included Lecturer: Patrick Mercer obe In Dublin, an in-depth study of the struggle for Home Rule and the early years of the Republic. In the North, examine The Troubles in Belfast, Londonderry, rural areas and the border. Led by Patrick Mercer obe, historian, former soldier and politician who served in the North. Contributions from people with special insight into the troubled past and the febrile present. This is a history tour of exceptional vividness, potency and contemporary relevance. The Good Friday Agreement is only twenty years old; for most people who lived in Britain or Ireland for any significant span of the preceding thirty years, ‘The Troubles’ were probably felt as the dominant issue of the day, an ever-present source of anxiety, bewilderment and distress. Only by duration and impact on the mainland, however, was this an exceptional period in Irish history. During the ‘Ascendancy’ following the seventeenth-century conquest, and throughout the nineteenth century, after the Act of Union of
1800, relations between the English and the Irish, and Protestants and Catholics, were at best sultry and were frequently hostile. Recrudescence of the cycle of protest, insurrection and oppression was a regular occurrence. The tour takes you to the sites of flash points and political and sectarian confrontations of the last hundred years. In the North, you go to places where only a few years ago civilians would not have dared to visit; this is not a tour for the faint-hearted. Nevertheless, you will find warmth, welcome and courtesy on both sides of the border which put some parts of the UK to shame. Starting in Dublin, the tour first focuses on Home Rule and the events leading up to the Easter Rising of 1916. Subsequent writing tends to emphasise the romanticism of the Rising, never better than in Yeats’s line, ‘A terrible beauty is born’. Yet that was not how it was seen at the time. While Britons bled on the Western Front, rebels rose up and delivered what many regarded as an unforgivable stab in the back, and the Crown reacted bloodily. That clumsy cruelty not only caused sympathy to turn but led to a chaotic Partition in 1922, a shocking civil war and dreadful brutality by all sides. The raw emotions of those years will be stripped bare by this tour: the links between Eire’s agony and modern Ulster’s political
turmoil will be explained by people who were – and still are – involved in the convolutions that dominate Ireland today. As the tour moves to Northern Ireland, so the tensions that caused resentment to bubble over in 1969 will be examined. The tour acquires particular edge from the fact that the speakers were participants in the Troubles one way or another. Patrick Mercer, a historian steeped in Ireland’s past is a former politician and soldier whose regiment was foremost in 1916 and who himself served during the most harrowing times of the conflict. He is joined at various points by individuals from different sides of the sectarian divide with very different views. The blame is often laid solely at the feet of either the IRA or the British Government but of course the situation was complex and nuanced. The speakers trace the simmering resentment between Republicans and Loyalists, the political and social impasse, the role of the police and soldiers who tried to keep order – and their intermittent bloody blunders – and the anguish of the people caught in the middle.
Itinerary Day 1: Dublin. The tour begins at 3.00pm with an exploration of the key sights of the 1916 Rising, beginning around the General Post Office in O’Connell Street, the rebel headquarters and site of the Provisional Government’s surrender, and continuing across the Liffey to various places including St Stephen’s Green, Countess Markievitz’s last stand, and Boland’s Mill, where Eamon de Valera was captured. First of two nights in Dublin.
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Day 2: Dublin. Visit Collins Barracks, built in 1702 and now a museum dedicated to Easter 1916. Here is the Asgard, which Erskine Childers used to smuggle guns from Germany, and a poignant cemetery. Kilmainham Gaol opened in 1796 and leaders of the rebellions of 1798, 1803, 1848, 1867 and 1916 were detained here. We see the extraordinary museum and Stonebreakers’ Yard where 14 Rebels were executed and the embers of The Troubles that beset the rest of the century were fanned. Day 3: South Armagh. Cross the Border (currently unmarked) near Newry. Now the tone of the tour changes as we are taken through the fabled ‘Bandit Country’. We’ll be shown where Thatcher’s new government was rocked by events at Warrenpoint, where Capt. Robert Nairac was abducted and won his George Cross, and the villages of Forkhill and Crossmaglen which still bear the marks of the twentieth century’s most protracted guerrilla campaign. The border was always lawless, and there are also sites of the conflict 1920–21. First of three nights in Belfast at the Europa Hotel, during the Troubles home of the press corps. Day 4: Derry-Londonderry, Omagh. (12th July: day of Protestant celebration of William of Orange’s victory at the Battle of the Boyne 1690.) Drive two hours through strikingly beautiful countryside to Londonderry, and explore Bogside and the Creggan Estate. Within sight of the 42
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Western Ireland Archaeology, history and landscape Apprentice Boys’ defence of the City Walls in 1690, the shocking events of January 30th 1972 – ‘Bloody Sunday’ – will be examined; the British Government stood on the brink of success until the disaster of that day gave the IRA the coup it needed to rejuvenate its campaign. Then a small village on the border where there are stories to be told, and Omagh, site of the deadliest but last of the Republican bombings. Day 5: Belfast. Start at Belfast Castle to view the city and its districts laid out below, then visit some of the most famous sites of confrontation: the so-called ‘peace-line’ which still divides the communities, Holy Cross School, the Ardoyne where the IRA split into its different factions, the Republican plot in Milltown Cemetery and the hardline Ballymurphy with its louring security forces’ base. Study also several of the famous murals, Loyalist and Republican. Day 6: Belfast. The tour is rounded off by a visit to the rarely seen Police Service of Northern Ireland’s Museum of The Troubles. The tour is over by 11.30am, which may allow you time to see more of Belfast before your flight.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,810. Single occupancy: £2,070. Flights. Several airlines link Dublin and Belfast with many UK and other airports, so flights are not included in the tour. You are free to choose flights which are the most convenient for you. Included meals: 2 lunches, 3 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Riu Plaza, The Gresham, Dublin (riu.com): historic 4-star hotel located on the famous O’Connell street in central Dublin. It has recently been fully refurbished. Europa Hotel, Belfast (hastingshotels.com): 1960s 12-storey tower of historical significance, recently refurbished, comfortable and with excellent service.
Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Western Ireland, 1–7 July 2019 (p.43). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration, left: political mural in Bogside, Derry-Londonderry, Photo ©Tourism Northern Ireland. Right: The Tara Brooch, wood engraving c. 1880.
For lecturers' biographies See pages 260–267
Prehistoric and historical sites, monastic and early Christian sites, country houses and museums. The marvellous landscape of the west coast of Ireland is still largely unspoilt. The Dingle Peninsula, the Burren, the Aran Islands. The west coast of Ireland is one of the richest archaeological landscapes in Europe with its surviving, though much threatened, Gaelic culture. There is a mixture of prehistoric and historical sites (for there are no Roman or Saxon remains in Ireland), monastic and early Christian sites, country houses, small museums and other treats strung out along one of the most beautiful coastlines in Europe. Irish archaeology and history offer a wealth of information, due partly to the extraordinary amount of survey and excavation carried out in the last two decades. From 10,000 years ago, the first hunter-gatherers moved across the island, exploiting the rich land and sea life of the western seaboard. From 6,000 years ago, complex societies were established and the development of a series of tombs bears out the structure of society at this time. From 4,000 years ago, Bronze Age and Iron Age Ireland produces incredible gold torcs, wonderful jewellery and fascinating evidence of
religious beliefs and rituals, contact with people overseas, and an increasingly stratified society. With the introduction of Christianity, many aspects of pagan practices were absorbed into the new belief. The arrival of the Vikings in 795 (Dublin became one of the largest Viking settlements outside of Scandinavia) brought new challenges and the beginnings of urbanisation. Ongoing conquest and colonisation from the east continued piecemeal to the end of the seventeenth century. Closer to our time rising rural populations led to a catastrophic famine and the deaths of one million people, the single largest loss of life in nineteenth-century Europe. Mass emigration to Britain and North America followed, and with it, ironically, a rising awareness of the cultural importance of this disappearing Gaelic world. This awareness provided inspiration for the remarkable cultural literary revival at the end of the nineteenth century, and is something which remains to this day. Ireland has emerged from a period of intense economic, social and political change with an increasing population – a large influx of returning Irish emigrants together with thousands of non-nationals – and a radical transformation of the major cities and towns of the island. The countryside, however, has escaped the impact and worst excesses of this intensive growth. Explore the incredibly rich rural landscapes, studded with small towns and villages, of the south and west coasts. The vast bulk of the country is still beautiful, unspoilt and offers a happy balance Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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How strenuous? The tour involves a lot of walking, where coach access is restricted, and a lot of standing at sites. A good level of fitness is essential. You will be on your feet for lengthy stretches of time. There’s rather more time spent outside than indoors on this tour. Average distance by coach per day: 58 miles.
1–7 July 2019 (mf 610) 7 days • £2,390 Lecturer: Professor Muiris O’Sullivan
Western Ireland continued
' Muiris O'Sullivan was outstanding. An exceptional authority on the topic, a warm personality and the ability to bring the content to life with appropriate story-telling made him a delightful, engaging and most authoritative lecturer.' W.P., participant on Western Ireland in 2018.
between fantastic archaeological sites and scenery, superb accommodation and relative peace and quiet. Our extensive itinerary is planned to take in parts of the country which show the cultural legacy of the island, specifically outside of the major cities. In addition, the food on the west coast is of the highest standard, and the daily fresh catch can bring in all sorts of delights.
Itinerary Day 1. The coach leaves Cork airport at midday or meet in the hotel. The beautiful coastal town of Kinsale has a rich maritime history: the battle in 1601 was a turning point in Irish history. Visit the 17th-century, star-shaped Charles Fort. Overnight in Kinsale. Day 2: Killarney, Dingle. Leave west Cork for Killarney. Visit the 19th-century Muckross House and gardens, Killarney’s National Park and see the earliest Bronze Age copper mine in northwest Europe. Drive along the dramatic south coast of the Dingle peninsula passing Inch and Anascaul, a landscape of mountain and sandy beach. First of two nights in Dingle. Day 3: the Dingle Peninsula. Drive around Slea Head (the westernmost point of Europe) to Dunquin and associated sites. The area is dotted with beehive huts, standing stones, and early monastic sites. Visit the Blasket Islands’ Visitor Centre and Ferriter’s Cove, the earliest Mesolithic site in the southwest of Ireland. Continue to the monastic sites of 10th-century Riasc, the perfectly preserved 8th-century Gallarus Oratory, and the 12th-century Kilmalkedar church. Visit the region’s museum in the village of Ballyferriter.
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Day 4: County Clare. Visit the 15th-century castle at Listowel, once occupied by the Firzmaurice lords of Kerry and occupying the location of the original 13th-century castle which fronted on to the river Feale. Cross the Shannon by ferry and pass through the spectacular landscape of the Burren in north County Clare. Visit the 12thcentury Kilfenora cathedral, with its high crosses and glass-roofed chancel. First of three nights near Ballyvaughan. Day 5: the Aran Islands. The Aran Islands have captivated visitors for hundreds of years; distinctive geology and landscape alone make it a memorable trip, and the archaeology makes it unforgettable. Earliest occupation dates from the 8th century bc, and it was here in the 1890s that J.M. Synge came to record the islands’ folklore and traditions which inspired his dramatic writings. By ferry to Inishmore, with views back on the Cliffs of Moher, for a full day on the island exploring ring forts, churches, and grave sites. Day 6: the Burren. Visit Ailwee Cave, the largest and most spectacular cave in Ireland. Surrounding Leamaneh castle, 15th-century, is a medieval landscape of ancient roads and ruins. Continue north through the Burren to view prehistoric Poulnabrone dolmen.
Day 7: Kilmacduagh, Shannon. The 11th-century slightly leaning 100ft tower at Kilmacduagh is on a monastic site with four ruined churches. Continue to Shannon airport by 11.00am where the tour ends.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,390. Single occupancy: £2,730. Included meals: 2 lunches, 5 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Acton’s Hotel, Kinsale (actonshotelkinsale.com): excellently located on the waterfront, a business-orientated 4-star hotel in five converted Georgian town houses. The Dingle Skellig Hotel (dingleskellig.com): 4-star functional hotel, out-of-town overlooking Dingle bay. Gregans Castle Hotel, Ballyvaughan (gregans.ie): 4-star country house hotel set in gardens and woodland. Flights. Flights from London to Cork and Shannon to London are not included in the price of the tour. We will send the recommended flight options when they are available to book and ask that you make your own flight reservation. The cost of an economy seat at the time of going to press is c. £250 and will be available to book in August 2019. How strenuous? The tour involves a lot of walking on archaeological sites. Uneven ground, irregular paving, steps and hills are standard. A good level of fitness is essential. Unless you enjoy entirely unimpaired mobility, cope with everyday walking and stair-climbing without difficulty and are reliably sure-footed, this tour is not for you. Average distance by coach per day: 61 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Glyndebourne & Garsington, 27–30 June 2019 (p.28); Interwar Interiors, 8 July 2019; Gastronomic West Country, 8–14 July 2019 (p.30); 'A terrible beauty', 9–14 July 2019 (p.42). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Professor Muiris O’Sullivan Emeritus Professor of Archaeology and former Head of School at the UCD School of Archaeology, Dublin. He has conducted research at some of the more famous sites in Ireland, at Tara, Knowth and Newgrange. His publications include The Mound of the Hostages, Tara: From the Past to the Future and Archaeology 2020. See page 260 for all lecturers' biographies.
What else is included in the price? See page 6 Illustration: The Cliffs of Moher, wood engraving c. 1880.
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West Cork Chamber Music Festival Concerts on Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way July 2019 Lecturer: Stephen Johnson Full details available in December 2018 Please call us to register your interest, or e-mail alerts@martinrandall.co.uk Concerts featuring national and international artists; Barry Douglas, Borusan Quartet, Delta Piano Trio, Johannes Moser and Finghin Collins. Grounded in artistic collaboration, the festival is an intensive musical experience, often comprising three or four short concerts a day. Set in the picturesque town of Bantry on Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way. Now entering its 24th year, the firmly established West Cork Chamber Music Festival attracts world-class international artists to the small town of Bantry on the west coast of Ireland with the promise of ten days of musical collaboration. Through an adventurous approach to programming, the festival juxtaposes the challenging and the unknown with the beloved and the familiar.
The 2019 programme boasts chamber musicians from all over the world – Germany, France, Turkey, Sweden and Russia to name but a few - as well as showcasing local Irish talent including rising star, Mairéad Hickey. The collaborative approach to music-making nurtured by the festival facilitates the coming together of skilled soloists, working and rehearsing together to create unique and creative performances from Mozart to Szervánszky. The festival’s home is the small, charming harbour town of Bantry, renowned for its brightly decorated houses and views across Bantry Bay. Coupling vistas of the wild Atlantic sea and the surrounding mountains, the allure of rugged Irish coast and unspoiled countryside serves only to enhance the performances. Many of the concerts are staged in the eighteenth-century Bantry House, in the intimate library overlooking the gardens. The audience sits on three sides, encircling the artists, with intervals allowing time to enjoy the view across the bay from the beautiful Italian gardens. In addition, late night concerts are performed by candlelight, creating a wholly enchanting musical experience.
Practicalities Accommodation. The Maritime Hotel, Bantry (themaritime.ie): comfortable 4-star hotel. How strenuous? Access to performances would be difficult with impaired walking. Little coach travel, other than the journey to and from the airport. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
Stephen Johnson Writer, broadcaster and composer. For 15 years he presented BBC Radio 3’s Discovering Music. His books include Bruckner Remembered, studies of Wagner and Mahler, and How Shostakovich Changed My Mind, which examines the effect of music on mental health. His orchestral piece Behemoth Dances had its première by the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra in 2016. See page 260 for all lecturers' biographies.
Photograph: Bantry House, ©Lizzy Holsgrove 2018.
BRITAIN & IRELAND: Ireland
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Albania: Crossroads of Antiquity Archaeology, history, art and landscape Romans, and a vital link on the route from Europe to Asia. We visit its amphitheatre, the largest in the Balkans, as well as the Roman forum, the ancient city walls and the archaeological museum. First of two nights in Berat. Day 3: Berat. A unesco world heritage site, Berat is one of Albania’s oldest and most attractive cities, with many Ottoman houses scattered across the hills above the river. A walking tour of the lower town includes the 15th-century mosque and the 18th-century Halvati Teqe. Meanwhile, the Byzantine citadel above shelters the Church of St Mary – home to the dazzling Onufri Icon Museum where 16th- and 17th-century Christian art and a beautiful iconostasis are displayed. Overnight in Berat.
2–11 October 2019 (mf 770) 10 days • £2,760 Lecturer: Carolyn Perry Discover a forgotten history of conflict, culture and economic power. Explore the remains of once-flourishing Greek, Roman and Ottoman cities. Stay in the unesco World Heritage towns of Berat and Gjirokastra.
MAINLAND EUROPE: ALBANIA
It may seem a backwater now. But Albania’s importance in the ancient world is writ large in the historical sources. Greek historian Thucydides describes how a dispute over the city of Epidamnus (modern Durrës) helped ignite the Peloponnesian War of 431–404 bc. Nearly 400 years later, much of Rome’s civil war between Caesar and Pompey was played out along the Albanian coast. And it was in the city of Apollonia that Octavian learned of the assassination of his great-uncle Caesar – and launched a bid for power that ultimately made him emperor. Why was Albania so important? One look at its geography will tell you. This is a country blessed with natural harbours, and a short sea crossing to the Italian port of Brindisi. It is also the start of the most direct overland route from the Adriatic to Istanbul, which in Roman times was traced by the Via Egnatia. A natural staging post between the eastern and western Mediterranean, Albania flourished under Greeks, Romans, Byzantines and Ottomans. It is this rich and forgotten history that forms the backbone of our tour. We visit ancient cities that once had glittering reputations, but have since fallen into ruin and have only ever been partially excavated. Meanwhile, the unesco World Heritage towns of Berat and Gjirokastra shine a light onto 46
the civilisation that developed under five centuries of Ottoman rule. Berat, known as ‘the town of a thousand windows’, is home to the museum of the sixteenth-century iconographer Onufri, while Gjirokastra, birthplace of the novelist Ismail Kadare, is believed to be the setting for his celebrated Chronicle in Stone. Not all the sites are easy to access: but that just adds to the sense of exploration and discovery. The drive to Labova e Kryqit (Labova of the Cross), for example, involves venturing off the beaten track, to be rewarded by an exquisite Byzantine church, complete with dazzling icons and exceptional frescoes. To reach Saranda, we travel through the pristine landscapes of the Llogara National Park and along the undeveloped Ionic coast. Albania wriggled free of the Ottomans on 28 November 1912, but since then has endured occupation by the Austro-Hungarians, Italians and Germans, among others – as well as a repressive Communist regime that outlasted all others in Europe. Thankfully, the past two decades have seen great changes, and the country is now a candidate for entry to the European Union. Tirana is modernising at breakneck speed: the tour culminates with a two-night sojourn amid its bustle and optimism.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 5.00pm (British Airways) from London Gatwick to Tirana. Drive to Kruja. Overnight in Kruja. Day 2: Kruja, Durrës, Berat. We start the day in Kruja, Albania’s medieval capital, clustered around its restored bazaar, above which sits a ruined citadel and castle. It is also home to an excellent Ethnographic Museum and a modern museum dedicated to the life of Gjergj Kastrioti (aka Skanderbeg). The afternoon is spent in Durrës, a key port for both the Greeks and the
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Day 4: Byllis, Vlora. Once the largest city in southern Illyria, Byllis is a vast and atmospheric archaeological site, perched on a hilltop and commanding spectacular views. In Late Antiquity Byllis became an important Christian centre, and several basilicas were built. Vlora is the country’s second port; the first parliament convened here following the declaration of independence in 1912. Here, we see the Muradie Mosque; built in 1537 by the greatest of Ottoman architects, Mimar Sinan. Overnight in Vlora. Day 5: Himara, Saranda. The day is spent travelling through Llogara National Park and along the breathtaking Ionic coast. The journey is broken in the bay of Porto Palermo, a few kilometres from the small town of Himara, where we visit a Venetian fort and castle. Arrive in Saranda for a panoramic view of the bay before continuing to the hotel for a one-night stay. Day 6: Butrint, Gjirokastra. Situated by a lake close to the Greek border, Butrint (Buthrotum) was settled by Greeks from nearby Corfu in the 6th century bc. It became an important Roman colony, declined in Late Antiquity and was abandoned in the Middle Ages. Lords Sainsbury and Rothschild set up the Butrint Foundation in 1991 to protect and examine the site. Excavation has revealed substantial elements of the late Roman and Byzantine town including a basilica, baptistery and a palace. First of two nights in Gjirokastra. Day 7: Gjirokastra, Labova e Kryqit. The steep cobbled streets and stone-roofed Ottoman houses of Gjirokastra are best appreciated from the castle. We visit the Old Bazaar, a traditional Ottoman house and the former home of dictator Enver Hoxha, now an ethnographic museum. In the afternoon, the remote village of Labova e Kryqit (Labova of the Cross) is our destination – to see one of the oldest Byzantine churches in Albania, dating back to the 6th century. Overnight in Gjirokastra. Day 8: Apollonia, Ardenica, Tirana. Drive north to Apollonia. Founded by colonists from Corinth around 600 bc, it was later home to a famous Academy, where Octavian was studying in 44 bc. Finds are displayed in the cloisters of a 13th-century Byzantine monastery. En route to Tirana visit the monastery of Ardenica, built in 1282 by Byzantine Emperor, Andronikos II Palaiologos and famous as the site of the wedding
Sacred Armenia Early Christian Monasteries and modern-day Yerevan in 1451 of Albania’s national hero, Skanderbeg. First of two nights in Tirana. Day 9: Tirana. A morning tour of Tirana includes some of the city’s grand central boulevards, lined with relics of its Ottoman, Italian and Communist past. There is also a visit to the National Art Gallery. The afternoon is spent in the vast National Historical Museum where displays span from antiquity to the Communist regime of Enver Hoxha. Overnight in Tirana. Day 10: Tirana. A morning visit to Bunk’Art in the outskirts of Tirana. Explore one of the many bunkers still standing after the fall of Enver Hoxha’s communist regime, which has recently opened to the public as a history and contemporary art museum. Fly from Tirana, arriving at London Gatwick at c. 3.15pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,760 or £2,450 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,980 or £2,670 without flights.
5–13 September 2019 (mf 729) 9 days • £3,510 Lecturer: Andrew Spira Monasteries and other sacred buildings from as early as the seventh century. Outstanding mountainous landscape. Time to get to know Yerevan, with its squares, cafés and street-life. Comfortable hotels and surprisingly good food. Of all the lands straddling east and west, the nation of Armenia is perhaps least like a gateway and most like a frontier. ‘Unique’ is a lazy and unenlightening epithet with which to characterise distant lands, but Armenia, both ancient and modern, Asian and European, melting-pot and defiantly individual, is fully deserving of the description. Its long and tenacious history is one of tragedy and renewal. The heralding this spring of
a ‘New Armenia’, following a peaceful uprising led by Nikol Pashinyan against corruption and singleparty rule, signals the latest upward curve. At its apogee in the first century bc, Armenia stretched from the Mediterranean to the Caspian, and almost to the Black Sea. For the next three centuries, however, it would suffer conquest and reconquest as the Romans and the Parthians traded blows in the southern Caucasus, with intermittent periods of self-rule keeping the flame of independence alive. It was in large part to keep themselves distinct from the two vast surrounding empires that the Armenians adopted the new religion of Christianity in ad 301, developing a new alphabet a hundred years after that. These two markers of identity survived domination by Byzantines, Arabs, Mongols, Turks and Russians, as did many spectacular religious buildings, which were built to withstand not just invasions but earthquakes too. Armenia’s sacred architecture was a greater influence on mediaeval Europe than is commonly assumed, after its round towers and cross-plans
Included meals: 8 lunches, 8 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Panorama, Kruja (hotelpanoramakruje.com): modern hotel built into the hillside offering panoramic views. Hotel Mangalemi, Berat (mangalemihotel.com): small, traditional, family-run hotel in several converted Ottoman townhouses with a central courtyard and roof terrace. Room sizes and furnishings vary. Hotel Partner, Vlora (hotelpartner.al): large, modern hotel in a central location. Santa Quaranta, Saranda (santaquaranta.al): uxury resort hotel away from the main centre with seaviews. Hotel Argjiro, Gjirokastra (hotelargjiro.al): recently-opened hotel in the the historical centre. Hotel Kotoni, Tirana (hotelkotoni.com): boutique hotel in a restored government building located on a quiet side-street off the main boulevard.
MAINLAND EUROPE: ALBANIA, Armenia
How strenuous? This is a fairly demanding tour and a good level of fitness is essential. Unless you enjoy entirely unimpaired mobility, cope with everyday walking and stair-climbing without difficulty and are reliably sure-footed, this tour is not for you. There are some long coach journeys, sometimes on uneven terrain. On one occasion a steep ascent by jeep is necessary to reach a site. There are several hotel changes. Average distance by coach per day: 59 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Classical Greece, 21–30 September 2019 (p.109); Moldavia & Transylvania, 12–20 October 2019 (p.176); Courts of Northern Italy, 13–20 October 2019 (p.132). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration: Berat, lithograph 1851 by Edward Lear.
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Sacred Armenia continued
were noted by returning crusaders. Thick-walled, built from local tuff or basalt, and housing a particularly severe strain of eastern Christianity, there is a resplendent austerity about these churches which is only heightened by their frequently spectacular natural surroundings. Many of the finest, including the rock-hewn Geghard and the unesco world heritage site of Echmiadzin, are easily visited from the capital, Yerevan. And while calling Yerevan the most sensitively-remodelled of all former Soviet cities may sound like damnation with the faintest praise imaginable, today it is attractive and confident, its proliferation of cafés, galleries and public spaces making it a truly pleasant place to spend time. In the north of the country are two more unesco-listed monasteries, at Sanahin and Haghpat; both tell the story of Armenian religion and cultural endurance. Meanwhile Yerevanis live, work and socialise in the literal and metaphorical shadow of Ararat, still Armenia’s most emotive symbol despite now being on Turkish land.
A few hundred yards from the border, the monastery of Khor Virap, which proudly boasts the dungeon where St Gregory the Illuminator was incarcerated, defiantly advertises the indomitable Armenian Christian tradition.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 9.00am from London Heathrow to Yerevan via Paris (Air France), arriving c. 8.25pm. Transfer to the hotel in the heart of the city. Day 2: Yerevan. A leisurely start this morning. The day begins with a visit to the comprehensive and fascinating State Museum of Armenian History. At the National Art Gallery see collections from Armenia, Russia and Western Europe. Overnight Yerevan. Day 3: Echmiadzin, Yerevan. In the morning, visit the Matenadaran, a repository of 17,000 illuminated manuscripts. The Museum of the Armenian Genocide is all the more powerful for its simplicity. After lunch, drive to Echmiadzin, the seat of the Armenian Apostolic Church, also a unesco world heritage site. The vast ruined cathedral at neighbouring Zvartnots tells of the extraordinary ambition of early architects. Overnight Yerevan. Day 4: Amberd, Dzoraget. The ruins of Amberd Fortress, dramatically located on the southern slopes of Mount Ararat, date back to the 12th century, although it has been a stronghold since the seventh. In the afternoon, drive to Dzoraget. First of two nights here. Day 5: Akhtala, Alaverdi. The 13th-century frescoes in Akhtala are strongly influenced by Byzantium. The monasteries at Haghpat and Sanahin, both unesco-listed sites, are both fine examples of Armenian sacred architecture. Overnight Dzoraget.
MAINLAND EUROPE: Armenia
Day 6: Vanadzor, Dilijan, Lake Sevan. Visit a stone-carver who continues the tradition of cutting khachkars (cross-stones), characteristic of Medieval Christian Armenian art. Drive to Lake Sevan, and the peerlessly situated Sevanavank monastery that overlooks it. Overnight Yerevan. Day 7: Khor Virap, Noravank, Yerevan. Visit the Khor Virap monastery in the foothills of Mount Ararat, where St Gregory the Illuminator was imprisoned. Hidden from view in a remote valley, Noravank, the masterwork of the architect and sculptor Momik, is perhaps the most beautiful of Armenia’s 13th-century monasteries. Overnight Yerevan.
Andrew Spira Formerly a specialist in Russian and Byzantine icons at the Temple Gallery in London, curator at the V&A and Programme Director at Christie’s Education. He studied at the Courtauld Institute, and is author of The Avant-Garde Icon: Russian Avant-Garde Art & the Icon Painting Tradition. He has led many cultural tours to Armenia, Georgia, Romania, Crete and Russia. See page 260 for all lecturers' biographies.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,510 or £2,850 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,980 or £3,320 without flights. Included meals: all lunches and all dinners with wine. Visas: British, EU, US, Australian and New Zealand nationals no longer require a visa. Passports must be valid for at least six months after the tour ends. Accommodation. Grand Hotel, Yerevan (grandhotelyerevan.com): in a 1920s NeoClassical-style building, close to Republic Square, this luxury hotel was fully renovated in 2015. It has spa facilities and a roof-top swimming pool with panoramic views. The Avan Dzoraget (tufenkianheritage.com): small and stylish hotel in a wonderful riverside location, equivalent to a 4-star. How strenuous? You will be on your feet for long periods. Many of the sites are reached by steep, uneven steps often without handrails. There are 220 steps to a monastery. The tour would not be suitable for anyone who has difficulties with everyday walking and stairclimbing. There are 4 coach journeys of over 2 hours (average distance by coach per day: 72 miles). Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Georgia Uncovered, 14–23 September 2019 (p.88); The Age of Bede, 14–17 September 2019 (p.15); Dark Age Brilliance, 15–22 September 2019 (p.133). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Day 8: Geghard, Garni. Much of the monastery at Geghard is carved out of the cliffside. There is a performance here of the Armenian Divine Lithurgy by the Garni Choir. The Hellenic temple at Garni is the last remaining pre-Christian building in Armenia. Day 9. The morning flight from Yerevan arrives Heathrow at c. 1.45pm.
What else is included in the price? See page 6 Illustration: Yerevan, copper engraving c. 1750.
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Connoisseur’s Vienna Art, architecture, music and private visits 17–23 June 2019 (mf 590) 7 days • £2,960 (including tickets to 2 performances) Lecturer: Dr Jarl Kremeier Art, architecture, music: the main sites as well as lesser-known ones. Several special arrangements for out-of-hours visits or private buildings. Perfectly located heritage hotel. Two included musical performances: Bach’s Mass in B Minor at the Musikverein with Collegium Vocale Gent, and Verdi's Aida at the Staatsoper.
Itinerary This is only a summary of the visits; there are many more which are not mentioned here. Day 1. Fly at c.10.00am from London Heathrow to Vienna (British Airways). An afternoon walk in and around the Hofburg, the Habsburg winter palace, a vast agglomeration from six centuries of building activity. See the incomparable collection of precious regalia and objets d’art in the Treasury, and the glorious library hall by Fischer von Erlach. Day 2. Walk through the Roman and mediaeval core to see a cross-section of architecture
including Gothic and Baroque churches and some of Vienna’s most enchanting streetscapes. Guided tour of the Synagogue (Josef Kornhäusel, 1824), followed by a visit to a private chapel. Another special arrangement to see a grand 18thcentury hall. The Jesuit church was spectacularly refurbished c. 1700 by the master of illusionist painting, Andrea Pozzo. Evening concert at the Musikverein with the Collegium Vocale Gent and Phillippe Herreweghe (conductor): Bach, Mass in B minor (BWV 232). Day 3. Drive to the outskirts to see buildings by Otto Wagner; the richly decorated apartment blocks in the Linke Wienzeile, the emperor’s personal railway station at Schönbrunn and the hospital church ‘Am Steinhof’, the finest manifestation of Viennese Secessionism. The Liechtenstein collection in the family’s great Baroque palace (Gartenpalais) is perhaps the finest in private hands in Europe, currently not open to the public. An evening at the Staatsoper: Aida (Verdi) with Marco Armiliato (conductor), Elena Guseva (Aida), Ekaterina Gubanova (Amneris), Gregory Kunde (Radames). Day 4. Drive around the Ringstrasse, the boulevard which encircles the old centre and is the locus classicus of historicist architecture. The magnificent Liechtenstein Palace (Stadtpalais) was built at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries by the richest family in the Habsburg Empire and has magnificent Rococo interiors and original furnishings. Visit to and dinner at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, one of the world’s greatest art collections, particularly rich in Italian, Flemish and Dutch pictures. Day 5. Visit the palace and garden of Schloss Belvedere, built on sloping ground overlooking Vienna for Prince Eugene of Savoy, which constitutes one of the finest residential complexes of the 18th century. It now houses the Museum of Austrian Art with paintings by Klimt and Schiele. Day 6. A tour of the Parliament building, a splendid example of enriched Neo-Classicism,
and visit a late-19th-century town house on the Ringstrasse. Afternoon at the Museumsquartier, an art centre in the imperial stables. Day 7. The Secession building, built in 1898 as an exhibition hall for avant-garde artists, contains Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze. Visit the great hall of the Academy of Art and the Church of St Charles, the Baroque masterpiece of Fischer von Erlach. The flight arrives at Heathrow at c. 5.00pm. Please note: because the itinerary is dependent on a number of appointments with private owners, the order and even the content of the tour may vary.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,960 or £2,820 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,380 or £3,240 without flights. Included meals: 2 lunches, 4 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Bristol (bristolvienna. com): 5-star hotel in a superb location on the Ringstrasse near the opera house, traditionally furnished and decorated. Music: tickets (first category) to 2 performances are included, costing c. £350. How strenuous? This tour involves a lot of walking in the town centre, and should not be attempted by anyone who has difficulty with everyday walking and stair-climbing. Public transport (metro or tram), is used on some occasions. Average distance covered by coach per day: 6 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: The Imperial Riviera, 10–16 June 2019 (p.121); Rhineland Romanesque, 10–16 June 2019 (p.104); Berlin: New Architecture, 25–29 June 2019 (p.94). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport. Illustration: Vienna, National (formerly court) Library, lithograph c. 1950.
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MAINLAND EUROPE: Austria
With visits to the chief sights as well as lesser ones and little-visited treasures, with privileged access to places not normally accessible and two musical evenings, this tour provides an exceptionally rich and rounded cultural experience. Whether or not you have been to the city before, it will present Vienna in a truly memorable way. Grandiloquent palaces and labyrinthine mediaeval streets; broad boulevards and quiet courtyards; at times embattled on the frontier of Christendom, yet a treasury containing some of the greatest of European works of art; an imperial city without an empire: Vienna is a fascinating mix, a quintessentially Central European paradox. The seat of the Habsburgs, pre-eminent city of the Holy Roman Empire and capital of a vast multinational agglomeration of territories, Vienna is magnificently equipped with buildings which were created by imperial and aristocratic patronage. But the history of Vienna is shot through with diversity, difference and dissent, and some of the choicest items we see were created in defiance of mainstream orthodoxy. A feature of this tour is the number of specially arranged visits to private palaces or institutions which are not generally open to the public or are off the beaten track. Because of the privileged nature of these visits we can only name a few of them here, but they include Baroque palaces, nineteenth-century halls, pioneers of modernism, churches and a synagogue. And then there is the music. As home for Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Mahler and countless other composers, Vienna is pre-eminent in the history of music. We have chosen to include a concert at the Musikverein and a performance at the Staatsoper.
Vienna’s Masterpieces The art collections of an imperial capital
27–31 August 2019 (mf 664) 5 days • £1,980 Lecturer: Patrick Bade Focuses on the best of the art in the city – painting, sculpture and decorative arts. Also the key architectural monuments and characteristic streetscape.
Kunsthistorisches Museum (Art History Museum), one of the world’s greatest collections of Old Masters. For this first visit concentrate on the northern schools, especially the early Netherlandish school, the famous Bruegels, Rubens, Rembrandt and Vermeer.
arts from the turn of the nineteenth century. An afternoon in the Kunsthistorisches Museum again, this time concentrating mainly on Italian pictures – Bellini, Titian, Bellotto. There is also the recently re-displayed Kunstkammer here, an outstanding collection of metalwork and sculpture.
Day 2. The splendid Belvedere Palace now houses the national collection of Austrian art, mediaeval, Baroque, Biedermeier and Secessionist – Klimt and Schiele. An afternoon walk around the Roman and mediaeval core of the city takes in the Cathedral, the greatest of Gothic buildings in the Danubian lands, distinguished for its late mediaeval sculpture, and the Hofburg, the sprawling winter palace of the Habsburgs. The precious regalia and objets d’art in the Schatzkammer (Treasury) are the best of their kind.
Day 5. Visit the Museum of Applied Arts, an outstanding collection from all eras and places, well displayed. Return to Heathrow c. 3.40pm.
Day 3. In a park a few minutes from the hotel see the Art Nouveau former metro stations by Otto Wagner and the great Baroque Church of St Charles. The excellent Vienna Museum traces the city’s history through art and artefacts. In the afternoon visit the Secession Building which contains Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze, the magnificent Great Hall of the Court Library and the excellent if small gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts. Among its holdings is a masterpiece by Hieronymus Bosch. Day 4. Another walk through picturesque streets and squares passes private palaces and public buildings such as the Gothic Revival city hall and the Neo-Classical Parliament. The Leopold Collection comprises excellent examples of the
Perfectly located 5-star heritage hotel.
MAINLAND EUROPE: Austria
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 10.00am from London Heathrow to Vienna (Austrian Airlines) and drive to the hotel in the heart of the city. Walk to the 50
Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,980 or £1,770 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,250 or £2,040 without flights. Included meals: 3 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Bristol (bristolvienna. com): 5-star hotel in a superb location on the Ringstrasse near the opera house, traditionally furnished and decorated. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking on this tour and standing around in galleries. Tram is used on some occasions. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Music Along the Danube, 31 August–7 September 2019 (a transfer is provided); Enescu Festival Bucharest, 1–7 September 2019 (p.178); Moscow & St Petersburg, 2–10 September 2019 (p.183). Illustration: Vienna, Josefsplatz, engraving c. 1810.
CELEBRATING MUSIC AND PLACE
Can be combined with Music Along the Danube, 31 August–7 September 2019. Vienna possesses one of the most significant concentrations of great art to be found anywhere in the world. There are Old Master paintings of the highest quality, indigenous early-modern art and design of the highest importance, furnishings and decorative arts from many civilisations, precious regalia and goldwork without peer – and much else besides. This tour includes all of the main art museums and many of the smaller or less-visited ones. There is also more than a passing glance at the most important works of architecture, and the lecturer’s input touches on the fascinating and turbulent history of Austria and her empire. The seat of the Habsburgs, pre-eminent city of the Holy Roman Empire and capital of a vast multinational agglomeration of territories, Vienna is appropriately equipped with magnificent buildings and broad boulevards. But cheek by jowl with grandiloquent palaces and trumpeting churches are narrow alleys and ancient courtyards which survive from the mediaeval city. In Vienna the magnificent mixes with the unpretentiously charming, imperial display with the Gemütlichkeit of the coffee houses. Diversity and delight.
Practicalities
31 AUGUST–7 SEPTEMBER 2019 Nine private concerts of music from the Austro-Hungarian Empire in beautiful and appropriate historic buildings, culminating with Mozart’s last three symphonies. Accommodation is on a comfortable modern ship which has been chartered exclusively for the festival audience. London Winds, Michael Collins, Haydn Philharmonic, Stuart Jackson, Julius Drake, Kristian Bezuidenhout, Wiener Kammerchor, Wihan Quartet, Martin Kasík, Gabrieli, Consone Quartet.
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Daily talks by Stephen Johnson and Professor Sir Richard J. Evans. Opportunity to see some of the loveliest towns and cities in the region and to savour its art and architecture. Alternatively, stay in hotels and combine seven of the concerts with country walks through ravishing scenery, with daily talks by Richard Wigmore. Please contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com/festivals
Opera in Vienna Beethoven, Wagner, Strauss, Handel
23–28 April 2019 (mf 495) 6 days • £3,270 (including tickets to 4 performances) Lecturers: Barry Millington & Tom Abbott At the Staatsoper: Fidelio (Beethoven), Parsifal (Wagner) and Salome (Strauss) with the Vienna Philharmonic. A concert performance of Rinaldo (Handel) at the historic Theater an der Wien.
Based at a venerable and very comfortable hotel perfectly located beside the Staatsoper.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 11.30am from London Heathrow to Vienna (British Airways). Day 2. A talk on the music is followed by a visit to the Hofburg, the sprawling Habsburg palace where we see inter alia the splendid library hall and the imperial apartments. Free afternoon. Evening opera at the Staatsoper: Parsifal (Wagner), Valery Gergiev (conductor), Matthias Goerne (Amfortas), René Pape (Gurnemanz), Simon O`Neill (Parsifal), Boaz Daniel (Klingsor), Elena Zhidkova (Kundry). Day 3. The daily talk precedes a visit to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, one of the world’s greatest art galleries. Then walk through a series
Practicalities
Day 4. A morning walk through the centre of the inner city includes the Stephansdom, the great Gothic cathedral, the Baroque church of St Peter and an apartment where Mozart lived. There is some free time before a lateafternoon talk and an early dinner. Evening at the Staatsoper: Fidelio (Beethoven), Adam Fischer (conductor), Thomas Johannes Mayer (Don Pizarro), Brandon Jovanovich (Florestan), Anne Schwanewilms (Leonore), Lars Woldt (Rocco), Chen Reiss (Marzelline).
Music: tickets (first category) for 4 operas are included, costing c. £740. Tickets are due to be confirmed in Autumn 2018.
Day 5. The daily talk is followed by a visit to the excellent Museum of Applied Arts, especially rewarding for Secessionist (Art Nouveau) furniture and design. Free time is followed by dinner and an evening at the theatre which was built by Emanuel Schikenader in 1801. Opera at the Theater an der Wien: Rinaldo (Handel), Jean-Christophe Spinosi (conductor), Filippo Mineccia (Rinaldo), Dara Savinova (Goffredo), Ekaterina Bakanova (Almirena), Eric Jurenas (Eustazio), Riccardo Novaro (Argante), Emilie Rose Bry (Armida), Ensemble Matheus (orchestra). Day 6. Some free time in the morning before the journey to the airport. The flight to Heathrow arrives at c. 1.30pm.
Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,270 or £2,960 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,610 or £3,300 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine.
Accommodation. Hotel Bristol (bristolvienna. com): 5-star hotel in a superb location on the Ringstrasse near the opera house, traditionally furnished and decorated. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking on this tour, mainly through the town centre where vehicular access is limited. Average distance by coach per day: 5 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Music in Berlin, 17–22 April 2019 (p.93); Mediaeval Sussex & Hampshire, 29 April–3 May 2019 (p.12); Mediaeval Saxony, 29 April–7 May 2019 (p.95). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration: Vienna, Theater an der Wien, a late 19th-century wood engraving after an 1826 copper engraving.
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Productions of the highest quality which tend more towards traditional than innovatory.
of gardens to a restaurant for lunch. Free time afterwards. An evening at the Staatsoper: Salome (Richard Strauss), Michael Boder (conductor), Herwig Pecoraro (Herodes), Jane Henschel (Herodias), Gun-Brit Barkmin (Salome), Markus Marquardt (Jochanaan).
The Schubertiade Music and mountains in the Vorarlberg Day 4. Optional excursion to Hohenhems, a small town nestled under the Schlossberg ‘castle mountain’. A guided tour includes the Renaissance Palace (exterior only) and the former Jewish quarter. Some free time before returning to Mellau for an afternoon lecture. Drive to Schwarzenberg for an afternoon concert with Baiba Skride (violin), Lise Berthaud (viola), Harriet Krijgh (cello), Lauma Skride (piano): Schubert, Adagio & Rondo Concertante for Piano Quartet in F, D487; Suk, Piano Quartet in A minor, Op.1; Brahms, Piano Quartet in A, Op.26. Dinner in Schwarzenberg before an evening concert with Julia Kleiter (soprano), Tara Erraught (mezzo-soprano), Pavol Breslik (tenor), Andrè Schuen (baritone) and Igor Levit (piano): Rossini, Petite Messe Solennelle. Day 5. Morning excursion to Bregenz, the capital of the Vorarlberg on Lake Constance. Begin in the upper town, the picturesque older part, and then continue down to the lower town for a lakeside walk and visit to the local history museum. Return to Mellau in the early afternoon in time to refresh before an afternoon concert with Igor Levit (piano) and Ning Feng (violin): Schubert, Sonata in D, D384, Sonata in A minor, D385 ‘Erlkönig’, Allegretto in C minor, D915, Sonata in G minor, D408. Independent evening in Mellau.
26 August–1 September 2019 (mf 662) 7 days • £3,710 (including tickets to 9 performances) Lecturer: Misha Donat Nine performances; artists include Artemis Quartet, Igor Levit (piano), Ning Feng (violin), Vienna Piano Trio, Helmut Deutsch (piano), André Schuen (baritone), Violeta Urmana (mezzo-soprano). Excursions to surrounding towns and an optional walk led by a local guide.
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The combination of music-making of the highest quality with a pre-Alpine mountain setting is a heady mix. Devotees of the Schubertiade return year after year; addiction is a distinct possibility. Add guided walks and visits in the surrounding area and top up with relaxation among ravishing upland scenery and this begins to sound like the recipe for the perfect holiday. The annual Schubertiade in the Vorarlberg, the westernmost province of Austria, is one of the most prestigious and enjoyable music festivals in Europe. It attracts artists of the highest calibre, while the rural setting and the predominance of Schubertian music create an endearing informality and intimacy. But the festival’s success has not stifled a constant desire for change and experiment, as its periodic peregrinations demonstrate. Having started in the village of Hohenems, it migrated a few years later up the valley to the little town of Feldkirch, which in 2001 it abandoned in favour of mountain villages amidst the beautiful scenery of the Bregenzerwald. The hill village setting has been further refined by confining all the concerts 52
to Schwarzenberg, described by Herder as ‘the prettiest village in Europe’. Our tour is based in the neighbouring village of Mellau, seven miles away.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 12.15pm from London Heathrow to Zurich (British Airways). Drive through Switzerland and into Austria, arriving early evening at Mellau in the lovely upland landscape of the Bregenzerwald. Day 2. Drive down the valley to Feldkirch, a little town built at a narrowing of the valley of the River Ill, with historic buildings, arcaded streets and a network of alleys nestling beneath high limestone cliffs. A guided tour includes medieval defences, town hall and Gothic cathedral (altarpiece by Wolf Huber). Drive to Schwarzenberg for a concert with Artemis Quartet: Tchaikovsky, String Quartet in F, Op.22; Schubert, String Quartet in D minor, D810 ‘Death & the Maiden’. Dinner in Schwarzenberg before an evening Lieder recital with Martin Mitterrutzner (tenor) and Gerold Huber (piano); Schubert, Die Schöne Müllerin. Day 3. Optional morning panoramic walk: Baumgartner Höhe, c. 4km, c.2½ hours and altitude gain is c. 200m. A moderate walk with inclines and terrific views. Take a funicular at the start and end of the walk. There is some free time in Mellau. Drive to Schwarzenberg for an afternoon piano recital with Francesco Piemontesi: Schubert, Four Impromptus, D899; Sonata in D, D850. Dinner in Schwarzenberg before an evening Lieder recital with Violeta Urmana (mezzosoprano) and Helmut Deutsch (piano): selected works by Schubert, Mahler and Strauss.
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Day 6. Morning lecture before driving to Schwarzenberg for a concert with the Vienna Piano Trio: Beethoven, Piano Trio in B, Op.97, ErzherzogTrio; Schubert, Piano Trio in B, D898. Return to Mellau for a free afternoon and dinner in the hotel. Drive to Schwarzenberg for an evening piano recital with Igor Levit: Mendelssohn, Six Songs Without Words; Mahler, Adagio from Symphony No.10; Schubert, Sonata in B, D960. Day 7. Fly from Zurich arriving at London Heathrow c. 4.30pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,710 or £3,530 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,900 or £3,720 without flights. Included meals: 5 dinners with wine. Music: tickets (top category) to 9 performances are included, costing c. £580. Accommodation. Hotel Sonne, Mellau (sonnemellau.com): 4-star hotel, modern and functional with a pleasant atmosphere and very helpful staff. There is a swimming pool and restaurant. All rooms are doubles. How strenuous? There is some walking through towns and over uneven ground. The optional walk is rated 'moderate' (see page 8) and participants wishing to take part should bring appropriate walking footwear. Average distance by coach per day: 55 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Moscow & St Petersburg, 2–10 September 2019 (p.181); Footpaths of Umbria, 2–9 September 2019 (p.145). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport. Illustration: The Vorarlberg (Feldkirch), lithograph c. 1850.
The Schubertiade The music festival with mountain walks 23–29 June 2019 (mf 581) 7 days • £3,590 (includes tickets to 8 performances) Lecturer: Richard Wigmore
Schwarzenberg. Afternoon concert with Apollon Musagète Quartet: Schubert, String Quartet No.1, D18, String Quartet in C, D46, String Quartet in G, D887. Return to Mellau for dinner in the hotel.
Eight performances; artists include Christoph Prégardien (tenor), Renaud Capuçon (violin), Christiane Karg (soprano) and Andrè Schuen (baritone).
Practicalities
Day 7. Free morning, then fly from Zurich arriving at London Heathrow c. 4.30pm.
Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,590 or £3,450 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,780 or £3,640 without flights.
Five country walks in the surrounding mountains, led by an experienced walking guide.
Included meals: 1 lunch and 5 dinners with wine.
Itinerary
Music: tickets (top category) to 8 performances are included, costing c. £520.
Day 1. Fly at c. 9.30am from London Heathrow to Zurich (British Airways). Stop at Winterthur (Switzerland) to see the Old Master and Impressionist paintings of the Oskar Reinhart Collection, beautifully displayed in the collector’s home in woods outside the city. Drive through Switzerland and into Austria, arriving early evening at Mellau in the lovely upland landscape of the Bregenzerwald. Dinner in the hotel restaurant. Day 2. Morning walk to Edelweißhütte, 6 km, 2½ hours. The funicular transports us to 1400m where the morning walk begins. Gentle but persistent climbs with no shade make this a moderately strenuous route, with spectacular views. Midafternoon lecturebefore driving to Schwarzenberg. Afternoon Lieder recital with Christoph Prégardien (tenor) and Michael Gees (piano). Selected Lieder by Schumann and Schubert. Dinner in Schwarzenberg. Evening concert with Gabriel Le Magadure (violin), Raphaël Merlin (cello) and Shani Diluka (piano): Schumann, Adagio & Allegro in A flat, Op.70; Grieg, Violin Sonata in C minor, Op.45; Schubert, Piano Trio in E flat, D897 ‘Notturno’, Piano Trio in E flat, D929.
Day 4. Morning walk: Barfußweg in Bizau, c. 4 km, c. 1½ hours. This is an easy marshland walk along a stream without any height gain. Late afternoon lecture. Evening concert with Renaud Capuçon (violin), Guillaume Chilemme (violin), Adrien La Marca (viola), Edgar Moreau (cello): Brahms, String Quartet in C minor, Op.51 No.1, String Quartet in A minor, Op.51 No.2. Day 5. Morning walk: Auer Ried, c. 6 km, c. 2½ hours. A challenging walk that begins with an ascent of about 45 minutes before continuing through deciduous forest and emerging on to high pasture for wonderful views of the Kanisfluh
mountains and the Argenschlucht waterfall. Return to Mellau for lunch and a lecturebefore driving to Schwarzenberg. Afternoon Lieder recital with Andrè Schuen (baritone) and Daniel Heide (piano): selected Lieder by Schubert. Dinner in Schwarzenberg. Evening concert with Till Fellner (piano): Schubert, Sonata in C minor, D958, Sonata in A, D959, Sonata in B flat, D960. Day 6. Morning panoramic walk: Baumgartner Höhe, c. 4 km, c.2½ hours. A moderate walk with inclines and terrific views. Take a funicular at the start and end of the walk. Return to Mellau for lunch and a lecturebefore driving to
How strenuous? This is a walking tour, graded moderate (see page 8). There are 5 walks, 1 easy, 3 moderate and 1 challenging. It is essential for participants to have appropriate walking footwear, be in good physical condition and to be used to country walking with uphill and downhill content and some walking at altitude. Average distance by coach per day: 55 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Connoisseur's Vienna, 17–23 June 2019 (p.49). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport. Illustration: From ‘The Foreign Tour of Messrs Brown, Jones & Robinson’ by Richard Doyle, Publ. 1854.
Opera in Munich & Bregenz See page 108
Mozart in Salzburg 28 January–3 February 2019 (mf 415) Very few spaces remaining 7 days • £3,765 (including tickets to 8 performances) Lecturer: Richard Wigmore Please contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com Daily attendance at the Mozartwoche, the annual festival celebrating the composer’s work in the town of his birth. An outstanding programme, performed by leading orchestras, chamber groups and soloists. The best-preserved Baroque city in northern Europe in a wonderful alpine setting. Five-star hotel close to the Mozarteum. Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Day 3. Morning walk from Mellau to Dösvorsäß: c. 4.5 km, c. 1½ hours. A moderate, low level walk from the hotel along the Mellen stream that later climbs to enjoy views of the surrounding mountains. Mid-afternoon lecturebefore driving to Schwarzenberg. Afternoon concert with Renaud Capuçon (violin) and David Fray (piano): J.S. Bach, Violin Sonata in E, BWV1016, Violin Sonata in C minor, BWV1017, Violin Sonata in F, BWV1018; Beethoven, Violin Sonata in A, Op.47. Dinner in Schwarzenberg. Evening Lieder recital with Christiane Karg (soprano), Sophie Rennert (mezzosoprano), Mauro Peter (tenor), Andrè Schuen (baritone), Helmut Deutsch (piano) Julius Drake (piano): selected Lieder by Brahms.
Accommodation. Hotel Sonne, Mellau (sonnemellau.com): 4-star hotel, modern and functional with a pleasant atmosphere and very helpful staff. There is a swimming pool and restaurant. All rooms are doubles.
Crécy, Agincourt & Waterloo History, context and battlefield exploration Day 3: Quatre Bras, Ligny. The Wellington Museum is in the inn where the Duke spent the nights before and after the battle. During the day of 16th June some of the scattered allied contingents converged at Quatre Bras, but numerical inferiority led to a well fought defensive engagement and, on the 17th June, an orderly withdrawal admirably screened by cavalry. At the same time a much bigger battle was taking place 7 miles to the East at Ligny where the Prussians were badly defeated by Napoleon; this proved to be his last victory. Day 4: Waterloo. All day is spent walking the battlefield, with stops for talks at key positions. Among the highlights are the farmstead of Hougoumont, held by the Guards throughout the day during the fiercest fighting, and the sweep of terrain across which the British cavalry drove back the advance of the French but exhausted themselves in the process. Also visit the panoramic painting of the battle (1912) and climb the Lion Mound. Finish the day by walking the course taken by Napoleon’s Guards towards the allied lines before they turned and fled in the face of deadly fire and bayonet charges.
25–29 September 2019 (mf 733) 5 days • £1,790 Lecturer: Major Gordon Corrigan A study of three of the most written-about battles in British history, and their remarkably wellpreserved battlefields. Prefaced by visits to Crécy and Agincourt. Led by an outstanding military historian who has published on both periods.
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The Battle of Waterloo in 1815 terminated twentythree years of fighting and ushered in ninety-nine years of relative peace and political equilibrium. Waterloo can also be seen as marking Great Britain’s coming of age as a superpower. The event became absolutely key for British self-identity, epitomising the championship of liberty over tyranny, victory of the weaker over the stronger, and the value of the virtues of courage, composure, discipline and perseverance. Despite its far-reaching consequences, Waterloo was far from being the biggest battle of the Napoleonic Wars, or the bloodiest, or even, in terms of imbalance of casualties, the most decisive. It was not even a particularly British victory – two-thirds of the allied army was German, Dutch and Belgian, and that is without including the Prussians, whose intervention late in the day ensured victory. Much of the enduring fascination of the battle – probably the most written-about in history – derives from these controversies and because it was ‘the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life’. Wellington’s ‘infamous army’, though of similar size to Napoleon’s, contained a high proportion of inexperienced troops and citizen militia, and some who only a year previously had been marching under the imperial eagle. But they 54
stood their ground tenaciously and finished the day in triumph. This was Wellington’s ultimate test, his chance to measure his abilities against Napoleon, whom he had never met in battle before. His generalship proved to be the superior. Amazingly, fortuitously, all three battlefields are very well preserved. Crécy (1346) and Agincourt (1415) were also scenes of British victories over superior French forces and are major ingredients in the fading national myth. But it is not jingoism which brings these three battles together in this tour, but the contingency of geographical proximity – that and their fame. As a trio of events in British (pre-Victorian) history, their combined resonance is unsurpassed. A proper study of the battlefields leaves little room for partiality; ‘Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.’
Itinerary Day 1: Crécy. Take the Eurostar at 11.00am from St Pancras to Lille. Drive south through rolling countryside to the village of Crécy-en-Ponthieu. It was here in August 1346 that an English army commanded by Edward III and the Black Prince inflicted a crushing defeat on a numerically superior French and international force, victory of the longbow over knights in armour. The battlefield has changed little in topography and planting in 650 years. Overnight Montreuil. Day 2: Agincourt. Similarly remote and rural, the little-altered terrain helps explain how Henry V and his exhausted followers brought catastrophe to the much larger French army. However, the traditional national myth and Shakespearean spin veils a more complex and controversial reality. After a brief visit to the visitors’ centre, have lunch in the vicinity before driving across Flemish France and Walloon Belgium to Waterloo. First of three nights in Waterloo.
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Day 5: Plancenoit, Waterloo. Prussian troops entered the village of Plancenoit south of the battlefield and soaked up Napoleon’s reserves; the fighting was so fierce that little of the village survives. Visit the Napoleon museum in the house where he spent the night before the fateful battle. Return to London by Eurostar from Brussels arriving St Pancras c. 6.00pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,790 or £1,600 without Eurostar. Single occupancy: £2,020 or £1,830 without Eurostar. Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Hermitage, Montreuilsur-Mer (hermitage-montreuil.com): 19th-century building converted into a 3-star hotel. Superior bedrooms are of a good size, the décor is modern. Martin’s Grand Hotel, Waterloo (martins-hotels. com): located close to the battlefield, this 4-star hotel is in a converted 19th-century sugar refinery. How strenuous? There is a lot of standing on exposed sites for extended periods of time. There is quite a lot of walking, the Waterloo day having about five miles on foot along country lanes, footpaths and fields. There is a long drive from Agincourt to Waterloo. Average distance by coach per day: 115 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Arts & Crafts, 24 September 2019; Arts & Crafts in the Lake District, 30 September–4 October 2019 (p.31); Pompeii & Herculaneum, 30 September–5 October 2019 (p.153); World Heritage Malta, 30 September–6 October 2019 (p.165); Aragón: Hidden Spain, 30 September–8 October 2019 (p.192). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport. Illustration: watercolour after Sir John Gilbert publ. 1920.
Flemish Painting From van Eyck to Rubens: Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp, Brussels 4–8 September 2019 (mf 678) 5 days • £1,870 Lecturer: Dr Sophie Oosterwijk Immersion in the highlights of Flemish painting in the beautiful, unspoilt cities in which they were created. The main centres of Flemish art: Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp and Brussels. Based in Ghent, which is equidistant to the other places on the itinerary. First-class train travel from London.
Itinerary Day 1: Ghent. Depart at c. 11.00am from London St Pancras by Eurostar for Lille, and from there drive to Ghent. Visit Ghent cathedral to see the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb polyptych by Hubert and Jan van Eyck, one of the greatest masterpieces of Netherlandish painting (undergoing restoration, not all panels are visible at once).
Day 3: Antwerp. The great port on the Scheldt has an abundance of historic buildings and museums and churches of the highest interest. Four of Rubens’s most powerful paintings are in the vast Gothic cathedral, joined for the first time for the first time since dispersal by the French in 1799. The house and studio Rubens built for himself are fascinating and well stocked with good pictures, and the Mayer van der Bergh Museum has a small but outstanding collection including works by Bruegel. Day 4: Bruges. Return to Bruges to see the mediaeval Hospital of St John, now a museum devoted to Hans Memling and contains many of
Dr Sophie Oosterwijk Researcher and lecturer with degrees in Art History, Medieval Studies and English Literature. Her specialisms are the Middle Ages, and the art and culture of the Netherlands. She has taught at the universities of Leicester, Manchester and St Andrews, and lectures at Cambridge. She is co-editor of the journal Church Monuments. See page 260 for all lecturers' biographies.
his best paintings. See the market place with its soaring belfry, Gothic town hall and Basilica of the Holy Blood. Back in Ghent visit the Museum of Fine Arts, principally to see a work by a follower of Hieronymus Bosch. Day 5: Brussels. The Fine Arts Museum in Brussels is one of the best in Europe, and presents a comprehensive collection of Netherlandish painting as well as international works. Take the Eurostar from Brussels to London St Pancras, arriving c. 6.00pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,870 or £1,670 without Eurostar. Single occupancy: £2,110 or £1,910 without Eurostar. Included meals: 3 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel NH Gent Belfort (nhhotels.com): comfortable 4-star hotel, excellently located beside the town hall. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of standing in museums and walking on this tour, often on cobbled or roughly paved streets. It should not
be attempted by anyone who has difficulty with everyday walking and stair–climbing. You will need to be able to carry (wheel) your own luggage on and off the train and within stations. Some days involve a lot of driving. Average distance by coach per day: 55 miles. Group size: between 10 and 20 participants. Combine this tour with: The Heart of Italy, 9–16 September 2019 (p.143); Roman Italy, 9–18 September 2019 (p.147). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport. Illustration: 'The Virgin & Child with Canon van der Paele', wood engraving 1871 after a painting by J. van Eyck.
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One might argue that Western art began in the southern Netherlands. In the context of 40,000 years of human artistic endeavour, painting which gives primacy to the naturalistic depiction of the visible world was an eccentric digression. Yet the illusionistic triad of solidity, space and texture first came together early in the fifteenth century in what is now Belgium, and dominated European art for the next five hundred years. The Flemish cities of Bruges and Ghent were among the most prosperous and progressive in mediaeval Europe. Brussels and Antwerp peaked later, the latter becoming Europe’s largest port in the sixteenth century. All retain tracts of unspoilt streetscape which place them among the most attractive destinations in northern Europe. Jan van Eyck and his brother Hubert stand at the head of the artistic revolution in the fifteenth century. Their consummate skill with the hitherto unexploited technique of oil painting resulted in pictures which have rarely been equalled for their jewel-like brilliance and breathtaking naturalism. The tradition of exquisite workmanship was continued with the same tranquillity of spirit by such masters as Hans Memling in Bruges and with greater emotionalism by Rogier van der Weyden in Brussels and Hugo van der Goes in Ghent, while Hieronymus Bosch was an individualist who specialised in the depiction of human sin and hellish retribution. The sixteenth century saw a greater focus on landscape and a shift towards mannerist displays of virtuoso skill and spiritual tension, although the outstanding painter of the century was another individualist, Pieter Bruegel. A magnificent culmination was reached in the seventeenth century with Peter Paul Rubens, the greatest painter of the Baroque age. His works are of an unsurpassed vigour and vitality, and are painted with a breadth and bravura which took the potential of oil painting to new heights. This tour presents one of the most glorious episodes in the history of art.
Day 2: Ghent, Bruges. With its canals, melancholic hues and highly picturesque streetscape, Bruges is one of the loveliest cities in northern Europe. A major manufacturing and trading city in the Middle Ages, decline had already set in before the end of the 15th century. The Groeninge Museum has an excellent collection by Flemish masters including Jan van Eyck and the Church of Our Lady is home to Michelangelo’s marvellous marble Madonna & Child. St Salvator’s cathedral contains a triptych by Dirk Bouts.
The Western Balkans Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro: history past and present The smaller Bosnian towns on our route (Višegrad, Mostar and Trebinje) have great charm. Kotor – in Montenegro – is a small fortified Venetian port city with a Romanesque cathedral on the shore of a fjord. Visits to the old capital, Cetinje, and the coast will offer insights into Montenegro’s history and strongly independent national character. One particular feature of this journey is that it takes in remote and functioning Serbian Orthodox monasteries that are of exceptional architectural and artistic interest, and include unesco World Heritage sites. This tour is emphatically a journey, with some long days and much driving through hilly terrain. The late-spring and autumn departures will show the magnificent countryside at its best.
Itinerary Day 1: Zagreb. Fly at c. 8.30am (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Zagreb. Lunch is served upon arrival followed by an orientation walk, including a visit to the State Archives. First of two nights in Zagreb (Croatia). Day 2: Zagreb. The westernmost place on this tour, the capital of Croatia ranks with the loveliest cities of Central Europe. Visit the Meštrović Atelier displaying the works of the renowned Croatian sculptor, private viewing of the Golden Hall, the Gothic Cathedral of the Assumption. Walk to the upper town, the Kaptol district, via the bustling market. After lunch there is free time to visit the Modern Art Gallery and Museum of Arts and Crafts. Overnight Zagreb.
13–26 May 2019 (mf 535) 14 days • £4,940 Lecturer: Elizabeth Roberts 14–27 October 2019 (mf 790) 14 days • £4,940 Lecturer: Elizabeth Roberts MAINLAND EUROPE: Bosnia & Herzegovina
A ground-breaking journey through one of the most politically complex and fissiparous yet fundamentally similar regions of Europe. Rural villages, little-visited towns, imposing capitals; magnificent mountainous landscapes; little tourism. Exquisite Byzantine wall paintings in the fortresslike monasteries of Southern Serbia, Ottoman mosques, Art Nouveau architecture. This journey takes us to borderlands where, for much of their history, the South Slavs have been divided by competing empires and cultures. In Serbia, the Nemanjić dynasty flourished from the twelfth until the fourteenth centuries and built monasteries that combined Byzantine and Romanesque influences. But from the early fifteenth century (following the defeat of Prince Lazar in 1389) until the mid-nineteenth century, the Ottoman Turks ruled Serbia, Bosnia and much 56
of Slavonia. Meanwhile, the Habsburg Empire reached south into Croatia, and Venice dominated the cities of the Adriatic coast. The modern politics and structure of the Western Balkans were defined by the Congress of Berlin in 1878; the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, which created the first Yugoslavia; the Second World War, which ravaged the region and gave birth to Tito’s Yugoslavia; and, most recently, the maelstrom of the 1990s and the emergence of the present seven independent states. What are the Western Balkans like now? There has been a major change in the past decade. The capitals and main cities that we shall visit are all lively and welcoming, but each retains a distinct character. Croatia is prosperous and joined the EU in the summer of 2013. Its historic links to Vienna and Budapest can be seen clearly in Zagreb and Osijek. Our other destinations are more complex and multi-layered. Belgrade is historically the extension of a strategic Ottoman citadel overlooking the Danube and Sava. It has fine and varied architecture (including some from the Art Nouveau period) and a cosmopolitan feel. Sarajevo combines mosques, Orthodox churches, squares and kafanas in a mountainous setting. Its troubled history is not far below the surface. Illustration: Kotor, watercolour by W. Tyndale, publ. 1925.
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Day 3: Zagreb, Osijek. Drive through Croatia’s rustic north-eastern region of Slavonia, via lunch at a vineyard, to Osijek. Located on the River Drava amid gently undulating countryside, Osijek is the administrative centre of Slavonia. There is a remarkably unspoilt 18th-century quarter built by the Austrians as their military and administrative headquarters when they pushed back the Turks, with cobbled alleys and fortress walls. Overnight Osijek (Croatia). Day 4: Ilok, Novi Sad. Pass through Vukovar, the Croatian town worst damaged by the 1991 war. Stop near Ilok, a picturesque fortified settlement on a bluff high above the Danube. Cross the river into Serbia and spend the afternoon in Novi Sad. This has a picturesque core with buildings from the 18th century. Onwards and, across the Danube, the massive fortress of Petrovaradin which was pivotal in Prince Eugene’s wars with the Turks. First of two nights in Belgrade (Serbia). Day 5: Belgrade. With its broad avenues and imposing public buildings, Belgrade is unmistakably a capital and instantly recognisable as a Balkan one. After Diocletian divided the Roman Empire in the late third century ad, it became the westernmost stronghold of the eastern portion. Its kernel is a citadel on a hill above the meeting of the Danube and Sava rivers, which holds the record for the number of times it has changed hands between hostile powers. Most of the city’s architecture dates from the late 19th century onwards. Liveliness is
' I could not have hoped for a more informative and erudite lecturer. I learnt so much from her lectures and experience of the countries we visited.' S.T., participant on The Western Balkans in 2018.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £4,940 or £4,750 without flights. Single occupancy: £5,520 or £5,330 without flights.
H U N G A RY S LO V E N I A Zagreb
Virovitica Osijek
CROATIA
ROMANIA Ilok
Novi Sad
Visas: not required for British citizens. Citizens of Australia and the US do not require visas for tourist stays of up to 90 days.
Belgrade
BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA
SERBIA
Sarajevo Višegrad
Kraljevo
Sopoćani
Stolac Trebinje Dubrovnik
c. 100 km
provided by the café culture typical of the Balkans. Overnight in Belgrade. Day 6: Belgrade, Manasija. Free morning in Belgrade. Then begin three days visiting what Serbia does best, mediaeval Orthodox monasteries. Tucked in a wooded valley, Manasija is ringed by surely the highest and stoutest walls of any monastery anywhere, built in the early 15th century in expectation of the inevitable Turkish assault. Frescoes of the highest quality – a late flowering of Byzantine art – survive well. First of two nights in Kraljevo (Serbia). Day 7: Studenica, Sopoćani. This includes a drive through spectacular mountain scenery. We visit two more superb mediaeval monasteries, Studenica and Sopoćani. Both are located in remote and beautiful valleys; both have amongst the finest 13th- and 14th-century Byzantine frescoes to survive anywhere. We stop briefly near the Bosniak town of Novi Pazar in the Sandžak. Overnight Kraljevo.
Day 9: Sarajevo. Famously squeezed by high treeclad hills at the head of a river valley, Sarajevo was founded in the 15th century by the Ottoman Turks in the wake of their steady conquest of the Balkan Peninsula. The various assorted mosques, churches and synagogues highlight the pluralist nature of the city. It is possible to stand where Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand; in the adjacent museum it is strangely moving to see the trousers of the man who started the First World War. Overnight in Sarajevo. Day 10: Mostar. Driving over the mountains that encircle Sarajevo and following the Neretva river, we arrive in Mostar in the late morning. A thriving trading town since Herzegovina came under Ottoman rule in 1482, this is Bosnia-Herzegovina’s
MONTENEGRO Perast Tivat Cetinje ALBANIA
KOSOVO
MACEDONIA
most picturesque town, an open-air museum with narrow cobbled streets and original Ottoman architecture. At its heart is the Old Bridge, shelled until it collapsed in 1993 and rebuilt in 2004. Overnight Mostar (Bosnia-Herzegovina). Day 11: Stolac, Trebinje, Tivat. This is wine country, and after a stop in the quiet Ottoman town of Stolac, lunch is at a winery in Trebinje, the southernmost city of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Walk around the historic walled town and a country market. In the afternoon cross from Bosnia-Herzegovina to Montenegro and descend into the Bay of Kotor. First of three nights in Tivat (Montenegro). Day 12: Kotor, Perast. Kotor nestles at the foot of high hills, a harbour on a sheltered fjord off the Adriatic. This diminutive city retains its fearsome ramparts, much unspoilt streetscape and an astonishing Romanesque cathedral incorporating Roman columns. In the later afternoon drive around the fjord to Perast, perched between towering mountains and the water, with large mansions, mediaeval to Baroque. A short boat ride allows a visit to an island church, Our Lady of the Rock, before lunch on the water’s edge. Overnight Tivat. Day 13: Cetinje, Budva. A mountain drive to Cetinje, which until the end of the First World War was the capital of Montenegro and still retains the echo of uniforms, a royal court and Balkan diplomacy. Visit the Palace of King Nikola, the Art and History Museum and former embassies. In the afternoon visit the historic old town of Budva on Montenegro’s Adriatic coast. Final night in Tivat. Day 14: Tivat. Fly from Dubrovnik, arriving London Gatwick at approximately 1.00pm. Please note that this tour departs from London Heathrow and returns to London Gatwick.
Accommodation. The Regent Esplanade Hotel, Zagreb (esplanade.hr): grand 5-star hotel within walking distance of the city centre. Hotel Osijek, Osijek (hotelosijek.hr/en): modern, comfortable 4-star high-rise hotel on the bank of the river Drava. Hotel Moskva, Belgrade (hotelmoskva. rs): well-located, comfortable hotel built in 1926 with a great deal of character; recently renovated. Hotel Crystal, Kraljevo (hotelcrystal.rs): simple but adequate 4-star with welcoming service; the only acceptable hotel in a region with little tourism. Hotel Europe, Sarajevo (hoteleurope.ba):
Elizabeth Roberts Historian, writer and lecturer, specialising in the Balkans. She is Academic Advisor for the WeidenfeldHoffmann Scholarships Programme, University of Oxford, and former expert witness for the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee on Kosovo and Montenegro. Her books include Realm of the Black Mountain: A History of Montenegro and The Sandžak: A History. See page 260 for all lecturers' biographies. centrally-located 5-star hotel, the best in the city; built in the late 19th century but comprehensively-renovated. Hotel Mepas, Mostar (mepas-hotel.ba/en): comfortable, modern business hotel just a short drive from the historic centre. Regent Porto Montenegro, Tivat (regenthotels.com/regent-portomontenegro): luxurious 5-star hotel located on the shores of the unesco-protected Bay of Kotor. How strenuous? Fitness is essential. There is a lot of walking in the city centres, some of it on uneven ground and up and down steep flights of steps. Though the average distance by coach per day is 65 miles, many roads are slow and mountainous and some travelling days are long. Border crossings may entail minor delays. There are 6 hotel changes. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. In May, combine this tour with: Tuscan Gardens, 6–11 May 2019 (p.139); Rhineland Masterpieces, 7–12 May 2019 (p.105). Or in October, with: Friuli-Venezia Giulia, 7–12 October 2019 (p.123). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
What else is included in the price? See page 6 Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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MAINLAND EUROPE: Croatia
Day 8: Višegrad, Sarajevo. Cross from Serbia to Bosnia-Herzegovina. Stop at the beautiful late16th-century Višegrad bridge before continuing to the capital, Sarajevo (Bosnia-Herzegovina). First of two nights here.
Manasija
Studenica
Mostar
Adriatic Sea
Included meals: 9 lunches, 10 dinners, with wine.
Sailing the Dalmatian Coast Maritime beauty, natural and architectural
20–30 April 2019 (mf 494) 11 days • from £3,740 Lecturer: Dr Ffiona Gilmore Eaves 30 April–10 May 2019 (mf 509) 11 days • from £3,740 Lecturer: Richard Bassett MAINLAND EUROPE: Croatia
One of the most beautiful of Mediterranean coastlines with clear blue water and innumerable islands and inlets. Exclusive charter of a small ship to explore the string of beautiful, unspoilt historic towns. Half each day is spent sailing, the rest is ashore.
Itinerary | 20–30 April Day 1: Split. Fly 9.00am from London Heathrow to Split via Vienna (Austrian Airlines). Board the MS Desire before an introductory walk around Split’s city walls. First of a series of lectures on board before dinner. Moor overnight in Split. Day 2: Šibenik. Early morning departure from Split. Sail northwest to Šibenik, an attractive mediaeval maritime town, with a GothicRenaissance cathedral. The rest of the afternoon is free with the option of a riverboat tour to the Franciscan monastery on the island of Visovac. Moor overnight in Šibenik. 58
Day 3: Zadar. The morning and early afternoon is spent sailing through enchanting coastal scenery to Zadar. Sometime capital of Croatia, the town is well endowed with architecture including a Romanesque cathedral and a circular preRomanesque church. The Museum of Church Art has important Romanesque, Renaissance and Baroque exhibits. Moor overnight in Zadar. Day 4: Trogir. Sail back down the coast and arrive mid-afternoon in Trogir, a delightful little island city with a delightfully restored Old Town and Romanesque cathedral with exceptionally fine sculpture (c. 1240). The 15th-century clock tower and loggia, with its large Meštrović bas-relief, complete the square. Moor overnight in Trogir. Day 5: Split. The core of Split consists of the vast quadrangular palace built by Emperor Diocletian ad 295–305 for his retirement. Particularly well preserved are the colonnaded central court, Temple of Jupiter (now a church), Diocletian’s mausoleum (the cathedral) and the halls of the palace’s substructure. Visit the home and studio of Ivan Meštrović, the great Croatian sculptor (1883–1962), and the Archaeological Museum, with an excellent collection of Roman antiquities. Moor in Split. Day 6: Salona. The once great Roman city of Salona (now Solin, 5km north of Split) affords a unique insight into the last stages of urban life, its walls now encircling a complete ecclesiastical
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quarter. Just outside, the funerary basilica of Manastirine illustrates the emergence of Christian architecture, authority and artistic style after the age of martyrdoms under Diocletian. The afternoon is spent sailing to the island of Hvar. Moor overnight in Hvar. Day 7: Hvar, Vis. Visit the mediaeval walled town of Hvar: narrow streets with Gothic palaces, 15thcentury Franciscan monastery and beautiful 17thcentury arsenal. Some free time before departure in the early afternoon. Arrive in Vis, Croatia’s farthest flung possession and its oldest recorded settlement. Visit the Archaeological Museum with its famous 4th-century bc bronze head of a Greek goddess. Moor overnight in Vis. Day 8: Korčula. Most of the day is spent sailing south-east to the island of Korčula whose history stretches back as far as anywhere in Croatia. Moor in the old town for a guided walk including the magnificent Gothic-Renaissance Cathedral of St Mark with two paintings by Tintoretto. Moor overnight in Korčula. Day 9: Korčula, Slano, Ston. The morning is free for independent exploration of Korčula town. Sail before lunch to Slano, a quiet town on the Pelješac Peninsula, 35km north of Dubrovnik. Travel by coach to Ston, which is surrounded by a series of remarkably well-preserved 14th-century walls, built to protect the saltpans, among the oldest in the Mediterranean. Stay in town for dinner to
sample Croatia’s best oysters and mussels. Drive back to Ston and moor overnight here. Day 10: Dubrovnik. Arrive in Dubrovnik and take the wall walk along the fortifications which are among the most complete, daunting and handsome of any in Europe, rising and falling with the terrain and affording prospects across the rooftops and out to sea. Then explore the city; while a pleasing uniformity was imposed on the façades after the earthquake of 1667, fine mediaeval monastic cloisters survive and two major palaces are Gothic. Moor overnight in Dubrovnik. Day 11: Dubrovnik. Second visit to Dubrovnik: the cathedral, a delightful exercise in Venetian Baroque, possesses an altarpiece by Titian, while the Dominican convent has an excellent collection of Croatian and Italian Renaissance paintings. Free time and independent lunch before leaving for the airport. The flight from Dubrovnik via Vienna (Austrian Airlines)arrives London Heathrow at c. 6.40pm. Please note that weather conditions can be unpredictable and the itinerary is dependent on them. Changes to moorings may need to be made at short notice.
Itinerary | 30 April–10 May The sites and visits are the same as the other sailing, though the order is different. Flights are as follows: Day 1. Fly at c. 11.00am from London Heathrow to Dubrovnik via Munich (Lufthansa).
BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA
Zadar
CROATIA Šibenik Trogir Split Adriatic Sea
Hvar Vis Korčula
c. 50 km
How strenuous? There is a lot of walking in the city centres, some of it on uneven ground, and there are steep flights of steps to be climbed.
Ston
MONTENEGRO
Dubrovnik
What else is included in the price? See page 6
Group size: between 20 and 30 participants.
Illustration, left: Dubrovnik, wood engraving c. 1880. Below: Šibenik, cathedral, watercolour by Walter Tyndale, publ. 1925.
For lecturers' biographies See pages 260–267
Day 11. Fly from Split to London Heathrow via Vienna (Austrian Airlines) arriving c. 6.40 pm.
Practicalities
MAINLAND EUROPE: Croatia
Accommodation. The MS Desire: a first-rate, 20-cabin vessel, launched in 2017. Cabins and bathrooms are finished to a high standard. There is an air-conditioned dining room and a bar. Cabins vary in size according not only to deck but also according to position within the outer curves of the ship’s deck plan. Lower deck cabins: have porthole windows that cannot be opened. There is little difference in size between lower and middle deck cabins. Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,740 or £3,460 without flights. Single occupancy: £4,300 or £4,020 without flights. Main deck cabins: fully opening windows. Price, per person. Two sharing: £4,130 or £3,850 without flights. Single occupancy: £4,300 or £4,020 without flights. Upper deck cabins: spacious with large opening windows. Price, per person. Two sharing: £4,660 or £4,380 without flights. Suite: stands alone on the sundeck, with panoramic views. Price, per person. Two sharing: £5,230 or £4,950 without flights. Included meals: 9 lunches (on board) and 7 dinners (of which six are ashore) with wine.
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Connoisseur’s Prague Art, architecture and design, with privileged access 10–16 September 2019 (mf 691) 7 days • £2,970 Lecturer: Richard Bassett Includes inaccessible and hidden glories as well as the main sights of this endlessly fascinating city. Special arrangements and private visits are major features. Also museum tours with curators. Museums and galleries have been transformed in recent years, and new ones added. Particular focus on art and architecture around the turn of the 19th century. This is an experience of Prague like no other. The capital of Bohemia needs no introduction as the most beautiful city in Central Europe, with plenty to delight the cultural traveller for a week or more. Yet many a façade screens halls and rooms and works of art of the highest interest which can scarcely ever be seen except by insiders. Other fine places are open to visitors but hard to get to. Gaining access to the inaccessible is a major strand of this tour.
Pursuing the private and straying off the beaten track will not be at the expense of the wellknown sights, among which are some of the most fascinating buildings and artworks. But here participants are enabled to focus on the essentials and as far as possible to visit when crowds have subsided. Prague enjoys an unequalled density of great architecture, from Romanesque to modern, but it is the fabric of the city as a whole rather than individual masterpieces which makes it so special. The city has the advantage of a splendid site, a crescent of hills rising from one side of a majestic bend in the River Vltava with gently inclined terrain on the other bank. A carapace of red roofs, green domes and gilded spires spreads across the slopes and levels, sheltering marvellously unspoilt streets and alleys and magically picturesque squares. Though the whole gamut of Czech art and architecture is viewed, the tour has an emphasis on the period from the 1870s to the 1920s. The spirit of national revival and the achievement of independence (in 1918) inspired a ferment of creativity among artists, writers and composers. A bewildering variety of styles drew on earlier Bohemian traditions, led Art Nouveau into highly innovatory directions and pioneered some radical and unique features at the dawn of modernism. Illustration: Prague, Old Town, lithograph by S. Prout 1839.
Another high point in Prague’s history was the fourteenth century, when Kings of Bohemia were also Holy Roman Emperors and the city became one of the largest in the western world. The Gothic cathedral rising from within the precincts of the hilltop Royal Castle is one of the many monuments of that golden age, and the exquisite panel paintings from this era, now excellently displayed in the Convent of St Agnes, are among the chief glories of the city. Subordination within the Habsburg Empire from the sixteenth century curtailed Bohemia’s power but not its wealth or architectural achievements: some of the finest Renaissance buildings in Central Europe arose here. In the eighteenth century, some of the richest landowners of the Baroque age built palaces here. In the city where Mozart had his most enthusiastic audiences and where Smetana and Dvořák reached fulfilment, there is still a rich musical life in a range of beautiful historic opera houses and concert halls. There will be the opportunity to attend performances. The itinerary given below does not list by any means all that you see. Nor does it indicate all the slots for free time, which is necessarily a feature of a tour of such richness and variety.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly from London Heathrow to Prague at c. 9.45am (British Airways). After settling into the hotel, there is a first exploration of the ancient core of the city on the right bank of the Vltava. A dense maze of dazzlingly picturesque streets and alleys converges on Old Town Square, surely the prettiest urban space in Europe, with shimmeringly beautiful façades – mediaeval, Renaissance, Baroque and Art Nouveau. Then a special visit to the Obecní dům (‘Municipal House’) to see the glorious suite of assembly rooms created 1904–12, a unique and very Czech mélange of murals and ornament.
MAINLAND EUROPE: Czech Republic
Day 2. Drive up to Prague Castle for a first visit to this extensive and fascinating hilltop citadel, residence of Dukes and Kings of Bohemia from the 10th century and now of the President. The Old Royal Palace rises from Romanesque through Gothic to Renaissance, the chief glory being the largest stone hall in Europe and its extraordinary vaulting. There follows privileged access to a wonderful sequence of halls not open to the public, dating from the 1570s to the 1930s (state occasions permitting). Visit the cathedral of St Vitus, a pioneering monument of High Gothic, richly embellished with chapels, tombs, altarpieces and stained glass. Return to the Castle District to see the delicately arcaded Belvedere in the Royal Gardens, the finest Renaissance building in Prague. Day 3. Continue the tour of the Old Town Visit the Church of St. James, a Gothic carcass encrusted with Baroque finery after a fire in 1689 and the Gothic Týn church, at the heart not only of Prague but also of Czech history. There follows the 13thcentury Convent of St Agnes, where one of the world’s greatest collections of mediaeval painting is brilliantly installed. A walk in and around 60
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Prague Spring The International Music Festival in Bohemia's capital incredible late-Gothic vaulting, and the Cathedral of St Vitus, a pioneering monument of High Gothic, richly embellished with chapels, tombs, altarpieces and stained glass. Evening opera at the Estates Theatre: Le Nozze di Figaro (Mozart).
Wenceslas Square, threading through a succession of arcades, takes in some outstanding turn-ofthe-century architecture and decoration and early modernist masterpieces. Day 4. See highlights of the New Town by coach. There is a special tour of the National Theatre (1869–83) to which all the leading Czech artists of the time contributed, and a visit to the Schwarzenberg Palace to see a new exhibition of the Czech and European Baroque. Visit the Veletržni (Trade Fair) Palace of 1928 which this year hosts a new exhibition commemorating the 100th anniversary of the founding of the first Czechoslovak Republic. .
Day 4. Visit the Veletržni (Trade Fair) Palace of 1928 which now houses fascinating Czech art of the 19th and 20th centuries and a remarkable holding of modern French art. Free afternoon. Evening concert at the Obecní dům: Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, John Nelson (conductor): works by Berlioz. Day 5. Walk across the 14th-century Charles Bridge, the greatest such structure in Europe, wonderfully adorned with sculptures. In the Lesser Town visit St Nicholas, one of the finest Baroque churches in Central Europe and the Czech Museum of Music, which houses an interesting collection of musical instruments. Evening concert at the Rudolfinum: Boston Symphony Chamber Players, Garrick Ohlsson (piano): works by Haydn, Barber, Brahms.
Day 5. Walk across 14th-century Charles Bridge, the greatest such structure in Europe, wonderfully adorned with sculptures. In the Lesser Town visit St Nicholas, one of the finest of Baroque churches in Central Europe. Walk through a sequence of delightful gardens on the south slope, followed by a visit to the infrequently opened Wallenstein Palace, a rare example of a 1630s residence (now the Senate). Day 6. See the treasures south of the centre by coach, among them St John Nepomuk ‘on the Rock’, a little Baroque masterpiece (rarely accessible), the bizarre phenomenon of Cubist houses and the fortress of Vysehrad, rising high above the river and enclosing a cemetery with the graves of many great Czechs. There is a quick visit to the Prague City Museum to see the extraordinarily detailed model of the city made in the 1830s. A riverside country retreat, Villa Troja is a 17th-century Italianate mansion with a French formal garden. Day 7. Strahov Monastery has commanding views over Prague and two magnificent library halls, which by special arrangement we enter. Then walk down the hill, passing the formidable bulk of the Černín Palace and the delightful façade of the Loreto Church. Drive to the airport for the flight to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 2.45pm.
Practicalities
Included meals: 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Paris, Prague (hotelparis.cz): 5-star hotel built in 1904 that retains the Art Nouveau theme throughout. Comfortable and elegant but not fussy with a good restaurant and café. Very well located in the Old Town close to Obecní dům (Municipal House). How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking, much of it on roughly paved streets, some on inclines. The tour would not be suitable for anyone with difficulties with everyday walking and stairclimbing. Fitness is essential. Group size: between 10 and 20 participants. Combine this tour with: Poets & the Somme, 6–9 September 2019 (p.70). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
A varied programme including performances by the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Chamber Players and Garrick Ohlsson, Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia with Antonio Pappano, as well as one opera: Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro. Stay in the Hotel Paris, comfortable and very wellpositioned in the Old Town. Prague’s celebrated Spring Festival remains one of the most illustrious in Europe and has the added attraction of being set at a time of year when the city is at its loveliest.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 9.45am from London Heathrow to Prague (British Airways). After settling in to the hotel, a private guided tour of the Estates Theatre, where Don Giovanni had its première in 1786. Day 2. Morning walk through the Old Town, a dense maze of streets and squares with buildings of all ages and an exceptionally lovely main square. A visit to the Obecní dům (‘Municipal House’) to see the glorious suite of assembly rooms created 1904–12. Evening concert at the Obecní dům: Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, Jakub Hrůša (conductor): Smetana, Má vlast. Day 3. Drive up to Prague Castle, the extensive hilltop complex, long-time residence of the Dukes and Kings of Bohemia and now the home of the President. Visit the medieval Old Royal Palace, within it the largest stone hall in Europe with
Day 7. Strahov Monastery has commanding views over Prague and two magnificent library halls, which by special arrangement we enter. Then walk down the hill, passing the formidable bulk of the Černín Palace and the delightful façade of the Loreto Church. The flight returns to London Heathrow at c. 2.45pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,110 or £2,970 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,580 or £3,440 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine. Music: tickets (top category) to 4 concerts and 1 opera are included, costing c. £450. Tickets are confirmed in January 2019. Accommodation. Hotel Paris, Prague (hotelparis.cz): 5-star hotel built in 1904 that retains the Art Nouveau theme throughout. Comfortable and elegant but not fussy with a good restaurant and café. Very well located in the Old Town close to Obecní dům (Municipal House). How strenuous? Quite a lot of walking, much of it over rough paveing, some on inclines. The tour would not be suitable for anyone with difficulties with everyday walking and stair-climbing. Group size: between 10 and 21 participants. Combine this tour with: Tuscan Gardens, 6–11 May 2019 (p.139). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport. Illustration: Prague, Cathedral of St Vitus, watercolour by B. Granville Baker, publ. 1923.
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MAINLAND EUROPE: Czech Republic
Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,970 or £2,770 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,510 or £3,310 without flights.
12–18 May 2019 (mf 523) 7 days • £3,110 (including tickets to 5 performances) Lecturer: Professor Jan Smaczny
Day 6. A morning walk in and around Wenceslas Square, threading through a succession of arcades which takes in some outstanding turnof-the-century architecture, decoration and early modernist masterpieces. Free afternoon. Evening concert at the Obecní dům: Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Antonio Pappano (conductor).
Great Houses of the Czech Lands Country houses and town palaces in Bohemia and Moravia Itinerary Day 1: Prague. Fly at c. 10.00am from London Heathrow to Prague and drive to Mělník. Situated on a bluff above the River Vltava and surrounded by vineyards, Zámek Mělník is a charming country house of several periods. The rooms with unrestored 18th-century decoration are outstanding. First of two nights near Liblice. Day 2: Veltrusy, Nelahozeves. Veltrusy is a delightful 18th-century house on an unusual X–plan. Chinoiserie interiors, and one of the Continent’s earliest ‘English’ landscaped parks. The formidable and apparently defensible bulk of Nelahozeves melts in the courtyard into a graceful Italianate dwelling with classical arcades, revealing itself as one of the first monumental Renaissance buildings in the region. A property of the Lobkowitz family, there is a fine collection of pictures and furniture. Overnight Liblice. Day 3: Chlumec, Kačina. Karlova Koruna (‘Charles’s Crown’) at Chlumec nad Cidlinou is a fascinating design by the brilliant if eccentric Baroque architect Santini-Aichel. It was built for the the Kinsky family, to which it was restituted after the collapse of the communist regime. Dating to the early 19th century, Kačina is a fine synthesis of English Palladianism and Continental Neo-Classicism. Fine rooms, remarkable cylindrical library, landscaped park. First of three nights in Brno.
23–31 August 2019 (mf 660) 9 days • £3,090 Lecturer: Dr Jarl Kremeier A selection from one of the densest collections of country houses and town palaces in Europe.
MAINLAND EUROPE: Czech Republic
Prosperous and progressive for most of their history, Bohemia and Moravia were favoured territories for aristocratic estates. Renaissance houses and decoration of the 16th century are a particular delight, Baroque is brilliantly represented, Neo-Classical and Gothic Revival not far behind. The tour can be combined with Music Along the Danube, 31 August–7 September 2019 (page 50). With an exceptional density of great houses, the Czech Republic, comprising the historic provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, is an essential destination for anyone who cares for country houses and town palaces. With variety also being as much a feature as profusion, visitors are invariably surprised and delighted by the riches that are to be seen in the relatively undiscovered countryside beyond Prague. The Middle Ages had an impact on the appearance of some of the houses where incorporation of the masonry of a castellar 62
predecessor affected the present plan or appearance. Reception of Italian Renaissance architecture was precocious, and there are arcaded courtyards of an elegance and scale which are unparalleled elsewhere in Europe. There is also some outstanding decoration of the sixteenth century. Around the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a period of renewal after a time of troubles, there was a veritable mania for building. Houses in rumbustious Baroque styles arose, sometimes sophisticated, often provincial, usually delightful, always impressive. The Age of Neo-Classicism is also handsomely represented. Many parks and gardens succumbed at this time to the fashion for the English landscaped style. Also partly of British inspiration was the Gothic Revival, and the nineteenth century produced a large number of mansions shaped by the spirit of Romanticism. Nearly all the houses retain first-rate furnishings and works of art. On the whole state custodianship has been adequately caring, but since the collapse of Communism a number of properties have been returned to their pre-1948 owners. Every year there are improvements to be seen as growing prosperity allows for restoration and more enlightened curatorship. Natural beauty is also a feature of the tour, with ravishing countryside and a deep rurality which has vanished from much of the rest of Europe.
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Day 4: Valtice, Lednice. Adjoining the Austrian border are two great houses which were the property of the Liechtenstein family from the 13th century to 1945. The redoubtable residence at Valtice is largely of the 17th and 18th centuries, while the house at Lednice is a magnificent Gothic Revival building with outstanding woodwork interiors. Here also are monumental Baroque stables designed by Fischer von Erlach and an extensive park with large-scale follies and pavilions. Overnight Brno. Day 5: Bučovice, Kroměříž. Bučovice is a Renaissance treasure, with a splendid tripletiered arcaded courtyard and stucco interiors of a quality virtually without equal in northern Europe. Kroměříž is a lovely small town which was an episcopal seat. The Bishop’s Palace has a magnificent Rococo hall and other fine rooms as well as an outstanding art collection (Titian’s The Flaying of Marsyas). The 17th-century walled garden with pavilion and immense colonnade is an astounding survival. Overnight Brno. Day 6: Vranov, Jaroměřice. The great house at Vranov, perched above a ravine, was transformed in the 1690s by Fischer von Erlach, greatest of 18th-century Austrian architects. The oval Hall of Ancestors, with frescoes by Johann Rottmayr and views across hills, is one of the finest creations of the Baroque Age. Vast and rambling, the Baroque palace at Jaroměřice has an enormous chapel and fine gardens. Overnight Telč. Day 7: Telč, Jindřichův Hradec, Hluboká. The tiny town of Telč has the loveliest square in Central Europe. The aristocratic residence was rebuilt in phases in the 16th century with arcaded
Walking in Southern Bohemia Castles, country houses and country walking courtyards and a series of halls with richly carved ceilings and decoration which verge on the bizarre. More Renaissance arcades follow at the castle at Jindřichův Hradec; we limit our visit to the interiors of the beautiful garden rotonda. Drive to Hluboká nad Vltavou, our base for two nights. Its white tower visible from afar, Hluboká had mediaeval and Baroque incarnations before the lavish Gothic Revival refurbishment inspired by visits to Britain. Splendid carved wood interiors and a profusion of furniture and works of art. Day 8: Český Krumlov, Kratochvíle. Built up around a bend in the River Vltava, Český Krumlov is an exceedingly picturesque and well-preserved town. The castle looms above –mediaeval in origin, in large part 16th-century, endowed in the 18th century with a hall painted with scenes of a masked ball and a theatre which has survived fully equipped with scenery and costumes. Secluded within a walled garden amid particularly lovely countryside, Kratochvíle is the finest Renaissance villa in the country. Overnight Hluboká. Day 9: Hluboká. Drive to Prague for the flight to London, arriving Heathrow c. 2.50pm. Some of the places on this itinerary require special permission to visit. The order may therefore vary a little from the description above.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,090 or £2,850 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,370 or £3,130 without flights. Included meals: 6 lunches, 6 dinners, with wine.
How strenuous? Quite a lot of walking, some of it up slopes or up steps. To be able to enjoy the tour it would be essential to manage daily walking and stair-climbing without any difficulties. There is also a fair amout of driving. Average distance by coach per day: 87 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Music Along the Danube, 31 August–7 September 2019 (p.50; we provide a private transfer to Passau, where the festival begins); Enescu Festival Bucharest, 1–7 September 2019 (p.178) – we are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration, left: Kačina, aquatint c. 1930 by Tavik Frantisek Simon.
Country walking and architectural history. Undulating countryside, some uphill walks, through woodland of oak, lime and conifer and across meadows and arable land. A variety of castles and country houses and extremely pretty towns and villages. Led by Dr Jana Gajdošová, art historian and lecturer at Cambridge, specialising in the architecture of Central Europe. The beauty of Bohemia is two-fold: exquisite towns and villages, and countryside as beguiling as any in Central Europe. In its southernmost reaches low-lying pastures give way to the foothills of the Šumava mountains on the Austrian border. Walking here delves deep into a gentle landscape, much of it farmland, predominantly arable, even more of it woodland and coniferous forest. Water is a constant with innumerable man-made lakes dating from the Middle Ages and the mighty River Vltava. There are no mountain peaks to scale or deep valleys to traverse. Some views are panoramic, others are snatched in forest clearings, some stretches are enclosed with no vistas at all. Nevertheless, walking here offers an intense experience with its own set of charms. Firstly, solitude: a careful construction of waymarked paths is woefully neglected by walkers, with just the occasional cyclist or mushroompicker to sidestep. Then there is ever-changing texture and colour, through dry and practically alpine forest to low-lying, damp, dark woods;
across maize and wheat farmland to fallow fields and meadows: a paint chart of greens, soft and musty or intense and clean. Finally, the chief focus of the tour: walks into (or away from) buildings and built environments of beauty, charm or magnificence, a sequence of country houses, monasteries, town palaces and castles. The tour is co-led by an art historian and a Czech guide who talks about the recent past. For much of its history, but especially in the sixteenth century, Bohemia was one of the most prosperous regions in Europe. Many of the great magnates of the Habsburg Empire established summer residences here, constantly rebuilding, extending and refurbishing. Reception of Italian Renaissance architecture was precocious, and in the era of Baroque there was a veritable mania for building. Many parks and gardens later succumbed to the fashion for the English landscaped style, and also partly of British inspiration was the nineteenth-century Gothic Revival.
Itinerary Day 1: Hluboká. Fly at c. 9.45am from London Heathrow to Prague. Drive southwards to the Gothic Revival castle at Hluboká, summer home of the Schwarzenbergs, wealthiest landowners in South Bohemia, and richly furnished and decorated. Continue to our neighbouring hotel for the first of three nights. Day 2: Staré Město to Slavonice. A moderate morning walk is mostly flat and begins with wonderful views of unspoiled, hilly countryside marking the boundary of the Czech Republic and Austria: 8 km, c. 2½ hours. Continue through forests of fir and pine, passing defences which the Czech army was obliged to relinquish as a Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Accommodation. Hotel Château Liblice, Liblice (chateau-liblice.com): 4-star hotel and conference centre converted from an 18thcent. country house. Grandezza Hotel, Brno (hotelgrandezza.cz): a newly opened luxury boutique hotel, located in the heart of Brno’s historic centre Green Market. Hotel U Hraběnky, Telč (hotel-uhrabenky.cz): the only usable hotel for many miles around, this 4-star hotel is fairly old-fashioned, if adequately equipped. Hotel Stekl, Hluboká nad Vltavou (hotelstekl.cz): 4-star hotel converted from an auxiliary building belonging to the neighbouring mansion.
18–23 August 2019 (mf 654) 6 days • £2,310 Lecturer: Dr Jana Gajdošová
Walking in Southern Bohemia continued
' Jana was lovely. She is knowledgeable and clearly interested in her specialist subject.' Participant on another of Dr Jana Gajdošová's tours in 2018.
Dr Jana Gajdošová Art historian and lecturer at the University of Cambridge and at Christie’s Education. She obtained her MA at the Courtauld Institute and her PhD at Birkbeck College. Her research interests include late medieval art and architecture, especially in Central Europe, England, Germany and Italy. See page 260 for all lecturers' biographies. consequence of Chamberlain’s acquiescence to Hitler’s demands in 1938. Drive to Samosoly for an easy afternoon walk to the raspberry-pink castle of Cervena Lhota set in the middle of a lake and surrounded by a landscaped park, 3 km, c. 1 hour. Day 3: Jindřichův Hradec, Spolí, Třeboň. Morning visit to Jindřichův Hradec castle with arcades and an exquisite Renaissance rotunda. There is an easy afternoon walk from Spolí to Lake Svet, c. 7 km, c. 2 hours. From the village of Spolí we ascend gently, affording views of the surrounding diverse landscape before entering a pine tree forest to Lake Svet. Visit the Schwarzenberg mausoleum on the edge of the delightful small town of Třeboň and remain here for dinner before returning to Hluboká. Day 4: Krtely, Kratochvíle, Kladné, Český Krumlov. Morning walk from Krtely to Kratochvíle: 3 km, c. 1 hour. An easy walk through
meadows and forest until the Renaissance castle of Kratochvíle gradually appears in the distance. After a visit and lunch, drive to Kladné for an afternoon walk into Český Krumlov: 6 km, c. 2 hours. This is a varied and picturesque, moderate walk of forested hills, carpeted with blueberries and hayfields, through the decaying remains of a Baroque estate into the formal gardens of the castle, from where we capture a first and glorious view of this exceedingly pretty town. First of two nights in Český Krumlov. Day 5: Český Krumlov, Vyssí Brod. Return to the castle on a hilltop above Cesky Krumlov, Mediaeval in origin, with Renaissance and Baroque additions. See the hall, painted with a masked ball. Drive to Vyssí Brod, once a major Cistercian monastery with a 13th-century church. Moderate, circular walk from Vyssí Brod: 6 km, c. 2¼ hours. Skirting the monastery complex, we follow an extremely scenic route via the waterfalls of Menší Vltavice and a neo-Romanesque chapel with lovely views of the Šumava foothills. Day 6: Český Krumlov, Prague. Morning visit of Český Krumlov’s castle theatre, one of the few intact 18th-century theatres to have survived, and the Gothic church of St Vitus. Drive to Prague for the afternoon flight arriving at London Heathrow at c. 6.30pm. Some of the places on this itinerary require special permission to visit. The order may therefore vary a little from the description here. Illustration: Ceský Krumlov, wood engraving c. 1880.
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book online at www.martinrandall.com
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,310 or £2,150 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,450 or £2,290 without flights. Included meals: 4 lunches (including 1 packed lunch) and 5 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Štekl, Hluboká nad Vltavou (hotelstekl.cz): 4-star hotel converted from an auxiliary building belonging to the neighbouring mansion. Hotel Latrán Český Krumlov (latran.hotely-krumlov.cz): small, 4-star hotel near the castle. How strenuous? This is a walking tour, graded easy (see page 8). Of the 6 walks, 3 are easy and 3 are moderate, mostly for their length rather than the terrain. It is essential for participants to have appropriate walking footwear, be in good physical condition and to be used to country walking with uphill and downhill content. Average distance by coach per day: 82 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: King Ludwig II, 26–31 August 2019 (p.107); The Schubertiade, 26 August–1 September 2019 (p.52). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
What else is included in the price? See page 6
Danish Castles & Gardens North Sealand and the Danish Riviera 1–7 July 2019 (mf 607) 7 days • £3,140 Lecturer: Dr Margrethe Floryan Privileged access to royal residences and gardens, some not generally open to the public. Based in Copenhagen and Elsinore (of Hamlet fame), with an excursion by ship to Sweden. Lectures by garden historian Dr Margrethe Floryan, curator at the Thorvaldsen Museum.
Our lecturer, Margrethe Floryan, is curator of Copenhagen’s Thorvaldsen Museum, the creation of the Neo-Classical sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770-1844), and has written books on gardens and garden history.
Itinerary Day 1: Copenhagen. Fly at c. 10.00am from London Heathrow to Copenhagen (British Airways). Walk to Rosenborg Palace, royal residence from the early 17th to the late 18th century in the heart of Copenhagen. It is set in the King’s Garden and contains original furnishings as well as the Crown Jewels and the royal regalia. The garden features lime alleys, historic pavilions and a sunken rose garden. First of three nights in Copenhagen. Day 2: Copenhagen. Walk via Frederiksstaden, a waterfront district built by Frederick V in 1748 to commemorate the tercentenary of his family’s ascent to the throne. Home to many Danish monarchs since the 1760s, Amalienborg is an exceptional complex of four matching Rococo palaces around a public square, the finest of its kind outside France. Christiansborg Palace, on the site of Copenhagen Castle, is seat of the Danish Parliament and is used today for Queen Margrethe’s public audiences and other state events. Overnight Copenhagen. Day 3: Copenhagen outskirts. Situated on the waterfront, the gardens at Hellerup are renowned for their roses and reflect the adoption of British planting schemes of the early 20th century.
Bernstorff Palace is an exquisite mid-18th-century French-inspired manor house, later acquired by the Royal family. Accompanied by the head gardener, we explore the extensive landscaped grounds, with orchards, vines and a historic rose garden, before lunch. Visit the Hermitage in Jægersborg Deer Park, recently restored to its 17thcentury glory, and still used by the Danish court. Overnight Copenhagen. Day 4: Elsinore. Drive along the coast from Copenhagen to Elsinore. Visit the commanding Renaissance castle of Kronborg, long a symbol of Danish power due to its position on the narrow strait between Denmark and Sweden. The newly restored Baroque gardens at Fredensborg Palace (the present royal couple’s favourite) represent the summit of the French tradition in Denmark. The private garden, orangery and kitchen garden are at their peak in July, and we meet the head gardener. First of three nights in Elsinore. Day 5: North Sealand. The Renaissance Frederiksborg Castle was restored after a fire in 1859 and now houses the National Museum of History (500 years of paintings, portraits and furniture). Italian and French influences lie behind the cascades and richly ornamented parterres of the gardens. The Marienlyst Palace and Garden trace their history to the 16th century. Optional visit to the famously beautiful Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk. Overnight Elsinore.
Illustration: Copenhagen, Rosenborg Palace, lithograph c. 1850.
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This is an opportunity to appreciate North Sealand’s natural environment and its architectural highlights, in particular where the two artfully combine in a series of beautiful gardens. A special ingredient of the tour is the opportunity to meet some of those involved in their planning, planting and conservation. Stretching from Copenhagen to Elsinore, thirty-five miles to the westernmost shore of Øresund, the Danish Riviera is celebrated for the quality of its produce (it is also known as ‘Denmark’s kitchen garden’) as well as for its beaches, woodlands and attractive fishing harbours. The region is also home to the country’s greatest royal residences. Their interiors and art collections are as impressive and fascinating as the landscapes and gardens in which they are set. An outward looking attitude is traceable in both Danish architecture and horticulture. Dutch Renaissance, Italian Baroque and French Classicist styles are easily detectable influences in the properties visited. Kronborg, Frederiksborg and Rosenborg castles, built under the patronage of King Christian IV (r. 1588-1648), are cases in point. Scandinavia’s longest reigning monarch pushed through an extensive civic programme that reflected his cosmopolitan outlook and economic aspirations for Denmark, and included the foundation of new towns and ports and the enlargement of the royal shipyards as well as monumental residences for himself. Rosenborg Palace was begun in 1606 as a summer pavilion and stylistically is Dutch in inspiration. A plan of 1649 shows how Renaissance principles also governed the design of the gardens, created both for pleasure and for provisioning the royal household with vegetables, fruit, fish and flowers. Large-scale conservation projects have recently been implemented here, and also at Frederiksborg and Fredensborg, respectively palace and hunting lodge built for Frederik IV (r. 1699–1730). Mile-long lime alleys have been renewed, parterres replanted with historically accurate specimens, fountains and pavilions restored and pathways returned to their original tracery. In contrast to these grandiose schemes, there are more modest and modern gardens too. Given to Copenhagen in 1983 by the shipping magnate A.P. Møller, Amaliehaven is on the site of a shipyard and faces the opera house across the water. Strandpark Hellerup is a public park laid out in 1912 to the pioneering design of G.N.Brandt, Denmark’s leading landscape architect and gardener of the time.
Danish Castles & Gardens continued
Puccini in Copenhagen Turandot and Tosca
Dr Margrethe Floryan Art historian and curator with a PhD in garden history. Studied at the University of Aarhus and the École du Louvre. Author of Great European Gardens: An Atlas of Historic Plans. She has published extensively on art, architecture and landscape design and is Honorary member of the Danish Horticultural Society. See page 260 for all lecturers' biographies. Day 6: Sofiero (Sweden), North Sealand. Take the ferry between Elsinore and Helsingborg to visit Sofiero Palace, which for more than a century was one of the Swedish Royal family’s country mansions. The garden has more than 500 rhododendron varieties. Free afternoon in Elsinore, which became rich from taxes on shipping, as the medieval churches and convents testify. Opened in 2014, the shipyard has been transformed by Bjarke Ingels Group as a cultural complex including a Maritime Museum. Overnight Elsinore. Day 7: Copenhagen. Drive back to Copenhagen. The view from Frederiksberg Palace stretches over the sea. Italian Mannerist villas are the source of inspiration for the layout of this early 18th-century royal palace, but a century later the scheme also accommodated winding waters, meandering paths and Classical and Chinese garden pavilions, to which we have special access. Some free time in the afternoon, perhaps to explore the garden of the Royal Danish Horticultural Society. Return to Heathrow c. 7.30pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,140 or £2,950 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,600 or £3,410 without flights.
MAINLAND EUROPE: Denmark
Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Phoenix Copenhagen (phoenixcopenhagen.dk): traditional 4-star hotel close to the Amalienborg Palace. Beach Hotel Marienlyst (marienlyst.dk): comfortable and contemporary 4-star hotel. Rooms have sea views. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking and standing in historic properties and gardens. Average distance by coach per day: 21 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Dutch Painting, 26–29 June 2019 (p.168); Glyndebourne & Garsington, 27–30 June 2019 (p.28); Interwar Interiors, 8 July 2019; Gastronomic West Country, 8–14 July 2019 (p.30). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
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30 May–2 June 2019 (mf 555) 4 days • £2,160 (including tickets for 2 performances) Lecturer: Dr John Allison Two performances at Copenhagen’s extraordinary new opera house: Puccini’s Turandot and Tosca. Private tour of the opera house and a walk in the historic centre with a local guide. Free time for rest before the performances or to sample the city’s outstanding museums.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 2.05pm from London Heathrow to Copenhagen (Scandinavian Airlines). There is time to settle into the hotel before dinner. Day 2. Start with a lecture on this evening’s performance. A walk passes the Amalienborg, an ensemble of 1750s palaces, the English church, Gefion Fountain, the Little Mermaid, bastions of the Kastellet and the opera house. In the afternoon travel by coach for the opportunity to visit one of the city’s finest art collections (self-guided): the Statens Museum for Kunst, the National Gallery of Denmark, which holds an extensive selection of Danish art from the Golden Age to the present day and a fine collection of European Old Masters. Evening performance at the Copenhagen Opera House: Turandot (Puccini), Alexander Vedernikov (conductor), Lorenzo Fioroni (director), Ann Petersen/Katrin Kapplusch (Turandot), Sung Kyu Park (Prince Calàf), Sine Bundgaard (Liù), Sten Byriel (Timur), Palle Knudsen (Ping), Gert Henning-Jensen (Pang), Jens Christian Tvilum (Pong), Simon Duus (A Mandarin).
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Day 3. Lecture on the evening’s opera. Cross the water by boat for a private tour of the opera house. Free afternoon. The National Museum is recommended or one of the city’s many other museums and galleries. Evening opera: Tosca (Puccini), Jun Märkl/Robert Houssart (conductor), Peter Langdal (director), Maria Pia Piscitelli (Floria Tosca), Niels Jørgen Riis (Mario Cavaradossi), Jens Søndergaard (Baron Scarpia), Kyungil Ko (Cesare Angelotti), Sten Byriel (A Sacristan), Jens Christian Tvilum (Spoletta), Martin Vilbrand (Sciarrione). Day 4. In the morning we suggest a visit to the Rosenborg Palace, royal residence from the 17th century, or one of the city’s many museums. Fly to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 5.30pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,160 or £1,990 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,470 or £2,300 without flights. Included meals: 3 dinners with wine. Music: tickets for 2 operas are included in the tour price, costing c. £215. Accommodation. Phoenix Copenhagen (phoenixcopenhagen.dk): traditional 4-star hotel close to the Amalienborg Palace. How strenuous? We reach the opera house on foot and by boat. Participants need to be fit enough to manage this, as well as the city walks, and to cope easily with stair-climbing. Average distance by coach per day: 5 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
Photograph: Copenhagen Opera House,©Royal Danish Opera.
Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania History of the Baltic nations 21 July–3 August 2019 (mf 628) 14 days • £4,170 Lecturer: Neil Taylor Three countries with different languages, diverse histories and distinct cultural identities. An extensive legacy from eras under German, Polish, Swedish, Russian and Soviet rule. The focus of the tour is history, politics and general culture, rather than art and architecture.
Day 4: Tartu (Estonia). Drive through a gently undulating mix of woodland and fertile fields, with traditional vernacular farmsteads. Tartu is in some ways the cultural capital of Estonia, the university having been founded in 1632. There are fine 18th- and 19th-century buildings, especially the town hall and university, and there is a visit to the restored Jaani church. First of two nights in Tartu. Day 5: Lake Peipsi (Estonia). Drive to the shores of Lake Peipsi and visit Alatskivi, Raja and Kolkja, all villages which provided refuge for the Old Believers, persecuted for their disaffection with the Orthodox Church. Return to Tartu via the recently re-opened Estonian National Museum. Day 6: Cesis (Latvia). Enter Latvia travelling through hilly landscape renowned for its beauty. Cesis is an historic and well-preserved small town with church and ruined castle. First of three nights in Riga. Day 7: Riga (Latvia). Explore Latvia’s capital on foot. The Art Nouveau district is a residential quarter of grand boulevards, with classical, historicist and outstanding façades. Within the extensive Old Town there are mediaeval streets, Hanseatic warehouses, Gothic and Baroque churches and 19th-century civic buildings. There are visits to the Menzendorff House, a restored merchant’s house and now a museum, Gothic St Peter with its distinctive tall spire and the cathedral, which is the largest mediaeval church in the Baltic countries.
Day 9: Rundale (Latvia), Kaunas (Lithuania). Rundale was one of the most splendid palaces in the Russian Empire, built from 1736 by Rastrelli for a favourite of Empress Anna. Lunch is in the palace restaurant. Lithuania is entered via the town of Bauska and there is a stop in Kedainiai to visit the regional museum. First of two nights in Kaunas. Day 10: Kaunas. A diverse historic town with a wealth of architecture. Near the central square are a number of churches and a museum dedicated to Lithuanian folk instruments. The Ciurlionis Art Museum has works of Lithuania’s most famous composer and artist. Other afternoon visits include the Resurrection Church and the neoBaroque Synagogue. Day 11: Pazaislis, Vilnius (Lithuania). At Pazaislis is a magnificent Baroque nunnery and pilgrimage church, one of the architectural gems of Eastern Europe. Continue to Vilnius which, far from the sea, has the feel of a Central European metropolis, with Baroque the predominant style. Afternoon walk to the bishop’s palace (now the Presidential Palace), the university, and the Church of St John. First of three nights in Vilnius.
Illustration: Tallinn, from Castle Hill, 20th-century etching.
Tallinn
Lahemaa National Park
La
Pe i
ESTONIA
MAINLAND EUROPE: Estonia
Baltic Sea
psi
Itinerary
Tartu
Day 1: Tallinn (Estonia). Fly at c. 10.15am (Finnair, Nordic Regional Airlines) from Heathrow to Tallinn via Helsinki. First of three nights in Tallinn. Day 2: Tallinn. The upper town has a striking situation on a steep-sided hill overlooking the Baltic Sea with views over the city. Among the mediaeval and classical buildings are the Toompea Palace (Parliament), Gothic cathedral and late 19th-century Russian cathedral and the 15thcentury town hall (subject to closure in case of state functions). Continue through the unspoilt streets of the lower town with its mediaeval walls, churches and gabled merchants’ houses and see the church of the Holy Ghost and the City Museum. Visit St Nicholas, a Gothic basilica with a museum of mediaeval art.
Day 8: Riga. A drive via the market, formerly Europe’s largest, situated in five 1920s Zeppelin hangars, followed by a visit to the fascinating outdoor museum of vernacular buildings. Free afternoon in Riga; possibilities include the Occupation Museumor the Jewish Museum.
ke
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania: the regaining of independence in 1991 by these three countries was a happy outcome of the demise of the Soviet Union. Of all the fragments of that former superpower, the Baltic countries have perhaps the brightest future and the least clouded present. Though geographical proximity leads the countries to be conventionally thought of together as a single entity, the degree of difference between them is surprisingly great in terms of ethnicity, language, historical development and religion. The Estonians are of Finno-Ugric origin and their language has nothing in common with their Latvian or Russian neighbours. Lithuanian history has for much of the post-mediaeval era been linked with Catholic Poland, whereas Estonia and Latvia were early recipients of Protestantism. In the eighteenth century these states succumbed to the bear-hug of the Russian Empire – and only after the First World War did they achieve full independence. In 1940, with the annexation by the Soviet Union, they once more fell under Russian rule. Between 1941 and 1944 they had the additional suffering of the German Occupation. Yet the Baltic States were always among the most prosperous and liberal of the Soviet republics, and among the most independent-minded. Surprise ranks high among the responses of the visitor now – surprise that there is so much of interest and beauty, and surprise that the Iron Curtain was indeed so opaque a veil that most of us in the West could remain so ignorant of these countries and their heritage. Surprise, perhaps, that on the whole the region functions with considerable efficiency and sophistication.
Day 3: Lahemaa National Park (Estonia). Drive east into an area now designated as a national park. The charming manor houses of Palmse and Sagadi have full 18th-century classical dress disguising the timber structure. Lunch is in a roadside inn, with wooden buildings – a former postal service station on the road to St Petersburg.
Cesis Riga
LATVIA
Rundale
LITHUANIA Kaunas c. 50 km
Pazaislis
BELARUS
Vilnius
POLAND
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Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania continued
Opera & Ballet in Helsinki Massenet and Delibes
Neil Taylor Leading expert on the former Communist world. He read Chinese at Cambridge and has worked in tourism in China, the USSR and many developing countries. His latest publication is Estonia: A Modern History. Others include The Bradt Guide: Estonia,The Bradt Guide: Baltic Cities and A Footprints Guide to Berlin. See page 260 for all lecturers' biographies.
Day 12: Vilnius. Walk to the Gates of Dawn, the Carmelite church of St Theresa, the former Jewish ghetto, the cathedral and the exquisite little Late-Gothic church of St Anne. Visit the church of Saints Peter and Paul with outstanding stucco sculptural decoration and the newly restored Grand Dukes’ Palace. Day 13: Vilnius. Visit the Church Heritage Museum and Kazys Varnelis House Museum, an eclectic private collection of art and maps. In the afternoon visit the Vytautas Kasiulis Museum and there is some free time; suggestions include the Genocide Museum, Vilnius Picture Gallery or the Theatre and Music Museum. Day 14: Vilnius. Fly from Vilnius to London Heathrow, via Helsinki, arriving at c. 3.15pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £4,170 or £3,690 without flights. Single occupancy: £4,590 or £4,110 without flights. Included meals: 5 lunches, 8 dinners, with wine.
MAINLAND EUROPE: Estonia, Finland
Accommodation. Hotel Palace, Tallinn (tallinnhotels.ee/hotel-palace-tallinn): comfortable 4-star hotel on the edge of the old town. London Hotel, Tartu (london.tartuhotels.ee): modern, centrally located 4-star hotel with a good restaurant; décor is quite bright. Radisson Blu Ridzene, Riga (radissonblu.com): 5-star hotel though more akin to a 4-star, well-located with views over the park. Hotel Daugirdas, Kaunas (daugirdas.lt): 4-star 19th-century mansion with modern features. Novotel Vilnius Centre (novotel. com): plain but comfortable 4-star chain hotel in a good location on the edge of the old town. How strenuous? This is a long tour with four hotel changes and some long coach journeys. There is a lot of walking, some of it on cobbled or roughly paved ground. Average distance by coach per day: 56 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
What else is included in the price? See page 6 68
27 February–2 March 2019 (mf 461) 4 days • £1,810 (including tickets to 2 performances) Lecturer: Dr Michael Downes Two performances in Helsinki’s magnificent bayside opera house. Massenet’s fin de siècle love story in a production described as ‘a luxurious visual feast.’ One of the greatest nineteenth-century ballets, Delibes’ Sylvia, with the spectacular choreography of John Neumeier. We include a private tour of the opera house and a city walk with a local guide. Time is allowed for Helsinki’s outstanding museums.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 10.20am (Finnair) from London Heathrow to Helsinki. A guided tour of Aalto’s Finlandia Hall (1961–75), a concert and event space celebrating nature and light. There is time to settle into the hotel before dinner. Day 2. Morning lecture on this evening’s performance, followed by a walk through the Neo-Classical heart of the city: Senate Square, the domed cathedral and the colourful Market Square by the old harbour. Free afternoon; recommended is the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art. Dinner before the performance at the Finnish National Opera: Thaïs (Massenet), Patrick Fournillier (conductor), Nicola Raab (director), Marianne Fiset (Thaïs), Warwick Fyfe (Athanaël), Mika Pohjonen (Nicias), Iida Antola (Crobyle), Elli Vallinoja (Myrtale), Jyrki Korhonen (Palémon), Jeni Packalen (Albine).
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Day 3. The day is free until an afternoon lecture. Drive to the Finnish National Opera for a private guided tour followed by dinner and an evening ballet: Sylvia (music by Delibes), John Neumeier (choreographer), Garrett Keast (conductor). Day 4. In the morning visit the Ateneum, Finland’s foremost art museum, which houses a collection of brilliant National Romantic pictures. Continue by coach to the airport and fly to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 3.15pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,810 or £1,680 without flights. Single occupancy: £1,990 or £1,860 without flights. Included meals: 3 dinners with wine. Music and ballet: first-category tickets to 2 performances are included, costing c. £230 in total. Accommodation. Hotel Haven, Helsinki (hotelhaven.fi): boutique hotel near the harbour. How strenuous? Participants need to be fit enough to manage the city walk and to cope easily with stair-climbing. Average distance by coach per day: 13 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Civlisations of Sicily, 4–16 March 2019 (p.161). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration: Helsinki, steel engraving c. 1850.
Savonlinna Opera Rossini and Mozart
The Sibelius Festival
22–25 July 2019 (mf 629) 4 days • £2,160 (including tickets to 2 performances) Lecturer: Dr John Allison
August 2019 Full details available in November 2018 Please call us to register your interest, or e-mail alerts@martinrandall.co.uk
Two operas at the renowned Savonlinna Opera Festival: Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia and Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail.
Begin in Helsinki with a night at the Hotel Kamp before moving to the lakeside town of Lahti. Concerts are interspersed with visits associated with Sibelius and National Romanticism.
Productions here are musically and dramatically first-rate, in the incomparable setting of a mediaeval castle on an island. Savonlinna is a pleasant, small town amidst the unassertive beauty of lakeland Finland.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 10.20am from London Heathrow to Helsinki (Finnair) and drive on to Savonlinna. Day 2. After a morning lecture, take a boat through beautiful lakeland scenery. In the afternoon, visit the castle of St Olaf at Savonlinna by guided tour. Evening opera: Il barbiere di Siviglia (Rossini), Frédéric Chaslin (conductor); soloists include Laura Verrecchia, Ville Rusanen, Alexey Tatarintsev, Raffaele Raffio, Shavleg Armasi, Päivi Pylvänäinen, Joonas Asikainen.
Day 3. Visit the Punkaharju nature reserve and the Finnish Forest Museum. In the afternoon, drive to Kerimäki, the largest wooden church in the world (1840s). Evening opera: Die Entführung aus dem Serail (Mozart), Kalle Kuusava (conductor); soloists include Elena Gorshunova, Claire de Sévigné, Jussi Myllys, Jonathan Winell, Petri Lindroos, Sebastian Wirnitzer. Day 4. Drive from Savonlinna to Helsinki and fly to London, arriving at Heathrow at c. 6.00pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,160 or £1,950 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,440 or £2,230 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 3 dinners with wine.
MAINLAND EUROPE: FINLAND
A massive structure of rough-hewn granite rising from a rocky islet, the castle at Savonlinna is the largest in Scandinavia. It was built in 1475 and frequently re-fortified during the next three centuries, for this was border country: Nordic occupancy alternated with Russian until modern times. Opera has been performed here in the courtyard since 1912, so it even pre-dates Verona as a festival in a spectacular historic setting. During the last couple of decades its artistic achievements have placed this festival among the best in the world, yet its unlikely and rather inaccessible location keeps the number of international visitors well below what it deserves. The courtyard is backed by a starkly beautiful wall of rough mediaeval masonry: its huge gateway and precipitous staircase make a wonderful setting for productions of operas. Musically, the acoustically-designed temporary roof allows both intimate scenes and vast choral ensembles to sound at their best. In all three performances, the Savonlinna Festival Orchestra and Choir – picked from among the best instrumentalists and singers in Scandinavia – will have the greatest opportunities to show their strength. The lake district of eastern Finland is an area of gently beguiling beauty. Thousands of interconnected lakes meet forests of birch and pine at an incredibly convoluted shoreline, the pattern varied with scattered patches of pasture and arable land neatly arranged around timber farmsteads. The scenery and pure air provide a restful and refreshing foil to nights at the opera. Visits include a guided tour of the castle at Savonlinna; a boat trip through beautiful lakeland scenery; a visit to the Punkaharju nature reserve and the Finnish Forest Museum; and the largest wooden church in the world (1840s) in Kerimäki.
Sibelius’s compositions are among the greatest and most universally appreciated achievements of western music. While displaying a range of stylistic influences, they are nevertheless highly original and distinctive, and are rooted in a passion for nature and a sense of the endurance of the human spirit. Sibelius was also one of the most place-specific of composers. His main literary influences were Nordic, particularly the Kalevala, the great Finnish national epic, and the landscapes which moved him so intensely are the forests and lakes of central Finland. He lived through and gave expression to the period of National Romanticism when Finland rebelled against Russian poli/ cal and cultural dominance and emerged as an independent nation in 1917. The small lakeside city of Lahti has hosted the festival annually since 2000 with performances taking place in the stunning timber concert hall, renowned for both design and acoustics. Our nights there are preceded by a night in Helsinki, staying at Sibelius’s preferred Hotel Kamp, in order to set the National Romantic scene.
Music: tickets for 2 performance are included, costing c. £315. Accommodation. Sokos Hotel Seurahuone (sokoshotels.fi): located by the lake in Savonlinna, this functional hotel is the best in town. It is basic but adequately equipped and with modern facilities. All rooms (including rooms for single occupancy) have twin beds. How strenuous? Access to the castle and the forest walk would be difficult with impaired walking. Average distance by coach per day: 14 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Opera in Munich & Bregenz, 28 July–3 August 2019 (p.108). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration: Savonlinna, St Olav, 18th-century engraving.
Illustration: Jean Sibelius, lithograph c. 1900.
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Poets & The Somme Poetry of the Great War in battlefield context Day 2: Beaumont Hamel, Mesnil, Thiepval. Explore to the north of the Albert to Bapaume Road. Start at Beaumont Hamel and visit Newfoundland Park for an introduction to the trenches through the poetry of Richard Aldington, Robert Graves and John Edgell Rickwood. Move along the line through Auchonvillers, along the Ancre Valley, with Edmund Blunden, Wilfred Owen and A. P. Herbert. At Thiepval is the Memorial to the Missing, the most monumental of the many Great War memorials, which bears over 72,000 names. Today’s poems include Dulce et Decorum est by Wilfred Owen, Binyon’s For the Fallen and, at Thiepval, Charles Sorley’s When you see the millions of the mouthless dead / Across your dreams in pale battalions go.
6–9 September 2019 (mf 673) 4 days • £1,480 Lecturer: Andrew Spooner First World War poetry in the context of the Battle of the Somme. A presentation of the poetry through a study of events, landscapes and the wartime lives of individual poets. An actor reads the poems. Led by military historian Andrew Spooner.
MAINLAND EUROPE: France
Blending history and poetry, this tour reveals the true landscape of war: locations, topography, events, but also hope, fear, anger, pain and love, all viscerally manifest in the poetry of the First World War. The opening day of the Battle of the Somme, 1st July 1916, is taken as the starting point for the tour, with an exploration of the front line area and a study of the events of that day and subsequent weeks. A sprinkling of poetry from 1914 and 1915 adds to the modern contextual understanding of the enormous sense of loss. During 1917 and 1918, other war poets became embroiled in later battles and their poetry will be placed into context on ‘the old 1916 battlefield’. This leads on to a wider examination of the nature of trench warfare and of the course of the war as a whole. Much has survived: trenches, shell holes and mine craters. The tangible remains of warfare and the pattern of cemeteries are now woven into the fabric of the modern landscape. What sets this tour apart is the parallel exploration of the lives of those regular soldiers, volunteers and civilians who bequeathed to us the most emotionally potent body of poetry in English literature. This is not an exercise in literary analysis, however, but poems are placed in the context of the battlefield and of the lives (and deaths) of the many and varied individuals who wrote them. 70
Led by the military historian who devised the tour, Andrew Spooner, it is also accompanied by an actor who reads the poems – sometimes at the site where they were composed (often identifiable to within a few yards), sometimes at the scene of the poet’s grave, sometimes at the place of his death or disappearance. The tour is very much ‘in the field’ with a series of short walks on each day, averaging from a few hundred metres to a maximum distance of 1.5 miles, and set to follow the events on particular sections of the front line. The fourteen miles of front line are neatly divided by the Roman road from Albert to Bapaume. Poets whose works are included are (in alphabetical order) Richard Aldington, Lawrence Binyon, Edmund Blunden, Vera Brittain, Richard Budworth, Eleanor Farjeon, Wilfrid Gibson, Robert Graves, Sir Alan P. Herbert, William Noel Hodgson, Roland Leighton, Wilfred Owen, Margaret Postgate Cole, John Edgell Rickwood, Isaac Rosenberg, Siegfried Sassoon, Alan Seeger, Charles Sorley, Edward Thomas, May Wedderburn Cannan, Arthur Graeme West.
Day 3: Longueval, Mametz, Fricourt. Visit the area south of the Albert to Bapaume Road where some battalions were more successful and gained their objectives on the first day, before the arduous struggle of attrition moved into the ‘Horseshoe of Woods’. The site of Siegfried Sassoon’s HQ dugout is near the village of Fricourt, ‘while time ticks blank and busy on their wrists’. At Mametz, on William Noel Hodgson’s ‘familiar hill’, read Before Action: ‘Must say goodbye to all of this / By all delights that I shall miss, / Help me to die, O Lord.’ Day 4: Contay, Louvencourt, La Boisselle. Stray behind the lines, visiting areas associated with the Casualty Clearing Stations. Louvencourt for Vera Brittain and Roland Leighton, and Contay as an appropriate location for the choice of women’s poetry, May Wedderburn Cannan and Margaret Postgate Cole. At La Boisselle, astride the Roman road, follow the fortunes of two battalions of the 34th Division. The poetry of Wilfred Owen, Edward Thomas and Alan Seeger features (I have a rendezvous with death). Final lunch before driving to Calais for the Eurotunnel journey home, arriving in central London at c. 7.30pm. Eurotunnel crossings are subject to confirmation a few months in advance. If we are unable to secure a space on our preferred crossings, we may need to take a ferry between Dover and Calais instead.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,480. Single occupancy: £1,630.
Itinerary
Included meals: all meals, with wine.
Day 1: Pozières, Agny. Travel by coach at 9.00am from central London to Folkestone for the 35-minute Eurotunnel crossing. Continue by coach, arriving in the field mid-afternoon. Drive the length of the front line for an initial orientation of the Somme battlefield, identifying the exact positions of the opposing trenches. The lecturer gives an introduction at the windmill site at Pozières, the highest part of the battlefield. Visit Agny Military Cemetery for poetry by Edward Thomas and Eleanor Farjeon. Continue to the hotel in Arras.
Accommodation. Hôtel de l’Univers, Arras (univers.najeti.fr): traditional 4-star hotel, installed in a 17th-century building; good restaurant. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of standing around and walking on this tour, most of it over rough ground. Some days involve a lot of driving. Average distance by coach per day: 143 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Connoisseur's Prague, 10–16 September 2019 (p.60). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Crécy, Agincourt & Waterloo See page 54
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Illustration: wayside crosses, photograph 1916.
Mediaeval Upper Normandy Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance 20–27 May 2019 (mf 540) 8 days • £2,460 Lecturer: John McNeill
Day 5: Varengeville, Dieppe, Pays de Bray. Drive out to the Channel coast, starting with the rangy parish church at Varengeville, arrestingly sited on a cliff overlooking the Côte d’Albâtre, then descending into Dieppe, home to one of the really great parish churches of northern France. Gentle afternoon winding our way through the Pays de Bray via the luminous and beautiful Renaissance church at Arques-La-Bataille, Bures and Neufchatel-en-Bray.
Superb examples of Romanesque and Gothic. Architecture, together with mediaeval sculpture and stained glass. Leisurely drives through the beautiful landscapes of the Seine Valley.
Itinerary Day 1: Mantes, Rouen. Travel by Eurostar (Standard Premier) at c. 10.30am from London St Pancras to Paris, and by coach to Mantes, home to the French royal collegiate church of NotreDame. Transfer by coach to Rouen where all seven nights are spent. Day 2: Rouen. Unquestionably the greatest city of Normandy, and one which retains enough
Day 7: Saint-Germer-de-Fly, Beauvais. Drive to St-Germer-de-Fly, a Benedictine abbey with an early Gothic church to which a delightful quasi-freestanding Lady Chapel was added in the manner of the Sainte Chapelle. Rest of the day in Beauvais, whose breathtakingly audacious cathedral choir has lost little of its power to thrill. Indeed, no description of French Gothic is complete without it. Day 8: Écouis, Gisors. Brief stop at Écouis to see the stunning 14th-century sculpture that still embellishes the church, before continuing to Gisors, the old capital of the Normandy Vexin. Visit the magnificent castle and 16th-century church. Drive on to Paris and return by Eurostar to London St Pancras arriving at c. 7.45pm.
Practicalities of its historic fabric to rank among the most architecturally enthralling cities of northern Europe. Visits include the wonderfully inventive cathedral, the Palais de Justice, the Musée des Antiquités and the important late Gothic churches of St-Ouen and St-Maclou. Day 3: Caudebec-en-Caux, Fécamp, Jumièges, Boscherville. Drive along the Seine to Caudebecen-Caux to see the virtuosic parish church of Notre-Dame and on to the great ducal monastery of La Trinité at Fécamp. The afternoon is spent at the peerless ruined abbey of Jumièges, one of a handful of buildings which might be said to mark the arrival of mature Romanesque architecture in Europe and finally, the altogether more intimate spaces of St-Martin-de-Boscherville. Day 4: Evreux, Conches-en-Ouche, Bernay. Evreux’s diocesan museum was recently beautifully refurbished and now houses both the exquisite 13th-century shrine of St-Taurin and the English alabaster retable of St George from La Celle. We will follow this with visits to Evreux’s variously Romanesque and Gothic cathedral along with the gloriously ramshackle monastic church of St Taurin. The afternoon will take in Conches-en-Ouche, famed for its late mediaeval and early Renaissance stained glass and Bernay the essential starting point for an understanding of Norman Romanesque.
Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,460 or £2,320 without Eurostar. Single occupancy: £2,820 or £2,680 without Eurostar. Included meals: 5 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Mercure Centre Cathédrale, Rouen (accorhotels.com): modern 4–star hotel in the historic centre of Rouen, a few minutes walk from the cathedral. How strenuous? The tour involves a lot of walking, some on roughly paved streets, and a fair amount of standing around. You need to be able to carry your luggage on and off the train and within the stations. On some days there is a lot of coach travel; average distance per day: 80 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Courts of Northern Italy, 12–19 May 2019 (p.132); The J.S. Bach Journey, 13–19 May 2019 (p.101); Barcelona, 14–18 May 2019 (p.194). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration: Rouen, oiliograph (detail) c. 1870.
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Beginning in the middle of the ninth century, raiding parties from Scandinavia first pillaged, and then occupied, the coastal reaches of northern France. The effect on Carolingian France was catastrophic, and as its governmental systems collapsed, France disintegrated into a patchwork of small feudal domains. Normandy was one of the most significant of these, and after the old Norse chieftain, Rollo, was granted the lordship of the lands north of the rivers Epte and Andelle, he took the title ‘Duke’ and set his embryonic duchy on a course of expansion. Rouen was Rollo’s chosen capital, and this tour concentrates on the eastern part of the duchy along with the adjoining Beauvaisis, combining sites which are otherwise difficult to access with the great monuments of Rouen, Evreux and the Seine Valley. It is no exaggeration to see in the events of 1066 something central to a Norman, and English, sense of identity. The most obvious reminders of this are the great Norman castles and churches which are such familiar landmarks of English towns. Their origins lie in the pioneering eleventh-century buildings of Jumièges, Rouen and Bernay. This early, and exceptionally inventive, development of a mature Romanesque architecture places Normandy at the forefront of an initiative which was to have profound consequences for later mediaeval Europe – the creation of integrated and highly articulated churches on a colossal scale – the effects of which are readily seen. Normandy’s Romanesque buildings have often been the subject of lavish praise, however. That distinctive late twelfth- and thirteenth-century architecture, of polished surfaces, detached shaftwork, giddying spires and sumptuous colour remains less widely appreciated. It is also the case that the buildings undertaken in the aftermath of the Hundred Years War have been overlooked by historians of the period. Yet these are characterised by an extraordinarily well-developed interest in the picturesque and the fantastical, by myriad angles, flickering tracery, and twisted slate-hung roofs. Taken individually they number among the most ravishing buildings of late mediaeval Europe.
Day 6: Les Andelys, Rouen. From the ruins of the Château Gaillard, Richard I’s mighty castle defending the approaches into Normandy, there are spectacular views of the Seine valley. Below is Grand Andely, centred around the church of Notre-Dame (13th and 15th century), while in Petit Andely is the 13th-century church of StSauveur. The afternoon is free in Rouen.
Champagne: Vines, Cellars & Cuvées Reims, Épernay, Côte des Blancs
23–27 April 2019 (mf 496) 5 days • £2,190 Lecturer: Giles MacDonogh Private arrangements at most of the champagne houses visited. Visits a selection of independent and multinational producers in Reims, Épernay and surrounding villages. Stay in a four-star hotel in central Reims.
MAINLAND EUROPE: France
Champagne is the wine of kings and oligarchs, demand way outstrips production and prices are merciless; but it wasn’t always so. Planted by the Romans like so many other parts of France, the Champagne region produced weedy wines before the seventeenth century as the area was too far north to guarantee ripe grapes. Only in very hot summers would the Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay grapes of the Montagne, Marne and the Côte des Blancs visited on the tour achieve levels of colour and alcohol that would have rendered champagne comparable to the great wines of Burgundy to the south, where the cocktail of grape varieties was largely the same. In those years a still, red Bouzy is a proper wine, but in others it is more likely to land in the blending vats where sparkling wines are made. Although champagne was the wine of coronations in Reims, where we are based, it was not until the seventeenth century that it found an international vocation. Pierre Pérignon, a Benedictine monk at the Abbey of Hautvillers in the Marne Valley and English merchants doctoring shipments of new wines, struck on a way of giving the wine a fresh twist. Laced with sugar and run into strong bottles before the spring, champagne underwent a second fermentation which not only resulted in more acceptable alcohol levels but it sparkled as well. 72
Sparkling champagne was an instant success. It was the fizz of Charles II’s court and the louche days of the French Regency following the death of Louis XIV. While still champagne continued to be made the sparkling stuff was always in demand when people were in the mood for fun. It had become the favourite of poets and painters, even before the widows and German book-keepers of the nineteenth century resolved the final technical problems and transformed champagne into one of the world’s greatest wines.
Itinerary Day 1: London to Reims. Leave London St Pancras by Eurostar (Standard Premier) at c. 10.30am for Paris, and continue by coach to Reims. Arriving at c. 4.00pm, there is time to settle into the hotel before an introductory talk, tasting and dinner. All four nights are spent in Reims. Day 2: Épernay. Travel by coach through the Montagne de Reims to the small, but important champagne town of Épernay. Morning lecture at the Comité Champagne, the trade association representing independent growers and houses. Afternoon private visit of the cellars at Moët followed by a tasting of Dom Pérignon. Day 3: Côte des Blancs, Montagne de Reims. South through an expansive landscape of vineyards to Vertus and the family-owned Fourny & Fils, where expression of the terroir and Chardonnay reigns supreme. After lunch, back north for the afternoon to the impressive cooperative installations in the premier cru village of Mailly. Visit and tasting of four champagnes. Day 4: Reims. Morning visit to Charles Heidsieck on the outskirts of the city, followed by time for an independent lunch and free afternoon. A late-afternoon visit to Pommery and the crayères followed by dinner in the champagne house.
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Day 5. Leave Reims at c. 10.30am by coach for Paris and continue by Eurostar to London St Pancras, arriving c. 3.30pm. The tour is dependent on the kindness of many individuals and organisations, some of whom are reluctant to make arrangements far in advance, so the order of visits outlined above may change and there may be substitutions for some of the wineries mentioned.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,190 or £1,980 without Eurostar. Single occupancy: £2,360 or £2,150 without Eurostar. Included meals: 2 lunches, 2 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Hôtel de la Paix, Reims (bestwestern-lapaix-reims.com): comfortable, modern and central 4-star hotel, originally three separate buildings. Bedrooms are bright and well-equipped. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking and standing in possibly muddy vineyards and cool, damp cellars (stairs to the crayères can be steep and numerous) as well as tasting an average of 5 champagnes per day. The first and last days involve a long drive but there is little coach travel in between. Average distance by coach per day: 57 miles. Group size: between 10 to 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Music in Berlin, 17–22 April 2019 (p.93); Monet & Impressionism, 28 April–3 May 2019 (p.73); Gastronomic Puglia, 28 April–5 May 2019 (p.158). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration: Reims, cathedral, wood engraving c. 1890.
Monet & Impressionism Paintings and places in Paris and Normandy 28 April–3 May 2019 (mf 502) 6 days • £2,270 Lecturer: Dr Frances Fowle The finest collections of Impressionism in France and places associated with the artists. First-class rail travel by Eurostar from London and good hotels in Paris and Rouen.
Day 1: Paris. Travel from London St Pancras at c. 10.30am by Eurostar (Standard Premier) to Paris. Visit the Musée Marmottan which, through a donation by Monet’s son, has one of the world’s largest collections of Impressionists including Impression: Sunrise. Continue to Rouen in Normandy where four nights are spent. Day 2: Honfleur, Le Havre. Honfleur is an utterly delightful fishing village at the mouth of the Seine, now crammed with art galleries and antique shops. In the museum are many works by Eugène Boudin, a major influence on the Impressionists. Cross the Seine estuary to Le Havre. After a recent donation and refurbishment, the Musée André Malraux has become the second largest collection of Impressionists in France. Day 3: Giverny. The morning is devoted to the premier site in the history of Impressionism, Monet’s house and garden at Giverny where he lived from 1883 until his death in 1926, designing and tending the gardens which grew in size as his prosperity increased. Also at Giverny is the newly reconstituted Musée des Impressionnismes. Return mid-afternoon for some free time in Rouen, perhaps to study the cathedral, the subject of over 30 of Monet’s paintings. Day 4: Rouen, Étretat. Spend the morning in Rouen at the Musée des Beaux Arts, a collection of painting, sculpture, drawing and decorative art, which date from the Renaissance to present day. Impressionist works are in the François Depeaux gallery, named after the local donor. Either spend a free afternoon in Rouen, architecturally and scenically one of France’s finest cities, or join an excursion to Étretat, a little seaside town flanked by dramatic chalk promontories scooped into arches by wind and sea, painted by Monet and many others.
Practicalities
Day 5: Auvers, Paris. Auvers-sur-Oise was a popular artists’ colony, frequented by Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. See sites associated with Van Gogh, who spent the last few weeks of his life here, and the studio of Daubigny. Return to Paris for an optional visit of the Musée des Beaux Arts in the Petit Palais, an underappreciated collection for which space has recently been expanded. (We sometimes change the visit to the Petit Palais in order to take advantage of a temporary exhibition elsewhere.) Overnight Paris.
How strenuous? This is a fair amount of walking as well as standing in the art galleries. You need to be able to lift your luggage on and off the train and wheel it at stations.
Day 6: Paris. Walk through the Tuileries Gardens to the Orangerie where an excellent collection of Impressionists, Monet’s famous water-lilies and 20th-century paintings are housed. Cross the river to the Musée d’Orsay; here are displayed not only the world’s finest collection of Impressionism but also masterpieces by important precursors such as Courbet and Millet. Return to London by Eurostar, arriving St Pancras at c. 5.30pm.
Art in Paris
Leonardo 500 – see page 138
Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,270 or £2,060 without Eurostar. Single occupancy: £2,600 or £2,390 without Eurostar. Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Mercure Rouen Centre Cathédrale (mercure.com): modern, functional 4-star hotel in the historic centre. Hotel Édouard 7, Paris (hoteledouard7-paris.com): comfortable 4-star, 5 minutes on foot from the Opéra Garnier.
Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Champagne: Vines, Cellars & Cuvées, 23–27 April 2019 (p.72); Classical Greece, 4–13 May 2019 (p.109). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Special autumn exhibitions October 2019 Full details available in December 2018 Please call us to register your interest, or e-mail alerts@martinrandall.co.uk
Illustration: Étretat, wood engraving c. 1880 after Claude Monet.
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Far more Impressionist pictures can be seen in the region covered by this tour than in any other territory of comparable size. This should be no surprise, as this is the region where Impressionism was born and where it was most practised, and the tour visits some of the key sites in that development. Attention is also paid to the precursors – pre-Impressionists such as Eugène Boudin and Jongkind – and to some PostImpressionist successors. As it was for mainstream artists, so it was for rebels and innovators: throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, Paris was the centre of the art world. All the French Impressionists spent time here, many lived here for most of their lives. Yet the essence of their art – the recording of the world about them as it presented itself in its immediate, transitory aspect – required them to spend time in the countryside. And the countryside they frequented most was in the north and north-west of Paris, the broad valley of the meandering Seine and of its tributaries the Oise and the Epte, and on to the coast with its vast skies and dramatic limestone cliffs. The focus of this tour is Claude Monet, the major exponent of Impressionism. He was born in Paris in 1840 and was brought up in Le Havre on the Normandy coast, where he was encouraged by Boudin to paint out of doors. Returning to Paris in 1859, he encountered the artists who would form the Impressionist group. From 1871 he made his home in the suburbs, often working from his studio boat and progressing downstream from Argenteuil to Vétheuil and Poissy, before settling in Giverny in 1883. Monet made frequent trips to the Normandy coas, where Impressionism was developing in tandem with tourism and the new fashion for sea bathing. Water, fresh or salt, was an important ingredient of Impressionist pictures, its fleeting, changing, evanescent qualities similar to the transient effects of light they sought to capture on canvas. The Impressionist emphasis on the importance of painting en plein air makes a tour that includes sites where painters set up their easels particularly rewarding. The Impressionists were also masters of figure painting and invigorated the genre of portraiture in their depictions of family, friends, and the wider Parisian circle. While Degas recorded the women of the city – dancers, milliners and washerwomen– Pissarro preferred to focus on rural workers. Influenced by photography and Japanese art these artists recorded the society of their time: from critics and political figures to singers at the café concert, capturing a snapshot of life in France at the end of the nineteenth century.
Itinerary
Versailles: Seat of the Sun King The greatest palace and garden 28 June–1 July 2019 (mf 591) 4 days • £1,910 Lecturer: Professor Antony Spawforth Focused tour examining the most influential of European palaces and related buildings. A study not only of art, architecture and gardens but also of history and statecraft. Includes a concert of Berlioz’s Messe solennelle and Martini’s Requiem for Louis XVI in the Château’s Chapelle Royale, with Hervé Niquet and Le Concert Spirituel.
Versailles was the grandest and most influential palace and garden complex in Europe, and arguably the most lavish and luxurious and most beautifully embellished too. It was much more than a building to house the monarch, his family and his court. It was conceived as the seat of government when France was at the apogee of her power, and as a structure to demonstrate and magnify the power of Louis XIV, to subdue his subjects and to overawe foreigners. A study of Versailles encompasses not only architectural history and garden history but also political science and the psychology of power. Built and altered by five French kings, Versailles is several palaces. Even during Louis XIV’s reign
elements changed constantly, reflecting not only changes of taste but also political realities as they changed from decade to decade. Indeed, at its core remains a small-scale hunting lodge built by his father (surely meant to be demolished in due course), and apartments were refurbished and parts added right up until the Revolution. Enlarging the understanding of Versailles and to set it in context there are also visits to the château of Vaux-le-Vicomte, in many ways its inspiration, and to the grounds of Marly-le-Roi, a demolished palace constructed to allow the Sun King to retreat from the formality of Versailles. Attention is paid to the town of Versailles, first laid out by Louis XIV, as well as to the park and gardens at Versailles.
Itinerary Day 1: Versailles. Leave London St Pancras at c. 9.15am by Eurostar (Standard Premier) for Paris. Drive to Versailles where all four nights are spent. Afternoon walk to view grand approach to the palace and some of the palace’s dependencies in Versailles town. Day 2: Versailles. After circumnavigating the vast palace, spend the morning immersed in the grandeur, the beauty and the symbolism of the King’s and Queen’s apartments, which culminate in the Hall of Mirrors. Explore the gardens, which remain largely as Le Nôtre created them, the parterres, basins and sculpture around the palace and the avenues and canal which seem to stretch to infinity. Then visit the family retreats of Grand Trianon, Petit Trianon and the Domaine de Marie Antoinette. Evening concert in the Royal Chapel of the Château with Le Concert Spirituel, Hervé Niquet (conductor): Berlioz, Messe solennelle; Martini, Requiem à la mémoire de Louis XVI.
MAINLAND EUROPE: France
Day 3: Vaux le Vicomte. The greatest country house and garden complex of its time (1656–61), Vaux-le-Vicomte was built by Nicholas Fouquet, Louis XIV’s finance minister. It is in many ways the predecessor of Versailles, for Louis XIV, after arresting Fouquet for corruption, plundered the property and later employed its chief designers and craftsmen at Versailles. Return to the palace for a guided tour of apartments from the time of Louis XV, characterised by lightness and delicacy and frivolity. Day 4: Versailles, Marly-le-Roi, Paris. Drive to Marly-le-Roi, Louis XIV’s retreat from the formality of Versailles, which became his favourite residence. No building survives, but the terraced park is evocative. Continue to Paris for the Eurostar arriving at St Pancras at c. 5.45pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,910 or £1,730 without Eurostar. Single occupancy: £2,270 or £2,090 without Eurostar. Included meals: 1 lunch and 2 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hôtel Le Louis Versailles Château (sofitel.com): recently-refurbished, modern, 4-star hotel within walking distance of the château. 74
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Le Corbusier Through France and Switzerland How strenuous? There is a lot of walking and standing around. The gardens cover a large area and paths are often uneven so sure-footedness is essential. You need to lift your luggage on and off the train and wheel it within stations. Group size: between 10 to 22 participants. Combine this tour with: The Ever-Changing City Skyline, 2 July 2019; Country Houses of the South West, 4–7 July 2019 (p.22). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Professor Antony Spawforth Emeritus Professor of Ancient History at Newcastle University. A historian and broadcaster specialising in Greek and Roman antiquity and in rulers’ courts. Books include The Complete Greek Temples, Greece: An Oxford Archaeological Guide (with C. Mee), and Versailles: A Biography of a Palace.
19–27 October 2019 (mf 806) 9 days • £3,480 Lecturer: Dr Richard Plant A wide survey of works by one of the greatest architects of all time. From Paris through the east of France and the Swiss Jura to Lyon and Marseille. Le Corbusier has left later generations of architects a problem. It sometimes seems that whatever design solutions they may dream up, Corb arrived there before. And that is without conscious imitation of the master, though no architect has been more imitated. Photograph: Ronchamp, Nôtre-Dame-du-Haut (used under license from shutterstock.com).
His energy, his gimlet intelligence and his ambition would have made him master of whatever profession he had chosen, but the fertility of his artistic genius and joy in creation turned him into one of the greatest architects of all time, and the most influential of the twentieth century. The exploration of the origins of the look of the modern world is a fascinating aspect of this tour, but it is likely that the dominant impression will be of the sheer beauty of Le Corbusier’s buildings. There is far more of subtlety, nuance, sophistication and variety than might be expected of someone often simplistically classed as one of the instigators of International Modernism. He was an individual, not merely a representative of a style or movement. His impact was felt not only through his buildings – which are scattered across four continents – but also through numerous unexecuted projects, voluminous writings, and lecture tours.
See page 260 for all lecturers' biographies.
Music & Ballet in Paris 6–10 February 2019 (mf 418) Very few spaces remaining 5 days • £2,670 (including tickets to 4 performances) Lecturer: Dr Michael Downes Please contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com A new production of Berlioz’s Les Troyens marking the 350th anniversary of the Paris Opéra.
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Four of Diaghilev’s most famous ballets in a theatre where the Ballets Russes performed. René Jacobs conducts Scarlatti’s version of the story of Cain and Abel at the Palais Garnier. Karita Mattila sings in Dvořák’s Rusalka at the Opéra Bastille.
Illustration: Chateau de Versailles, Hall of Mirrors, wood engraving c. 1880.
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Le Corbusier continued
with the master’s involvement and the site became the largest ensemble of his buildings outside Chandigarh. Also designed by Corbusier are the Maison de la Culture, with its dramatically canted side wall, the sports stadium, and the Unité d’Habitation. The astonishing church of St Pierre was finally completed in 2007, and there is a revelatory Le Corbusier museum. Free afternoon in Lyon to explore the historic centre or some of Lyon’s striking modern buildings (Tony Garnier, Renzo Piano) or the Jean Nouvel opera house. Overnight Lyon. Day 8: Marseille. Travel south by TGV. All his life Corbusier had been concerned with issues of housing, urbanism and community, and the fruits of his thinking are to be found in the ‘Unité d’Habitation’ apartment blocks. The one at Marseille (1945–52), though dogged by opposition and delays, is the most monumental embodiment of these theories. Overnight in Marseille. Day 9: Marseille. Some free time in Marseille or join the lecturer for a walk through the old town. Return home by plane (British Airways), arriving at London Heathrow at c. 5.45pm. This tour concentrates on the rich seam of his works to be quarried in Paris and in an arc out to the east of France, through the Swiss Jura and down through Lyon to Marseille – much of it passing fine natural scenery. It covers a considerable distance, but does give as complete a picture of Le Corbusier’s architecture as can be expected in a tour of this duration. Begin in Paris where Le Corbusier settled when he was thirty and emerged as a central figure in what became the intellectual capital of Europe in the inter-war years. End in Marseille where Le Corbusier finally realised his collectivist vision of the Mediterranean good life. Some buildings are in private hands and we see them from the outside, others are public and accessible and a few will be entered by special arrangement.
Itinerary
International Modernism. The Pavillon Brésilien (1959) attempts an expression of national style while the Atelier Ozenfant (1922, exterior) was the studio-residence of painter-critic and fellow purist. Take the TGV (high speed train) from Paris to Besançon. First of three nights in Besançon.
Practicalities
Day 4: La Chaux-de-Fonds (Switzerland). The son of a watchmaker, Le Corbusier’s home town for thirty years was La Chaux-de-Fonds, and here he built his first houses. See exteriors of The Villa Fallet (1908), a commission obtained by Le Corbusier when he was only 18, and the Villas Stotzer and Jacquemet when he was still under the influence of the Arts and Crafts movement and Ruskin. Classicism, rationalism and modern building techniques began to prevail in the Villas Jeanneret (1912, for his own family, enter by special arrangement) and Schwob (1916, exterior). Overnight Besançon.
Accommodation. Hotel Édouard 7, Paris (hoteledouard7-paris.com): comfortable 4-star hotel, five minutes on foot from the Opéra Garnier. Hotel de Paris, Besançon (besanconhoteldeparis. com): 3-star hotel in the historic centre. Hotel Carlton, Lyon (accorhotels.com): boutique 4-star hotel, well-situated on the Presqu’île. Hotel la Résidence du Vieux-Port, Marseille (hotelresidence-marseille.com): 4-star hotel in a 1950s building overlooking the harbour, with bright, modernist décor.
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Day 1: Paris. Travel by Eurostar (Standard Premier) at c. 11.00am from London St Pancras to Paris. Paris is the site of Corb’s purest statements and of his first large commissions. Visit Villa la Roche-Jeanneret which now houses the Fondation Le Corbusier, and the Immeuble Molitor (1934) in which Le Corbusier created the top floor apartment for himself. First of two nights in Paris.
Day 5: Ronchamp, Besançon. Drive into the countryside to the Benedictine monastery at Ronchamp, whose hill-top chapel, Nôtre-Damedu-Haut (1950), resulted in charges of treachery from hard-line modernists but has proved prophetic in embracing organic, sculptural values. Some free time in Besançon, a lovely hill town dominated by a massive citadel. Overnight Besançon.
Day 2: Paris. On the western outskirts, at Poissy, is Le Corbusier’s lyrically beautiful Villa Savoye (1929), one of the icons of the 20th century. Back in central Paris see Jean Nouvel’s Institut du Monde Arabe, a remarkable building with splendid views of the city. Walk through the Quartier Masséna, home to the Bibliothèque National de France (Dominique Perrault, 1996) and a development that includes the Jardin des Grands-Moulins, created in 2011. Overnight Paris.
Day 6: Arc et Senans, L’Arbresle. The route turns southwest, with a break at La Saline Royale, the remarkable industrial complex in romantic Neo-Classical style (1775) by Ledoux, one of Le Corbusier’s inspirations. His second monastic commission, the hillside Couvent de La Tourette at l’Arbresle, was obtained because his agnosticism was regarded as of less significance than the sacred values of his architecture. Continue south to Lyon. First of two nights in Lyon.
Day 3: Paris, Besançon. At the Cité Universitaire, the Pavillon Suisse (hall of residence, 1930) became one of the most influential buildings of
Day 7: Lyon, Firminy-Vert. The new town at Firminy-Vert (1956–70) was one of the few pieces of Corbusian town planning actually executed
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Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,480 or £3,320 without international travel. Single occupancy: £3,950 or £3,790 without international travel. Included meals: 6 dinners with wine.
How strenuous? This is a tiring tour with a lot of travel and several hotel changes. There is also quite a lot of walking within the cities visited. For the train journeys you will need to be able to carry your luggage on and off the train and within the stations. Average distance by coach per day: 38 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Houghton & Holkham, 15–18 October 2019 (p.24). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration: Marseilles, rue Cannebière, engraving c. 1875.
For lecturers' biographies See pages 260–267
French Gothic The great cathedrals of northern France 1–7 July 2019 (mf 608) 7 days • £2,330 Lecturer: Dr Matthew Woodworth The cradle of Gothic, northern Europe’s most significant contribution to world architecture. Nearly all the most important buildings in the development of Early and High Gothic, with an entire day at Chartres. Unparalleled examples of stained glass, sculpture and metalwork. Gothic was the only architectural style which had its origins in northern Europe. It was in the north of France that the first Gothic buildings arose, it was here that the style attained its classic maturity, and it is here that its greatest manifestations still stand. From the middle of the twelfth century the region was the scene of unparalleled building activity, with dozens of cathedrals, churches and abbeys under construction. Architects stretched their imaginations and masons extended their skills to devise more daring ways of enclosing greater volumes of space, with increasingly slender structural supports, and larger areas of window. But Gothic is not only an architectural phenomenon. Windows were filled with brilliant coloured glass. Sculpture, more life-like than for nearly a thousand years yet increasingly integrated with its architectural setting, was abundant. The art of metalwork thrived, and paint was everywhere. All the arts were coordinated to interpret and present elaborate theological programmes to congregations which included both the illiterate lay people and sophisticated clerics. Nearly all the most important buildings in the development of the Early and High phases of Gothic are included, and the order of visits even follows this development chronologically, as far as geography allows. A whole day is dedicated to the cathedral at Chartres, the premier site of the building arts of the mediaeval world.
Day 1. Travel by Eurostar (Standard Premier) at c. 1.00pm from St Pancras to Lille. Continue by coach to Laon and the hotel, in an attractive lakeside setting. First of three nights near Laon. Day 2: Noyon, Laon. One of the earliest Gothic cathedrals (c. 1150), Noyon’s four-storey internal elevation marks the transition from the thickwalled architecture of the Romanesque to the thinwalled verticality of Gothic. Laon is spectacularly sited on a rock outcrop. Begun c. 1160, the cathedral is the most complete of Early-Gothic churches and one of the most impressive, with five soaring towers. Day 3: Soissons, Reims. Soissons Cathedral is a fine example of the rapid changes which took place in architecture at the end of the 12th century. Reims Cathedral, the coronation church of the French monarchy, begun 1211, is a landmark in the development of High Gothic with the first appearance of bar tracery and classicising portal
Day 4: St-Denis. On the outskirts of Paris, the burial place of French kings, St-Denis was an abbey of the highest significance in politics and in the history of architecture. In the 1140s the choir was rebuilt, and the pointed arches, rib vaulting and skeletal structure warrant the claim that this was the first Gothic building. 100 years later the new nave inaugurated the Rayonnant style of Gothic with windows occupying the maximum possible area. First of two nights in Chartres. Day 5: Chartres. The cathedral at Chartres, begun in 1145 and recommenced in 1195 after a fire, is the finest synthesis of Gothic art and architecture. Sculpture and stained glass are incorporated into an elaborate theological programme. The full day here provides time for unhurried exploration of the building and space to reflect and absorb. See also the church of St Pierre. Day 6: Mantes-la-Jolie, Beauvais, Amiens. Visit the 12th-century collegiate church at Mantes-la-Jolie. Beauvais Cathedral, begun 1225, was, with a vault height in the choir of 157 feet, the climax in France of upwardly aspiring Gothic architecture and the highest vault of mediaeval Europe. Overnight Amiens. Day 7: Amiens. The cathedral in Amiens is the classic High-Gothic structure, its thrilling verticality balanced by measured horizontal movement. Drive to Lille for the Eurostar to London St Pancras, arriving c. 7.15pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,330 or £2,190 without Eurostar. Single occupancy: £2,560 or £2,420 without Eurostar. Included meals: 5 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hôtel du Golf de l’Ailette, Chamouille (ailette.fr): comfortable 3-star located a short drive from Laon in an attractive position by a lake. Hotel Le Grand Monarque, Chartres (legrandmonarque.com): centrally located 4-star hotel. Hotel Mercure Amiens (mercure.com): modern 3-star hotel near the cathedral.
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Itinerary
sculpture. At the church of St Rémi the heavy Romanesque nave contrasts with the light EarlyGothic choir.
How strenuous? There is a fair amount of walking and standing around. Some long coach journeys. You should be able to lift your luggage on and off the train and wheel it within the station. Average distance by coach per day: 89 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Great Houses of the North, 21–30 June 2019 (p.20); At home at Weston Park, 25–30 June 2019 (p.23); Berlin: New Architecture, 25–29 June 2019 (p.94); Dutch Painting, 26–29 June 2019 (p.168); Glyndebourne & Garsington, 27–30 June 2019 (p.28); Interwar Interiors, 8 July 2019; Gastronomic West Country, 8–14 July 2019 (p.30). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport. Illustration: Chartres Cathedral, engraving c. 1900.
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Mediaeval Alsace Both sides of the Rhine in France and Germany a Carthusian monastery. The chapel of St Ulrich in Avolsheim was built in the 10th century and contains 13th-century frescoes. In Obernai, visit the Romanesque church of St Pierre. Rosheim possesses a number unspoilt mediaeval houses and the 12th-century church of St Pierre et Paul. In the heart of wine-producing countryside, Obernai is partly surrounded by fine ramparts. Day 5: Kaysersberg, Murbach. Kaysersberg is a remarkably unchanged mediaeval village with delightful houses, castle, bridge, and a church with a very fine carved altarpiece. In the afternoon drive south through the lovely hill scenery of the Massif du Ballon d’Alsace. Nestling in wooded hills, the Romanesque abbey at Murbach was the most important in the region, and its Romanesque church is correspondingly magnificent.
15–22 October 2019 (mf 794) 8 days • £3,140 Lecturer: Dr Matthew Woodworth Architecture, art and history around the Upper Rhine in France and Germany. Exceedingly lovely towns and villages, amid lush landscapes of vineyards, rolling farmland and wooded hills. Stay in one hotel throughout, a beautifully restored, 16th-century Alsatian Inn.
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It is one of the oddities of modern Europe that Alsace belongs to France. Historically, culturally and linguistically, the region has had more in common with its German neighbour to the east of the Rhine. Alsace is a hybrid. The region was settled by Teutonic tribes in the fifth century. In the Middle Ages most of the region, along with a chunk of Switzerland, formed part of the German duchy of Swabia, which owed allegiance to the Holy Roman Empire. Two of the imperial families, the Hohenstaufen and the Habsburgs, had their principal domains in the region, on both sides of the Rhine. The major cities – Strasbourg, Colmar and Freiburg – were among the greatest of the independent free cities of the Rhineland, the economic powerhouse of transalpine Europe. Only in relatively recent history has the Upper Rhine become a disputed border between antagonistic powers. In the Middle Ages and for long after the river was not a divisive factor but a unifying highway, the meeting place for goods, peoples and ideas from both sides. The acquisition by France in 1648 of the left bank – modern-day Alsace – paid no heed to linguistic, religious or cultural considerations. Indeed, it reverted to the German Empire for 47 years after the FrancoPrussian war of 1871. 78
This tour ignores modern national boundaries. This way the immensely rich artistic and cultural heritage can be fully appreciated, and stylistic variations be seen as regional inflections rather than national differences. Among the highlights of the tour are Romanesque churches, the Gothic cathedral and an exceptionally rich collection of late mediaeval altarpieces. Alsace is also rich in mediaeval church architecture, both Romanesque and Gothic.
Itinerary Day 1. Leave London St Pancras by Eurostar (Standard Premier) at c. 9.30am for Paris, and continue by TGV (high-speed train; 1st class) to Strasbourg. There is plenty of time to settle into the hotel, for an introductory talk and dinner. All seven nights are spent in Strasbourg. Day 2: Strasbourg. Since the High Middle Ages, Strasbourg has been one of the most important intellectual and cultural centres of Europe, and is now seat of the European parliament. The cathedral, constructed and adorned over several centuries, is one of the greatest monuments of Gothic art and architecture in Europe. Visit also the cathedral museum and the church of St Thomas (extravagant tomb of Maréchal de Saxe) and enjoy the picturesque streets and canals. Day 3: Colmar. Colmar is an attractive mediaeval town with richly ornamented halftimbered and stone buildings lining the streets and canals. The Gothic church of St Martin contains the Virgin of the Rose Garden, an altarpiece by Schongauer (1473). The Musée d’Unterlinden has an outstanding collection of 15th- and 16th-century pictures, chief of which is Grünewald’s Issenheim altarpiece, the most searing of all images of the Crucifixion. Day 4: Molsheim, Rosheim, Obernai. A day of small places. Molsheim has a Jesuit church and
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Day 6: Niederrotweil, Freiburg, Breisach. Cross the Rhine to Germany. The parish churches at Breisach and Niederrotweil each have a most beautiful late Gothic altarpiece carved by the socalled Master HL with an extraordinary swirling design. Freiburg im Breisgau is one of the best preserved old towns in Germany. At its centre is the minster, a magnificent Gothic construction with the tallest spire completed in the Middle Ages. The excellent city museum has recently reopened after major restoration. Day 7: Strasbourg. Free morning followed by a visit to the Palais Rohan and its museums of fine and decorative arts in the afternoon. Day 8. Leave Strasbourg at c. 10.30am by TGV for Paris and continue by Eurostar to London St Pancras, arriving c. 4.45pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,140 or £2,830 without Eurostar & TGV. Single occupancy: £3,760 or £3,450 without Eurostar & TGV. Included meals: 1 lunch and 5 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Cour du Corbeau, Strasbourg (cour-corbeau.com): beautifullyrestored 4-star hotel, located close to the cathedral and the Palais Rohan. Rooms maintain many of the original features of the building, though décor is contemporary. How strenuous? There is a fair amount of walking and standing around within the towns. Many town centres are only accessible on foot, and paving may be cobbled or uneven. You need to be able to lift your luggage on and off the train and wheel it within stations. Average distance by coach per day: 55 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Walking in Southern Tuscany, 7–14 October 2019 (p.140); Ravenna & Urbino, 23–27 October 2019 (p.131). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration: Strasbourg, watercolour by E. Harrison Compton, publ. 1912
Wine, Walks & Art in Alsace France’s prettiest wine region 6–12 September 2019 (mf 690) 7 days • £3,260 Lecturer: Marc Millon Four walks of between 5 and 9.5 km in the lush landscapes of vineyards, rolling farmland and wooded hills. Stay in one hotel throughout, a charming listed building in the centre of Colmar. Marc Millon is a wine, food and travel writer, and author of The Wine & Food of Europe.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 8.30am (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Basel. Drive to Colmar, an attractive town with richly ornamented halftimbered and stone buildings lining the streets and canals, it’s position in the foothills of the Vosges makes an ideal base for walking tours. Lunch is followed by an introductory tasting at the Domaine Viticole de Colmar. Dinner in Colmar where all five nights are spent. Day 2: Colmar, Wintzenheim. A tour of Colmar with a local guide, including two of the city’s splendid churches, ends at the Musée d’Unterlinden, with an outstanding collection of 15th- and 16th-century pictures, chief of which is Grünewald’s Issenheim altarpiece. In the afternoon drive to Wintzenheim for a wine tasting at Josmeyer. Day 3: Bergheim, Ribeauvillé, Colmar. Drive to Bergheim to begin an easy walk along part of the Alsace wine route: 5 km, c. 1½ hours. The path is mostly level through fields and on grass through the vineyards, though there is little shade. After lunch drive to Rorschwihr for a tasting at Rolly Gassmann. Return to Colmar for some free time.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,260 or £3,140 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,750 or £3,630 without flights. Included meals: 2 lunches, 4 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Maison des Têtes, Colmar (la-maison-des-tetes.com): charming, independent 5-star hotel located in the historic centre of Colmar. Rooms are traditional in style. How strenuous? This is a walking tour, graded moderate (see page 8). Of the 4 walks, 2 are easy and 2 are challenging. It is essential for participants to have appropriate walking footwear, be in good physical condition and to be used to country walking with uphill and downhill content. Average distance by coach per day: 22 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: St Petersburg (for solo travellers), 13–20 September 2019 (p.179). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport. Illustration: Colmar, rue des Marchands, etching by Charles Pinet (1867–1932).
Day 4: Munster, Ammerschwihr. A challenging walk in the foothills of the Vosges. Beginning with a steep climb from Munster Haut-Rhin, this is a circular route on country lanes, farm tracks and woodland paths, which passes through picturesque villages and farms: c. 9.5 km, c. 3 hours. Lunch, to taste tarte flambée made with Munster cheese and a tasting at the JB Adam winery in Ammerschwihr before returning to Colmar. Day 5: Kaysersberg. Drive to near Kaysersberg to begin a challenging walk across the First World War battlegrounds east and south of the highly strategic Tête des Faux mountain peak, where French and German troops fought with heavy losses between the end of 1914 and the beginning of 1915. Starting at 940m we begin with a climb to reach 1,130m at the Roche du Corbeau in the woods before making our way back through pastures and farmlands: 6 km, c. 3½ hours. Lunch is in Kayserberg where there is a chance to see this remarkably unchanged mediaeval village with delightful houses, castle, bridge and a church with a very fine carved altarpiece. In Colmar, an evening tasting of a range of eaux de vie.
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Alsace, arguably the prettiest wine region in France, is also one of the best to explore on foot. Footpaths lead across a carpet of vineyards that extends over the lower slopes of the Vosges mountains. Tall pointed steeples, often topped with storks’ nests, peek out from above the rolling slopes; visible markers connect villages filled with sandstone buildings and charming half-timbered mediaeval houses with window boxes overflowing with colourful geraniums. Undoubtedly the best time to visit is September, when there is a buzz of activity as the grapes are being brought in to wine cellars and the heady smell of pressed grape must, fermentation and new wine is in the air. Wine producers take time off from their exertions to warmly welcome visitors, happy to explain the intricacies of their terroir, their style and range of wines, and to offer generous samples to taste. In historic towns and villages along the way, Winstubs offer further opportunities simply to enjoy the distinctive wines of Alsace, served in delicate green-stemmed goblets. And what wines! Alsace’s turbulent past – annexed by Germany after the Franco-Prussian war in 1871, retaken by the French after World War I, once again occupied by the Germans during World War II – has resulted in a range of varietal wines that reflect a mixed heritage. Teutonicsounding grapes such as Riesling, Sylvaner, Gewürztraminer and others are vinified in the Gallic style to result in a range of wines that are archetypically and undoubtedly French: classic (mainly) dry, forceful white wines that are meant to be enjoyed with meals. If the wines of Alsace reflect the region’s historic past, so does its renowned gastronomy. German sauerkraut here translates into choucroute; French culinary expertise raising the mundane to the sublime: the lightly fermented cabbage simmered with spices in Riesling wine to accompany a veritable mountain of outstanding sausages and cured meats of the region. Foie gras from the fattened livers of ducks and geese is a longstanding speciality here, while, in addition to charcuterie, magnificent picnic foods include tarte à l’oignon, local cheeses such as Munster, and, of course, delectable and colourful pâtisseries made from the abundance of local and seasonal fruits (many of these same fruits are distilled into clean and powerful eaux de vie). Restaurants range from the humble and simple to refined and famous temples of gastronomy. While the main focus of the tour is the wine and walking, there is also time to appreciate the immensely rich artistic and cultural heritage of
Alsace. A leitmotif of the tour is the collection of late mediaeval altarpieces and mediaeval church architecture, both Romanesque and Gothic.
Day 6: Rosheim, Obernai. A day of small places, beginning in Rosheim which possesses a number of unspoilt mediaeval houses and the 12th-century church of Saints Pierre et Paul. The easy morning walk ascends to vineyards before levelling off over fields to Obernai which is partly surrounded by fine ramparts: 5 km, c. 1¾ hours. Wine tasting at Robert Blanck and a tour of the Romanesque church of St Pierre before returning to Colmar where dinner is at a Michelin-starred restaurant. Day 7. Return to Basel and fly to London Heathrow arriving at c. 12.30pm. Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Châteaux of the Loire The Renaissance in France angle turrets, elaborate gables, classicising pilasters and evocative interiors. With its formidable defensive towers Langeais, reconstructed from the 1470s, is scarcely affected by Renaissance taste and has a good collection of mediaeval furniture and tapestries.Villandry is an excellent 1530s château with three arcaded wings but its chief glories are the tiers of formal gardens, recreated in the 20th century according to 16thcentury designs and principles. We visit in the late afternoon, when the crowds have subsided, and return to the hotel at c. 7.00pm. Day 3: Beauregard, Blois, Chambord. Beauregard has a unique 17th-century gallery lined with 327 portraits of historical persons. The three wings of the castle at Blois were built in the latest fashion respectively for Louis XII from 1498, François I from 1515 and, the brother of Louis XIII (by Mansart) from 1635. There is time in the delightful town of Blois to see its gardens, churches and museums. The creation of François I and the most ambitious of the Loire châteaux, Chambord startles by its vast size. Outstanding are the double helix stairway and the fantastical roofscape of cones, wedges, elaborate gables and chimney stacks.
2–5 May 2019 (mf 514) 4 days • £1,710 Lecturer: Dr Sarah Pearson Includes only the best of the houses and gardens in the region. Stay at a château hotel in the centre of the area. Option to combine this tour with Tuscan Gardens, 6–11 May 2019 (see page 139).
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The region around the lower reaches of the Loire was exceptional in a country still dominated by over-mighty French monarchs and riven by factionalism until well into the seventeenth century. The relative stability of a territory submissive to royal writ, the prosperity arising from highly productive agricultural land and river-borne trade, and the excellent hunting, all provided the conditions for a building boom. Especially towards the end of the fifteenth century and during the first half of the sixteenth, a plethora of palaces, hunting lodges and country retreats were erected at the behest of members of the royal family, their mistresses and their loyal followers. These beautiful residential buildings have become paradigmatic in popular culture for furnishing the world-wide image of a fairy-tale palace. More importantly they were seminal in architectural history by constituting the first significant ultramontane manifestation of the Italian Renaissance. The sudden and whole-hearted admiration for all things Italian documented by the châteaux of the Loire was stimulated, ironically, by French invasions of Italy which began under Charles VIII in 1494 and came to an end under François I thirty years later. 80
The distinctive and affecting feature of these buildings was that Italianate motifs were grafted onto what were essentially Flamboyant Gothic forms. Round-headed arches, square-headed windows, classical pilasters and ancient Roman candelabra decoration blend with cylindrical towers and turrets, conical spires, high-pitched roofs and elaborate dormers to produce an effect which is Italianate but unmistakably French. It was not a case of importing wholesale the principles of Brunelleschi and Bramante but the creation of an original – and highly influential – synthesis. Most of the châteaux are well furnished and much decoration survives or has been well recreated (contrary to the widespread myth that French châteaux are empty). Several of them have gardens, among which are some extraordinarily fine recreations of the original Renaissance design. This itinerary provides a balanced and varied selection, and aims to side-step the crowds.
Itinerary Day 1: Chenonceau. Travel by Eurostar (Standard Premier) at c. 9.30am from London St Pancras to Paris. Continue south by coach to Chenonceau. Of surpassing beauty and surmounting a bridge across the River Cher, the Château of Chenonceau (‘des Dames’) is deservedly one of France’s most treasured sights. Transformation of the castle began in 1515 and continued intermittently for much of the 16th century.Stylistically it leads from an embellished castle keep to the supremely successful Mannerism of the long galleries across the river. Continue to the hotel in Chargé where all three nights are spent. Day 2: Azay-le-Rideau, Langeais, Villandry. Lapped by the River Indre, Azay-le-Rideau is a jewel of the French Renaissance, replete with
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Day 4: Cheverny. Built in the 1630s, Cheverny is as elegant and restrained as Baroque can get and is unmistakably French with its chiselled façade and dramatic roofline, and sumptuously decorated and furnished interiors. Drive to Paris and then continue by Eurostar to London St Pancras, arriving c. 8.00pm. If combining this tour with Tuscan Gardens, fly at c. 8.45pm from Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport to Florence (Air France), transfer by taxi to the hotel in Fiesole and stay overnight.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,710 or £1,540 without Eurostar. Single occupancy: £1,940 or £1,770 without Eurostar. Included meals: 3 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Château de Pray, Chargé (chateaudepray.fr): 4-star hotel in a converted château on the river Loire; excellent restaurant. How strenuous? Although a short tour there is quite a lot of standing around and walking. You need to be able to lift your luggage on and off the train. Average distance by coach per day: 119 miles (most driving is on days 1 and 4). Group size: between 12 and 22 participants. Price, Châteaux of the Loire and Tuscan Gardens combined. Two sharing: £4,430 or £4,260 without international travel. Single occupancy: £5,120 or £4,950 without international travel. This includes the one-way flight from Paris to Florence (Air France), airport transfers and the extra accommodation in Fiesole (1 night). These arrangements are pre-booked but unescorted.
Illustration: Château de Chenonceau, watercolour by A.H. Hallam Murray, publ. 1904.
Mediaeval Burgundy Abbeys and churches of the high Middle Ages 8–15 June 2019 (mf 570) 8 days • £2,840 Lecturer: John McNeill A superb collection of Romanesque and early Gothic buildings. Exceptionally well-preserved historic towns. Rural drives through beautiful landscapes.
Day 1. Take the Eurostar (Standard Premier) at c. 11.00am from London St Pancras to Paris and then onwards by TGV (high-speed train; 1st class) to Mâcon. Continue by coach to Tournus where two nights are spent.
Day 3: Beaune, Autun, Dijon. The 15thcentury Hôtel-Dieu in Beaune houses Rogier van der Weyden’s Last Judgement. The stalwart Romanesque church of Notre-Dame has fine tapestries. At Autun the cathedral of St Lazare is celebrated for its sublime sequence of Romanesque capitals and relief sculptures by Gislebertus. First of three nights in Dijon.
Day 2: Cluny, Berzé-la-Ville, Tournus. Cluny is the site of the largest church and most powerful monastery in mediaeval France. Study the magnificent remains of the church and monastic buildings. The tiny chapel at Berzé-la-Ville was perhaps built as the abbot of Cluny’s private retreat, and is embellished with superb wall paintings of c. 1100. At Tournus see the striking and immensely influential early 11th-century monastery.
Day 4: St Thibault, Semur-en-Auxois, Fontenay. The church of the market town of St Thibault has a 13th-century choir that is the most graceful Burgundian construction of the period. The fortified hill town of Semur-en-Auxois has a splendid Gothic collegiate church. The tranquil abbey of Fontenay is the earliest Cistercian church to survive and has an exceptionally well-preserved monastic precinct.
Illustration: Vézelay, Abbey of La Madaleine, after a drawing by René Piot, c. 1920.
Day 5: Dijon. A day dedicated to Burgundy’s capital and one of the most attractive of French
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The key to understanding mediaeval Burgundy is its situation, a cradle of wooded hills drained by three great river systems flowing, respectively, to the north, south and west. Not only did this lend the area the status of a lieu de passage, but it guaranteed its importance, ensuring that the mediaeval duchy was open to the forms and traditions of far-flung regions. Remarkably, much of Burgundy’s mediaeval infrastructure survives. Even extending back as far as the ninth century, for in the interlocking spaces of the lower church at St-Germain d’Auxerre one might catch a glimpse of western Carolingian architecture and painting, a glimpse that presents this most distant of periods at its most inventive and personal. It is equally the case that while the great early Romanesque basilicas which once studded the underbelly of the Ile-de-France are now reduced to a ghost of their former selves, what survives in Burgundy is sublimely impressive, as one might see in that great quartet of crypts at Dijon, Auxerre, Flavigny and Tournus. As elsewhere, the twelfth century is well represented, though the depth of exploratory work undertaken here cannot fail to impress. The fundamental Romanesque research was probably conducted to the south, at Cluny and in the Brionnais, but the take-up in central Burgundy was immediate, and in the naves of Vézelay and Autun one might see two of the most compelling essays on the interaction of sculpture and architecture twelfth-century Europe has produced. Nor were Cistercians slow to tailor Burgundian architecture to suit their needs, and though her great early monasteries have now perished at least Fontenay survives – among the most breathtaking monastic sites of mediaeval France. Gothic also arrived early, and there began a second wave of experimentation, tentative at first but blossoming in the centre (where the new choir at Vézelay is the first intimation we have that Gothic architecture had a future outside northern France) into perhaps the most lucid of all architectural styles. It is thus no surprise that the thirteenth century saw the region at the cutting edge of Europe. At Auxerre a definitive account of space as illusion took shape, and at Semur-en-Auxois a theatre of stone clambered aboard the church. Moreover, the patrons invested heavily in glass. No thirteenth-century church was without it – and most have retained it, blazing the interior with a heady combination of light, meaning and colour. This sublime vigour even continued into the later middle ages, where under the Valois dukes of Burgundy, Dijon became a major artistic centre, attracting artists of the calibre of Rogier van der Weyden and Claus Sluter.
Itinerary
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Mediaeval Burgundy continued
Cave Art of France Prehistory in the Dordogne Ice Age excavation site looks like, while the small museum next door still has a carving on its ceiling. Font-de-Gaume is one of the greatest of all Ice Age decorated caves, with remarkable polychrome bison and other animals, skilfully placed to take full advantage of the rock shapes.
cities with many fine buildings from the 11th to 18th centuries. St Bénigne has an ambitious early Romanesque crypt. Notre-Dame is a quite stunning early Gothic parish church. The palace of the Valois dukes now houses a museum with extensive collections of work from the period of their rule (1364–1477).
Day 4: Lascaux. Two fascimiles are now the public’s only chance to see the wonders of Lascaux, the most famous and most beautiful of all decorated caves. Visit the new, enlarged and more complete replica, Lascaux IV, opening to the public in December 2016. Lascaux II was the world’s first cave facsimile, opened in 1983. The park at Le Thot contains many of the animal species which were familiar to Ice Age people: aurochs, bison, horses, deer and ibex, as well as a robotic mammoth.
Day 6: Saulieu, Avallon, Vézelay. Visit the Basilique St-Andoche in Saulieu, with carved capitals depicting flora, fauna and biblical stories. Drive north to Avallon, whose fine Romanesque church is spectacularly situated above the river Cousin. Vézelay, a picturesque hill town whose summit is occupied by the abbey of La Madeleine, was one of the great pilgrimage centres of the Middle Ages, and has one of the most impressive of all 12th-century churches for both its architecture and its sculpture. First of two nights in Auxerre.
Day 5: Rouffignac, Cougnac. Rouffignac is a unique experience; a decorated tunnel-like cave so vast that one travels around it in a train. Its art is hugely dominated by drawings of mammoths. The Grotte de Cougnac is one of the most beautiful of all decorated caves, not only for its art, but also and especially for its natural formations of stalagmites and stalactites. Cap Blanc is the greatest sculpted frieze from the Ice Age that is open to the public.
Day 7: Auxerre. The morning includes the magnificent Carolingian crypt of St Germain and the cathedral, a pioneering 13th-century building with exceptional glass and sculpture. The afternoon is free. Day 8: Sens. The striking cathedral of Sens is among the earliest Gothic churches of Europe, housing important glass and an exquisitely carved 12th- and 13th-century west front. The diocesan museum also houses an extensive collection of Roman and mediaeval antiquities. Take the Eurostar from Paris arriving at London St Pancras c. 6.30pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,840 or £2,630 without Eurostar and TGV. Single occupancy: £3,200 or £2,990 without Eurostar and TGV. Included meals: 6 dinners with wine.
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Accommodation. Hôtel Le Rempart, Tournus (lerempart.com): 4-star hotel formerly a 15thcentury guard house, located on the ramparts of the town. Hostellerie du Chapeau Rouge, Dijon (chapeau-rouge.fr): centrally located, comfortable 4-star hotel furnished to a high standard. Hôtel Le Parc des Maréchaux, Auxerre (leparcdesmarechaux.com): 3-star hotel in a delightful 18th-century hôtel particulier. There are no twin rooms at the Hôtel Le Parc des Maréchaux. Please contact us for a quote if you require two single rooms at this hotel instead. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking, some of it on steep hillsides, and standing around. There is plenty of coach travel and you stay in three hotels. You will need to be able to lift your luggage on and off the train and wheel it within stations. Average distance by coach per day: 71 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Gastronomic Sweden, 31 May–7 June 2019 (p.203); London Choral Day, 7 June 2019 (p.37); Connoisseur's Vienna, 17–23 June 2019 (p.49). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
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17–24 June 2019 (mf 599) Very few spaces remaining 8 days • £2,880 Lecturer: Dr Paul Bahn Encompasses some of the most important Prehistoric caves in Europe including the new facsimile Lascaux IV, Pech Merle and Niaux. Great art, whatever its function or the ‘artist’s’ intention, in an area of outstanding natural beauty and charming villages. Lecturer, Dr Paul Bahn, is Britain’s leading specialist in Prehistoric art.
Itinerary Day 1. Take the Eurostar (Standard Premier) at c. 10.30am from London St Pancras to Paris and then onwards by TGV (high-speed train; 1st class) to Bordeaux. Overnight Bordeaux. Day 2: Bordeaux, Pair-non-Pair. The Musée d’Aquitaine provides a perfect introduction to the archaeology and art of the Ice Age in southwest France; a particular highlight is the ‘Venus of Laussel’ bas-relief carving. The cave of Pair-nonPair is small but filled with wonderfully deep engravings of animals – and with no electrical installations provides a more authentic experience. Continue to Les Eyzies for the first of four nights. Day 3: Les Eyzies. The National Prehistory Museum, now housed in an ultra-modern building at the foot of the cliffs, has one of the world’s greatest collections of Ice Age material. The Abri Pataud is the best possible way to see what a major
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Day 6: Pech Merle, Cahors, Toulouse. Pech Merle is among the greatest of the decorated caves. It is huge and has spectacular natural formations and a wide variety of artistic techniques, including the famous spotted horse panel. Some free time is spent in Cahors en route to Toulouse, where two nights are spent. Day 7: Niaux, Toulouse. The tour ends with Niaux, a fitting climax as the long walk into this Pyrenean mountain leads one to the ‘Salon Noir’ with its stunning drawings of bison, horses and ibex, and its extraordinary acoustics. The afternoon is free in Toulouse; suggestions include the Musée SaintRaymond and the cathedral. Day 8. Catch the late morning flight to London Heathrow, arriving c. 12.15pm. Please note this tour departs from London St Pancras station and returns to Heathrow airport.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,880 or £2,690 without international travel. Single occupancy: £3,240 or £3,050 without international travel. Included meals: 1 lunch and 5 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Best Western Etche-Ona, Bordeaux (bordeaux-hotel.com). Hotel Le Centenaire, Les Eyzies (hotelducentenaire.fr). Grand Hotel de l’Opéra, Toulouse (grand-hotelopera.com). How strenuous? There is a fair amount of walking on uneven and sometimes steep, slippery ground, so sure-footedness is essential. Caves are not well lit and can be very damp and cold; this tour is not suitable for people who suffer from claustrophobia. Average distance by coach per day: 69 miles. Group size: between 10 and 18 participants. Illustration: Pyrenées, wood engraving c. 1890.
Modern Art on the Côte d’Azur Picasso, Matisse, Chagall and their contemporaries 21–27 March 2019 (mf 462) Exclusively for solo travellers 7 days • £2,910 Lecturer: Mary Lynn Riley 17–23 October 2019 (mf 816) 7 days • £2,630 Lecturer: Lydia Bauman Europe’s greatest concentration of classic modern art in the idyllic Mediterranean setting where it was created. Old and new collections, with outstanding work by Renoir, Bonnard, Braque, Léger, Miró, Giacometti, Cocteau, Chagall, Matisse, Picasso. Visits to the coastal towns and villages which inspired the artists. Stay in Nice throughout.
Itinerary Day 1: Nice. Fly at c. 11.30am from London Heathrow to Nice. There is an afternoon visit to the
Musée des Beaux Arts Jules Chéret, concentrating on their 19th- and early 20th-century holdings.
afternoon visit Chapelle du Rosaire, a Dominican chapel designed by Matisse.
Day 2: Nice. The Musée Matisse unites a wide range of the artist’s work; sculpture, ceramics, stained glass as well as painting. In the afternoon, visit the Marc Chagall Museum which has the largest collection of the artist’s works: notably the seventeen canvases of the Biblical Message, set in a peaceful garden in a salubrious Nice suburb.
Day 7: Le Cannet. The first museum dedicated to the works of Bonnard opened in Le Cannet in 2011. Fly from Nice arriving at London Heathrow at c. 4.30pm.
Day 3: Antibes, Vallauris, Cagnes-sur-Mer. Most of the paintings Picasso produced in his studio in the Château Grimaldi in 1946 have been donated to the town of Antibes. Vallauris is a centre of contemporary pottery revived by Picasso, whose masterpiece War and Peace is here. Renoir’s house in Cagnes-sur-Mer is set amidst olive groves, a memorial to the only major Impressionist to settle in the south. Day 4: St-Tropez, Biot. Drive west to St-Tropez, which has been popular with artists since Paul Signac settled here in 1892. The Musée de l’Annonciade is one of France’s finest collections of modern art (Signac, Maillol, Matisse, Bonnard, Vlaminck, Braque). Continue to Biot and visit the Musée National Fernand Léger, built to house the artist’s works bequeathed to his wife.
In recent years, renovation work has led to museum closures. At the moment all visits listed are possible but we cannot rule out the possibility of changes.
Practicalities Price in March 2019 (exclusively for solo travellers). Classic room: £2,910 or £2,790 without flights. Superior sea view room: £3,260 or £3,140 without flights. Price, per person in October 2019. Two sharing, superior garden view room: £2,630 or £2,500 without flights. Two sharing, superior sea view room: £2,900 or £2,770 without flights. Single occupancy, classic room: £2,970 or £2,840 without flights. Single occupancy, superior sea view room: £3,420 or £3,290 without flights. Included meals: 4 dinners with wine.
Day 5: Villefranche-sur-Mer, St Jean Cap Ferrat, Nice. In Villefranche is the small Chapelle St-Pierre, decorated by Cocteau. Continue to St-Jean-Cap-Ferrat to see the paintings, sculpture and furniture of the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild, a mansion set in attractive gardens. The afternoon is free in Nice or there is an optional visit to the Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain with its excellent collection of post-war art.
Accommodation. Hotel La Pérouse, Nice (leshotelsduroy.com): stylish 4-star hotel partially built into the cliff and overlooking the Promenade des Anglais. Rooms are furnished in modern Provençal style.
Day 6: St-Paul-de-Vence, Vence. The Maeght Foundation at St-Paul-de-Vence is renowned for its collections (Picasso, Hepworth, Miró, Arp, Giacometti, but not all works are shown at once) and for its architecture and setting. In the
Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
How strenuous? There is a fair amount of walking and standing around in museums. Average distance by coach per day: 40 miles
Illustration: Antibes, oiliograph c. 1870.
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Natural resources and climate have drawn invaders and visitors to Nice and its surroundings from the Greek colonists of classical times to the jet-set of today. But from the late nineteenth century a special category of visitor – and settler – transformed the Côte d’Azur into the greatest concentration of modern art in Europe. Monet first visited Antibes in 1883; Signac bought a house in the fishing village of St-Tropez in 1892. Matisse’s first visit to the Midi in 1904 transformed his art, and from 1918 he spent more time on the Côte d’Azur than in Paris. Matisse, Chagall and Picasso are merely among the most illustrious of the artists who chose to live in the South of France. Many of their fellow modernisers followed suit: Braque, Bonnard, Dufy, Picabia. This tour is an extraordinary opportunity to see how modernity relates to the past as well as the present, and how gallery displays can be centred on the art, the location or the patron/collector. In Matisse’s Chapelle du Rosaire at Vence, traditional arts and crafts have been revived by a modern genius, as in the monumental mosaic and glass designs of Léger which can be seen at Biot. There are also echoes of collecting habits of earlier eras in the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild. The mixture of past and present and the juxtaposition of the Goût Rothschild with the beauty of its location are breathtaking. (Graham Sutherland drew exotic flowers and plants in the extraordinary gardens.) At Antibes the Picasso Museum is housed in the Château Grimaldi, lent to Picasso as studio space in 1946 where he produced lifeaffirming paintings. Old and new galleries abound, such as the Fondation Maeght, St-Paul-de-Vence, whose building (designed by José Luis Sert, 1963) makes it a work of outstanding sympathy to its natural surroundings, in gardens enlivened by Miró’s Labyrinthe and other sculptures.
Gastronomic Provence La cuisine du soleil, history and art in the South of France 9–16 April 2019 (mf 482) 8 days • £3,570 Lecturer: Marc Millon Sample the most abundant, colourful and delicious larder in France, from street food to Michelin-starred. Wines from simple Provençal rosé to prestigious Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Journey from fruitful sea and river to dramatic plains and mountains. Provence is the France of our imagination, where the sun always shines, the food tastes more vivid than anywhere else, and the wine is rich and plentiful. It is the landscape of a painting by Paul Cézanne or the words of a novel by Marcel Pagnol; it is that languid dreamy place where pastis is drunk in the shade of plane trees, where cypresses bend with the force of the mistral, and where the sun, that huge, throbbing yellow orb that Vincent van Gogh painted so intensely, shines some three hundred days of the year from a deep azure sky. From the rugged uplands of Les Alpilles to the glistening sea of the Côte d’Azur; from the windswept Camargue to the stony wine hills of Châteauneuf-du-Pape; and from Nice to Avignon - our two bases for this tour - Provence is a region of great contrasts, artistically, historically and gastronomically. What unites it above all is a sense of warmth, generosity and abundance. The gastronomy of Provence is truly cuisine du soleil – 'cuisine of the sun'. Stroll through markets in Nice, Aigues-Mortes or Avignon, and you will be assaulted with colourful visions and scents: huge, pregnant aubergines, piles of fine haricots verts, and at least a dozen types of lettuce laid out in the morning light slanting through canopies lining the broad avenues.
Such seasonal abundance has traditionally required preserving methods for leaner times. Fish may be salted, pork transformed into charcuterie, milk from the goats that graze on the scrubby garrigues made into discs of cheese, sometimes covered in fines herbes de Provence. And the seasonal glut of fruits for which Provence is so famous is still, in a few traditional places only, transformed by slow poaching in sugar syrup into fruits confits that are virtually works of art in themselves. Both land and sea yield so many good things and this is reflected in a generous cuisine that is rarely over-complicated. Fishing villages along the fabled Côte d’Azur are the source of an extraordinary Mediterranean catch, while typical inland dishes reflect the harsher terrain of Provence, where meat is scarce and everything must be utilised. La gardiane is a rich stew made from the meat of bulls raised on the Camargue and the petits farcis of Nice stretch out abundant fresh vegetables with delicious morsels of ground meat. A discovery of the wines of Provence is an equally important part of our pursuit. The pretty, pale rosés are a delightful theme, but there are also less frequently encountered vintages to slake the thirst; Cassis, a forceful white from vineyards above the eponymous fishing village, is the perfect accompaniment to the equally full-flavoured bouillabaisse. We dip into the Rhône’s southern flanks at Châteauneuf-du-Pape, as well as for the lighter vins de sable produced from prephylloxera grapes planted in the sandy dunes of the Camargue. For the Romans, this corner of France, the province of Gallia Narbonensis, was one of the most important and strategic in the Empire. The Aurelian Way leading from Rome to Arles left notable Roman remains including the ancient Glanum at St-Rémy and the triumphal theatre at Orange. However, perhaps the greatest Roman
legacy is found not in bricks and mortar, but in the values of Roman civilisation, which remained after the fall of the Empire and had a profound effect on present-day Provençal attitudes to food, wine, and easy good living.
Itinerary Day 1: Nice. Fly at c.11.30am from London Heathrow to Nice (British Airways). An afternoon walk to a ruined citadel strategically positioned at the highest point of Old Nice with spectacular views of the city. An introductory lecture precedes dinner at two Michelin-starred Flaveur. The chefs, brothers Mickaël and Gaël Tourteaux, who earned their second star in 2018, create characterful, delicate dishes. First of three nights in Nice. Day 2: Nice, Mougins. A guided food walk through Nice is an opportunity to sample local delicacies such as socca, chickpea batter baked in a ferociously hot oven, and pissaladière, a sort of Provençal pizza. In the afternoon visit the Musée Matisse, which unites a wide range of the artist’s work; sculpture, ceramics and stained glass as well as painting. In the steep wine hills above the city, the urban appellation of Bellet produces a rare wine in the tiniest quantities. A tasting here before continuing to dinner. Second of three nights in Nice. Day 3: Cagnes-sur-Mer, Vence, St-Paul-de-Vence. Drive to Renoir’s house set amidst olive groves; a memorial to the only major Impressionist to settle in the south. The group is joined by MRT lecturer, Mary Lynn Riley, resident of the Côte d’Azur and specialist in modern art. Continue to the Chapelle du Rosaire, a Dominican chapel designed by Matisse, before lunch at La Colombe d’Or in StPaul-de-Vence, long famous for the artistic crowd that it attracts as well as its fresh regional cuisine. In the afternoon visit the Maeght Foundation, renowned for its collections (Picasso, Hepworth, Miró, Arp, Giacometti, but not all works are shown at once) and for its architecture and setting. Final night in Nice.
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Day 4: Cassis, Avignon. An early departure from Nice for the pretty port of Cassis. Accessible only by boat, visit the hidden bays of the calanques that are home to the bony rock fish traditionally thrown into the fisherman’s pot. Afterwards, overlooking the water, feast on that amazing festival of the sea, la bouillabaisse. Continue to Avignon, where the following four nights are spent. An evening wine tasting in the hotel (situated in a former 16th-century residence) celebrates the wines of the Rhône, a mighty river of wine since the times of the Greeks and Romans. Day 5: Avignon, Orange, Châteauneuf-du-Pape. A morning guided tour of Palais des Papes, principal monument of the Avignon papacy, one-time site of the papal curia and the most significant 14th-century building to survive in southern France. Drive to Orange, site of the greatest of all Roman theatres to survive in the West, before continuing to Châteauneuf-du-Pape for a tour and wine-tasting at a respected familyrun vineyard. Return to Avignon for dinner at La Vieille Fontaine within the hotel. Young chef 84
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Gardens of the Riviera In and around Menton and Nice Mathieu Desmarest creates modern and enticing cuisine rooted in its terroir. Day 6: Les Baux, St-Rémy-de-Provence. In the morning drive to an olive oil producer in the heart of the Alpilles. The mill, dating to the 12th century, has been run by the same family for ten generations. A wine-tasting at a vineyard immortalised by Van Gogh in 1889 precedes a visit to the delightful mediaeval and Renaissance town of Les Baux, whose citadel sits on top of a rocky spur. We are joined here by MRT lecturer, Dr Alexandra Gajewski, specialist in mediaeval architecture and resident of the Languedoc. Continue to St-Rémy, Glanum of old, and proud possessor of one of the truly great funerary memorials of the Roman world. Visit a traditional producer of prized fruits confits before returning to Avignon. Day 7: Aigues-Mortes, Avignon. An excursion to the Camargue, where wild horses and pink flamingos make their home. Visit the salt flats, which have been harvested in this region for thousands of years, before lunch within the mediaeval city walls of Aigues-Mortes. Return to Avignon for a final dinner at Michelin-starred Maison Christian Étienne. Chef Guilhem Sevin, who worked with Étienne for nearly two decades before taking over the restaurant in 2016, creates modern menus in a striking historical setting in the shadow of the Palais des Papes. Day 8: Avignon. An early departure from Avignon for Marseille airport. Fly to London Heathrow arriving c. 12.00 noon.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing, superior garden view room in Nice: £3,570 or £3,460 without flights. Two sharing, superior sea view room in Nice: £3,640 or £3,530 without flights. Single occupancy, classic room in Nice: £3,990 or £3,880 without flights. Single occupancy, superior sea view room in Nice: £4,100 or £3,990 without flights. Accommodation. Hotel La Pérouse, Nice (leshotelsduroy.com): 4-star hotel partially built into the cliff and overlooking the Promenade des Anglais. Rooms are furnished in modern Provençal style. Hôtel d’Europe, Avignon (heurope.com): central 5-star hotel in a former 16th-century residence close to the river Rhône with a pleasant courtyard. Rooms are classic rooms both for two sharing and for single occupancy. How strenuous? There is a lot of walking and standing on this tour (some of it over uneven ground), and it would not be suitable for anyone who has difficulties with everyday walking or stair-climbing. One day involves a lot of driving. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Music in Berlin, 17–22 April 2019 (p.93). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport. Illustration: Avignon, cathedral, lithograph c. 1850.
22–28 March 2019 (mf 456) 7 days • £2,290 Lecturer: Steven Desmond Inspiring historic gardens in spectacular settings, with exceptional growing conditions. Includes visits to some gardens not normally open to the public. Based in Menton throughout. When Tobias Smollett arrived on the Riviera in 1763, he found himself ‘enchanted’ by a landscape ‘all cultivated like a garden’. A century later Dr Bennett’s discovery of the miraculous winter climate at Menton established the town as a haven for prosperous foreigners in need of climatic therapy. By 1900 this narrow strip of land between the Maritime Alps and the Mediterranean had been transformed into a paradise of villas, palatial hotels, seafront promenades and exotic vegetation. The migratory nature of the moneyed population meant that the region developed a character quite separate from local cultural traditions. In a landscape of olive and lemon groves, the villa gardens seem an eclectic collection, disconcerting for those who look for patterns of continuity, but best viewed as separate incidents taking advantage of the exceptional growing conditions. The Hanbury family famously made the steep Italian cliffs of La Mortola a garden of beauty and experiment. Lawrence Johnston, the maker of Hidcote, established himself in the hills above Menton where his romantically sited garden at La Serre de la Madone provided a home for his huge collection of exotics. The gardens of the villas in Garavan continue to evince the private pleasures of past and present owners of many nationalities and design persuasions. The French have added their own distinctive contribution to this artificial enclave. Renoir found new inspiration, as well as some relief from pain, in his garden at Cagnes-sur-Mer. Marguerite
and Aimé Maeght established a magnificent modern art collection in a garden setting at St-Paul-de-Vence. Art of a different character adorns the rooms of the Villa Ephrussi Rothschild at St Jean-Cap-Ferrat where the gardens take advantage of an incomparable setting, viewing the Mediterranean through a filter of pines, palms and cypresses. Charles, Vicomte de Noailles, made a garden drawing together a rich variety of cultural influences at the Villa Noailles, Grasse, providing inspiration for the most recent English horticultural creations at nearby La Mouissone.
Itinerary Day 1: Cagnes-sur-Mer, Menton. Fly at c. 11.30am from London Heathrow to Nice (British Airways). Renoir spent his last years in the farmhouse at Les Collettes near Cagnes-sur-Mer, painting and sculpting from the olive terraces around the garden. Transfer by coach to Menton where all six nights are spent. Day 2: Menton. Visit a private garden in Menton, not normally open to the public (details will be provided). The garden at Clos du Peyronnet is still owned by an Englishman who continues to develop it, blending plants from around the world in a setting of terraces, pools and pergolas. Day 3: Grasse. To the west of Grasse the gardens of the Villa Noailles were made during the postwar years in a distinctive style blending English, classical and other influences in a refreshing rural setting. Drawing on its inspiration, to the east lies La Mouissone, a former olive grove, where the terraces are being developed, rooted in the scents of Grasse’s history but planted with contemporary verve. Day 4: Monaco, La Mortola (Italy). The astonishing outdoor collection of cacti and succulents at the Jardin Exotique in Monaco overlooks the Principality and the sea from its clifftop walks. The Hanbury Botanic Gardens at La Mortola have been famous since their establishment in the 19th century. An unparalleled Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Included meals: 4 lunches, 4 dinners, with wine.
Illustration: Monaco, wood engraving c. 1880.
Gardens of the Riviera continued
Romans in the Rhône Valley Spectacular remains of Provincia Romana
collection of specimens festoon the steep site. Curtains of plumbago and bougainvillea, perfumed parterres, pergolas, exotic pavilions and citrus orchards adorn this garden paradise on a private headland. Day 5: Menton. Lawrence Johnston’s great garden La Serre de la Madone was made between the wars, and though much of the detail has gone, a romantic atmosphere still pervades the dramatic layout. Opportunity for independent time in Menton; a chance to see the Musée Cocteau or his Salle des Mariages. Afternoon tour of Fontana Rosa whose tiled benches still evoke the ‘Writers’ Garden’ created in 1921 by Vicente Blasco Ibaňez, successful playwright and novelist of Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse fame. Literary threads are drawn in from across the world, the surviving rotunda decorated with 100 tiles illustrating Cervantes’s Don Quixote encapsulates the mood perfectly. Dinner is at 2-Michelin star restaurant, Mirazur. Day 6: St Paul de Vence, Menton. The Fondation Maeght near St-Paul provides a rare opportunity to view modernism in a garden context. Return to Garavan, the hillside quarter of Menton to visit Val Rahmeh, an early early 20th-century villa surrounded by gardens of exceptional richness created by Maybud Campbell in the 1950s. Day 7: St Jean-Cap-Ferrat. Sited in an exceptional position on Cap Ferrat, the gardens at the Villa Ephrussi Rothschild, established by Beatrice de Rothschild, are rich and varied. Her Palazzo contains an eclectic, wealthy art collection. Transfer to Nice airport for the flight to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 4.30pm. Some of the gardens can only be visited by special arrangement and are subject to confirmation.
Practicalities
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Price, per person. Rear-view room, two sharing: £2,290 or £2,180 without flights. Sea view room, two sharing: £2,340 or £2,230 without flights. Single occupancy, rear-view room: £2,590 or £2,480 without flights. Single occupancy, sea-view room: £2,500 or £2,390 without flights. Included meals: 2 picnic lunches and 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Napoléon, Menton (napoleon-menton.com): modern, comfortable 4-star hotellocated near the border with Italy, looking back on Vieux Menton. Sea view rooms have balconies but suffer some noise from the busy coastal road and availability is limited. Rooms at the rear are quieter. How strenuous? A lot of walking and standing. Several gardens are on steep sites and paths are often slippery and uneven, without handrails. Sure-footedness is essential. Average distance by coach per day: 42 miles. Group size: between 10 to 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Gardens of the Bay of Naples, 31 March–7 April 2019 (p.152). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport. 86
9–15 April 2019 (mf 476) 7 days • £2,570 Lecturer: Professor Simon Esmonde Cleary A group of the finest Roman monuments surviving anywhere in the empire, with some of the most famous examples of Roman architecture and engineering. The theatres, amphitheatres and temples of Arles, Lyon, Orange and Vienne are spectacular survivals, with the Pont du Gard near Nîmes the most renowned Roman aqueduct of all. Beautiful Provençal landscapes, towns, colours and scents. ‘More like Italy than a province’ was the verdict of the elder Pliny in the middle of the first century AD, speaking of Provence. Two thousand years later his words still hold true. The Rhône valley between Lyon and the Mediterranean was the part of Gaul where Roman influence was most deeply felt. Nature had endowed the region with agricultural riches (grain, vines, olives – the ‘Mediterranean triad’) and the Rhône corridor was the main trade route from Mediterranean lands into Gaul. This wealth allowed the construction of great cities and monuments in the Roman style. Arles, Nîmes and Orange form a tight group of cities at the southern end of the valley, all of them Roman coloniae (privileged cities) with exceptional series of monuments. Nîmes houses perhaps two of the best-preserved structures in the Roman world: the ‘Maison Carrée,’ a classical temple built under the first Roman emperor Augustus, and a late 1st-century ad amphitheatre.Most famously, Nîmes was supplied by a long aqueduct which included the world-famous, triple-tiered Pont du Gard aqueduct. Arles rivalled Nîmes, with an amphitheatre of similar dimensions, a theatre and a great circus for chariot-racing.
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Orange is famous for its theatre with a huge 37m-high stage wall and the exceptionally complete, early 1st-century ad triumphal arch. Further north, the coloniae of Vienne and Lyon also housed great theatres, and at Lyon there is a rare odeon, or covered theatre. Vienne is second only to Nîmes in the quality of its surviving Roman temple and, like Arles and Lyon, boasted a circus. St-Rémy near Arles and Vaison near Orange show how local communities reacted to the examples set by the neighbouring Roman cities. At St-Rémy, the narrow valley in the Alpilles shows Mediterranean influence before the arrival of Rome, with buildings clearly derived from the Hellenistic city of Marseille. In the Roman period construction of amenities such as a forum and public baths, along with a triumphal arch and a splendid family tomb on the main road, were public benefactions by local wealthy families, some of whom had become Roman citizens. A similar pattern can be seen at Vaison, where there is also exceptional evidence of how these Gaulish aristocrats adopted houses that would not have looked out of place at Pompeii. In the late Roman period Arles became one of the most important cities of Roman Europe and a fine set of baths built under the first Christian emperor Constantine I (306–37) survives along with evidence for the growth of Christianity in its churches and cemeteries. With the fall of the western Roman empire in the fifth century and the troubled times that followed, what had been great public monuments, such as the amphitheatres of Arles and Nîmes or the theatre at Orange, became instead fortified redoubts, filled with houses and churches sheltering within their massive Roman walls. As well as the monuments there are museums, some recently created to the highest international standards, housing the sculptures, mosaics, carved marble sarcophagi and humbler items of daily life recovered from excavations in and around the cities.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 2.00pm (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Lyon. Overnight Lyon. Day 2: Lyon, Vienne. The theatre and odeon on Lyon’s Fourvière hill are accompanied by a museum where highlights include an impressive mosaic depicting a circus race. After free time for lunch in Lyon’s old town, continue to Vienne and its stunning temple as well as other Roman remains. Overnight in Vienne. Day 3: Vienne, Arles. Morning visit to Vienne’s Gallo-Roman museum, where remains include domestic and commercial buildings as well as the intriguing wrestlers’ baths. Lunch at the museum’s restaurant before continuing to Arles via Orange, site of the greatest of all Roman theatres to survive in the West. First of four nights in Arles. Day 4: Arles. At Arles the amphitheatre is a justly famous, early 2nd-century structure of a type developed from the Colosseum. See also Constantine’s baths, walls and a cryptoporticus built as foundation for the forum and possibly to
house slaves. In the afternoon visit the Alyscamps Roman necropolis and the Musée de l’Arles et de la Provence Antiques’ spellbinding collection of classical and early Christian art.
Day 6: Pont du Gard, Arles. Spend the morning at the Pont du Gard, an astonishing feat of engineering over the River Gardon. Return to Arles for a free afternoon, perhaps to visit the Van Gogh foundation with temporary exhibitions, or the Romanesque Cathedral of St-Trophime with one of the greatest cloisters of 12th-century Europe. Day 7: Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Drive to St-Rémy-de-Provence, Glanum of old, and proud possessor of one of the truly great funerary memorials of the Roman world, the cenotaph erected by three Julii brothers in honour of their forebears. Continue to Marseille airport for the afternoon flight landing at London Heathrow at c. 6.00pm.
Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,570 or £2,390 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,930 or £2,750 without flights. Included meals: 2 lunches, 4 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Le Royal, Lyon (lyonhotel-leroyal.com): ideally located on the Place Bellecour, the main square of the Presqu’île. Elegant and welcoming with a restaurant and bar. Locally rated as 5-star but more comparable to a good 4-star. Hotel La Pyramide, Vienne (lapyramide.com): 4-star hotel situated a short walk from the centre of town, renovated in 2015. Rooms are contemporary with modern furnishings. There are two restaurants and a boutique, though one will be closed during the dates of the group stay. Arles, Hotel Jules César (hotel-julescesar.fr): former-17th-century Carmelite Convent, now a 5-star boutique hotel. Rooms have been recently refurbished and have modern fittings. Has a pool, bar, and restaurant. How strenuous? Quite a lot of walking is involved, particularly in the town centres. The tour is not suitable for anyone who has difficulties with everyday walking and stair-climbing. There are some long days and coach journeys. Average distance by coach per day: 29 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
Professor Simon Esmonde Cleary Archaeologist specialising in the western Roman Empire and Emeritus Professor of Roman Archaeology at the University of Birmingham. He remains an active researcher and has conducted fieldwork in the UK and France and written books on Gaul and Spain in late antiquity and on Roman Britain.
MAINLAND EUROPE: France
Day 5: Nîmes. See first the perfectly preserved Roman monuments in Nîmes: La Maison Carrée and amphitheatre. Continue to the Jardin de la Fontaine, once a Roman spring sanctuary and now a beautiful 18th-century garden around the terminus of an aqueduct – the water brought here across the Pont du Gard. Nestled here are the Temple of Diana, part of the Roman sacred complex, possibly used as a library, and the Tour Magne watchtower, at the highest point of the city.
Practicalities
See page 260 for all lecturers' biographies.
Illustration: looking out over the junction of the Rhône and the Saône from the Roman ruins in Lyon, lithograph c. 1830.
What else is included in the price? See page 6 Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Georgia Uncovered Treasures of the Southern Caucasus 14–23 September 2019 (mf 707) 10 days • £3,510 Lecturer: Ian Colvin Churches and monasteries dating from the sixth century and earlier. Exquisite jewellery and metalwork from the Bronze Age and Antiquity. Spectacular mountain landscapes. A delicious and varied regional cuisine in a land that is the cradle of wine. Georgia is a country that evokes many mythical and historical associations and yet, paradoxically, is little known in the West. This is partly geopolitical circumstance. For centuries Georgia was cut off from Europe, first by the Islamic caliphate and the Ottoman Turks, and then by Imperial Russia and the USSR. Opportunities for travel there were few. Set on the borders of Europe and Asia, a Christian country surrounded by Muslim neighbours, it is an heir to the civilisations of both continents, and at the same time preserves its own language and a rich cultural heritage that is peculiar to the South Caucasus. Illustration: Tbilisi, wood engraving c. 1880.
An ancient land, its past, like that of neighbouring Armenia, is deeply intertwined with the history of the empires and civilisations that surround it. Georgia appears in the stories of the earliest peoples of the Fertile Crescent and Anatolia. It is linked closely with the Iranian empires to the southeast. They fought the Greeks, Macedonians, Romans, Byzantines and Ottomans to the west for hegemony in this borderland. And the Georgian kings, called in aid from the nomads to the north, or laboured to bar the mountain passes to them: Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans, Huns, Khazars, Turks, Mongols and Timurids – and finally their geographical heirs, the Russians. Even today, Russia, America, Turkey, Iran and the EU play a complex game in the South Caucasus, competing for political and economic influence in a region of vital oil wealth. Georgia has frequently found itself in the vanguard of global history. The metal ages came early in the South Caucasus, and the exquisite archaeological finds displayed in the gold rooms of the Tbilisi Museum confirm the reputation of its ancient smiths. It adopted Christianity early in the fourth century ad; and its beautiful and unique alphabet was created in the early fifth century to help evangelize the people. Georgian and Armenian architects evolved a distinctive South Caucasian religious architecture in the sixth and seventh centuries, even as their churches fell out over Christological differences.
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In the eleventh and twelfth centuries the Bagratid kings unified Georgia and built a multiethnic empire that extended from the Caspian to the Black Sea, and from the Armenian highlands to the North Caucasus. It was demolished by the Mongols and Timurids and the country was again divided into a series of fractious principalities, preyed on by Ottoman Turks, Safavid Persians and Lezgi raiders from the north Caucasus. Georgians greeted the Russians as their Christian saviours on their first arrival at the end of the eighteenth century, but soon fell out with their colonial masters. The Tsars’ viceroys brought European fashions to Tbilisi, remodelling the city with a European quarter to stand alongside the Asiatic Old Town. At the beginning of the oil age, English, international and local investors, including Rothschilds, Nobels, Gulbenkians and Mantashevs built fortunes investing heavily in the Transcaucasus to bring Baku’s oil to world markets. The Art Nouveau palaces of this first age of globalisation still adorn Tbilisi and Batumi. In the same period, Stalin first impressed Lenin with his organising of the workers of Batumi, Tiflis and Baku and with the notorious Tiflis bank robbery of 1907. When war and the Bolsheviks brought the whole edifice crashing down, it was Stalin who built it up again at huge human cost. Nationalism and a longing for ‘freedom’ brought the end of the Soviet Union. It brought
' A most interesting tour and a good introduction to a diverse and complex country. The mountain scenery and insights into the rural economy were intriguing, and the Chavchavadze House, Stalin Museum, and museums were fascinating.' C.M., participant on Georgia Uncovered in 2018.
civil war too, economic collapse and stagnation, finally ended in 2003 by the first of the ‘colour revolutions’ and a new oil boom. Georgia’s new confidence is conspicuous, its promise great, its challenges evident.
c. 50 km
RUSSIA
Itinerary Day 1: London to Tbilisi. Fly at c. 12.00 midday from London Gatwick to Tbilisi via Istanbul (Turkish Airlines). Arriving at c. 10.30pm. Transfer to hotel in the heart of the city. First of four nights in Tbilisi. Day 2: Tbilisi. The Asiatic Old Town set beneath the Narikala fortress remains a twisting maze of streets, caravanserais and ancient churches, adding contrast to the subsequent architecture erected by the tsars’ viceroys, by merchant princes, Bolsheviks and post-Soviet presidents’ favourite modern architects (the vast post-Soviet Sameba – Holy Trinity – Cathedral, rivals the ambition of the great cathedrals of the Middle Ages). Past the ancient bath district built on Tbilisi’s thermal springs, the church at Metekhi is set on cliffs above the Mtkvari River. Day 3: Kakheti. Drive over the scenic Gomburi mountains to Tsinandali in fertile Kakheti, the country estate of the princely Chavchavadze family. Built by Alexandre (1786-1846) diplomat, poet and general, raised at the court of Catherine the Great – and one of the first to introduce enlightenment ideas and modern agricultural methods to Georgia – in 1854 the house was the scene of a notorious raid by the Imam Shamil’s Daghestani fighters. Today it is a small museum affording a glimpse of 19th-century Georgian noble life.
Day 5: Mtskheta, Gudauri. Just north of Tbilisi is the old capital, Mtskheta, scene of the country’s 4th-century conversion and still the religious heart of this strongly Christian country. Its spiritual landmarks include: the sixth-century Jvari Church, perched high above the town; the tiny 5th-century Antioch church; and the 11thcentury Cathedral of Svetitskhoveli, symbol of Georgia’s Conversion. We follow the Georgian Military Highway, the route the Russians constructed at the turn of the 19th century to secure their hold on their Transcaucasian possessions. First of two nights at Gudauri in the high Caucasus Mountains. Day 6: Gudauri. Drive over the Jvari pass to Stepantsminda on the headwaters of the Terek.
Kutaisi Black Sea
Gori
GEORGIA
Mtskheta
Kakheti
Tblisi
Batumi
TURKEY
The 14th-century Gergeti Sameba Church on the slopes of volcanic Mount Kazbek is in perhaps the most dramatic setting in Georgia. Then to the Darial Gates, a natural gorge, where the Terek cuts a narrow passage beneath cliffs that tower nearly 1,000 metres above. Legend has it that Alexander the Great set iron gates here to protect the settled lands of the Near East from the rapacious nomads beyond. Day 7: Gori, Kutaisi. The cult of Joseph Stalin, Georgia’s most famous son, was officially abolished by Khrushchev in 1956, but at his birthplace in Gori the Stalin Museum continues to operate. Although Stalin is a source of embarrassment to many modern Georgians, this museum has been preserved as it was at the fall of the Soviet Union, a fascinating museum of the museum built by his henchman Beria. At Kutaisi we visit the world heritage sites of the 12th-century academy and monastery of Gelati, with its frescoed interiors, and the controversially restored 11th-century Bagrat Cathedral. Overnight Kutaisi. Day 8: Nokalakevi, Batumi. The imposing ruins at Nokalakevi are the remains of the ancient capital of the kingdoms of Colchis and EgrisiLazika, whose massive fortifications date to a period when the region was a focus of ByzantineSasanian rivalry, but the site overlooking the Colchian plain, the ‘Land of the Golden Fleece’, has a much longer history. Excavations have been on-going since the 1970s and have uncovered buried remains through the Hellenistic period to the Late Bronze Age. Since 2001 our lecturer, Ian Colvin, has led an international team in a joint project with the Georgian National Museum. First of two nights at Batumi. Day 9: Batumi. The Bathus Limen, or deep water port, of Greek settlers of the 6th to 5th centuries bc was a sleepy provincial backwater under the Ottomans, until the Russians annexed it in 1878. Subsequently international investment brought a railway and pipelines to bring Baku oil to an eager European market. While Nobels, Rothschilds and Mantashev’s invested in Batumi’s oil infrastructure, Stalin cut his teeth organizing their oil workers’ strikes. The elegant 19th-century seafront boulevard is undergoing an investment boom, but the architecture of the first great period of globalization pre-First World War remains, alongside the post-Soviet towers.
Ian Colvin Historian and Byzantinist specialising in Late Antiquity and the South Caucasus. Trained at Oxford, he is now a researcher at Cambridge. He has directed an ongoing archaeological expedition to ancient Archaeopolis in the South Caucasus since 2001. See page 260 for all lecturers' biographies.
Day 10: Batumi to London. Fly at c. 10.30am from Batumi Airport to London, via Istanbul, arriving at Gatwick at c. 4.00pm (Turkish Airlines).
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,510 or £3,160 without flights. Single occupancy: £4,030 or £3,680 without flights. Included meals: 8 lunches, 8 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Marriott Tbilisi (marriott. co.uk/hotels): 5-star hotel behind a 19th-century facade that is within walking distance of Tbilisi’s central attractions. Carpe Diem Hotel, Gudauri (carpediem.ge): functional, modern hotel designed for skiers. It has spectacular views of the mountains. Best Western, Kudaisi (bestwestern. co.uk): new, 3-star, contemporary hotel in a good central location. Radisson Blu, Batumi (radissonblu.com/Batumi): large hotel with good amenities and views of the Black Sea. How strenuous? You will be on your feet for long periods. Many of the sites are reached by steep, uneven steps sometimes without handrails. The tour would not be suitable for anyone who has difficulties with everyday walking and stairclimbing. There are some long coach journeys (average distance by coach per day: 56 miles). Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Sacred Armenia, 5–13 September 2019 (p.47); Food & Wine Archaeology, 24–27 September 2019 (p.154). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport. Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Day 4: Tbilisi. Tbilisi’s Ethnographic open air House Museum displays examples of the architecture and ethnographic traditions of Georgia’s 14 different regions in a hillside park above the city. The National History Museum preserves its archaeological treasures, while its subterranean treasury is a highlight, demonstrating the remarkable skill of its smiths from the Bronze Age through to Antiquity. There is free time to explore Tbilisi’s pleasures: the enamels and icons of the Fine Art Gallery, the modern paintings of the Art Gallery, or perhaps Prospero’s Books, Tbilisi’s English language bookstore.
Gudauri
Nokalakevi
The Hanseatic League Germany’s Baltic Coast 4–11 September 2019 (mf 671) 8 days • £2,810 Lecturer: Andreas Puth Picturesque towns, spectacular mediaeval buildings, a transformative historical phenomenon – yet little known outside Germany. Monumental brick Gothic, a major feature in the plurality of mediaeval architecture, and many unesco-listed sites. Swedish suzerainty and Communist rule add to the historical fascination of the area. For three hundred years from the middle of the twelfth century, the Hanseatic League was a major power in northern Europe. It began with the cooperation of trading guilds in a few Baltic ports to protect their seafaring and riparian trade (‘Hansa’ means convoy), and grew to become a loose federation of over two hundred cities, stretching from the Gulf of Finland to the Southern Netherlands. Though never a state, and with few of the members enjoying the independence of Free Cities elsewhere in Germany and Italy, the League had the cohesion and might to wage and win a war against the kingdom of Denmark.
The prosperity that resulted from judicious exercise of their power ushered in an explosion of civic pride expressed in art and architecture. Great churches were constructed in imitation of French Gothic cathedrals, town halls received extensions and decorative gables, and merchants’ houses were magnificently rebuilt. In decline from about 1450, a combination of political and economic factors broke their monopoly. England was partly to blame. Only nine delegates attended the last Hanse meeting in 1669. This tour traces the growth of this great merchant empire and explores the remarkable building traditions which arose in its wake. In particular, the development of North German Brick Gothic architecture is a remarkable and – outside Germany – little known phenomenon. One of the reasons most of these remarkable towns have not been visited more – and part of their attraction – is that for forty years they were locked behind the Iron Curtain. That barrier collapsed nearly thirty years ago, and in the meantime huge resources have been devoted to the restoration of the region’s heritage and to the embellishment of the towns. Much of the damage done during the Second World War, and the consequences of neglect during the Communist era, have now been made good.
Illustration: Lübeck, Town Hall, after a drawing in 'Leaves from a Sketchbook', publ. c. 1890.
Itinerary Day 1: Ratzeburg. Fly at c. 10.45am (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Hamburg. Drive to Ratzeburg, a charming town picturesquely located on an island in a lake. The Romanesque cathedral was founded by Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony and of Bavaria, who conquered the area in 1159. Continue to Lübeck for the first of three nights. Days 2 & 3: Lübeck. Lübeck was the first, the richest and the most powerful of all Hansa cities. Tremendous prosperity in the 13th and 14th centuries led to the construction on a grand scale of civic and charitable buildings, churches and monasteries, mansions and fortifications. Of the brick-built churches, the Romanesque cathedral was founded by Henry the Lion, but the greatest is St Mary, a soaring Gothic construction. St Catherine (1300, now a museum) houses Tintoretto’s Raising of Lazarus, and St Jacob (1334) retains its box pews and historic organ. The St Annen Museum, in a former priory, shows art of the 13th–16th centuries including an altarpiece by Hans Memling. Walks also take in massive city gates and walls, the town hall, market place and picturesque backstreets. A free afternoon allows a visit the European Hansemuseum, opened in 2015, and the Buddenbrookhaus, former home of Thomas Mann’s family. Day 4: Wismar, Bad Doberan. The rest of the tour is in territory which until 1989 lay behind the Iron Curtain. The port city of Wismar has two massive late Gothic churches (Nikolaikirche, Georgenkirche), a mediaeval hospital and wellpreserved cityscape of Gothic and early modern merchants’ houses. Between 1848 and 1903 it was technically Swedish territory. Continuing eastwards, visit Bad Doberan Abbey, perhaps the crowning achievement of ecclesiastical Gothic architecture in the Baltic. Overnight Rostock.
MAINLAND EUROPE: Germany
Day 5: Rostock, Stralsund. On the banks of the Warnow River, Rostock joined the Hanseatic League in 1253, and in the next century took over the fishing village of Warnemünde 12km away on the Baltic coast. It became the largest city in the Duchy of Mecklenburg. The Church of St Mary was modelled on Lübeck’s church of the same name, the town hall is mediaeval with 18th-century Baroque embellishments. The City Museum, located in the historic Convent of the Holy Cross, houses an extensive collection of art and cultural history. Continue to Stralsund for the first of three nights. Day 6: Stralsund, Greifswald. Unspoiled and undamaged, Stralsund commands the Baltic Straits to the Island of Rügen, and was second only to Lübeck during its 14th-century golden age. The legacy is a unesco-listed gabled streetscape where Gothic showpieces are interspersed with Baroque monuments from two centuries of Swedish rule. The Alter Markt is a unique mediaeval panorama combining the church of St Nicholas with the spectacular town hall. Greifswald has a superb hall church and many merchants’ houses with enormous gables, and a university founded in 1456. Close by are the romantic abbey ruins at 90
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Hamburg: Opera & 'Elphi' Music, art and architecture in Germany's second city Eldena, immortalised by Caspar David Friedrich. Overnight Stralsund. Day 7: Stralsund. The Catherine Cloister Museum displays Gothic altars and sculptures alongside objects illustrating the life of Hanseatic merchants; mediaeval ecclesiastical textiles are a highlight. The restored chandler’s house dates to the 14th century, and the still-functioning elevator wheel in the attic is one of the oldest of its kind in Northern Europe. The afternoon is free. You may wish to visit the island of Rügen, renowned for its chalk cliffs, silver sands and beautiful, deciduous woodland. Day 8: Chorin. Drive south into Brandenburg to Chorin. The former Cistercian abbey was founded 1258 and secularised in 1542 and allowed to decay until the early 19th century, when the ruins were restored and the building partly rebuilt under the direction of Karl Friedrich Schinkel. It is now an archetypal example of the Brick Gothic style. Break for lunch here before continiung to the airport. Fly from Berlin Tegel, arriving London Heathrow c. 6.00pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,810 or £2,610 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,160 or £2,960 without flights. Included meals: 5 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Radisson Blu Senator Hotel, Lübeck (radissonblu.com): 4-star hotel located on the banks of the river Trave. Radisson Blu Hotel, Rostock (radissonblu.com): large 4-star conference hotel on the edge of the old town with views of the harbour. Hotel Scheelehof, Stralsund (scheelehof. de): characterful 4-star hotel in converted historic townhouses.
Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: London's Underground Railway, 3 September 2019; St Petersburg (for solo travellers), 13–20 September 2019 (p.179). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
What else is included in the price? See page 6 For lecturers' biographies See pages 260–267
The Hamburg Philharmonic play Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Shostakovich at the newly opened, much awaited Elbphilharmonie. La Fanciulla del West (Puccini) and La Belle Hélène (Offenbach) at the Staatsoper Hamburg. Based at an historic hotel, beautifully situated on the Aussenalster lake.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 1.30pm from London Heathrow to Hamburg (British Airways). Arrive at the hotel in time to settle in before dinner. Day 2. A morning walk through the city highlights its musical history, including a visit to the Komponistenquartier, a charming row of small museums commemorating composers including Brahms, Mendelssohn, and Mahler. There is some free time before a late-afternoon talk and early dinner. Evening performance at the Staatsoper: La Fanciulla del West (Puccini): Josep Caballé Domenech (conductor), Anja Kampe (Minnie), Marco Berti (Dick Johnson), Claudio Sgura (Jack Rance), Jürgen Sacher (Nick), Tigran Martirossian (Ashby), Kartal Karagedik (Sonora), Ziad Nehme (Trin), Alexey Bogdanchikov (Sid). Day 3. A morning walk through the Speicherstadt, the old warehouse district and centre of Hamburg’s industrial past. Continue to HafenCity, the commercial and cultural development surrounding the harbour by the river Elbe. Free time before an afternoon talk and early dinner. Evening performance at the Elbphilharmonie with the Hamburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Dennis
Russell Davies (conductor), Konradin Seitzer (violin): Beethoven, Leonore Overture No.2, Op.72a; Mendelssohn, Violin Concerto, Op.64; Shostakovich, Symphony No.12, 'The Year 1917'. Day 4. Visit the Kunsthalle, Hamburg’s largest art museum, established in 1869 with an excellent collection of Old Masters and 19th- century paintings. The afternoon is free for independent exploration; a visit to the Museum of Applied Arts is recommended. Afternoon talk and dinner. Evening performance at the Staatsoper: La Belle Hélène (Offenbach): Nathan Brock (conductor), Oleksiy Palchykov (Pâris), Peter Galliard (Ménélas), Kate Aldrich (Hélène), Viktor Rud (Agamemnon), Max Emanuel Cencic (Oreste), Ziad Nehme (Achille), Christian Miedl (Calchas). Day 5. Free morning before driving to the airport. The flight to Heathrow arrives at c. 3.00pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,460 or £2,350 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,810 or £2,700 without flights. Included meals: 4 dinners with wine. Music: tickets (first category) for 3 performances are included, costing c.£230. Accommodation: Hotel Atlantic Kempinski (kempinski.com): 5-star hotel in a beautiful location on the Aussenalster lake. Traditionally furnished and decorated. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking on this tour, and a reasonable amount of standing around in museums. Average distance by coach per day: 5 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Photograph: Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, ©Malte Flechner, courtesy of Hamburg Tourism.
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How strenuous? Fitness is essential. You will be on your feet a lot, walking and standing around. The tour would not be suitable for anyone with difficulties with everyday walking and stair climbing. Some days involve a lot of driving, particularly the final day. There are also several days with no coaching. Average distance by coach per day: 60 miles.
18–22 May 2019 (mf 539) 5 days • £2,460 (including tickets to 3 performances) Lecturer: Dr John Allison
Berlin, Potsdam, Dresden Art and architecture in Brandenburg and Saxony 19–27 September 2019 (mf 730) 9 days • £3,170 Lecturer: Dr Jarl Kremeier Chief cities of Brandenburg-Prussia and Saxony, rich in fine and decorative arts. Internationally important historic and contemporary architecture. Rebuilding and restoration continues to transform the cities.
MAINLAND EUROPE: Germany
Berlin is an upstart among European cities. Until the seventeenth century it was a small town of little importance, but by dint of ruthless and energetic rule, backed by the military prowess for which it became a byword, the hitherto unimportant state of Brandenburg-Prussia became one of the most powerful in Germany. By the middle of the eighteenth century, with Frederick the Great at the helm, it was successfully challenging the great powers of Europe. Ambitious campaigns were instituted to endow the capital with grandeur appropriate to its new status. Palaces, public buildings and new districts were planned and constructed. At nearby Potsdam, Frederick’s second capital, he created the park of Sanssouci, among the finest ensembles of gardens, palaces and pavilions to be found anywhere. Early in the nineteenth century Berlin became of international importance architecturally when Karl Friedrich Schinkel, the greatest of Neo-Classical architects, designed several buildings there. Berlin has museums of art and antiquities of the highest importance. The Bode Museum and Gemäldegalerie are among the best of their kind and the recently opened Neues Museum, designed by David Chipperfield, provides an excellent setting for the Egyptian collection. The reunited city is now one of the most exciting in Europe. A huge amount of work has been done to knit together the two halves of the city and to rebuild and restore monuments which had been neglected for decades. Dresden was the capital of the Electorate of Saxony. Though it suffered terrible destruction during the War, rebuilding and restoration allow the visitor to appreciate once again something of its former beauty. The great domed Frauenkirche has now been triumphantly reconstructed. Moreover, the collections of fine and applied arts are magnificent. The Old Masters Gallery in Dresden is of legendary richness, the Green Vault is the finest surviving treasury of goldwork and objets d’art, and the Albertinum reopened in 2010 to display a fine collection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century art.
arena for festivities and part museum for cherished collections. Visit the excellent porcelain museum and the fabulously rich Old Masters Gallery, particularly strong on Italian and Netherlandish painting. The Green Vault of the Residenzschloss displays one of the world’s finest princely treasuries. Day 3: Dresden, Pillnitz. Visit the great domed Frauenkirche, the Protestant cathedral. Drive to Pillnitz, a summer palace in Chinese Rococo style, with park, gardens and collections of decorative art. Take a boat trip back along the Elbe to Dresden for an optional afternoon visit of the New Masters Gallery in the Albertinum. Day 4: Dresden, Potsdam. In the morning drive on to Potsdam. The enclosed park of Sanssouci was created as a retreat from the affairs of state by Frederick the Great. It consists of gardens, parkland, palaces, pavilions and auxiliary
Itinerary Day 1: Dresden. Fly at c. 10.45am from London Heathrow to Berlin (British Airways) and drive to Dresden. Introductory lecture before dinner. First of three nights in Dresden. Day 2: Dresden. The Zwinger is a unique Baroque confection, part pleasure palace, part 92
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buildings. In the afternoon visit his relatively modest single-storey palace atop terraces of fruit trees and the exquisite Chinese teahouse. Overnight in Potsdam. Day 5: Potsdam, Berlin. Spend the morning on the Alter Markt, seeing the Nikolaikirche, a Classiciststyle, Lutheran church. The Museum Barberini was built on the site of the original Barberini Palace, which was largely destroyed by bombing in 1945 and then demolished three years later. Walk through the city’s historical Dutch Quarter. After lunch travel to Berlin by coach. The villa of Klein-Glienicke is a dream of Italy; visit its gardens strewn with Neoclassical garden buildings. First of four nights in Berlin.
Illustration: Dresden, entrance to the Zwinger Palace, lithograph c. 1850 after Samuel Prout.
Music in Berlin Art, architecture and music in the German capital Day 3: Berlin, Charlottenburg. Schloss Charlottenburg, the earliest major building in Berlin, is an outstanding Baroque and Rococo palace with splendid interiors. The Berggruen Collection of Picasso and classic modern art is also here. Evening concert at the Philharmonie: Verdi, Quattro Pezzi Sacri. Daniel Barenboim (conductor), Anna Netrebko (soprano), Rundfunkchor Berlin and Staatskapelle Berlin.
Day 6: Berlin. A walk to see a selection of the historic and new architecture of Berlin, passing Bebelplatz, the Gendarmenmarkt with its twin churches and concert hall, and the HumboldtForum, a new museum project on the site of the former City Palace, due for completion in 2019. Spend the afternoon on ‘Museum Island’: the Bode Museum houses a splendid, comprehensive collection of European sculpture, including works by Riemenschneider, as well as Byzantine art, and the Alte Nationalgalerie houses an excellent collection of 19th-century paintings and sculptures. Day 7: Berlin. A morning walk includes Unter den Linden, Peter Eisenmann’s controversial Holocaust Memorial and the unmistakeable symbol of the city, the Brandenburg Gate. End at the Reichstag, a ponderous 1880s structure scarred by the vicissitudes of the 20th century, the shell now brilliantly rehabilitated by Norman Foster and topped by the famous glass dome. Lunch is at the rooftop restaurant.Visit the Kunstgewerbemuseum, the Museum of Decorative Arts, one of the many museums scattered around the ‘Kulturforum’. The Gemäldegalerie houses one of Europe’s major collections of Old Masters. Day 8: Berlin. Drive to Schloss Charlottenburg, the earliest major building in Berlin, an outstanding summer palace built with a Baroque core and Rococo wings, fine interiors, paintings by Watteau, extensive gardens, pavilions and a mausoleum. The Berggruen Collection of Picasso and classic modern art is also here and has recently reopened after extensive renovation works. Day 9: Berlin. Take a coach to Kreuzberg, passing Cold War related landmarks such as the Oberbaumbrücke and Karl-Marx Allee. Pass also the Jewish Museum, Daniel Libeskind’s jagged, lacerated, powerfully emotive extension to a Baroque palace. Pause at the Prussian National Monument for the Liberation Wars, designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel in 1821. Fly from Berlin to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 3.30pm.
Practicalities
Included meals: 3 lunches, 5 dinners, with wine Accommodation. Gewandhaus Hotel, Dresden (gewandhaus-hotel.de): traditional 5-star hotel in a reconstructed Baroque building. Steigenberger Hotel Sanssouci, Potsdam (steigenberger.com): 4-star hotel on the edge of Potsdam’s old town, very close to Sanssouci Palace. Regent Hotel, Berlin (theregentberlin.de): elegant 5-star hotel decorated in Regency style, located close to Unter den Linden. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking required and standing around in museums. Average distance by coach per day: 44 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
17–22 April 2019 (mf 487) 6 days • £3,320 (including tickets to 4 performances) Lecturer: Dr John Allison Deutsche Oper Berlin: Rienzi (Wagner) and Tosca (Puccini). Staatsoper Unter den Linden: Die Meistersinger (Wagner), Daniel Barenboim (conductor). At the Philharmonie: Quattro Pezzi Sacri (Verdi), conducted by Barenboim, with Anna Netrebko (soprano). Walks, museum and gallery visits with a Berlinbased local guide, including excursions to Potsdam and Charlottenburg.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 12.55pm from London Heathrow to Berlin Tegel (British Airways). Take an orientation tour by coach: the New Embassy quarter, Reichstag, Brandenburg Gate, Pariser Platz and Unter den Linden. Dinner in the hotel. Day 2. Walk through the oldest part of the city to ‘Museums Island’. Visit the Neues Museum, the stunning new home to the Egyptian Museum, restored and recreated by British architect David Chipperfield and the Alte Nationalgalerie which superbly displays European painting of the 19th century including the finest collection of German Romantics. Some free time. Evening performance at the Deutsche Oper: Rienzi (Wagner). Evan Rogister (conductor), Philipp Stölzl (director), Torsten Kerl (Rienzi), Martina Welschenbach (Irene), Andrew Harris (Steffano Colonna), Annika Schlicht (Adriano), Dong-Hwan Lee (Paolo Orsini), Derek Welton (Kardinal Orvieto), Clemens Bieber (Baroncelli), Stephen Bronk (Cecco del Vecchio). Illustration: Die Meistersinger, 1890.
Day 5: Berlin, Potsdam. Excursion to Potsdam which in the 18th century developed into Brandenburg-Prussia’s second capital. Sanssouci, created as a retreat from the affairs of state by Frederick the Great, is among the finest 18thcentury complexes of gardens, palaces and pavilions to be found anywhere. Return to Berlin. Early evening performance at the Staatsoper: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (Wagner). Daniel Barenboim (conductor), Andrea Moses (director), Wolfgang Koch (Hans Sachs), Kwangchul Youn (Veit Pogner), Julia Kleiter (Eva), Burkhard Fritz (Walther von Stolzing), Stephan Rügamer (David), Natalia Skrycka (Magdalene), Graham Clark (Kunz Vogelgesang), Gyula Orendt (Konrad Nachtigall), Johannes Martin Kränzle (Sixtus Beckmesser), Jürgen Linn (Fritz Kothner), Siegfried Jerusalem (Balthasar Zorn), Reiner Goldberg (Ulrich Eisslinger), Florian Hoffmann (Augustin Moser), David Oštrek (Hermann Ortel), Franz Mazura (Hans Schwarz), Olaf Bär (Hans Foltz). Day 6. Homeward journey. Return to London Heathrow from Berlin Tegel landing at c. 1.15pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,320 or £3,180 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,710 or £3,570 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 3 dinners with wine. Music: tickets to 4 performances are included, costing c. £760. Accommodation. The Regent Berlin (theregentberlin.de): elegant 5-star hotel decorated in Regency style, close to Unter den Linden. How strenuous? There is a reasonable amount of walking and standing around in art galleries. Average distance by coach per day: 9 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Opera in Vienna, 23–28 April 2019 (p.51). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport. Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,170 or £3,000 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,610 or £3,440 without flights.
Day 4. Europe’s greatest building project in the 1990s, Potsdamer Platz showcases an international array of architects. Scattered around the nearby ‘Kulturforum’ are museums, the State Library and the Philharmonie concert hall (Hans Scharoun 1956–63). The Gemäldegalerie houses one of Europe’s major collections of Old Masters. Free afternoon. Evening performance at the Deutsche Oper: Tosca (Puccini). Ivan Repusic (conductor), Boleslaw Barlog (director), Carmen Giannattasio (Tosca), Jorge de León (Mario Cavaradossi), Zeljko Lucic (Scarpia), Derek Welton (Angelotti), Seth Carico (Sacristan), Jörg Schörner (Spoletta), PaullAnthony Keightley (Sciarrone).
Berlin: New Architecture The unification of a capital cleansed from the former ‘death strip’, provides an ethereal monument in pressed clay and wooden rods (by Berlin architects Peter Sassenroth and Rudolf Reitermann and Austrian clay artist Martin Rauch). Berlin has become a European hub of science and technology and contemporary architectural contributions reflect this dominance, with an exciting use of materials and technologies. Visits to the Otto Bock Science Center, whose whiteribboned facade represents human muscle fibre in 3D; Bothe Richter Teherani’s renewable-energypowered EnergieForum; and The Sony Center, German-American firm Jahn’s powerful essay in glass and light. The controversial Holocaust Memorial by Peter Eisenmann is nearby. Visit the Jewish Museum, Daniel Libeskind’s jagged, lacerated, powerfully emotive extension to a Baroque palace. Potsdamer Platz, before the war a nodal point in the city centre but subsequently virtually open wasteland. Now it is at the centre of a 50-acre development and a conspectus of international contemporary architecture with contributions from Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers, Helmut Jahn, Hans Kollhoff, Rafael Moneo and Arata Isozaki. Buildings of a wide range of use and design, interconnected with public atria, fill the segments and step up to the towers which front the Platz itself.
25–29 June 2019 (mf 578) 5 days • £1,970 Lecturer: Tom Abbott
Spree. The devastated 19th- and early 20th-century industrial landscape has been reborn, with striking contemporary additions, including a hotel, its dramatic arm cantilevered over the water.
Berlin contains Europe’s biggest concentration of contemporary architecture.
Day 2. Post-War and post-Wall Berlin has been all about melding old with new. The art scene in Berlin began its renaissance in the mid-90s with a migration to the Scheunenviertel (Barn Quarter) in the old East, now home to a multitude of high-fashion galleries, bars, and cafés. Elsewhere, antique and modern sit easily side by side. Berlin’s renewal has involved some of the greatest names in post-War architecture. We visit David Chipperfield’s Neues Museum, a mediation on damage, with fragments of fresco, carving and old brick work exposed alongside new construction; the Jakob-and-Wilhelm Grimm university library, the great, glass-roofed reading room, a dramatic, porous space; Harris + Kurrle’s cuboid Archaeological Centre citing Egyptian temple architecture at the National Museum of Berlin’s cluster of archaeological museums. After lunch, drive out to Foster’s library at the Free University, inspired by the human brain. The Catholic parish church of St Canisius is based on strictly geometrical patterns enlivened through light.
The list of architects virtually comprises a roll-call of the world’s leading architectural practices. Access to private places, and time for some of the standard sights. Option to combine this tour with Dutch Modern, 20–24 June 2019 (see page 168).
MAINLAND EUROPE: Germany
Itinerary Because this itinerary is dependent on a number of appointments and special arrangements, the order and even the content of the tour may vary. If combining this tour with Dutch Modern: fly from Amsterdam Schiphol to Berlin Schönefeld (EasyJet) at c. 7.30pm on 24th June and transfer by taxi to the hotel. Overnight Berlin. Day 1. Fly at c. 11.00am from London Heathrow to Berlin (British Airways). Travel by coach to central Berlin via the Felleshus, or pan-Nordic building. The complex houses five embassies, each of which were designed quite distinctively by architects of the respective countries. The houses are arranged according to their location on the map. Even the North and Baltic Seas are represented by three water basins between the buildings. Drive to Hans Scharoun’s original and organic Philharmonie (concert hall) for a guided tour. Continue to the hotel, passing the Mediaspree, established to house the media industries along the banks of the River 94
Day 3: Memory. Germany has engaged with its troubled history with as much energy as its dynamic present. The Topography of Terror sits on a site that once housed the SS and Gestapo headquarters. Here, the brief was to commemorate and educate. Later political scars are addressed in Bernauer Strasse (the street along which the Wall ran) where the Berlin Wall Memorial, by Stuttgart architects Kohlhoff & Kohlhoff, uses two six-meter-high corroded steel walls as symbols of the ‘Iron Curtain’. The Chapel of Reconciliation, replacing a 19th-century church
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Day 4: Triumph, defeat, unity. Perhaps no other building is imbued with such mixed associations while remaining the unmistakable symbol of a city: isolated since the war, politically and architecturally, the Brandenburg Gate again is integrated into a stately square, Pariser Platz. Despite strict planning regulations, buildings of individuality and distinction have arisen including the chirpy British Embassy by Michael Wilford and the DG Bank by Frank Gehry. Planned by Axel Schultes and Charlotte Frank, the ‘Band des Bundes’ is a long rectangle of government buildings including the Chancellery which twice crosses the meandering River Spree. The main railway station by Gerkan, Marg & Partners, which opened in June 2006, celebrates unification through its form and transparent appearance. Examine the converted bunker which now houses the Sammlung Boros contemporary art collection. Another potent Berlin symbol is the Reichstag, a ponderous 1880s structure scarred by the vicissitudes of the 20th century, the shell now brilliantly rehabilitated by Norman Foster and topped by the famous glass dome. Dinner is at the rooftop restaurant. Day 5. Visit the Museum for Architectural Drawing run by the Tchoban Foundation. The ‘Kulturforum’ was planned in the 1960s by the West as an area for cultural institutions and became a site for Mies van der Rohe’s modernmovement New National Gallery. En route to the airport visit and break for lunch in the Bikinihaus, Germany’s first ‘concept mall’ – part of a listed building complex in the zoological garden area of Berlin. Fly from Berlin to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 3.30pm.
Mediaeval Saxony Carolingian, Ottonian, Romanesque Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,970 or £1,810 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,250 or £2,090 without flights. Included meals: 3 dinners with wine. Accommodation. The Regent Berlin (theregentberlin.de): elegant 5-star hotel decorated in Regency style, close to Unter den Linden. Rooms are of a good size and excellent standard.
29 April–7 May 2019 (mf 500) 9 days • £2,780 Lecturer: Dr Ulrike Ziegler One of the most fascinating areas of early mediaeval art and architecture. Straddling the former border between East and West Germany and still relatively unfrequented. Some delightful landscape and attractive towns.
How strenuous? This is a short but tiring tour. There is a lot of walking and very little free time. Average distance by coach per day: 10 miles.
Option to combine this tour with The Cathedrals of England, 8–16 May 2019 (see page 10).
Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
In amassing territory which stretched from the Atlantic to Bohemia and from the Baltic to central Italy, Charlemagne believed that he was recreating the ancient Roman Empire. Vivid expression was given to this belief by the attempts to emulate Roman forms by the builders and artists who worked on his innumerable projects of construction and embellishment. Few of these
Price, Dutch Modern and Berlin: New Architecture combined. Two sharing: £4,070 or £3,930 without flights. Single occupancy: £4,660 (standard room in Utrecht) or £4,720 (deluxe); £4,520 or £4,580 without flights. This includes extra accommodation in Berlin (1 night), flight and airport transfers between the two. These arrangements are pre-booked but unescorted. (Please note that, at the time of printing, Dutch Modern has very few spaces remaining.)
survive, but some of the most enlightening are to be seen in Saxony. The election of Henry of Saxony in 919 to the royal throne of Germany brought to an end a century of disunity and baronial misrule and ushered in a period during which the Saxon kings – two Henrys and three Ottos – achieved a partial reconstitution of Charlemagne’s empire and brought about the emergence of a nation state, arguably the first in Europe. ‘Old’ Saxony, which comprised the Harz mountains and the undulating plains to the north, became the most powerful of the German duchies as well as forming the kernel of the German nation. Subsequently the region gradually lost its pivotal role in national and international affairs; even the name slid across the map to denominate another part of Germany. A consequence of the region’s central importance in the early Middle Ages is that Old Saxony has no peers in northern Europe for the wealth of Ottonian and early Romanesque architecture, sculpture, precious metalwork and
Other possible combinations: Connoisseur's Vienna, 17–23 June 2019 (p.49); Danish Castles & Gardens, 1–7 July 2019 (p.65); French Gothic, 1–7 July 2019 (p.77). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Bauhaus Centenary 27 September–2 October 2019 (mf 762) Very few spaces remaining 6 days • £2,310 Lecturer: Tom Abbott 8–13 October 2019 (mf 785) Very few spaces remaining 6 days • £2,310 Lecturer: Tom Abbott MAINLAND EUROPE: Germany
A one-off tour to mark the centenary of last century’s most influential art school. Visits special commemorative exhibitions as well as permanent collections and buildings. Includes the Bauhaus college buildings and several pioneering examples of modernism.
What else is included in the price? See page 6 For lecturers' biographies See pages 260–267 Photograph: Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, Architect: Peter Eisenmann. Copyright: visitBerlin, Photo ©Wolfgang Scholvien.
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' Ulrike Ziegler was very personable – and a font of historical knowledge.' L.H. & R.H., participants on Mediaeval Saxony in 2018.
Day 4: Hildesheim, Goslar. Goslar is a lovely little town with outstanding Ottonian art and architecture, of which the palace is a rare secular survival. Works of art including a bronze altar are in the museum. First of five nights in Quedlinburg.
Practicalities
Day 5: Quedlinburg, Gernrode. Quedlinburg is not only a wonderfully preserved mediaeval town but has the authentic feel of a place not spruced up for the tourist trade. The castle hill is crowned by the collegiate church of St Servatius, begun 1070, and contains another of Germany’s finest treasuries. The Wipertikirche has a 10thcentury crypt. St Cyriakus at Gernrode is a church of exceptional beauty; begun 961, it is the oldest large-scale Ottonian building surviving. Overnight Quedlinburg.
Included meals: 1 lunch and 5 dinners with wine.
Day 6: Halberstadt, Hamersleben. Halberstadt was a major city in the Middle Ages. The Romanesque Church of Our Lady contains life-size reliefs of apostles. The cathedral is the largest French-style Gothic church in Germany after Cologne, and has a very rich treasury, which is particularly good for mediaeval textiles. Visit the Monastery and church of St Pankratius in Hamersleben, a hidden gem of Romanesque architecture. Overnight Quedlinburg.
other arts. A consequence of subsequent decline is that much of this heritage is situated in some amazingly lovely and unspoilt little towns amidst a largely rural landscape of wooded hills and rolling farmland. Split after the war between West and East, the region is still far from recovering the popularity it had with travellers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Itinerary Day 1: London to Paderborn. Fly at c. 10.45am from London Heathrow to Düsseldorf (British Airways). Overnight in Paderborn.
MAINLAND EUROPE: Germany
Day 2: Paderborn, Corvey. At Paderborn are the fascinating archaeological remains of Charlemagne’s palace and a modern reconstruction of the Ottonian replacement. The 13th-century cathedral has a western tower and spire similar to its pre-Romanesque predecessor. Also see the treasury in the Diocesan Museum. The westwork of the Abbey at Corvey is among the most important of surviving Carolingian buildings. Drive to Hildesheim for the first of two nights. Day 3: Hildesheim. Hildesheim is of enormous importance in the history of Romanesque art and architecture. The cathedral has some of the earliest and best bronze sculpture of that era and the treasury is one of the finest in Germany; both reopened in August 2014 after extensive renovations. A pinnacle of Ottonian achievement embodying many influential innovations, the sixtowered church of St Michael was begun in 1010. Overnight Hildesheim. 96
Day 7: Magdeburg, Königslutter. Magdeburg was the favoured residence of Otto the Great. The cathedral, standing on a bluff above the River Elbe, is the first Gothic building in Germany and a veritable museum of mediaeval sculpture. Königslutter am Elm has a very fine church and cloister from the abbey founded in 1135 and built by Lombard masons; the sculpture is superb. Overnight Quedlinburg. Day 8: Merseburg, Naumburg. Drive south to Merseburg on the river Saale with its cathedral, begun in 1015 and dating mainly from the 13th and 16th centuries. Architecturally, Naumburg Cathedral is an outstanding embodiment of the transition from Romanesque to Gothic, but its great importance lies in its 13th-century sculpture, including statues of the founders, among the most powerful and realistic of the Middle Ages. Day 9: Braunschweig. Braunschweig (Brunswick) was residence of Henry the Lion, one of the most powerful princes in 12th-century Europe. The Romanesque cathedral has extensive frescoes of c. 1220, a rare survival. Opposite stands Henry’s castle; now a museum, it displays the Lion Monument, the first free-standing monumental bronze sculpture since Roman times. Fly from Hanover and arrive at Heathrow at c. 9.00pm. If combining this tour with The Cathedrals of England: fly back with the group to London Heathrow (British Airways). Transfer by taxi to the Ambassdor Hotel in London and spend the night there. Transfer by taxi in the morning to the start of The Cathedrals of England.
Illustration, previous page: Quedlinburg Schloss, after a drawing 1920. Above left: Magdeburg, pulpit of the cathedral, wood engraving c. 1880.
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Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,780 or £2,660 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,020 or £2,900 without flights. Accommodation. Hotel zur Mühle, Paderborn (hotelzurmuehle.de): modern 3-star hotel in the city centre. Van der Valk Hotel, Hildesheim (hildesheim.vandervalk.de): modern 4-star hotel with a historical facade looking onto the market square. Romantik Hotel am Brühl, Quedlinburg (hotelambruehl.de): comfortably-furnished 4-star hotel in a restored heritage building near the historical heart. How strenuous? This tour involves a lot of walking in the town centres where vehicular access is restricted, and should not be attempted by anyone who has difficulty with everyday walking and stair-climbing. Some days involve a lot of driving. Average distance by coach per day: 91 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Price, Mediaeval Saxony and The Cathedrals of England combined. Two sharing: £5,720 or £5,600 without flights. Single occupancy: £6,420 or £6,300 without flights. This includes extra accommodation in London (1 night) and a taxi transfer from Heathrow to the hotel, and again the next morning to the start of the tour. These arrangements are pre-booked but unescorted. Other possible combinations: Opera in Vienna, 23–28 April 2019 (p.51); Ravenna & Urbino, 24–28 April 2019 (p.131); Organs of Bach’s Time, 8–13 May 2019 (p.102); Tudor England, 8–13 May 2019 (p.26). The Cathedrals of England, 8–16 May 2019 (p.10). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
The Ring in Leipzig 30 April–6 May 2019 (mf 504) Very few spaces remaining 7 days • £2,980 (including tickets to 4 performances) Lecturer: Barry Millington Wagner’s monumental Ring of the Nibelung cycle in the composer’s birthplace. Talks on the operas by Barry Millington, chief music critic for London’s Evening Standard and editor of The Wagner Journal. Guided walks with local guides to explore the architecture and museums of this historic and lively city. Day excursion to Halle, birthplace of Handel.
Dresden Music Festival Art and music in the Saxon capital 16–22 May 2019 (mf 532) 7 days • £3,010 (including tickets to 5 performances) Lecturer: Professor John Holloway Five performances in three venues including the Staatskapelle Berlin and Daniel Barenboim at the Semperoper. Walks to see the fine 18th- & 19th-century architecture and outstanding art collections, and excursions to the surrounding area. Rebuilding, restoration and refurbishment has wrought wonders in this once shattered city.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 10.45am from London Heathrow Airport (British Airways) to Berlin. An evening lecture is followed by dinner. Day 2: Dresden. Morning visit of the Residenzschloss to see the wonderful Green Vault and its content, one of the world’s finest princely treasuries, once again displayed in their original venue. Evening concert at the Kulturpalast with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla (conductor), Yujia Wang (piano): Ligeti, Romanian Concerto; Prokofiev, Piano Concerto No.5 in G, Op.55; Brahms, Symphony No.2 in D, Op.73. Day 3: Meissen, Dresden. Drive downstream to Meissen, ancient capital of Dukes of Saxony and location of the discovery of hard-paste porcelain. The largely 15th-century hilltop castle overlooking the Elbe, the Albrechtsburg, is one of the first to be more residential than defensive, and within the complex is a fine Gothic cathedral. Return to Dresden for some free time. Evening concert at the Kulturpalast with the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra, Cristian Măcelaru (conductor), Jan Vogler (cello): Muhly, Helbig & Long, Cello Concerto (world première); Beethoven, Symphony No.3 in E flat, Op.55 ‘Eroica’. Day 4: Dresden. In the morning visit the Zwinger, a unique Baroque confection, a pleasure palace, arena for festivities and museum for cherished collections. See the Old Masters Gallery, one of the finest collections in Europe, particularly strong on Italian and Netherlandish painting. Free afternoon. Evening concert at the Semperoper with the Staatskapelle Berlin, Daniel Barenboim (conductor): Brahms, Symphony No3. in F, Op.90, Symphony No.4 in E minor, Op.98. Day 5: Pillnitz, Dresden. Travel by boat upstream to Pillnitz, a summer palace in Chinese Rococo style, with collections of decorative art and a riverside park. After lunch return to Dresden for some free time. Evening concert at the Kulturpalast with the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Sir Antonio Pappano (conductor), Lisa Batiashvili (violin): Mussorgsky, Night on the Bald Mountain; Bartók, Violin Concerto No.1; Rimsky-Korsakov, ‘Scheherazade’, Op.35. Day 6: Dresden. Visit the New Masters Gallery in the Albertinum, reopened in 2010 after extensive renovations following flood damage and home to the New Masters Gallery. Some free time. Evening concert at the Frauenkirche with the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Sir Antonio Pappano (conductor): Mahler, Symphony No.6 in A minor. Day 7. Fly from Berlin to London Heathrow airport, arriving c. 3.45pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,010 or £2,900 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,390 or £3,280 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine. Music: tickets (top category) for 5 performances are included costing c. £420. Accommodation. Taschenbergpalais, Dresden (kempinski.com): 5-star hotel in the heart of the Old Town, 2 minutes’ walk from the Semperoper and the Zwinger. How strenuous? Vehicular access is restricted in the city centre. Participants are expected to walk to the concert venues and there is a substantial amount of walking and standing around in art galleries and museums. Average distance by coach per day: 45 miles (predominantly on the first and last days of the tour). Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
Illustration: Dresden, Hoftheater, by Paul Hey c. 1908.
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Dresden’s greatness as a city of the arts was very much the creation of two electors in the 18th century: Frederick Augustus I (‘the Strong’, 16941733) and his son Frederick Augustus II. (17331763). Though founded at the beginning of the thirteenth century, for its first five hundred years it was a minor city of little distinction. This despite having been selected as residence in 1485 by the branch of the dukes of Saxony that gained the electorate in 1547. Augustus the Strong’s pillaging of the state treasury to feed his reckless extravagance was both symbol and to some extent the cause of his dismal record in most areas of statecraft, but his achievements as builder, patron and collector rank him among the most munificent of European rulers. Great architecture, a picture collection of legendary richness, magnificent accumulations of precious metalwork and ceramics (porcelain was manufactured here for the first time in Europe) and a glorious musical life transformed Dresden into one of the most admired and visited cities in Europe and a major destination on the Grand Tour. If to a somewhat lesser degree, subsequent rulers of Saxony continued the tradition of cultural embellishment (and political ineptitude: they had a tiresome habit of joining the losing side). In the nineteenth century, ‘the Florence on the Elbe’ acquired buildings by Schinkel and Semper, and Weber and Wagner were directors of the opera house. In the twentieth century, Richard Strauss added to its illustrious musical history. Then in February 1945 a tragically propitious set of circumstances conspired to make the air raid on Dresden the most ‘successful’ of Allied bombing missions. Most of the art collections had been removed to safety but 80 percent of the old centre was destroyed. Under the Communist regime a few of the chief monuments were grudgingly restored, but since unification the painstaking process of rebuilding and restoration has accelerated. The great dome of the Protestant Cathedral, the Frauenkirche, again dominates the skyline, and the Green Vault in the royal palace again displays the unequalled magnificence of the treasury. Significantly, rank and file buildings are steadily being recreated; the glory of Dresden lay as much in the lesser buildings as in the major ones. Some striking new architecture is being added, notably the all-glass car factory in the historic centre and the Foster & Partners railway station.
The Dresdner Musikfestspiele is generally of an appropriate standing, but 2019 is again of high musical standards. The venues, too, are varied – the Frauenkirche, a magnificent nineteenthcentury opera house and the city’s newly restored Bauhaus cultural complex (Kulturpalast) with its modern 1,800 capacity concert hall.
Handel in Halle Music festival in the composer’s birthplace Day 3: Naumburg, Halle. Drive out to Naumburg, a well preserved town with a major Romanesque and Early Gothic cathedral which contains some of the finest of mediaeval sculptures including astounding pseudo-portraits of the founders. Return to Halle for some free time. Concert at the Händel Halle with the Kammerorchester Basel and MDR Rundfunkchor, Paul McCreesh (conductor), soloists: Mary Bevan, Rupert Enticknap, David Soar, Thomas Walker: Susanna, HWV 66. Day 4: Leipzig, Halle. Leipzig, the largest free city in Saxony and always a major centre of trade and industry, especially publishing. A guided walking tour includes the Markt, the large square with the arcaded town hall on one side, the maze of alleys and courtyards behind the streetfronts and the Thomaskirche, the mediaeval church where J. S. Bach was director of music for 26 years. Some free time, opportunity to visit the Bach Museum or the Museum of Fine Arts in its new premises, before returning to Halle mid afternoon. Evening concert at the Dom zu Halle with Academy of Ancient Music, Tenebrae, Nigel Short (conductor), soloists: Katie Trethewey, Martha McLorinan, Nicholas Madden, Stephen Kennedy: Messiah, HWV 56.
12–17 June 2019 (mf 579) 6 days • £2,240 (including tickets to 4 performances) Lecturer: Dr David Vickers Four performances including one opera: Alcina. Internationally renowned artists including: The King’s Consort, Academy of Ancient Music and the Tenebrae choir with Paul McCreesh.
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Excursions to Leipzig, Wörlitz and Naumburg with its astounding thirteenth-century cathedral. Britain’s greatest composer was not, of course, born in Britain but in Saxony, in the city of Halle an der Saale. Its prosperity founded on salt and trade, the city reached its apogee in the sixteenth century. But the seeds of its international reputation were sown in the following century with the founding of the university and the birth of George Frideric Handel (or Georg Friedrich Händel), the son of a barbersurgeon, in 1685. While hearing music in the composer’s home town has a special frisson, a visit to the Handel Festival in Halle is justified by infinitely more than historical association. Now in its sixtyseventh season, it is in the forefront of Handelian endeavour, and no longer need defer to the slightly more senior and rival festival at Göttingen, which for much of the Halle festival’s history was across the border in West Germany. 98
Since German unification, federal funding has been generous, the range of performers makes the festival truly international and their quality puts the festival on a par with some of the best in Europe. Equally striking is the rapidity with which the resident orchestra, from the Halle Opera House, has embraced period performing styles, switching to authentic instruments for the festival. As with all our music tours, there are excurisons to places of beauty or architectural interest in the vicinity, while allowing plenty of free time in Halle itself. The city survived the war without much damage, and the effects of pollution and neglect during the years of communism have been largely reversed.
Itinerary
Day 5: Halle, Bad Lauchstädt. In the morning visit the Moritzburg, a once formidable but partly ruined 15th-century castle; a 19th-cent. range houses an excellent art gallery. Drive the few miles to Bad Lauchstädt, a fashionable resort in the early 19th century with a delightful theatre built for the annual visit by Goethe and his troupe of actors from Weimar. Afternoon opera at the Goethe-Theater: Alcina (Handel) with the Lautten Compagney Berlin, Nigel Short (conductor) and soloists to be confirmed. Return to Halle for dinner. Day 6: Wörlitz. Visit the park of Schloss Wörlitz, one of the first and most successful of English-style landscaped gardens on the Continent, a delightful ensemble with artfully planned lake, Classical pavilions and Romantic follies. Fly from Berlin Tegel to Heathrow, arriving c. 5.45pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,240 or £2,020 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,480 or £2,260 without flights. Music: top category tickets to 4 performances are included, costing c. £220. Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine.
Day 1: Halle. Fly at c. 10.50am from London Heathrow Airport to Berlin (British Airways). Drive to Halle (c. 3 hours), with a stop en route.
Accommodation. Hotel Rotes Ross, Halle (dormero-hotel-rotes-ross.de): 4-star hotel in the centre, comfortable and furnished in a classic style.
Day 2: Halle. An introductory walk in Halle includes the 16th-century Marktkirche, an outstanding example of the very last phase of Gothic with coevil paintings and furnishings, and the Gothic and Baroque cathedral. In the afternoon, visit the excellent Handel Museum in the historic centre, once believed to be his birthplace but well furnished with Handeliana and furniture of the time. Evening concert at the Ulrichskirche with The King’s Consort, Neil Brough (trumpet), Robert King (conductor) and Carolyn Sampson (soprano): ‘Handel’s Heroines’.
How strenuous? The tour involves walking in town centres where vehicular access is restricted. It should not be attempted by anyone who has difficulty with everyday walking and stairclimbing. Average coach travel per day: 65 miles.
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Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
Illustration: G.F. Handel, engraving 1800s.
Mitteldeutschland Weimar and the towns of Thuringia and Sachsen-Anhalt 21–29 July 2019 (mf 627) 9 days • £2,660 Lecturer: Dr Jarl Kremeier A trawl through little-known and largely unspoilt towns at the heart of Germany. Great mediaeval churches, Baroque and NeoClassical palaces, enchanting streetscape, fine art collections, beautiful countryside.
is dominated by Schloss Friedenstein, which has fine interiors, a picture collection and a Baroque theatre. Walk down a processional way to the Hauptmarkt with its Renaissance town hall. Arnstadt, the oldest town in eastern Germany, has fine streetscape on a sloping site with the church where Bach was organist 1703–7; the Early Gothic Church of Our Lady and a palace which illustrates social hierarchy from the court’s perspective. First of four nights in Weimar.
Day 3: Blankenburg, Halberstadt. Blankenburg is an idyllic little spa town in the foothills of the Harz mountains with two Baroque palaces, the creation of a younger son of the Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel dynasty who made Blankenburg his capital. Halberstadt was a major city in the Middle Ages, and the cathedral is the largest French-style Gothic church in Germany after Cologne; the treasury is exceptional. Overnight Quedlinburg.
Day 6: Weimar. 200 years of enlightened patronage by members of the ducal family enabled the city-state of Weimar to be home to many great writers, philosophers, composers and artists. Visit the Stadtkirche, the main church with altarpiece by Cranach; Goethe’s house, a beautifullypreserved sequence of interiors and garden; the ducal Schloss with Neo-Classical interiors and fine art museum, and an English-style landscaped park with Goethe’s summer house.
Day 4: Mühlhausen. Drive in the morning across the Harz mountains to Thuringia, passing forested vistas, half-timbered hamlets and patches of pasturage. Mühlhausen is astonishing, one of the most delightful and evocative towns in northern Europe, preserving its complete mediaeval wall, an abundance of half-timbered buildings and six Gothic churches. Walk along a section of the wall, visit the soaring, five-aisled church of St Mary, and St Blasius, the church where Bach was organist 1707–08. Overnight Mühlhausen. Day 5: Gotha, Arnstadt. A Residenzstadt within the principality of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Gotha
Day 7: Erfurt. Capital of Thuringia, Erfurt well preserves its pre-20th-century appearance with a variety of streetscape and architecture from mediaeval to Jugendstil. Outstanding are the Krämerbrücke, a 14th-century bridge piled with houses and shops, and the cathedral, framing Germany’s largest set of mediaeval stained glass. See also the Severikirche, the friary of St Augustine where Luther was a monk, the Predigerkirche which retains its late mediaeval appearance intact, and the 17th-century hilltop citadel.
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Sachsen-Anhalt and Thuringia, the Länder in the middle of Germany, are predominantly rural, with rolling hills, deciduous woodland, compact red-roofed villages and ancient small-scale cities. Only patchily affected by the ravages of war and industrialisation, much of the historic architecture remained intact throughout the twentieth century. Forty years in the chill embrace of the East German state further impeded ‘progress’. The result is that at the heart of Europe’s richest and most modern nation is a region which feels strangely provincial and archaic. Thuringia was one of the five major states of early mediaeval Germany, but by the end of the Middle Ages it had fragmented into numerous little statelets and free cities. The history of Sachsen-Anhalt was similar: during the tenth century ‘Old’ Saxony was the most powerful of the German duchies and formed the kernel of the German nation, but loss of pre-eminence was followed by subdivision. From the sixteenth century both Länder consisted of innumerable principalities and independent cities, and were political and economic backwaters – though in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Bach family dominated music making here. And one small dukedom in particular made a quite exceptional contribution to art and thought. Weimar played host to J.S. Bach, Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Liszt, Nietzsche, Richard Strauss, Walter Gropius and many other great names. For those who knew East Germany before 1991, the subsequent changes appear little short of miraculous – major upgrading of the infrastructure, transformation of the built environment through cleaning, painting and wholesale restoration, recrudescence of commercial and social life. But those who come to the territory for the first time might be less enamoured. It is as if the region hasn’t fully awoken from a half-century sleep, a corrosive slumber which allowed much of the historic fabric of the towns and villages to slide into desuetude and dereliction. Yet in an odd sort of way the dilapidation contributes to a powerful sense of the past, and an air of authenticity which can be lost in places more thoroughly spruced up emanates from this fascinating, constantly surprising, frequently beautiful and richly-endowed region.
Day 2: Quedlinburg, Gernrode. Quedlinburg is a wonderfully preserved mediaeval town. The castle hill is crowned by the church of St Servatius, begun 1070, and contains one of Germany’s finest treasuries. See also the Gothic church of St Benedict in the market square and the Wipertikirche with its tenth century crypt. At nearby Gernrode is one of the oldest churches in Germany, and one of the most beautiful, St Cyriakus, begun ad 961. Overnight Quedlinburg.
Itinerary Day 1: London to Quedlinburg. Fly at c.10.45am from London Heathrow to Berlin (British Airways). Drive to Quedlinburg. First of three nights in Quedlinburg. Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Mitteldeutschland continued
When Bach went AWOL A walking tour from Lübeck to Arnstadt
Day 8: Weimar. A walk includes Haus am Horn and Van de Velde’s School of Arts and Crafts from which the Bauhaus emerged. Free afternoon in this beautiful little city. Among the many other museums to choose from are the Bauhaus Museum, the 18th-century Wittumspalais and the Schiller House. An excursion to Buchenwald concentration camp can be arranged. Day 9: Naumburg. Architecturally, Naumburg Cathedral is an outstanding embodiment of the transition from Romanesque to Gothic, but its great importance lies in its 13th-century sculpture, including statues of the founders, among the most powerful and realistic of the Middle Ages. Fly from Berlin, arriving Heathrow at c. 8.00pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,660 or £2,530 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,900 or £2,770 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 5 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Romantik Hotel am Brühl, Quedlinburg (hotelambruehl.de): restored 4-star hotel in a heritage building near the historical heart, comfortably furnished. Brauhaus 'Zum Löwen', Mühlhausen (brauhaus-zum-loewen.de): 3-star converted brewery in the centre of the town; characterfully rustic dining area and bar, simple but spacious rooms. Dorint Am Goethepark, Weimar (hotel-weimar.dorint.com): modern 4-star hotel, situated by the park and on the edge of the town centre. How strenuous? This tour is fairly long and there is quite a lot of walking in the town centres where vehicular access is restricted. It should not be attempted by anyone who has difficulty with everyday walking and stairclimbing. There are long transfers between each hotel and the airport, otherwise coach travel is limited to short excursions. Average distance by coach per day: 56 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
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Illustration, previous page: Weimar, ducal schloss, lithograph c. 1830.
What else is included in the price? See page 6 For lecturers' biographies See pages 260–267 100
7–13 May 2019 (mf 528) 7 days • £2,460 Lecturer: Lindsay Kemp A pilgrimage of walks through pine forests, open countryside and medieval townscapes. Daily lectures from Lindsay Kemp, musicologist and BBC Radio 3 producer, whose 2017 miniseries Bach Walks inspired the tour. Designed for participants joining The J.S. Bach Journey, 13–19 May 2019 (see opposite). Johann Sebastian’s time in Arnstadt 1703–7 as church organist and choir director, his first appointment in that role, was not a stress-free period, for either employee or employer. For example, there was the little matter of the brawl with a bassoonist, though a tribunal grudgingly exonerated Bach. As context it is worth noting that he was 20 at the time while his (university educated) assailant, member of a band Bach was contracted to conduct, was 23. Then there was the episode when he went AWOL. He wanted to further his musical education by travelling to Lübeck to consort with Dieterich Buxtehude, the greatest German musician of his time and, at the Church of St Mary, master of one of the finest organs in the world. The Arnstadt authorities granted him four weeks’ leave; he took four months. This is a journey of 500km which Bach would have undertaken on foot, perhaps occasionally cadging a lift from a passing cart or boat. All this shows that while Bach may have been the most divinely inspired
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composer of all time, he was also tough, ambitious, obstreperous and, above all, dedicated to his art. This tour covers the ground of his return journey – not the exact same route because that is unknown, but this approximation is sufficient to give a flavour of the topography and landscapes of that heroic hike. This is a walking tour, though the stretches actually walked are a small proportion of the total distance, with six walks of between 45 minutes and 2½ hours. Most of the journey, however, is done by coach. For the drives, we have chosen lesser roads where the countryside is most attractive. The towns we have selected are likely to be ones he visited; in one, Lüneburg, he had spent two years as a teenager.
Itinerary Day 1: London to Lübeck. Fly at c. 10.30am (British Airways) from Heathrow to Hamburg. Drive to Lübeck and walk from the medieval city gate to the soaring Gothic Marienkirche, the sight of which was surely an uplifting moment for the travel-weary J.S. Bach. Buxtehude was organist here 1668–1707. Short organ recital (subject to confirmation). Overnight Lübeck. Day 2: Lübeck, Mölln, Lüneburg. The St Annen Museum, in a former priory, shows art of the 13th–16th centuries including an altarpiece by Memling. Some free time to explore the picturesque streets, or the home of Thomas Mann’s family. After lunch drive south to Mölln, a charming and well-preserved medieval town on the the Elbe-Lübeck canal, part of the old salt route. From here, an easy semi-circular walk
through fields and woodland: c. 4.5km, 1½ hours. Continue to. Overnight Lüneburg. Day 3: Lüneburg, Medingen, Celle. The architecture of Lüneburg reflects its prosperous past as a key trading post. Bach boarded here at the prestigious Michaelisschule 1700–2, and sang in the Mettenchor. Drive to Bad Bevensen and walk through a park and along a woodland trail above the Ilmenau river; 5km, 2 hours. Emerge from the trees at Kloster Medingen, a convent and girls’ school. Drive to the lovely town of Celle and visit the wonderfully decorated Renaissance chapel in the Schloss. It is assumed the young Bach attended concerts here, encountering French music played by the duke’s band. Overnight Hildesheim. Day 4: Hildesheim, Quedlinburg. A pinnacle of Ottonian achievement, embodying many influential innovations, the six-towered church of St Michael at Hildesheim is important in the history of Romanesque art and architecture. Quedlinburg is not only a wonderfully preserved medieval town but has the authentic feel of a place not spruced up for the tourist trade. The castle hill is crowned by the Romanesque church of St Servatius, and contains one of Germany’s finest treasuries. First of two nights in Quedlinburg.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,460 or £2,260 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,640 or £2,440 without flights. Included meals: 3 lunches, 5 dinners, with wine. Flights are included in the price of this tour, therefore the J.S. Bach Journey will be charged at the ‘without flights’ price. Accommodation. Radisson Blu Senator Hotel, Lübeck (radissonblu.com): 4-star hotel located on the banks of the river Trave. Hotel Bergström, Lüneburg (bergstroem.de): charming 4-star hotel on the banks of the River Ilmenau in the heart of town. Van der Valk Hotel, Hildesheim (hildesheim.vandervalk.de): modern 4-star hotel with a historical façade looking onto the market square. Romantik Hotel am Brühl, Quedlinburg
(hotelambruehl.de): comfortably-furnished 4-star hotel in a restored heritage building. Hotelpark Stadtbrauerei, Arnstadt (hotelpark-arnstadt.de) comfortable 4-star hotel with on-site brewery on the outskirts of town. How strenuous? This is a walking tour, graded moderate (see page 8). There are 4 country walks, of which 3 are easy and 1 is challenging. There are also 2 easy town walks. It is essential for participants to have appropriate walking footwear, be in good physical condition and to be used to country walking with uphill and downhill content. If you are used to them you may find walking poles useful. The distance covered necessitates several hotel changes and some long drives. Average distance by coach per day: 60 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
Day 5: Brocken, Quedlinburg. Bach would have saved himself days and blisters by traversing rather than circumventing the Harz mountain range. Walk on rocky paths through thick pine forest and on a paved road to the summit, the Brocken, which is steeped in German folklore: c. 7 km, 2½ hours (ascent: 500m). The Brocken is often shrouded in mist, though on a clear day there are panoramic views. Lunch at the summit before travelling down by steam train. Free time in Quedlinburg. Second and final night here.
Day 7, first day of The J.S. Bach Journey: Arnstadt, Eisenach. Drive to Schloss Wartburg which rides the crest of a steep hill above Eisenach. One of the best-preserved secular constructions of the 12th century in Germany, it was here that Martin Luther translated the New Testament into German. Lunch here before transferring to your festival hotel in Eisenach or Mühlhausen. The rest of the afternoon is free until you join the other festival participants for dinner. Sunday 19th May, final day of The J.S. Bach Journey. Fly to London Heathrow, arriving there at c. 5.40pm.
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Day 6: Arnstadt, Dornheim. Drive through unspoilt countryside to Arnstadt, a lovely ancient town on a sloping site where Bach was organist 1703–7 at the New Church, now named the Bach Church. From here there is a pleasant walk (3.5km, 1 hour) to Dornheim, which follows the presumed route Bach would have taken in 1707 to his wedding to Maria Barbara at the Church of St Bartholomäus. This makes a charming ensemble with the cemetery and gate house. Overnight in Arnstadt.
CELEBRATING MUSIC AND PLACE 13–19 MAY 2019 Ten private concerts in the places where Johann Sebastian Bach lived and worked. Among the music is the St John Passion and the B-Minor Mass. Performances by the Dunedin Consort, Rachel Podger, Brecon Baroque, Vox Luminis, Mahan Esfahani and Freiburg Baroque Orchestra. Daily talks by Sir Nicholas Kenyon.
Four packages to suit different budgets with accommodation in 3-, 4- and 5-star hotels. Free time to explore Mühlhausen, Eisenach, Weimar, Leipzig and other historic towns.
Contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com/festivals
Illustration: Arnstadt, steel engraving c. 1850.
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Organs of Bach’s Time Silbermann and Baroque organs in Saxony and Thuringia 8–13 May 2019 (mf 518) 6 days • £2,120 Lecturers: James Johnstone & Dr Matthew Woodworth Recitals on the finest Baroque organs to survive, some of them instruments which Bach and Handel knew. Accompanied by organist James Johnstone, a Bach specialist, who gives recitals and demonstrations in association with the local organists, and by art historian, Matthew Woodworth. Visits towns and villages off the beaten track. For a maximum of 28 participants, the format of this tour is a hybrid between MRT Festivals and our tours for small groups. The tour can be combined with The J.S. Bach Journey, 13–19 May 2019 (see page 101).
Itinerary Day 1: London to Merseburg. Fly at c. 8.45am from London Heathrow to Berlin (British Airways) and continue by coach (c. 2 hours) to Merseburg, a cathedral town on the river Saale; first of three nights here. Day 2: Pomßen, Naumburg. The village of Pomßen has a church with an organ of the 1660s, a delightful instrument which is more Renaissance than Baroque, set in a painted wood ensemble of gallery, chest and panelled ceiling. The church of St Wenceslas in Naumburg has a major Hildebrandt organ of 1748. There is also time for the cathedral with its exceptional 13th-century sculpture. Second of three nights Merseburg. Day 3: Zschortau, Störmthal, Rötha. Visit three small towns outside Leipzig with outstanding organs. The Scheibe organ in the church of St Nicholas, Zschortau was tested by J.S. Bach in 1746 who found it to be ‘efficiently and painstakingly
well-built’. Störmthal has an organ by Hildebrandt which was inspected and approved by Bach in 1723 and is still in its original condition. In the fine mediaeval church of St George in Rötha there is a Silbermann organ tested in 1721 by Johann Kuhnau, Bach’s predecessor in Leipzig. Final night in Merseburg. Day 4: Altenburg, Ponitz, Freiberg. Travel from Merseburg to Freiberg via Altenburg and Ponitz. The court city of Altenburg is one of the rarely visited jewels of the former DDR, with a hilltop ducal residence featuring mediaeval fortifications, Baroque apartments and a quite remarkable collection of Italian Renaissance paintings. The chapel has a fine organ by Trost of 1739. After free time for lunch and independent exploration in Altenburg, travel on to Ponitz. Gottfried Silbermann began building an organ for the Friedenskirche in Ponitz in 1734, before the construction of the church itself had ended. Continue to Freiberg. Before dinner, there is an opportunity to hear the Silbermann in St. Peter’s Church. First of two nights in Freiberg. Day 5: Freiberg, Helbigsdorf. The morning is free in Freiberg. In the afternoon drive out to Helbigsdorf, whose church is home to Silbermann’s smallest, double-manual instrument (1726–28). Freiberg cathedral is one of the most beautiful of Late Gothic buildings in Germany and has retained an exceptional panoply of furnishings. The organ by Silbermann (1711–1714) is one of the world’s finest instruments; three manuals, 44 stops, largely unaltered. Dinner and final night in Freiberg. Day 6: Freiberg to London. Drive to Prague and fly to London Heathrow, arriving c. 3.30pm. Note that all recitals are subject to confirmation from the relevant churches – changes are possible.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,120 or £1,890 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,250 or £2,020 without flights.
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Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Radisson Blu, Merseburg (merseburg-radissonblu.com): situated in the historic centre of the town, within walking distance of the cathedral, this modern 4-star hotel is housed in the former Zech’sche Palace. Hotel Freyhof, Freiberg (hotel-freyhof.de): opened in 2016, this traditional hotel is situated in a reconstructed monastery, within walking distance of the cathedral. How strenuous? There is a lot of coach travel with some long journeys. Average distance by coach per day: 95 miles. Group size: maximum 28 participants. Combine this tour with: The J.S. Bach Journey, 13–19 May 2019 (p.101; transfer from Cologne to your festival hotel is included).
Illustration: Copper engraving c. 1730.
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Oberammergau The decennial Passion play in Bavaria 21–27 July 2020 (mg 315) 18–24 August 2020 (mg 340) 7 days • £3,140 Lecturer: Tom Abbott This unique and moving event has taken place nearly every ten years since 1634. Best seats and best available hotel nearby. Preceded by several days based in Munich seeing some of Bavaria’s finest art and architecture, towns and villages of Germany’s most beautiful state.
Itinerary Day 1: Munich. Fly at c. 11.00am from London Heathrow to Munich (Lufthansa). An afternoon walk passes through the core of the historic city. See the Marienplatz, dominated by the 19th-
century city hall, and the little Baroque church of St John Nepomuk created by the Asam brothers. First of four nights in Munich. Day 2: Munich. The morning is spent in the Residenz, rambling palace of the Wittelsbach dynasty, Dukes, Electors and Kings of Bavaria, with sumptuous interiors of the highest arthistorical importance from Renaissance to Romantic, and a marvellous Rococo theatre. After lunch continue to Königsplatz, a noble assembly of Neoclassical museums, and visit the Glyptothek, an outstanding collection of Greek and Roman sculpture. The Lenbachhaus has an outstanding collection of German Expressionist paintings. Day 3: Munich. Drive out to Nymphenburg, summer retreat of the ruling Wittelsbachs. Set in an extensive park there is a Baroque palace and several delightful garden pavilions, the apogee of Rococo. In the afternoon there is an opportunity to visit more of Munich’s many outstanding art collections. Day 4: Landshut. Drive out to Landshut, an earlier capital of Bavaria.The broad main street is composed of Renaissance and Baroque house fronts, the Gothic church of St Martin has Europe’s tallest brick tower and the ducal palace is one of the earliest examples of the Italian Renaissance north of the Alps. Return to Munich and visit the Alte Pinakothek, one of the world’s greatest collections of Old Master paintings. Day 5: Ludwig II’s Castles. King Ludwig II of Bavaria almost bankrupted the state by his patronage of the composer Richard Wagner and his mania for building elaborate palaces evoking past eras. Visit Schloss Neuschwanstein, the famous fairytale turreted castle ordered by Ludwig II in homage to Wagner though never completed. 1870s Linderhof was reputed to have been the King’s favourite castle; it draws on
French influences, lavish interiors in Renaissance and Baroque styles, extravagant terrace gardens and Oriental adornments. First of two nights near Oberammergau. Day 6: Oberammergau. Free time in the morning, with the option of a visit to the museum which documents the passion play – the performance is in two parts, each of two-and-a-half hours, beginning at 2.30pm and 8.00pm. Dinner is provided in the three-hour interval. Day 7: Wies. On the way back to Munich Airport, stop at the astoundingly beautiful 18th-century pilgrimage church of Wies, whose success, like the passion play, derives from its integration of high art and local, peasant tradition. Fly to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 3.45pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,140 or £2,970 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,520 or £3,350 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 5 dinners with wine. Performance: top category tickets to the Passion Play are included and have been confirmed. Accommodation. Hotel Torbräu, Munich (torbraeu.de): friendly, family-run, 4-star hotel in the city centre. Oberammergau: 4-star hotel, to be confirmed in 2019. How strenuous? This is a fairly strenuous tour with some long coach journeys and a lot of walking and standing around in churches and galleries. A good level of fitness is essential. Average distance by coach per day: 53 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Illustration: Oberammergau, wood engraving c. 1880.
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Theatrical spectacle or religious ritual? Living drama or a 376-year-old tradition? High art of international significance or a community-based amateur production? A world-famous tourist attraction or a sincerely felt devotional act of real local importance? The Oberammergau Passion Play is all of these. Moreover, in each of the categories suggested, it towers above most or all of its fellows. Oberammergau is unique; it is rare (miss this and wait until 2030); and it is an exceptional and moving experience. The drama has its origins in the Plague, coupled with the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48), a protracted and devastating series of conflicts during which the population of much of Germany was reduced by half and many of the survivors reduced to penury. The people of the village of Oberammergau in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps vowed that, were they to be spared, they would perform every ten years a play portraying the last days of Christ’s life on earth, his suffering, crucifixion and resurrection. This they did for the first time in 1634, and, excepting the odd wobble and a preference for round numbers (since 1680 it has been in the first year of the decade), the tradition has continued ever since. Over 2000 people take part, almost half the inhabitants of Oberammergau (only those born in the village qualify for participation), and they rehearse for ten months. Media rumours of conflict between traditionalists and modernisers flourish every time; some of the dramatic power does arise from the blend of continuity and novelty. Of course, the raw material is the most potently moving story in Christendom, whatever ones beliefs. Dramatisation of Christ’s life and contemplation of his suffering was a crucial ingredient in Christianity in the late Middle Ages and Baroque eras and resulted in some of the finest works of art and music in the western cannon. JS Bach’s St John and St Matthew Passions can be ranked alongside the Oberammergau Passion Play, though the latter, being specific to time and place, and evolving, retains a sense of occasion and of passionate engagement which comparable artworks can never yield in the 21st century.
Rhineland Romanesque With Carolingian and Ottonian preludes 10–16 June 2019 (mf 575) 7 days • £2,260 Lecturer: Dr Richard Plant The Rhineland produced some of the most adventurous and sophisticated architecture of the Romanesque era. Parish churches, great cathedrals, monasteries, city and country, buildings, paintings and metalwork. Intensive and wonderfully rich study tour. To a percipient observer of Europe in the eleventh century, it might have seemed that the Kingdom of Germany was poised to become the dominant power in Europe. By all the indicators of economic development, demography and governance, the region was outpacing other embryonic nation states. Such a view would have been lent weight by a survey of the construction industry. Not only was the number of projects remarkable, but some of the most ambitious and innovative architecture
in Europe was being created in the German lands, especially in the Rhineland. Wealthy abbeys, burgeoning cities and ambitious princes and emperors were instigating buildings of unprecedented size and magnificence. Romanesque architecture is distinguished by massiveness of construction and noble simplicity of form, but these characteristics often mask a high degree of structural adventurousness and very considerable sophistication of design, symbolism and iconography. Nowhere was this more so than in Germany, where many churches have high towers and spires, complex ground plans and evidence of bold experiments in engineering. So keen were German builders to develop the full potential of round-arched architecture that they were not attracted to the new forms and techniques of Gothic until well into the thirteenth century, nearly a hundred years after their appearance in France. A subsidiary theme of the tour – and an essential prelude to Romanesque – is the art and architecture of the Carolingian era. By the time of his death in ad 814, Charlemagne, King of
Illustration: Cologne, St Apostolen, engraving from 'Hope's Essay on Architecture', publ. 1835.
the Franks and Roman Emperor, had amassed territory that stretched from the Atlantic to Bohemia, and from the Baltic Sea to Central Italy. Charlemagne had a passionate interest in the culture and institutions of ancient Rome and his belief that he was reviving the Roman Empire found expression in his attempts to emulate its literature and art. The Dark Ages soon closed in again on the Carolingian Empire and its visible remains are few but fascinating. The Ottonian revival of the Empire a century later was a more immediate precursor of Romanesque. The Rhine with its tributary the Mosel was the busiest river in mediaeval Europe, a major highway for people, goods and ideas, and a source of wealth for both cities and feudal lords. The abundance of Romanesque architecture in the region is matched by its variety, and in museums and cathedral treasuries outstanding examples of the other arts survive.
Itinerary Day 1: Cologne. Fly at c. 10.45am from London Heathrow to Düsseldorf (British Airways). One of the largest cities in mediaeval Europe, Cologne has the greatest concentration of Romanesque churches to be found anywhere. Among those visited are St Maria im Kapitol, which introduced clover-leaf apse clusters, St Gereon, with a unique dome and arcaded decoration and St Pantaleon, with a liturgically interesting west end. First of two nights in Cologne. Day 2: Cologne.The morning is spent in more of Cologne’s Romanesque churches, including St Aposteln and Santa Maria in Lyskirchen. Free afternoon: Cologne has several fine museums displaying the wealth of the Roman and Mediaeval city. There is also time for the Gothic cathedral and the Cathedral Treasury.
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Day 3: Aachen, Schwarzrheindorf, Maria Laach. Drive to Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), Charlemagne’s favourite residence. The cathedral, a most precious survival of early mediaeval architecture, has a remarkable rotunda with the emperor’s throne in situ. The treasury has outstanding mediaeval metalwork. The small lovely late Romanesque church at Schwarzrheindorf is unusual in having two storeys, and has important wall paintings. Continue to Maria Laach, an active Benedictine monastery with a Romanesque church in an unspoilt lakeside setting. First of two nights in Maria Laach. Day 4: Limburg, Maria Laach. The abbey cathedral at Limburg an der Lahn enjoys a striking situation on a hilltop, the effect enhanced by a full complement of seven spires. On our return to Maria Laach, there is time to visit one of the most homogenous and complete Romanesque churches and its beautifully sculpted narthex, as well as the opportunity to attend a service. Day 5: Trier. The Roman city of Trier was for a while capital of the Western Empire and an important early centre of Christianity. Its surviving Roman buildings, still the most impressive group in northern Europe, were a major influence on German Romanesque. Visit 104
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Rhineland Masterpieces Exceptional art and architecture, medieval to modern the Porta Nigra (city gate), and the Aula Palatina, Emperor Constantine’s throne hall. The cathedral is a romanesque church incorporating Roman masonry. Continue to Speyer, a charming town beside the Rhine. First of two nights in Speyer.
to the Von der Heydt-Museum in Wuppertal, a collection of international importance from the 16th century to contemporary, strong on Dutch and Flemish, German Romantics, French Impressionists and Expressionism.
Day 6: Speyer, Lorsch, Worms. Speyer, second of the imperial cathedrals, is the burial place of the Salian emperors and the largest of Rhenish Romanesque churches. With its parkland setting, vast vaulted nave and well preserved eastern parts, it is immensely impressive. A precious and beautiful remnant of Carolingian Europe, the gateway of Lorsch Abbey is crudely classicizing. The second of the three ‘imperial’ cathedrals, Worms, was rebuilt in the twelfth century, with an extraordinary late-Romanesque western choir.
Day 4: Cologne, Brühl. Drive upstream from Düsseldorf to Cologne, which under the Romans and during the Middle Ages was the largest city in northern Europe. Its collection of Romanesque churches is without parallel, and we visit one of the grandest, Gross St Martin. The Wallraf Richarz Museum is one of Germany’s finest art galleries, the collections embracing much of western art. Drive out to Brühl and Schloss Augustusburg, a splendid Baroque palace with magnificent gardens. First of two nights in Bonn.
Day 7: Mainz. The busy and picturesque city of Mainz is the site of the third of the imperial cathedrals, elaborate outside (with six towers) and containing jewels of Gothic sculpture. Fly from Frankfurt arriving at London Heathrow c. 7.25pm.
Day 5: Bonn. The day begins with a walking tour of the attractive historic centre (Baroque episcopal palace, Romanesque cloister). ends The Beethoven House, where the composer spent his early years, is one of the best composer museums anywhere. Travel by U-Bahn in the afternoon to the Museums Mile, a string of modern museums including the Kunstmuseum, another fine art collection, especially good for Expressionists. An alternative would be the Haus der Geschichte, an excellent historical museum covering the period after 1945.
Practicalities
7–12 May 2019 (mf 506) 6 days • £2,330 Lecturer: Patrick Bade
Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,260 or £2,100 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,500 or £2,340 without flights.
An exceptionally rich seam of art museums – amazing collections stunningly displayed, and galleries largely empty of people.
Included meals: 5 dinners with wine.
Superb German Expressionists, Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, Old Master paintings from all Europe and outstanding decorative arts.
Accommodation. Mondial am Dom, Cologne (mgallery.com): modern hotel located a very short walk from the cathedral and main railway station. Rooms are comfortable and well-equipped. Seehotel, Maria Laach (seehotel-maria-laach. de): quiet and comfortable 4-star hotel next to the secluded monastery. Hotel Domhof, Speyer (domhof.de): small traditional hotel in an old building around a courtyard close to the cathedral. How strenuous? A good level of fitness is essential. You will be on your feet for lengthy stretches of time. The tour involves a lot of walking in town centres, where coach access is restricted, and a lot of standing in museums and churches. There are some long coach journeys; average distance per day: 90 miles. Combine this tour with: Palaces of Piedmont, 4–9 June 2019 (p.118); Connoisseur's Vienna, 17–23 June 2019 (p.49). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration, above right: engraving after Stefan Lochner's 'Adoration of the Magi' in Cologne Cathedral.
What else is included in the price? See page 6 Mediaeval Alsace – see page 78
Choice selection of architectural treats, from Romanesque churches to modern museums. The tour can be combined with The J.S. Bach Journey, 13–19 May 2019 (see page 101).
Itinerary Day 1: Düsseldorf. Fly c. 11.00am from London Heathrow to Düsseldorf and settle into the hotel. Behind the polished black marble facade of the Nordrhein-Westfalen Gallery, most of the leading European painters of the earlier 20th century are represented by high quality works, a quite remarkable collection as good as any in Europe. First of three nights in Düsseldorf. Day 2: Essen. The wooded valley of the River Ruhr was at the heart of Germany’s industrial revolution, and Essen was its chief city. The cathedral possesses a dazzling medieval treasury, particularly rich in rare 10th and 11th-century bejewelled goldwork, among the best in the world. Since 2010 occupying David Chipperfield’s serene and spacious building, the Museum Folkwang has outstanding collections of Romantics and Expressionists as well as French 19th-century and Post-Impressionist paintings (five Van Goghs). Day 3: Düsseldorf, Wuppertal. A walking tour of Düsseldorf finishes at the Kunstpalast (Palace of the Arts), a cultural forum of the 1920s. The Glass Museum here is one of the finest in the world; the paintings range from mediaeval to modern, with Rubens and the 19th-century Düsseldorf school among the highlights. Another Ruhr excursion,
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,330 or £2,160 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,650 or £2,480 without flights. Included meals: 2 lunches, 4 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Steigenberger Parkhotel, Düsseldorf (steigenberger.com): 5-star hotel excellently located next to the Hofgarten and Altstadt; traditional décor with contemporary furnishings. Hotel Königshof, Bonn (ameronhotels.com/en): traditional 4-star hotel overlooking the Rhine. How strenuous? The tour involves a lot of walking in historic centres, where coach access is restricted, and a lot of standing in museums and churches. A good level of fitness is essential. You will be on your feet for lengthy stretches of time and there is a significant amount of travel by coach (although distances are relatively short). Average distance by coach per day: 25 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: The Johann Sebastian Bach Journey, 13–19 May 2019 (p.101; transfer from Cologne to your festival hotel is included). Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
Some of the finest precious metal artefacts to survive from the Middle Ages.
Day 6: Cologne. The second visit to Cologne starts in the Kolumba Museum, an innovatory display of diocesan treasures in a captivating new building by Peter Zumthor. A converted Romanesque church is the setting for the Schnütgen Museum, a large collection of mediaeval sulpture. Cologne Cathedral is one of Europe’s greatest Gothic buildings, and it houses the Adoration tryptych by Stephan Lochner and the Shrine of the Three Kings (c. 1180–1225), the largest reliquary in the world. Fly from Düsseldorf to London City Airport, arriving at c. 6.15pm.
Franconia Art and architecture in Germany’s mediaeval heartland The end of the Middle Ages was artistically one of the most creative in Franconia, with Tilman Riemenschneider and Veit Stoss, perhaps Germany’s greatest sculptors, evoking the fraught spirituality of the age in works of remarkable virtuosity. The Romanesque sculpture in Bamberg’s cathedral is also of the highest importance. The eighteenth century also bequeathed much artistic wealth. The Prince-Bishop’s palace in Würzburg and the pilgrimage church of Vierzehnheiligen (both designed by Balthasar Neumann) are consummate achievements of Baroque and Rococo art and architecture. Moreover, the greatest achievement of eighteenthcentury Venetian painting is here: Tiepolo’s ceiling fresco in the Würzburg Residenz.
Itinerary Day 1: Würzburg. Fly at c. 9.30am from London Heathrow to Frankfurt (Lufthansa). Drive to Würzburg, and check in to the hotel. An afternoon walk to the oldest mediaeval bridge to survive and visit the Marienburg, the formidable fortress dominating the city from across the River Main. Visit the vast museum within, with its sizeable collection of Riemenschneider sculpture. First of two nights in Würzburg.
7–14 September 2019 (mf 677) 8 days • £2,840 Lecturer: Dr Jarl Kremeier A neglected region of southern Germany which has an exceptional heritage of art and architecture, enchanting streetscape and natural beauty.
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Mediaeval art including Romanesque sculpture (the Bamberg Rider) and late mediaeval wood carving by Tilman Riemenschneider. Baroque and Rococo palaces, churches and paintings – including Tiepolo’s masterpiece. Once the very heart of the mediaeval German kingdom, Franconia possesses some of the loveliest towns and villages in Germany, beautiful countryside and a variety of art and architecture of the highest quality. Yet remarkably few Britons find their way here – or could even point to the region on a map. Würzburg, with its vine-clad riverbanks and Baroque palaces, is a delight. The tour stays here for two nights. One of the loveliest and least spoilt of German towns, Bamberg has fine streetscape, riverside walks and picturesque upper town around the Romanesque cathedral. Nuremberg, the home of Dürer, was one of the great cities of the Middle Ages, and its churches and museums are filled with outstanding sculpture and painting. Bayreuth was a centre of Rococo culture and a mecca for Wagnerians. 106
Day 2: Würzburg. The Residenz (Prince-Bishop’s Palace), designed partly by Balthasar Neumann and extended over time, is one of the finest 18thcentury palaces in Europe, with magnificent halls, state apartments, exquisite chapel and ceiling frescoes which are the masterpieces of the Venetian painter Tiepolo. In the afternoon walk around the largely post-war reconstruction of the old centre, with its vast and sombre Romanesque cathedral, delicate Gothic church and flamboyant Baroque churches. Day 3: Creglingen, Rothenburg, Pommersfelden, Bamberg. Drive through gently undulating countryside to the little pilgrimage church near Creglingen; here see The Assumption by Riemenschneider, his finest work. Rothenburgob-der-Tauber is an exceedingly picturesque little town scarcely changed in appearance for hundreds of years; the church of St James has Riemenschneider’s Last Supper. Visit Schloss Weissenstein in Pommersfelden, an early 18thcentury country house with one of the grandest of Baroque staircases. Continue through lovely landscape to Bamberg. First of four nights here. Day 4: Bamberg. Morning walk taking in the riverside town. Visit the Gothic Church of our Lady with its Tintoretto altarpiece and the splendid Romanesque cathedral with some of Germany’s finest mediaeval sculpture, including the Bamberg Rider, a potent image of knightly values. The Diocesan Museum has outstanding mediaeval textiles. In the afternoon visit the Neue Residenz, palace of the Prince-Bishops. Day 5: Bayreuth. All-day excursion. Bayreuth developed as a minor court city in the 18th century, and a varietal of Rococo decoration evolved in the town palace and at the Hermitage, a complex of gardens, palaces and pavilions,
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under the patronage of the Markgraf. Visit Wagner’s Festspielhaus, built to the composer’s specifications on a hill outside the town. Day 6: Coburg, Vierzehnheiligen. At Coburg visit the formidable fortress above the city, now a museum with good paintings and furnishings. Schloss Ehrenburg, in the centre of town was the home of Prince Albert. Across the valley, the pilgrimage church of Vierzehnheiligen by Balthasar Neumann is perhaps the greatest of all Rococo churches. Day 7: Nuremberg. An immensely rich trading and manufacturing city in the Middle Ages, Nuremberg is girt by massive walls and possesses much art and architecture of the 15th and 16th centuries. A walk through the old town includes the church of St Sebaldus, which contains outstanding sculpture by Veit Stoss and others, and the Albrecht Dürer House. St Lorenz is the city’s other great church, and is likewise laden with major artworks including Veit Stoss’s Annunciation (1517/18). Day 8: Nuremberg. Visit the German National Museum, home to the finest collection of German mediaeval and Renaissance art in the country. Fly from Munich, arriving Heathrow at c. 5.00pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,840 or £2,700 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,120 or £2,980 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 5 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Rebstock, Würzburg (rebstock.com): well-located, comfortable 4-star hotel. Hotel Villa Geyerswörth, Bamberg (villageyerswoerth.de): elegant, quiet 4-star hotel, conveniently located close to the old town. Le Méridien Grand Hotel, Nuremberg (lemeridiennuernberg.com): modern 4-star hotel in a late 19th-century building, a 10-minute walk from the centre. How strenuous? The tour involves a lot of walking in town centres, where coach access is restricted, and a lot of standing in museums and churches. A good level of fitness is necessary. It should not be attempted by anyone who has difficulty with everyday walking and stair-climbing. There are several long drives. Average distance by coach per day: 55 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Music Along the Danube, 31 August–7 September 2019 (p.50); Dark Age Brilliance, 15–22 September 2019 (p.133). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and travel.
Illustration: Bamberg, Rathaus, watercolour by E. Harrison Compton, publ. 1912.
Music Along the Danube See page 50
King Ludwig II and the Wittelsbach palaces of Bavaria 26–31 August 2019 (mf 663) 6 days • £2,480 Lecturer: Tom Abbott Explore eight royal palaces and castles set against the breathtaking backdrop of Germany’s most beautiful state. Learn about the lives, loves and legacies of King Ludwig II and the House of Wittelsbach, rulers of Bavaria for over 700 years. Art and architecture from the Renaissance through to Late Romanticism, much of it opulent and theatrical. This tour can be combined with Music Along the Danube, 31 August–7 September 2019 (page 50.)
Day 2: Munich. The Residenz in the centre of the city was the principal Wittelsbach palace and seat of government; a magnificent sprawl of buildings, courtyards, state apartments and museums of every period from Renaissance to the end of the 19th century. There are fine works of art and sumptuous interiors of the highest importance, especially the Rococo interiors and the Cuvilliés Theatre (subject to confirmation as the theatre can close for rehearsals at short notice). Free afternoon. Day 3: Nymphenburg, Linderhof, Murnau. Drive to the city’s outskirts and the palace and park of Nymphenburg, birthplace of Ludwig II. An extensive complex including bathhouses and the Rococo Amalienburg lodge. After lunch drive to Ettal, site of the only one of Ludwig II’s commissioned castles to have been completed. 1870s Linderhof was reputed to have been the King’s favourite castle; it draws, like Herrenchiemsee, on French influences, lavish interiors in Renaissance and Baroque styles, extravagant terrace gardens and Oriental adornments (the Venus grotto is closed for renovations until 2020). First of three nights in Murnau am Staffelsee. Day 4: Hohenschwangau, Neuschwanstein. Drive south to Hohenschwangau castle, site of Ludwig II’s childhood, owned by his parents Maximilian II of Bavaria and Princess Marie of Prussia. Majestic lakeside Alpine location, frescoes featuring medieval Swan-Knight Lohengrin which led to Ludwig II’s obsession with Wagner. Then continue to Neuschwanstein, the famous fairytale turreted castle ordered by Ludwig II in homage to Wagner though never completed.
Day 5: Herrenchiemsee. In the countryside southeast of Munich and surrounded by a park, woodland and a great lake, Schloss Herrenchiemsee is a copy of Versailles. Ludwig II’s megalomaniac hymn of homage to the absolutism of Louis XIV, his final folly, brought the Bavarian state to the brink of bankruptcy. Day 6: Berg, Starnberg. Leave Murnau, drive to Berg and the mock Gothic castle to which Ludwig II retreated from his ministers, and where he was placed under house arrest after his forced abdication in 1886 on grounds of insanity. Lake Starnberg surrounds the castle and is the scene of Ludwig II’s death and that of his doctor, officially by drowning. Visit the Memorial Chapel and have lunch in Starnberg. Fly from Munich, returning to London Heathrow at c. 5.30pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,480 or £2,310 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,820 or £2,650 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Torbräu, Munich (torbraeu.de): well-located 4-star, traditional in style and décor. Hotel Alpenhof, Murnau (alpenhof-murnau.com): rambling 5-star hotel on the outskirts of Murnau with a country house feel. How strenuous? This is a strenuous tour with long coach journeys and a lot of walking and standing around in the castles and gardens. Average distance by coach per day: 65 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Music Along the Danube, 31 August–7 September 2019 (p.50; a coach transfer to Passau is provided, except for those joining Walking the Danube who fly to Vienna instead – additional cost: £100 per person).
Illustration: Linderhof, wood engraving from 'The Magazine of Art', 1887.
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Germany’s large and beautiful south-eastern state of Bavaria is an established destination for Martin Randall Travel, with a number of tours over the years dedicated to a variety of themes. This tour has a different focus, that of the legendary ‘Swan King’ Ludwig II and the House of Wittelsbach from which he hailed, and his extraordinary architectural and cultural legacy. Architecturally and artistically, the tour encompasses outstanding examples of Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, Neo-Classical and Romantic styles as well as Ludwig’s fairytale follies. Historically it examines the eccentric world of one of Europe’s most controversial monarchs and the story of what, until German unification, counted as one of the continent’s most important little states. It is true that Ludwig II’s predilection for aesthetic absorption over political and legal leadership gained him fierce opposition and criticism, but this handsome young king and his elaborate castles are responsible for a considerable proportion of Bavaria’s appeal today. Ironically, the dream world into which the sovereign retreated in order to escape the responsibilities of state now benefits Ludwig’s former kingdom in a way it never did when he inhabited it. Was he, to quote one of his more defamatory labels, insane? Or simply weak, of solitary disposition, and therefore tragically unsuited to the role imposed upon him at a time of Bavaria’s considerable political fragility and conflict with Prussia, Austria and France? Once deposed in 1886, what was the cause of his untimely death? Was it suicide, or did it take place at the hand of murderous detractors? Or was it mere accident? Was he an impotent and irresponsible sybarite or a luminous benefactor of the arts?
Rococo period. There is a gallery of Baroque art, sculpted stucco of exceptional quality in the state apartments, Hofgarten (Court Garden) and a collection of Meissen porcelain in Schloss Lustheim. First of two nights in Munich.
Itinerary Day 1: Schleissheim, Munich. Fly at c. 9.00am from London Heathrow to Munich (British Airways). Between airport and city, the palace and garden at Schleissheim form a rare ensemble of Baroque taste from an early 17th-century retreat, through the 1684 Lustheim pavilion at the far end of a canal of absolutist straightness, to the magnificent Neues Schloss, begun 1701 but whose progress continued haltingly into the Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Opera in Munich & Bregenz Puccini, Handel, Wagner, Verdi 28 July–3 August 2019 (mf 637) 7 days • £3,860 (including tickets to 4 performances) Lecturer: Patrick Bade Four opera productions – La Fanciulla del West, Agrippina, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (Munich) and Rigoletto (Bregenz). The Nationaltheater in Munich is one of the world’s most dependable houses, and the Prinzregententheater has Jugendstil charm. The city is the most enjoyable in Germany, and walks and visits are led by the lecturer who is an art and opera historian. Bregenz offers the most spectacular productions of any open-air festival, with a lakeside setting to match.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 12.45pm from London Heathrow to Munich. Tour the city by coach to see much of the best of Munich’s historic architecture: NeoClassical Königsplatz, historicist Ludwigstrasse, Jugendstil houses and the modern Gasteig Arts Centre. The first of four nights in Munich. Day 2: Munich. After the daily talk, there is a walk to see more of the city’s treasures, including the vast Gothic cathedral and the Asamkirche, a Baroque masterpiece. Free time in the afternoon.
At the Nationaltheater: La Fanciulla del West (Puccini). James Gaffigan (conductor), Andreas Dresen (director), Anja Kampe (Minnie), John Lundgren (Jack Rance), Brandon Jovanovich (Dick Johnson), Kevin Conners (Nick), Alexander Milev (Ashby), Tim Kuypers (Sonora), Manuel Günther (Trin), Bálint Szabó (Sid), Milan Siljanov (Bello), Galeano Salas (Harry), Freddie De Tommaso (Joe), Christian Rieger (Happy), Andrea Borghini (Larkens), Oleg Davydov (Billy Jackrabbit), Noa Beinart (Wowkle), Sean Michael Plumb (Jake Wallace), Oğulcan Yılmaz (José Castro). Day 3: Munich. Drive out to Nymphenburg, summer retreat of the ruling Wittelsbachs. Set in an extensive park, there is a spreading Baroque palace and several delightful garden pavilions, the apogee of Rococo. Free time in the afternoon, opportunity to visit more of Munich’s many outstanding art collections. At the Prinzregententheater: Agrippina (Handel). Ivor Bolton (conductor), Barrie Kosky (director), Gianluca Buratto (Claudio), Alice Coote (Agrippina), Franco Fagioli (Nerone), Elsa Benoit (Poppea), Iestyn Davies (Ottone), Andrea Mastroni (Pallante), Eric Jurenas (Narciso), Katarina Bradić (Giunone). Day 4: Munich. In the morning a second walking tour which culminates in a visit to the Alte Pinakothek, one of the world’s greatest Old Master galleries. The afternoon is again free, though a visit to the Residenz with its exquisite Rococo Theatre by Cuvilliés is recommended.
At the Nationaltheater: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (Wagner). Kirill Petrenko (conductor), David Bösch (director), Sara Jakubiak (Eva), Okka von der Damerau (Magdalena), Jonas Kaufmann (Walther von Stolzing), Allan Clayton (David), Wolfgang Koch (Hans Sachs), Christof Fischesser (Veit Pogner), Martin Gantner (Sixtus Beckmesser), Kevin Conners (Kunz Vogelgesang), Christian Rieger (Konrad Nachtigall), Michael KupferRadecky (Fritz Kothner), Ulrich Reß (Balthasar Zorn), Dean Power (Ulrich Eißlinger), Thorsten Scharnke (Augustin Moser), Levente Páll (Hermann Ortel), Peter Lobert (Hans Schwarz), Kristof Klorek (Hans Foltz). Day 5: Ottobeuren, Bregenz. Leave Munich and journey by coach through the lovely landscape of Upper Bavaria, skirting the Alpine foothills before entering the Vorarlberg region of Austria. Break the journey at the little town of Ottobeuren to see the magnificent monastery, whose church is one of the greatest achievements of German Baroque. Arrive in Lochau, (4 km from the centre of Bregenz) where two nights are spent. Day 6: Bregenz. Strung out along the edge of Lake Constance, Bregenz is the attractive little capital of the Vorarlberg, the western-most province of Austria. A guided walking tour in the morning begins in the historic Upper Town and then descends to the lake and the museum. The afternoon is free. At the Seebühne, the open-air opera house with a stage on the lake and with seats from which hills in three countries can be seen: Rigoletto (Verdi) – cast to be confirmed. Day 7: Zurich to London. Drive to Zurich and fly to Heathrow, arriving at c. 2.00pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,860 or £3,710 without flights. Single occupancy: £4,370 or £4,220 without flights. Included meals: 5 dinners with wine.
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Music: tickets (top category) for 4 operas are included, costing c. £860. In the event of bad weather in Bregenz, the performance will take place indoors in a nearby theatre. Accommodation. Platzl Hotel, Munich (platzl. de): 4-star hotel located in the heart of the old city, a 5-minute walk from the opera house. See Hotel am Kaiserstrand, Lochau (seehotel-kaiserstrand. com): spacious 4-star hotel on the shores of Lake Constance, 4 km from the centre of Bregenz, and a short boat journey to the Festival stage. How strenuous? The tour involves a lot of walking in the town centres where vehicular access is restricted, and should not be attempted by anyone who has difficulty with everyday walking and stair–climbing. Average distance by coach per day: 37 miles, primarily on 3 days of the tour. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
Illustration: Munich, Cuvilliés theatre (note: not the location of any of the tour performances, but possible to visit independently), wood engraving c. 1880.
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Classical Greece The Peloponnese, Attica and Athens 4–13 May 2019 (mf 550) 10 days • £3,410 Lecturer: Professor Antony Spawforth 21–30 September 2019 (mf 734) 10 days • £3,410 Lecturer: Dr Andrew Farrington A comprehensive survey of the principal Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic sites in mainland Greece. Highlights include Mycenae, Olympia, Delphi. The lecturers both have expert knowledge of ancient Greece. In Athens, a full day on the Acropolis and in the ancient Agora.
Illustration: Temple of Corinth, copper engraving c. 1750.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly early afternoon from London Heathrow to Athens. The little port of Nauplion is one of the most attractive towns in mainland Greece; arrive in time for dinner. First of three nights here. Day 2: Nauplion, Tiryns, Mycenae. Today’s theme is the Mycenaean civilisation of the Argolid Plain, the Greece of Homer’s heroes (16th–13th centuries bc). Visit Tiryns, a citadel with massive Cyclopean walls of enormous blocks of masonry, and Mycenae, reputedly Agamemnon’s capital, with Treasury of Atreus (finest of beehive tombs) and Acropolis (Lion Gate). Day 3: Corinth, Epidauros. The site of Ancient Corinth has the earliest standing Doric temple on mainland Greece, and a fine museum with evidence of Greece’s first large-scale pottery industry. Epidauros, centre for the worship of Asclepios, god of medicine, where popular magical dream cures were dispensed, includes the bestpreserved of all Greek theatres. Day 4: Arcadia, Bassae. There are spectacular views of Nauplion from the 18th-century Venetian Fortress of Palamidi. Drive across the middle of the Peloponnese, through the beautiful plateau of Arcadia and past impressive mountain scenery. A stunning road leads to the innovatory and well-preserved 5th-century Temple of Apollo (in a tent for protection) on the mountain top at Bassae (3,700 feet) and through further breathtaking scenery to Olympia. Overnight Olympia.
Day 5: Olympia. Nestling in a verdant valley, Olympia is one of the most evocative of ancient sites; never a town, but the principal sanctuary of Zeus and site of the quadrennial pan-Hellenic athletics competitions. Many fascinating structures remain, including the temples of Hera and Zeus, the workshop of Phidias and the stadium. The museum contains fragments of pediment sculpture, among the most important survivals of Classical Greek art. First of two nights in Delphi. Day 6: Delphi. Clinging to the lower slopes of Mount Parnassos, Delphi is the most spectacularly evocative of ancient Greek sites. Of incalculable religious and political importance, the Delphic oracle attracted pilgrims from all over the Hellenic world. The Sanctuary of Pythian Apollo has a theatre and Athenian Treasury, and the Sanctuary of Athena has a circular temple. The museum is especially rich in Archaic sculpture. Some free time amidst the austere beauty of the valley. Day 7: Hosios Loukas, Athens. Visit the Byzantine monastery of Hosios Loukas in a beautiful setting in a remote valley, one of the finest buildings of mediaeval Greece with remarkable mosaics. The Agora (market place) was the centre of civic life in ancient Athens, with the small Doric Hephaisteion, the best-preserved of Greek temples. First of three nights in Athens. Day 8: Athens. The Acropolis is the foremost site of Classical Greece. The Parthenon (built 447–438 bc) is indubitably the supreme achievement Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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The Ancient Greeks had far greater influence on western civilisation than any other people or nation. For two and a half millennia, philosophy and ethics, the fundamentals of science and mathematics, prevailing notions of government and citizenship, literature and the visual arts have derived their seeds, and a large amount of their substance, from the Greeks. In the words of H.D.F. Kitto ‘there gradually emerged a people not very numerous, not very powerful, not very well organized, who had a totally new conception of what human life was for, and showed for the first time what the human mind was for.’ Whatever the depth of our Classical education, there is a deep-seated sense in all of us that the places visited on this tour are of the greatest significance for our identity and way of life. A journey to Greece is like a journey to our homeland, a voyage in which a search for our roots is fulfilled. In no field is the Greek contribution to the modern world more immediately evident than in architecture. The grip upon the imagination that the Greek temple has exerted is astonishing, and in one way or another – ranging from straightforward imitation of the whole to decorative use of distorted details – has dominated nearly all monumental or aspirational building ever since. A striking and salutary conclusion, however, which inevitably emerges from participation on this tour, is that the originals are unquestionably superior. This is also true of sculpture. This tour includes nearly all of the most important archaeological sites, architectural remains and museums of antiquities on mainland Greece. It presents a complete picture of ancient Greek civilisation beginning with the Mycenaeans, the Greek Bronze Age, and continuing through Archaic, Classical and, to a lesser extent, Hellenistic and Roman Greece. It also provides a glimpse of the spiritual splendour of Byzantine art and architecture. It is a full itinerary, but the pace is manageable. Plenty of time is available on the sites and in the museums, allowing opportunity both for adequate exposition by the lecturer and time for further exploration on your own.
Classical Greece continued
Gastronomic Crete Ambrosia and díaita, from land to table
of Greek architecture. Other architectural masterpieces are the Propylaia (monumental gateway), Temple of Athena Nike and the Erechtheion. At the Theatre of Dionysos plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides were first performed. The new Acropolis museum has superb Archaic and Classical sculpture, including some by Phidias and his assistants. Day 9: Athens. The refurbished National Archaeological Museum has the finest collection of Greek art and artefacts to be found anywhere. The vast Corinthian Temple of Olympian Zeus was completed by Hadrian 700 years after its inception. Kerameikos Cemetery was where Athenians were buried beyond the ancient city walls. Some free time. Day 10: Athens. Drive to the Temple of Poseidon at Sounion, overlooking the sea at the southernmost tip of the Attic peninsula, visited by Byron in 1810. Fly from Athens, arriving Heathrow at c. 3.30pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,410 or £3,230 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,770 or £3,590 without flights. Included meals: 2 lunches, 7 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Ippoliti, Nauplion (ippoliti.gr): small, comfortable hotel in a converted 19th-century mansion situated close to the harbour. Hotel Europa, Olympia (hoteleuropa.gr): characterful hotel outside the town. Hotel Amalia, Delphi (amaliahoteldelphi. gr): modern hotel, a short coach ride from the archaeological site. Electra Palace Hotel, Athens (electrahotels.gr): smart hotel near the picturesque Plaka quarter. How strenuous? A long tour with three hotel changes and some long journeys. You will be on your feet for long stretches of time, in some cases on exposed sites and walking over rough terrain; sure-footedness and agility are essential. Average distance by coach per day: 75 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
MAINLAND EUROPE: Greece
In May, combine this tour with: In Search of Alexander, 14–20 May 2019 (p.113); Roman Southern Britain, 14–21 May 2019 (p.16); Walking Hadrian's Wall, 14–20 May 2019 (p.18). Or in September: Ancient Egypt at the British Museum, 20 September 2019; Palladian Villas, 1–6 October 2019 (p.124); Albania: Crossroads of Antiquity, 2–11 October 2019 (p.46). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and travel.
29 September–7 October 2019 (mf 767) 9 days • £3,530 Lecturer: Rosemary Barron A tour celebrating Cretan gastronomy, from ancient to modern, country simplicity to epicurean sophistication. Feast in the mountain foothills, taste wine at a vineyard overlooking ancient Gortyn and meet restaurateurs championing new Cretan cooking. Visit some of the archaeological highlights of the island with a local guide.
What else is included in the price? See page 6 For lecturers' biographies See pages 260–267 110
Gastronomically-speaking, the Greek island of Crete is a place like no other. The Greek word gastronomia, the art and science of good eating and drinking, has its roots in Linear B, the language of the Minoans. With their knowledge of the natural world and their advanced farming and artistic skills, these early Cretans and their diet, or díaita (Greek, meaning ‘way of life’), became a source of myth and legend for the classical Greeks.
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Crete’s honeys, herbs, olive oil, fruits, cheeses and wines were renowned, and traded, throughout the empire – North Africa, Sicily, Asia Minor – in Byzantine and Ottoman Constantinople, and medieval Venice. Five hundred years later, Cretans are still celebrating their magnificent foods and we are beginning to understand the true meanings of gastronomy and diet. Surrounded by coral seas rich in maritime life, and endowed with snow-capped mountains and natural springs, Crete has fabulous sea food and more indigenous plants than any other European island. Today, herb-covered foothills, olive groves and ancient terraced hillsides covered in vines define the landscape just as they did in the past. Carob trees offer summer shade (and ‘chocolate’ and syrup in the kitchen) and abundant almond blossom promises luscious, honey-soaked nut cakes and pastries. There is no gentle pasture here, nor spare grain; livestock and Cretans alike forage for wild greens (horta), herbs and fruits. These nutrient-dense plants provide rich grazing for the sheep and goats whose milk, in turn, makes exquisite fresh cheeses
' Rosemary was a wonderful lecturer. She is warm and has a great sense of humour, definitely knows her Cretan cuisine, was highly informative and above all, clearly loves Crete, its people, its traditions and food.' G.W., participant on Gastronomic Crete in 2018.
– myzithra, anthotyro – aged graviera (mountain sheep cheese), the best yogurt made anywhere, fine-flavoured meats and game and memorable glyko tou koutaliou – ‘spoon sweets’ of cherries, citrus blossom, quince or tiny figs. The supreme quality of Cretan olive oil is well-known to connoisseurs, so too is the sweet richness of the island’s thyme honey and sunkissed sultanas and raisins. Curious wine-lovers are in for a treat. Grape varietals in Crete date back to antiquity, and we shall be tasting the finest. A new generation of wine-makers is bringing alive the old flavours, including Cretan malmsey, the favourite tipple of Shakespearean England. As we travel from Heraklion south, through the central mountains, then west to Chania, we shall meet many Cretans – home-cooks, wine producers, bakers and farmers, visit street markets, kafenio (cafés serving coffee the traditional way), tavernas – dedicated to fish, meats, mezes or grills – and restaurants using local ingredients that would make any chef elsewhere envious. Cretan hospitality is reflected on the table and there will be a lot of food! Meanwhile, the renowned sites of Knossos and Phaestos provide the focus for appreciating the significance and legacy of Minoan civilisation. Immersion in Crete’s unique historical and modern traditions, brings home a deeper understanding of how and where history and gastronomy, diet and culture meet.
Itinerary Day 1: Heraklion. Fly at c.12.15pm from London Heathrow to Heraklion via Athens (Aegean Airlines). Arrive at the hotel in time for a meze supper. First of three nights in Heraklion.
Day 3: Heraklion. Explore Heraklion market on foot. At its heart, a family bakery has deep roots in the Cretan baking tradition. The superb Archaeology Museum, has an exceptional collection of Minoan artefacts. An olive oil tasting precedes dinner at Peskesi, a restaurant specialising in modern Cretan cooking. Final night Heraklion. Day 4: Heraklion to Zaros. Heading southwest into the glorious rural hinterland, visit a sophisticated, family-owned winery cultivating island grape varietals. In contrast, the hospitable and sometimes boisterous inhabitants of the mountain settlement of Zaros welcome us into the fold, affording an insight into Cretan village life today. The next two nights are spent here. Day 5: Zaros, Phaestos. Phaestos is the second largest Minoan palace and its setting is perhaps the most evocative. After a coastal lunch, sample more
Practicalities
Day 6: Zaros, Chania. Cross the Psiloritis mountains to Chania. In the Venetian harbour town, we bring together myriad threads of the Cretan food story while surrounded by a vibrant past. The Minoan remains of Kastelli lie under the Venetian walls embedded with re-used Greek columns. Down by the harbour are both the Turkish mosque and the synagogue. We focus on Crete’s gastronomic life in Venetian and Byzantine times. First of three nights in Chania.
Included meals: 5 lunches, 7 dinners, with wine.
Day 7: Chania. Start with a visit to the market and an opportunity to explore the specialist foods shops and local delicacies to be found in the small streets and alleys around the harbour. Free time to continue at leisure, or to visit one of the numerous museums (these include archaeology, Byzantine and Maritime histories). Day 8: Chania. Etz Hayyim Synagogue is a fitting location in which to discuss the history of Jews in Crete, as well as the Jewish/Cretan dishes for which its former spiritual director Nikos Stavroulakis was well known. A seaside lunch of local specialities precedes a visit to a familyowned olive mill producing organic olive oil using millstones and presses. Our final appointment is dinner at a pioneering restaurant near Souda Bay.
Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,530 or £3,090 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,730 or £3,290 without flights. Accommodation. Lato Boutique Hotel, Heraklion (lato.gr): family-run 3-star hotel in a backstreet close to the Venetian port, mildly quirky modernist décor, rooms well-appointed. Hotel Keramos, Zaros: family-run rural guest house with few pretensions in a busy working village. If you prize luxury over authenticity, this tour is not for you. Rooms are spacious but décor old fashioned, showers not baths, no toiletries, good wifi. Kydon Hotel, Chania (kydon-hotel. com): 4-star hotel, spacious rooms, well situated close to the old town and port. How strenuous? There is a fair amount of standing and walking on this tour. Meals can be long and large and so expect some late nights. If you have dietary requirements it is advisable to contact us before booking. Average coach travel per day: 38 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Food & Wine Archaeology, 24–27 September 2019 (p.154). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Day 9. Fly to London Heathrow via Athens arriving c.3.30pm. The opening of sites on Crete can be influenced by local or national politics at the time of the tour. This may mean that at short notice not all sites listed can be visited.
Illustration, centre: Cretan backstreet (exact location unknown), etching; above: Crete, wood engraving c. 1890.
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Day 2: Heraklion, Knossos. After an introduction to Cretan gastronomy, we drive inland to a country homestead. Pies, from tiny parcels to the magnificently huge, and stuffed with savoury or sweet fillings, are a feature of Cretan cuisine. A fine, local cook demonstrates her pie-making skills, before entertaining us to lunch at her home. Return to Heraklion via Knossos. The excavations and reconstructions at the former capital of Minoan Crete enrich our understanding of early civilisation and Cretan díaita.
native varietal wines at a beautifully-sited winery on the rocky, calciferous slopes of Orthi Petri. Overlooking parts of ancient Gortyn, organicallycultivated grapes are grown here at an altitude of 500m. Overnight Zaros.
Minoan Crete History and archaeology 18–27 March 2019 (mf 450) 10 days • £3,130 Lecturer: Dr Alan Peatfield Concentrates on the extraordinary civilisation of the Minoans, but also pays due attention to Classical and later cultures.
Mycenaean, Hellenistic, Classical Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Venetian and Turkish domination followed. The books written on the island’s Second World War history alone fill a bookshelf. And yet throughout these millennia of foreign occupation and domination, Crete remained strong and proud and retained its own unique and captivating character.
Plenty of time for Knossos and the main sites, but also many remote and little-visited ones.
Itinerary
Wonderful, contrasting landscapes at a beautiful time in the island’s calendar.
Day 1. Fly at c. 12.15pm from London Heathrow to Heraklion via Athens (Aegean Airlines). First of four nights in Heraklion.
‘Land of contrasts’ is the king of clichés, but for Crete it is difficult to avoid, not only because of the variety of natural environments but also because of the influence these have had on the built environment and the history of the island. The contrasts in the landscape, vegetation and people are dramatic. Crete has its ‘deserts and jungles, its arctic and its tropics’. The high mountains and upland plains are bleak and remote; the gorges in the highly erosive limestone are lush. The west provides a retreat from the more developed stretch of north coast between Heraklion and Agios Nikolaos. The south is difficult of access, scored by gorges and with the Asterousia mountains dropping sharply to the sea. The Sphakia region further west on the south coast is one of the most culturally distinct regions. Lying between Europe, Africa and the Near East, variety also marks the island’s cultural legacy. The tour will focus primarily on the Bronze Age civilisation of the Minoans, the first great palace civilisation of Europe, which flourished in the second millennium bc. Wonderfully expressive, the art and influence of the Minoans spread throughout Greece, Egypt and the Near East. Pottery, sealstones, frescoes and architecture reached peaks of excellence unforeseen in the prehistoric Aegean.
Day 2: Knossos, Heraklion. The capital of Minoan Crete and centre of the Bronze Age Aegean, Knossos is shrouded in myth both ancient and modern. At its peak it comprised a magnificent palace with courts, religious buildings and mansions. Excavated by Sir Arthur Evans at the turn of the century, his reconstructions not only protect the excavated remains but grandly illustrate the splendour of palatial civilisation. Visit the Archaeological Museum which houses the island’s largest collection of Minoan art. Overnight Heraklion. Day 3: Gortyn, Phaestos, Agia Triada, Matala. A day in the Mesara, a rich agricultural plain along the south coast. Gortyn was the Roman capital of Crete; a famous 5th-century bc inscription has details of Greek law. On a ridge Phaestos is the second largest Minoan palace. Agia Triada, interpreted as the summer resort for Phaestos, has beautifully sited and architecturally elaborate villas. Visit the charming town of Matala, a harbour of Roman Gortyn, with rock-cut tombs in a cliff nearby. Overnight Heraklion. Day 4: Arhanes, Heraklion. Another pretty town, Arhanes possesses remarkable archaeological remains and one of the best excavated cemeteries on Crete, Phourni (this is a closed site and
permission for access can be withdrawn). The town also has a beautiful museum. Some free time in Heraklion. Overnight Heraklion. Day 5: Malia, Agios Nikolaos, Gournia. At Malia visit the Minoan Palace and houses belonging to the Minoan town. The Archaeological Museum at Agios Nikolaos houses a fine collection of Minoan art. The largest excavated Minoan town, Gournia’s over seventy cramped houses lie dotted about the hillside with a mini-palace at the top. First of three nights in Sitia. Day 6: Sitia, Toplou, Zákros. The museum at Sitia has a good collection of artefacts from eastern sites of the island. Positioned in the barren low hills of east Crete, Toplou monastery has a history of fierce resistance to the island’s various invaders. Káto Zákros, at the foot of the Gorge of the Dead, is an excavated Minoan palace. Overnight Sitia. Day 7: Agia Photia. Visit Agia Photia, a collection of early Bronze Age sites including a cemetery and a small settlement. Overnight Sitia. Day 8: Knossos, Chania. Second visit to Knossos and a private visit of outer-lying buildings. Drive to Chania, the spiritual capital of Crete, a beautiful town with delightful restaurants and good craft shops. First of two nights in Chania. Day 9: Aptera, Chania. One of the most powerful Graeco-Roman city states, Aptera is a huge site with Roman ruins, a theatre and a Turkish fort. See the British war cemetery at Souda Bay. Moni Agias Triadas on the Akrotiri peninsula above Chania was founded in 1630 by Venetian nobles and has some of the finest monastic architecture on the island. Overnight Chania. Day 10. Fly to London Heathrow via Athens, arriving c. 3.30pm. The opening of sites on Crete is arbitrary and can be influenced by the politics at the time of the tour. This may mean that at short notice not all sites listed can be visited.
Practicalities MAINLAND EUROPE: Greece
Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,130 or £2,830 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,350 or £3,050 without flights. Included meals: 5 lunches, 4 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Lato Boutique Hotel, Heraklion (lato.gr): family-run 3-star hotel with small but well-appointed rooms. Good location by the Venetian port. Sitia Beach Hotel, Sitia (sitiabeach.com): large, 4-star resort hotel on the edge of the town. Kydon Hotel, Chania (kydonhotel.com): 4-star hotel well located close to the old town and port. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking and scrambling over archaeological sites and this tour is not suitable for anyone who is not sure-footed. Average distance by coach per day: 56 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Illustration: Bull's head from Knossos, after a drawing by John Duncan ARSA, publ. 1917.
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In Search of Alexander Classical sites in northern Greece 14–20 May 2019 (mf 534) 7 days • £2,670 Lecturer: Professor Antony Spawforth Classical, Hellenistic and Roman archaeology, architecture and art in the ancestral home of Alexander the Great. The history of ancient Macedonia and the rule of the great Temenid kings. Fertile pastures and mountainous landscapes in a culturally rich, little-visited part of Greece.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 9.00am from London Gatwick to Thessaloniki (British Airways). From there drive eastwards via the newly constructed Egnatia motorway to the harbour town of Kavala. First of two nights in Kavala. Day 2: Thasos, Kavala. Reached by ferry, Thasos is a very attractive island, rugged and densely forested. The remains of the ancient city include one of the best-preserved agora complexes in Greece. The old part of Kavala, crowned by a Byzantine castle, sits on a promontory above the port joined to hills behind by a massive Ottoman aqueduct. Overnight Kavala. Day 3: Philippi, Amphipolis. Philippi is known for the battles in 42 bc that led to the victory of Octavian and Antony over Brutus and Cassius, and as the place where St Paul established the first
Christian community in Europe. Striking ruins of a theatre, forum and Early Christian basilicas are situated in an attractive valley. Amphipolis was an important and prosperous city from its founding as an Athenian colony in 437 bc until its demise in the 8th–9th centuries. The Hellenistic gymnasium is the best preserved in Greece. First of five nights in Thessaloniki. Day 4: Thessaloniki. Start the day with a walk in the upper town along the ramparts, the Vlattadon Monastery and the little church of Hosios David with its early-Byzantine mosaics. The Archaeological Museum is an excellent, extensive and well presented collection. Free afternoon or an optional visit to three great Byzantine churches. Overnight Thessaloniki. Day 5: Pella, Lefkadia, Vergina. Pella was the luxurious capital of Macedonia, birthplace of Philip II and his son Alexander the Great. The extensive but only partly excavated site has outstanding floor mosaics, and there are excellent finds in the attractive new museum. A Macedonian tomb at Lefkadia has rare, highquality paintings. Vergina is the site of the tombs of Philip II and members of his family. Only fairly recently discovered, the astonishing grave goods are among the finest survivals from the ancient world. Overnight Thessaloniki. Day 6: Olynthos. The most important of the Greek settlements on the fertile peninsula of Chalkidiki, Olynthos never recovered after destruction by Philip II (348 bc). The ruins, set in rolling farmland, provide the best evidence of Greek town-planning and a chance to walk residential streets of a Classical Greek city. Back in Thessaloniki, most of the significant Roman remains date to the city’s time as an Imperial
capital under Emperor Galerius (ad 305–311): parts of his palace, the Arch of Galerius and the impressive bulk of the Rotonda, which was probably built as his mausoleum. The awardingwinning Museum of Byzantine Culture displays artworks and artefacts dating from the 2nd to the 20th centuries. Overnight Thessaloniki. Day 7: Thessaloniki. Free morning. Drive from here to the airport and return to Gatwick c. 2.20pm (British Airways).
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,670 or £2,360 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,010 or £2,700 without flights. Included meals: 5 lunches, 4 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Egnatia Hotel, Kavala (egnatiahotel.gr): modern hotel, well located with fine views. Electra Palace Hotel, Thessaloniki (electrahotels.gr): traditional 5-star hotel with views of Aristotelous Square and the Mediterranean. How strenuous? You will be on your feet for lengthy stretches of time in some cases on exposed sites and walking over rough terrain. Sure-footedness and agility are essential. Average distance by coach per day: 60 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Classical Greece, 4–13 May 2019 (p.109); Tudor England, 8–13 May 2019 (p.26). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport. Illustration: Thessaloniki, wood engraving c. 1880.
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To many Classical Greeks the Macedonians were barbarians. Hailing from beyond Mount Olympos, they had only relatively recently abandoned nomadism for settled agriculture and life in cities, and they persisted with the system of hereditary kingship that city-state Greeks considered politically primitive. But military monarchy served the Macedonians well. In three dramatic decades that changed the ancient world, Philip II subdued most of the southern Balkans, followed by his son, Alexander the Great, legendary conqueror of the East. Meanwhile, mainstream Greece had gained several footholds on the islands and coastline in order to exploit the region’s rich natural resources, before these settlements succumbed to the Macedonians in the fourth century bc. After Alexander, Macedonian kings based at Pella maintained a flourishing kingdom until they were toppled by the legions in the second century bc, when the whole area became part of the Roman Empire. Athenian snobbishness notwithstanding, the Macedonians embraced Greek culture (Euripides and Aristotle, among others, graced the royal court). The treasures from the Royal Tombs at Vergina and elsewhere are among the most accomplished and beautiful artefacts to have survived from the ancient world. Macedonia flourished under the Pax Romana, with important centres at Philippi and Thessalonica (Salonica). This last went on to become a cultural and religious bastion of the mediaeval Byzantine empire, second only to Constantinople itself.
Iceland’s Story Natural marvels, saints and sagas
15–22 May 2019 (mf 536) 8 days • £3,440 Lecturer: Dr Siân Grønlie Geographical drama, variety and spectacle in volcanic landscapes, from the Golden Circle to the west coast. Iceland’s history, explored through the scenery, sagas and the manuscripts that recorded them. Traverse the majestic Snæfellsnes peninsula, a setting of Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth. Time to explore Reykjavík’s museums, galleries and its architectural daring.
MAINLAND EUROPE: ICELAND
‘Here let the citizen, then, find natural marvels... the student of prose and conduct places to visit, / the site of a church where a bishop was put in a bag, / the bath of a great historian, the fort where / an outlaw dreaded the dark, / remember the doomed man thrown by his horse and crying / Beautiful is the hillside...’ Figures from the past are part of the landscape and intrigue of Iceland. Immortalised in the mediaeval sagas, they also live on in place-names and landmarks that have inspired literary and artistic figures for centuries. The lines above, from W. H. Auden’s ‘Journey to Iceland’, appeared in Letters From Iceland, the collection of poetry and prose that Auden published with Louis MacNeice after the pair visited in 1936. William Morris was an earlier ‘saga pilgrim’, while Jules Verne eternally popularised the formidable glacier-capped mountain Snæfellsjökull on the Snæfellsnes peninsula, when he imagined it as the site of a hidden passage to the centre of the earth in his famous 1864 novel. Recorded anonymously, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the sagas are foundation legends that describe how Iceland was settled from mainland Scandinavia – in some cases via Norse settlements in the British Isles from ad 871. 114
Iceland had no monarchy or aristocracy until it came under Norwegian rule in the 1260s. Instead, the sagas are inhabited with warrior-farmers and chieftains, influential women, martial champions, poets, outlaws and the walking dead. The real and half-real people and quasihistorical events they depict reflect the challenges of creating a new society in a previously unoccupied and hostile environment. This was a world characterised by violent and sometimes deadly disputes over honour and natural resources, but one that was also swiftly regulated – to a greater or lesser degree – by the laws adopted by the early republic. Running through the sagas and integral to the tour, is the remarkable story of Icelandic Christianisation. The clash between ancient beliefs and the new religion in tenth-century Iceland has parallels elsewhere in the Viking world but the resolution adopted in Iceland was unique, and sheds light on many aspects of early Icelandic culture, society and law. Iceland’s landscapes remain much more than a mere backdrop to the saga action. Exploring these phenomenal feats of nature is a powerful, even emotional experience. Nearly 30 years after his first visit, Auden wrote: ‘In my childhood dreams Iceland was holy ground; when, at the age of twenty-nine, I saw it for the first time, the reality verified my dream; at fifty-seven it was holy ground still, with the most magical light of anywhere on earth.’
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 1.10pm (Icelandair) from London Heathrow to Keflavík International Airport. An introductory evening lecture precedes dinner at the hotel. First of three nights in Reykjavík. Day 2: Reykjavík. A morning walking tour of the city’s architectural highlights with a local guide including Hallgrímskirkja (Hallgrímur’s church) and the Harpa Concert Hall. An afternoon visit to Safnahúsið (Culture House), the original home
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of the National Library and Archives of Iceland. The exhibition Sjónarhorn presents examples of Icelandic visual art from the earliest times to the present, and includes a selection of mediaeval and post-mediaeval Icelandic manuscripts. Day 3: Golden Circle, Reykjavík. An all-day excursion to visit the classic sites of Geysir, a geothermal attraction since the early 19th century, spectacular Gullfoss (Golden Waterfall), and Þingvellir (Assembly Plains) the astonishing site of Iceland’s early parliament. Stop at Skálholt, which became an important centre of learning and manuscript production after the first Icelandic bishopric was established there in 1056. Final night in Reykjavík. Day 4: Reykjavík to Stykkishólmur. At the Reykjavík 871 +/-2 Museum, see the excavated remains of a Viking longhouse. The National Museum gives a good overview of the history of the country from settlement to the present. Our route to the west runs beneath the Hvalfjörður fjord and follows the coast. Helgafell, on the northern shore of the Snæfellsnes peninsula, was home to the chieftain Snorri goði, who features in several sagas, and to Guðrún Ósvífursdóttir, heroine of the romantic Laxdæla saga. An Augustinian monastery also stood here from the 1180s until the Reformation. Overnight Stykkishólmur. Day 5: Stykkishólmur, Snæfellsjökull, Hellnar, Arnarstapi, Búðir. Stykkishólmur has been an important centre of commerce in the west of the country since the 19th century. Today’s route circumnavigates the Snæfellsjökull glacier. Setting for the Bárðar saga Snæfellsáss, the Snæfellsnes peninsula is famous for its dramatic coastal scenery. Búðir, where our hotel stands in the midst of a lava-field, was another trading post and fishing site until the early 20th century. Day 6: Búðir to Húsafell. The museum at Borgarnes, with its exhibits on the settlement of Iceland, is one of several sites around the town to highlight Egil’s saga, a narrative
Caravaggio From Lombardy to Naples, via Rome chronicling the 9th-century farmer and warriorpoet: the burial mound of Egil’s father and son is situated in a small memorial garden near the museum. En route to Húsafell, subterranean water emerges mysteriously from beneath the surface of the plain into the Hvítá river at Hraunfossar, an extraordinary lava fall. First of two nights in Húsafell.
25 March–1 April 2019 (mf 465) Very few spaces remaining 8 days • £3,730 Lecturer: Dr Xavier Bray
Day 7: Húsafell, Reykholt. There is much to explore at Húsafell, including the work of the contemporary sculptor and artist Páll Guðmundsson. Eastwards, the fringes of the central highlands are lava fields and woodland, beyond; the glaciers of Langjökull and Eiríksjökull. At Reykholt, visit the exhibition dedicated to Snorri Sturluson (d. 1241), the famous mediaeval chieftain-historian, and his role in 13thcentury politics and culture. Remains from his time include Snorralaug (the hot pool), in which he is said to have bathed, an underground tunnel and the foundations of a mediaeval farmstead and hall. There is evidence of early Christian settlement here and today, a striking modern church sits beside its 19th-century timber forerunner.
Unhurried appreciation of the finest painter of the Italian Baroque, in the company of art historian Xavier Bray, director of the Wallace Collection in London.
Day 8: Húsafell. Drive to Reykjavík for some free time to explore the city’s galleries and museums. Fly to London Heathrow arriving c.8.10pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,440 or £3,290 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,980 or £3,830 without flights. Included meals: 3 lunches, 5 dinners, with wine.
Almost twenty of Caravaggio’s works in all: most in Italy’s greatest art museums, some in their original chapels, and one in private ownership. Travel first class by rail between Milan, Rome and Naples. When Caravaggio died in 1610 aged 38 he was the most famous painter in Italy, and the most influential. His reputation slumped in subsequent centuries but in recent decades his stock has risen steadily to a new peak. His works are now widely regarded as the most immediately compelling and dramatically charged in the whole history of Italian art. With unflinching realism, stark contrasts of light and shade and intense emotional power, his art burst upon the tired, febrile artistic scene of fin-de-siècle Italy like a Damascene conversion. His paintings were radically innovatory, even shocking; his personality was arrogant, tempestuous and violent. Accused of murder, he fled Rome and sought exile successively in Naples, Malta and Sicily, time and again obliged by further conflict to make a fresh start. Nevertheless, in his own lifetime connoisseurs clamoured for works. His patrons and protectors were among the richest and most powerful of cardinals, bankers and aristocrats. Though paintings by him now hang in museums around
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,730 or £3,430 without flights. Single occupancy: £4,190 or £3,890 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 5 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Rosa Grand Hotel, Milan (starhotels.com): smart 4-star hotel excellently located directly behind the Duomo. Rooms are well appointed in a clean, modern style. Hotel Bernini Bristol, Rome (berninibristol.com): luxurious 5-star hotel at the bottom of the Via Veneto, on Piazza Barberini. How strenuous? Despite the central location of the hotels there is unavoidably a lot of walking. In both cities, the historic area is vast, and vehicular access is increasingly restricted. On many occasions we get about on foot or occasionally by metro and even when a minibus is used there may often be a walk of several hundred metres due to traffic restrictions. Participants need to be able to lift their own luggage onto and off trains. Average distance by coach per day: 14 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Illustration: detail from 'The Entombment of Christ', engraving after Caravaggio’s, published in 'The Art Journal', 1862.
MAINLAND EUROPE: Iceland, Italy
Accommodation. Hotel Holt, Reykjavík (holt.is): 4-star centrally located boutique hotel in a historic building. Houses the largest privately owned art collection in Iceland. Fransiskus, Stykkishólmur (fransiskus.is): built in a former nunnery, the hotel still has an active chapel. Rooms are basic but comfortable. Hótel Búðir, Búðir (hotelbudir. is): beautifully-located boutique hotel. Rooms are comfortable with very good views. Hótel Húsafell (hotelhusafell.com): modern hotel in extensive grounds with geothermal baths, showcasing work by local artist Páll Guðmundsson.
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the world, many remain in the cities where he produced them, some still in the chapels for which they were made. This tour begins in Lombardy, including the small town from which the artist took his name. It ends in Rome, where he established both his reputation and his notoriety, with a day in Naples where he was received with acclaim. Throughout it allows unhurried viewing of many of his finest paintings. The focus on a single artist provides not just a thematic stringency, but also a springboard to enhance the appreciation of the arts of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Italy.
How strenuous? Fitness is essential. This is a long tour with four hotel changes and some long journeys. You will be on your feet for long stretches of time, in some cases on exposed sites and walking over rough terrain and therefore surefootedness and agility are essential.Average coach travel per day: 69 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
Illustration: near Reykjavik, wood engraving c. 1880. Photograph: Snæfellsnes Peninsula, photo ©Lizzy Holsgrove.
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Lombardy: Gastronomy & Opera Food, music, wine, art and architecture in northern Italy Day 4: Bergamo. Leave Bellagio to travel to an exceptional family-run trattoria near Bergamo. With its own herb garden, vegetables and fruit, this restaurant is beloved for the freshness of its flavours and fidelity to local food traditions. Continue to Bergamo, birthplace of Gaetano Donizetti, and visit the Basilica, founded in 1137. The Cappella Colleoni was built on the orders of Bartolomeo Colleoni, who destroyed the sacristy of S. Maria Maggiore in order to use the site as a personal shrine to himself and his daughter Medea. Travel onwards to Milan for the first of three nights. Day 5: Cremona. This glorious town in the Po Valley gave the world Claudio Monteverdi, the first great opera composer, as well as the Stradivari, Amati and other families of luthiers whose stringed instruments have been the world’s best for more than 300 years. Learn about the violin and Monteverdi in situ and then discover another Cremona speciality, torrone, the city’s famous nougat.
5–11 September 2019 (mf 685) 7 days • £3,830 Lecturer: Fred Plotkin A spectacular range of geography yields diverse, superb food and wine. Includes a top category ticket to L’Elisir d’Amore at the renowned Teatro alla Scala in Milan. Visit the charming cities of Bergamo and Cremona, as well as Leonardo’s Last Supper in Milan. Lecturer Fred Plotkin is a world-famous Italy expert, author of Italy for the Gourmet Traveller and former director at the Teatro alla Scala.
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Lombardy – Lombardia – is the region of Italian excellence, the place that sets modern standards for much of what Italy is admired for around the world. It is one of the country’s most geographically diverse areas and with that comes a remarkable variety of food and wines that make its cucina among the most sophisticated in Italy. The region contains the famous Lake District, including Lake Como, the deep blue jewel that is the most beautiful of them all, as well as the nearby Valtellina, a glorious and undiscovered swath of the Italian Alps that produces the region’s best wines and rustic mountain food. Noble cities such as Milan, Cremona and Bergamo each have their own rich traditions, and in Lombardy one also finds hill towns and broad fertile plains. Its southern border is the Po, the largest river in Italy. Such geographic diversity provides a feast of ingredients to cook with. They include wild mushrooms; berries; rice; corn for polenta; wheat for pasta and baking; fish from lakes and rivers; prized cattle; and more cow’s milk cheeses than any other region of Italy, including Parmesan, Stracchino, Taleggio, Bitto and Gorgonzola. Lombardy has known its share of geniuses. Leonardo da Vinci lived in Milan, the region’s capital, for 25 years and introduced engineering, 116
design, canals and modern irrigation for agriculture. He also wrote his codexes here, those precious volumes that reflect his restless imagination and contain his innovative inventions. And he painted, including the world-famous Last Supper in the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie. Claudio Monteverdi, the first great opera composer, was born in Cremona, and Giuseppe Verdi, Italy’s titan of opera, lived much of his life in Milan. Gaetano Donizetti, whose operas often depicted royals and nobles from the United Kingdom, was from Bergamo. This tour is a unique combination of the very best elements the region has to offer, whether musical, gastronomic or artistic. To savour Lombardy is to experience all the pleasures of life, gratifying the eye, ear, nose, palate and soul. It is the region of cultivated sensuality.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 3.00pm (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Milan Malpensa. Drive to Bellagio, among the loveliest and most romantic spots on earth. First of three nights in Bellagio. Day 2: Lake Como. Spend the day on land and water, travelling exclusively by boat. Visit Como and the city’s grand cathedral, and see a glorious lakeside villa. Built as a summer residence for a Milanese aristocrat on the western shore of Lake Como, the Villa Carlotta combines dramatic terracing, parterre and grottoes with an extensive landscape park and arboretum. The house contains notable collections from the Napoleonic period. Day 3: The Valtellina. Just north of the lake is the Valtellina, a valley that opens to Lombardy’s alps. Some of Italy’s top red wines come from here, and there is a tasting with delicious local cheeses at one of the region’s best producers. This zone is famous for numerous local foods, among them pizzoccheri, a buckwheat pasta served with cheese, greens, potatoes and garlic – ideal paired with local red wine.
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Day 6: Milan. Morning lecture by Fred Plotkin on Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore, followed by a visit to La Scala’s remarkable museum. Lunch at one of Milan’s temples of gastronomy, situated inside the opera house. Some free time in Milan. Evening opera at the Teatro alla Scala: L’Elisir d’Amore (Donizetti). Day 7: Milan. Visit Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper, one of the greatest achievements in the history of art. Fly from Milan Malpensa, arriving London Heathrow at c. 8.00pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,830 or £3,620 without flights. Single occupancy: £4,390 or £4,180 without flights. Included meals: 4 lunches, 3 dinners, with wine. Music: one opera ticket (top category) is included, costing c. £350. Accommodation. Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni, Bellagio (villaserbelloni.com): excellently situated on the edge of the lake, a historic 5-star hotel with lavishly decorated public rooms and wellappointed bedrooms (they vary in size). Rooms with a lake view are available on request and for a supplement. Rosa Grand Hotel, Milan (starhotels. com): smart 4-star hotel excellently located directly behind the Duomo. Rooms are well appointed in a clean, modern style. How strenuous? Visits require a fair amount of walking and standing around. There is one late night after the opera but the start is leisurely the following day. Some days involve a lot of coach travel. Average distance by coach per day: 58 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
Illustration: Cremona, the cathedral, steel engraving c. 1850.
Gardens & Villas of the Italian Lakes Como and Maggiore 25 April–1 May 2019 (mf 499) 7 days • £3,160 Lecturer: Steven Desmond 19–25 September 2019 (mf 732) 7 days • £3,160 Lecturer: Steven Desmond Among the loveliest and most romantic spots on earth – the summer retreat of the wealthy, aristocratic and intellectual since the time of Pliny. Some of the finest gardens in Europe, glorious in their design and range. Sublime mountain scenery, the inspiration of Bellini and Stendhal. Historic lakeside hotels. In September, the option to combine this tour with Roman Italy, 9–18 September 2019 (see page 147).
Itinerary If combining this tour with Roman Italy: travel by train from Naples to Milan on 18th September, then by car transfer to Bellagio. Spend and one extra night at Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni. Day 1: Bellagio. Fly at midday (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Milan. Drive to Bellagio on Lake Como. First of three nights in Bellagio.
Day 3: Lake Como. Villa Carlotta on the western shore of Lake Como, built as a summer residence for a Milanese aristocrat, combines dramatic terracing, parterre and grottoes with an extensive landscape park and arboretum. The house contains notable collections from the Napoleonic period. The Villa Balbianello occupies its own headland projecting into the middle of Lake Como. This glorious site is terraced to provide sites for lawns, trees, shrubs and a chorus of statuary. The villa stands among groves of oak and pine. Day 4: Renaissance villa gardens. At the Villa Cicogna Mozzoni at Bisuschio, north of Varese, the 16th-century house and garden are thoroughly intertwined; the courtyard of pools and parterres leads to a water staircase, grottoes and giochi d’acqua. Lunch is served at the villa. The Villa della Porta Bozzolo, tucked away in a mountain valley near Lake Maggiore, is a hidden treasure of a garden, shooting straight up a dramatic hillside from the village street of Casalzuigno. The beautiful 17th-century villa is unexpectedly set to one side to increase the visual drama. First of three nights in Pallanza. Day 5: The Borromean Islands. Isola Bella is one of the world’s great gardens (and correspondingly popular), a wedding cake of terraces and greenery floating improbably in Lake Maggiore. The sense of surrealism is enhanced by the symbolic statuary and the flock of white peacocks. Isola Madre is the ideal dessert to follow Isola Bella: a relaxed, informal landscape garden around a charmingly domestic villa. Visual entertainments include the marvellous plant collection, revitalized by Henry Cocker in the 1950s, the chapel garden, puppet theatre and ambulant aviary. Day 6: Pallanza, Brissago. The Villa Taranto at Pallanza is an extravagant piece of 20th-century kitsch created by Henry Cocker for his patron, the enigmatic Neil McEacharn. The alarmingly gauche design is superbly planted and maintained with loving zeal by the present staff. In the afternoon cross to the Swiss part of Lake Maggiore to visit the extensive botanical gardens on the island of San Pancrazio, home to c. 1700 different plant species. Day 7. Fly from Milan to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 5.00pm.
Illustration: Como, watercolour by Ella du Cane, publ. 1905.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,160 or £3,020 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,580 or £3,440 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni, Bellagio (villaserbelloni.com): excellently situated on the edge of the lake, a historic 5-star hotel with lavishly decorated public rooms and wellappointed bedrooms (they vary in size). Rooms with a lake view are available on request and for a supplement. Grand Hotel Majestic, Pallanza (grandhotelmajestic.it): recently renovated, privately owned 4-star Belle Epoque hotel with lakeside gardens; bedrooms vary in size and all have lake views. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking as some of the gardens are extensive, and all have uneven ground. A good level of fitness is essential. You will be on your feet for lengthy stretches of time. Average distance by coach per day: 23 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Price, Roman Italy and Gardens & Villas of the Italian Lakes and combined. Two sharing: £7,160 or £7,010 without flights. Single occupancy: £8,370 or £8,220 without flights. This includes accommodation (1 night), first-class rail travel and a car transfer between the two. These arrangements are pre-booked but unescorted. Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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The gardens of the Italian lakes fall into two categories: formal, terraced, parterred, allegoried and enclosed summer residences of native landowners, and the expansive, landscaped villa grounds of the rich and splendid. Some are small, others huge; some ostentatious, others retiring; some immaculate, others picturesquely mouldering. Many are the former homes of Austrian aristocrats, Napoleonic grandees, bel canto composers or British seasonal emigrants. All respond to the setting, gazing out across bays and peninsulas, or up to mountain scenery of heroic dimensions. The tour is divided between Lake Como and Lake Maggiore. Lake Como, the home of Pliny, is intensely romantic: Shelley, Bellini and Stendhal found inspiration here on the shores of a long and slender lake divided in three parts. The little town of Bellagio surveys all three from its glittering headland, and provides a convenient (and luxurious) base for visiting the lakeside villa gardens. Lake Maggiore is altogether broader and more open, extending northwards into Switzerland, with the air of an inland sea. The great western bay includes the famous Borromean Islands, among them the contrasting garden retreats of Isola Bella and Isola Madre. As early as 1686 Bishop Burnet gushed that these were ‘certainly the loveliest spots of ground in the World, there is nothing in all Italy that can be compared to them’. Our tours are scheduled at times of the year when there is the possibility of clear, brilliant sunshine. Each lake, each shore, each promontory and island, has its own character, but everywhere is pervaded by the abundance of light, perfume and natural beauty.
Day 2: Bellagio. The neoclassical Villa Melzi at Bellagio was built in 1810 for Francesco Melzi d’Eril, vice-president of Napoleon’s Italian Republic. It overlooks the lake in an undulating English landscape park, richly planted and decorated with ornamental buildings. The Villa Serbelloni, probably built on the site of one of Pliny the Younger’s two villas on Lake Como, occupies the high ground above Bellagio. The woods offer magnificent views to all parts of the lake. The mediaeval remnants, 16th-century villa and later terraces are the setting for planting schemes in a backdrop described by Stendhal as ‘a sublime and enchanting spectacle’.
Palaces of Piedmont Courtly splendour in and around Turin Day 3: Staffarda, Manta, Racconigi. Drive south to the Abbey of Staffarda which retains an impressive Romanesque church with cloister and chapter house. Continue to the castle of Manta which has an early 15th-cent. fresco cycle, an important and beautiful example of secular International Gothic painting. The Castello di Racconigi was one of the summer residences of the Savoys; the front overlooking the park is by Guarini (1676). Day 4: Superga, Turin. The basilica of Superga (1731), a votive church and burial place of the royal family with a magnificent hilltop location just outside the city, is Juvarra’s finest work. Though altered in the 18th cent., the Villa della Regina (1620) is a good example of an early Baroque residence. The afternoon is free; there is plenty to do and see in Turin, equally it is a good place in which to relax. Day 5: Agliè, Masino, Albugnano. The Castello di Agliè to the north of Turin was rebuilt as a ducal palace in 1646 and further refurbished in the 18th and early 19th cents. With a similarly long history of embellishment, but with the 18th cent. predominant, the Castello di Masino is one of the best-preserved royal residences in Piedmont. Nestling in an isolated rural setting, the small Romanesque Abbey of Vezzolano is outstanding for its architecture, stone carvings and frescoes.
4–9 June 2019 (mf 560) 6 days • £2,340 Lecturer: Dr Luca Leoncini Based in Turin, a lively city developed on a grand scale in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Magnificent castles and royal residences, with other treats such as Romanesque abbeys, Gothic frescoes and outstanding paintings.
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First emerging as an independent territory in the eleventh century, Savoy from the middle of the sixteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth grew from a minor duchy to a prosperous and powerful little kingdom. Straddling Alpine territory in what is now France, Switzerland and Italy, and adding Sardinia in 1720, it became larger than modern Belgium and was a significant player in European affairs. The capital moved from Chambéry to Turin in 1563, enabling extensions to be built on relatively unencumbered terrain, planned in accordance with Renaissance and, later, Baroque principles. Italy has little else to match the grandeur and homogeneity of its sequence of squares, boulevards and palaces dating to this period. The city looks, and is, as much French and Central European as Italian, and has always impressed visitors with its orderliness, regularity and magnificence. The capital was not the only material manifestation of Baroque culture in Piedmont. The House of Savoy and their courtiers created a constellation of residences and hunting lodges, gardens and parks around their capital which constitute as fine a group as is to be f ound anywhere in Europe. The patrons were fortunate in their choice of architects, especially 118
Guarino Guarini (1624–83) and Filippo Juvarra (1678–1736). Guarini was a priest, a mathematician and creator of the some of the most original and beguiling architectural forms of the Baroque era. Juvarra trained in Rome and developed an international practice but his best works are in Piedmont, perfecting the easeful magnificence characteristic of the dying decades of the Age of Absolutism. Despite its cultural and linguistic orientation towards its western and northern neighbours, Savoy became the vanguard of the unification of Italy and the expulsion of foreign rulers, providing the firepower and diplomatic clout which facilitated the success of the Risorgimento in 1861. It also provided the kings of a newly united Italy. Shorn of the territories west of the Alps, France’s reward for assistance, the Italian residue of Savoy came to constitute the region of Piedmont, one of Italy’s most progressive and prosperous but unaccountably neglected by tourists.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 1.15pm from London Gatwick (British Airways) to Turin and reach the hotel late afternoon. All five nights are spent in Turin. Day 2: Turin. Begin with a walk through the beautiful, arcaded Piazza San Carlo. The Palazzo Carignano has a remarkable curvaceous façade by Guarini. Piazza Castello is splendid, the greatest of the buildings being Palazzo Madama by Filippo Juvarra (1721), now housing the art gallery. Palazzo Reale, the principal royal residence, is largely of the late 17th cent. but has interiors of the 18th and 19th cents. and the Chapel of the Holy Shroud, Guarini’s masterpiece (1694). Housed here are masterpieces from the Galleria Sabauda.
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Day 6: Stupinigi, Venaria. The Palazzina di Caccia di Stupinigi is a royal hunting lodge built to a fascinating ground plan by Filippo Juvarra in 1730. Lavish interiors, fine gardens. The Venaria Reale (Amedeo Castellamonte 1660, Juvarra 1714–28) is the largest of the suburban palaces, a magnificent complex which reopened in 2007 after comprehensive renovation. Drive from here the short distance to the airport; return to Gatwick at c. 6.15pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,340 or £2,120 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,600 or £2,380 without flights. Included meals: 3 lunches, 3 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Grand Hotel Sitea, Turin (grandhotelsitea.it): 4-star hotel, comfortable, elegantly furnished and very central. How strenuous? The tour involves a lot of walking in the town centres where vehicular access is restricted and standing in museums, and should not be attempted by anyone who has difficulty with everyday walking and stair-climbing. Average distance by coach per day: 20 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Moscow & the Golden Ring, 25 May–3 June 2019 (p.181); The Imperial Riviera, 10–16 June 2019 (p.121); Rhineland Romanesque, 10–16 June 2019 (p.104); Walking to Santiago, 11–22 June 2019 (p.187). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport. Illustration: Turin, Palazzo Madama and Palazzo Reale, wood engraving c. 1880.
Gastronomic Piedmont Some of the finest food and wine in Italy 26 October–1 November 2019 (mf 864) 7 days • £3,170 Lecturer: Marc Millon One of the most celebrated gastronomic regions in Italy, centre of the ‘Slow Food’ revolution. Wine and food production studied at source, including visits to Alba, white truffle capital of the world, and a number of Barolo wineries. Superb restaurants, from simple trattorias to the Michelin starred. Beautiful landscapes: upland pasture, rolling hills, sloping vineyards and hazelnut woods.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 9.30am from London Gatwick to Genoa (British Airways) and drive north to Bra, an attractive market town with some fine architecture, where the first four nights are spent.
Wine, food and travel writer. Born in Mexico, he was raised in the USA and then studied at the University of Exeter. He lives in Devon where he is closely involved with the West Country food scene. He is author of The Wine Roads of France, The Wine Roads of Italy, The Food Lover’s Companion to France, The Food Lover’s Companion to Italy and The Taste of Britain. See page 260 for all lecturers' biographies.
In the evening study the local wine-making process at the Ascheri winery adjacent to the hotel. Day 2: Alba, Grinzane Cavour. Drive to Alba, chief town of the Langhe, for a truffle seminar and lunch. In the afternoon there is a wine tasting in the Castle of Grinzane Cavour, a spectacularly situated unesco heritage site, home of the first regional enoteca to open in Piedmont, now almost 50 years old. Dinner is at a Slow Food restaurant. Day 3: Piozzo, Monforte d’Alba. The landscape between Dogliani and Murazzano is a patchwork of vineyards and rumpled hills, woods and pasturage. There is a truffle hunt (real, not simulated) this morning in the woods around Piozzo, then a wine tasting and lunch at a small, family-run estate. Day 4: Bra or surrounding countryside, Asti. Choose from two options this morning: either a wine tasting in the Ascheri winery and visit to a traditional sausage maker, or take a guided walk through orchards, vineyards and hazelnut groves, for the entire morning (c. 3 hours). Reconvene for lunch and a cooking demonstration at an outstanding restaurant. In the afternoon visit the lovely little city of Asti, centre of another famous wine and food area, set amidst the gently undulating Monferrato hills. Day 5: Pollenzo, Serralunga d’Alba. In the morning there is a visit and wine tasting at the fascinating wine bank in nearby Pollenzo, which stores and ages wines from all over Italy in order to keep a historical record of the very best vintages. Lunch is at a Michelin-starred restaurant in Serralunga d’Alba. In the castle at Manta there are some marvellous mediaeval frescos. Continue to Cuneo where the last two nights are spent. Day 6: Castelmagno, Sampeyre. The steep-sided valley of the river Grana is the sole source of one of Italy’s finest cheeses, Castelmagno. Visit a farm to see aspects of its production. Continue to Sampeyre in the mountains for lunch and a cooking demonstration with one of Italy’s rising stars. Day 7: Rivoli. Drive to Castello di Rivoli, one of the palaces of the royal house of Savoy established in hunting grounds around Turin. Rebuilt in the 18th century, though never finished, a museum of contemporary art has been installed here. Lunch
here at one of the best restaurants in Piedmont, Combal Zero. Fly from Turin, arriving London Gatwick at c. 6.00pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,170 or £2,980 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,360 or £3,170 without flights. Included meals: 6 lunches, 4 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Albergo Cantine Ascheri, Bra (ascherihotel.it): 4-star hotel refurbished in a very modern but enjoyable design using locally made materials as much as possible. Service is enthusiastic and rooms are comfortable. Hotel Palazzo Lovera, Cuneo (palazzolovera.com): excellently situated 4-star hotel just off the ancient arcaded Via Roma. Traditional, tasteful décor with dark wood and faux-Rococo wall paintings. How strenuous? There is a fair amount of walking involved. Participants need to be used to walking unaided on uneven terrain, and surefootedness is also essential for truffle hunting in the woods. Participants on the optional walk on Day 4 need to be used to hiking up and down hills. Average distance by coach per day: 65 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Modern Art on the Côte d'Azur, 17–23 October 2019 (p.83); Venetian Palaces, 5–9 November 2019 (p.127); Opera in Southern Sicily, 5–11 November 2019 (p.162).
Illustration: ‘A Valley in Piedmont’ by Frank Fox, publ. 1913.
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Gastronomically, Piedmont is undoubtedly one of Italy’s most interesting regions. Its wines are superb, the food produced there is varied and the delicious cooking ranges from traditional country fare to creatively modern cuisine. Moreover, the region is the centre of the Slow Food revolution, which is transforming gastronomy in Italy and beyond. There is also another winning feature: many Piedmontese in the food and wine business have a desire to share their passion, and welcome interested visitors with generous amounts of their time and produce. In part this may be because visitors are relatively few, despite the high reputation which Piedmont enjoys. For this tour we have bypassed Turin in favour of spending time in the countryside, seeing the origins of the food and wine and meeting the producers. This bucolic exile is not at the expense of culinary excellence; you will find superb restaurants, from simple rustic trattorias where Granny’s recipes are still gospel, to Michelinstarred and innovative establishments, all serving some of Italy’s finest food. The study and enjoyment of wines is a large part of the tour. Barolo is the dominant wine – noble, austere and complex; the Nebbiolo grape is used for the elegant, tarry Barbaresco, and various other DOCs. We meet makers, chosen as much for their charm and communicativeness as for their wines, in some cases study their vines and the wine-making process, and taste the results. Among the foods we investigate, truffles are significant – Alba is something of a truffle capital – but the mountain cheeses such as Tomino and Castelmagno make an equally powerful impression. Landscape is another of the great pleasures of the tour. As its name suggests, Piedmont reaches from high pastures to alluvial plains, and much of it is used for agriculture (or small family-run farms). The Langhe hills are among the most beautiful in Italy, the flanks almost entirely carpeted with vineyards, the summits sporting castles, little mediaeval towns or ancient farmsteads.
Marc Millon
Historic Musical Instruments Museums and private collections in northern Italy, with recitals instruments have been the world’s best for more than 300 years. Learn about the violin in situ at the Museo del Violino (with a performance on a historic violin), and visit a violin-maker’s workshop. Cremona has a splendid central square formed of cathedral, campanile (Italy’s tallest), baptistry and civic palaces, and there is some free time to explore these. Overnight in Cremona. Day 4: Bologna. Continue to Bologna. The Museo della Musica houses a rich collection of scores, portraits and instruments. The private collection of the late-Bolognese scholar Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini, long-admired by specialists, has recently been made available to the public. It is housed in one of Bologna’s oldest churches and traces the history of keyboard instruments from the 16th to the 19th centuries. Fly from Bologna to London Heathrow, arriving c. 8.00pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,840 or £1,730 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,040 or £1,930 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 3 dinners with wine.
1–4 November 2019 (mf 873) 4 days • £1,840 Lecturer: Professor Robert Adelson
Recitals on period instruments and the opportunity to meet the collectors.
Milan was the centre of the violin family’s early development, but both Milan and Bologna were also famous for their lutes. As early as the thirteenth century Bologna was renowned for the quality of its wind instruments; the ensemble of cornets and sackbuts at the church of San Petronio was admired throughout Italy. Northern Italy is home to some of Europe’s most important collections of historic instruments, many of which are in playable condition, making it possible to explore the evolution of the principal instrumental families – keyboards (harpsichords, clavichords, organs and pianos), bowed and plucked strings, woodwind and brass.
Option to combine this tour with Opera in Southern Sicily, 5–11 November 2019 (page 162).
Itinerary
Some of Italy’s finest collections of musical instruments, some in private properties and viewed only by special arrangement. Based in Milan and Cremona, with some free time to explore these historic cities, and excursions to Briosco and Bologna.
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An instrument is the sole and precious witness to music that was performed in the past. Many years after the musicians and the sounds they produced have disappeared, a few rare instruments remain, in museums and private collections. Thanks to their preservation, we can today hear appropriate music played with more colourful timbres and more authentic performance styles, and better understand the stylistic choices made by composers. This tour brings musical history to life by visiting some of the most influential centres of instrument making. No city can surpass Cremona for its tradition of bowed strings, dating to the early sixteenth century when the mellifluous tone of the Amati family’s instruments transformed the violin from a folk instrument to one capable of expressing the noblest musical sentiments of the Baroque period. Probably it was Nicolò Amati who taught both Antonio Stradivari and Andrea Guarneri, whose instruments have become legendary and whose tradition is continued today among Cremonese luthiers. 120
Day 1: Milan. Fly at c. 10.30am (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Milan. Visit the Musical Instruments Museum at the Castello Sforzesco, which has a vast collection of over 800 instruments, including a rare double virginal by Ruckers (Antwerp c. 1600), numerous examples from the Lombard lute and viol tradition and many African and Asian instruments. In the evening, visit a collection in a private palazzo where there is a harpsichord recital and dinner. First of two nights in Milan. Day 2: Milan, Briosco. Drive to Briosco to visit Villa Medici-Giulini, a 17th-century stately residence which houses one of the most important private collections of European keyboard instruments and harps, many of which have been restored to playable condition. There are demonstrations and performances on the instruments, followed by lunch in the villa. There is some free time in Milan in the afternoon. Day 3: Cremona. This glorious town in the Po Valley was home to the Stradivari, Amati and other families of luthiers whose stringed
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Accommodation. Hotel Rosa Grand, Milan (starhotels.com): smart 4-star hotel excellently located directly behind the Duomo. Rooms are well appointed in a clean, modern style. Dellearti Design Hotel, Cremona (dellearti.com): small, modern boutique hotel, conveniently located just metres from Piazza del Duomo. Rooms are large and bright with modern fittings. How strenuous? There is inevitably quite a lot of walking and standing in museums on this tour. Some of the walking is uphill or over cobbles. The coach cannot be used within the town centres. Average distance by coach per day: 53 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Opera in Southern Sicily, 5–11 November 2019 (p.162); Venetian Palaces, 5–9 November 2019 (p.127).
Professor Robert Adelson Professor of Music History and Organology at the Conservatoire de Nice. From 2005–16 he curated the collection of historical musical instruments in the Musée du Palais Lascaris. He has published widely; his latest book is The History of the Erard Piano & Harp in Letters & Documents, 1785–1959. See page 260 for all lecturers' biographies.
Illustration: early-18th-century copper engraving.
The Imperial Riviera Trieste, Ljubljana and the Istrian Peninsula 10–16 June 2019 (mf 573) 7 days • £2,360 Lecturer: Richard Bassett Follow in the footsteps of the Habsburgs, Europe’s leading imperial dynasty. Explore three countries from one hotel, crossing between Italy, Slovenia and Croatia. All six nights are spent in Trieste.
Day 2: Trieste. The morning in Trieste is spent climbing the cathedral hill through the old Venetian town and visiting the grave of the 19th-century scholar of Neoclassicism, Johann Joachim Winckelmann, who is buried in a picturesque lapidarium beyond the former English church. In the afternoon visit the Miramar castle, the dream of the ill-fated Emperor Maximilian of Mexico, whose last moments alive were devoted to planning the atmospheric gardens of the castle’s park. Day 3: Ljubljana. The capital of Slovenia, Ljubljana is a city formed in the Imperial Austrian tradition, but following the collapse of the Habsburg empire it was vigorously reconstructed by the architect Jože Plečnik. See the fine Baroque churches which are the city’s older glories; Neo-Renaissance government buildings; and the enchantingly picturesque riverside with its incomparable nexus of Plečnik’s bridges. Walk in the Tivoli park where Marshal Radetzky had his summer residence. Day 4: Hrastovlje, Opatija, Piran. A trip across the limestone carso of Istria, taking in the beautiful mediaeval church of Hrastovlje before reaching Opatija (Abbazia), the jewel of the old Austrian Riviera with its fin-de-siècle hotels, rocky promenade and views across the Quarnero. Visit also Piran, a formerly Venetian coastal town, with a fine campanile and view across the lagoons towards Venice. The Istrian coastal towns were established first as fishing villages before, in early mediaeval times, Venice developed them into centres of civilisation which have contributed such composers as Tartini and other notable figures. Day 5: Trieste. In the Museo Revoltella the importance of the city’s trade with the orient is underlined by a special section devoted to the opening of the Suez Canal, an event with profound consequences for the development of Trieste. Free afternoon. Day 6: Pola, Brioni. Return to the picturesque Istrian peninsula. At the tip lies Pula (Pola), the former headquarters of the Imperial Habsburg Navy and a city rich in spectacular Roman remains including the magnificent 3rd-century Arena built of white Istrian stone. From Pola, a boat takes 45 minutes to the charming island of Brioni where the Archduke Franz Ferdinand spent his last family holiday before his assassination in 1914. Full of pleasant promenades, this once malarial islet was transformed by the Rothschilds 120 years ago into an Adriatic paradise. Day 7. Fly from Venice to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 7.00pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,360 or £2,240 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,710 or £2,590 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Savoia Excelsior Palace, Trieste (starhotels.com): majestic 4-star hotel overlooking the Bay of Trieste, set in a historic building with 19th-century architecture. How strenuous? The tour involves quite a lot of walking, some of which is uphill and some of which is in the town centres, where vehicular access is restricted. Streets are often cobbled, and the tour should not be attempted by anyone who has difficulty with everyday walking and stairclimbing. Some days involve a lot of driving. Average distance by coach per day: 78 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Palaces of Piedmont, 4–9 June 2019 (p.118); Connoisseur’s Vienna, 17–23 June 2019 (p.49). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Itinerary Day 1: Trieste. Fly at c. 9.00am from London Heathrow to Venice (British Airways). Drive to Trieste, where all six nights are spent. Afternoon walk through the quarters of the Borgo Teresiano where the great Empress Maria Theresa established the foundations of Austria’s greatest seaport,
Illustration: Trieste, Miramar castle and gardens, watercolour by Mima Nixon, publ. 1916.
What else is included in the price? See page 6
For lecturers' biographies See pages 260–267 Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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The Habsburg Empire vanished barely a hundred years ago but nowhere is its legacy more apparent than in the once great seaport of Trieste, its hinterland and the adjoining coastline. The region was once a progressive and prosperous international melting pot, but in the twentieth century it was riven by borders, often contested. The result was that the territory became peripheral and dropped from mainstream tourist itineraries – despite the hoard of extraordinarily handsome cities and settlements, sensationally interesting history and outstanding natural beauty. This tour evokes the memory of a multinational and multi-confessional empire. Under Vienna’s tutelage, Trieste became not only the third-largest city of the Austrian Empire but also one of the greatest ports of the world. Through it came most of central Europe’s coffee, fruit and colonial wares. A multi-national plutocracy took advantage of light regulation and low taxation to establish fortunes in Trieste which have survived well into our times. To the east of Trieste, the Adriatic coast was developed to accommodate the wishes of a newly prosperous imperial middle-class who sought refuge from metropolitan life; the coastline rejoiced in the name Imperial and Royal Riviera. The thermal springs and bathing facilities of Opatija (Abbazia) along the Quarnero peninsula were one such attraction. With its turn-of-thecentury villas and hotels the town still exudes the atmosphere of Edwardian elegance. Inland from these charming resorts lies the Slovene capital Ljubljana. Here the architectural heritage is stamped by imperial Austrian tradition but also by the unique stylistic vocabulary of the greatest of all Slovene architects, Jože Plečnik, a pupil of Otto Wagner in Vienna but a man determined to express the culture of the newly emerging southern Slavs in a vivid and original language. The result is one of the most enchanting of European capitals, if one of the smallest. The tour also explores the relatively unknown interior of nearby Istria. Here crumbling villages marked by beautiful limestone churches punctuate a karst landscape which, ravaged in winter by the fierce north-easterly Bora wind, remains one of the wildest and least known in Europe.
ending on the Molo Audace from where in the 19th and 20th centuries several Habsburgs sailed to violent deaths in faraway lands.
The Venetian Hills Renaissance art in the foothills of the Dolomites of Asolo was home to three exceptional women: Queen Caterina Corner, the actress Eleonora Duse and the writer and traveller Freya Stark. Visit the cathedral where the Assumption of the Virgin by Lorenzo Lotto has been treasured in the past 500 years. Day 5: San Fior, Treviso. Descend to San Fior, a little town on the densely populated plain at the foot of the hills. Riven by canals and streams, San Fior has an altarpiece by Cima. Once an important fortress city, Treviso has a fine historic centre with imposing public buildings and many painted façades. Selective visits here include the extraordinary frescoes of learned monks in the chapter house of St Nicholas by 14th-cent. painter Tommaso da Modena. Fly from Venice airport, arriving at Gatwick c. 7.00pm. If combining this tour with Friuli-Venezia Giulia: there is a refreshment break at Venice airport before the coach continues to Udine. with fine buildings and arcaded streets which give protection from mountain downpours and summer sun. The ostensible theme of this tour is painting of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but other aspects of the art and history of the region will not be ignored. The base is Follina, a tiny community which grew up around a monastery in the mountains.
Practicalities
Some of the loveliest hill towns in Italy, including the birthplace of Titian.
Itinerary
Option to combine this tour with Friuli-Venezia Giulia, 7–12 October 2019 (see opposite).
Day 1. Fly at c. 1.00pm (British Airways) from London Gatwick to Venice. Drive through the hills to Follina where all four nights are spent.
‘Hills’ and ‘Venice’ are not accustomed to finding themselves in the same sentence; sited on (and sometimes under) an estuarial lagoon, elevation above (or below) sea level in Venice is measured in centimetres. But on a clear day a range of hills can be seen rising to the north. On a very clear day the snowy peaks of the Dolomites come into view. Towards the end of the Middle Ages the proud little communities which populated these hills one by one submitted to the rule of La Serenissima, as did much of northern Italy. Political hegemony was followed by cultural influence, clearly manifested still in the disorientating sight of Venetian-style Renaissance palazzi set against precipitous pineclad hillsides. But the cultural forces did not flow only in one direction. As is often the case with an artistically flourishing metropolis, many of the creators were outsiders. Titian was born in the rugged Cadore mountains, Cima from the gentler hillside town of Conegliano, Marco Ricci from hilltop Belluno. These and many other artists enjoyed successful careers in Venice; but most kept in contact with their natal towns, accepting commissions for, or donating paintings to, their parish church. These hill towns are among the loveliest in Italy, and they are set in ravishing landscapes which range from vine-clad foothills to soaring limestone peaks. Most of them are quite small, but the architectural ambitions of their inhabitants were otherwise: the historic centres are dense
Day 2: Vittorio Veneto, Conegliano. The tiny city of Serravalle (now joined with Cèneda to form Vittorio Veneto), occupying a gorge scoured by the River Meschio, has a fine group of mediaeval and Renaissance buildings, 15th-century frescoes in the chapel of S. Lorenzo and a Titian in the cathedral. In the church of Santa Maria in Cèneda there is an exquisite Annunciation by Previtali. Drive to the birthplace of Giambattista Cima del Conegliano, the lovely town from which the artist took his name, that spreads down a hillside below the remains of a castle. Visit Cima’s house and the cathedral to see one of his greatest works (1492).
How strenuous? The tour involves quite a lot of walking, some of which is uphill or in the town centres where vehicular access is restricted. Streets are often cobbled, and the tour should not be attempted by anyone who has difficulty with everyday walking and stair-climbing. Agility, stamina and sure-footedness are essential. Many of the historical buildings visited are sprawling and vast. Some days involve a lot of driving. Average distance by coach per day: 62 miles.
3–7 October 2019 (mf 774) 5 days • £1,880 Lecturer: Dr Carlo Corsato Ravishingly beautiful landscapes from vine-clad foothills to the peaks of the Dolomites. Altarpieces and frescoes by Venetian masters, mediaeval to Rococo.
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Day 3: Pieve di Cadore, Belluno. Titian was born in the little town of Pieve di Cadore; see here the family home and the parish church with paintings by him and his family. In the afternoon drive north along the valley of the Piave into an ever-more dramatic mountain landscape. Sitting athwart a promontory looped by the Piave, Belluno is a beautiful little city with a Renaissance cathedral and Venetian-style palaces. Among the fine paintings is an exquisite Madonna & Child by Cima in the Museo Civico. Day 4: Bassano, Asolo. Bassano del Grappa is a highly attractive town in the foothills of the Dolomites with a series of picturesque squares with painted façades. Home of the prolific Bassano family of painters, there are several of their works in the civic museum. The lovely hilltop town
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Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,880 or £1,700 without flights. Single occupancy: £1,980 or £1,800 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 3 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel dei Chiostri (hoteldeichiostri.com): 4-star hotel in the hill town of Follina, installed in former abbey buildings.
Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Price, The Venetian Hills and Friuli-Venezia Giulia combined. Two sharing: £3,570 or £3,390 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,800 or £3,620 without flights.
Dr Carlo Corsato Expert in early modern art and architecture and lecturer at Morley College, London. In the past 15 years he has contributed to many journals and exhibition catalogues, as well as lecturing extensively in higher and adult education. His research reconstructs how 14th to 17th-century art documented religion, economy and society in Italy. See page 260 for all lecturers' biographies.
Illustration: Pieve di Cadore, Titian’s house, wood engraving from 'The Magazine of Art' 1883.
Friuli-Venezia Giulia The border lands of northeast Italy 7–12 October 2019 (mf 775) 6 days • £1,880 Lecturer: Dr Carlo Corsato A wide variety of art and architecture: Roman, Byzantine, Gothic, Renaissance, Palladian. Tiepolo is a recurrent theme and the tour is based in Udine where he worked early in his career. Option to combine this tour with The Venetian Hills, 3–7 October 2019 (see opposite).
Itinerary If combining this tour with The Venetian Hills, travel to Venice airport where you wait for the rest of the group before continuing to Udine. Day 1. Fly at c. 2.00pm (British Airways) from London Gatwick to Venice. Drive to Udine where all five nights are spent. Day 2: Udine. In Udine, visit the main piazza with its Gothic and Renaissance loggias, and the cathedral, basically Gothic but much augmented later. The main theme is Tiepolo, the greatest painter of the 18th century, who created several major works in the cathedral, the Oratorio della Purità and the Archbishop’s Palace. A hillock at the centre is the site of the castle, an imposing
Day 3: Aquileia, Grado. See two of Italy’s best early mediaeval churches, the Basilica at Aquileia, rebuilt in the 11th century but retaining a 4thcentury mosaic floor, and S. Eufemia at Grado with mosaics, pulpit and silver altar frontal. Aquileia was a major Roman city and seat of the patriarchate while Grado was its outer port.
Price, The Venetian Hills and Friuli-Venezia Giulia combined. Two sharing: £3,570 or £3,390 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,800 or £3,620 without flights.
Illustration: Villa Manin, pen drawing c. 1950.
Day 4: Trieste. On the way to Trieste, visit Miramare Castle. Completed in 1860 by Archduke Maximilian of Habsburg for his wife Charlotte of Belgium, it preserves their memory and identity. Before 1919 Trieste was the principal seaport of the Habsburg Empire and the busiest port in the Mediterranean, and its broad straight streets and 19th-century buildings have a distinctly Viennese cast. After a troubled 20th century its fortunes have revived since 1989, demonstrated through grand seafront architecture. Towering above, the ancient Capitol has remains of the Roman forum, castle and the cathedral of S. Giusto, an agglomeration of buildings from the 5th century onwards with Byzantine mosaics. Also see ceramics dating from the middle ages to the nineteenth century in the Museo Sartorio, as well as the civic museum of history and art. Day 5: San Daniele, Spilimbergo, Sacile. In the morning visit Villa Manin, residence of the last Doge of Venice, Ludovico Manin. The Renaissance frescoes by Pellegrino di San Daniele in the church of Sant’Antonio at San Daniele are the finest in the region. Spilimbergo has a Gothic cathedral with 14th-century frescoes, and a castle courtyard with painted façades. The cathedral of Sacile perfectly reflects the influence of the Republic of Venice in its architecture and interior decorations. Day 6: Cividale. Cividale is in the hills bordering Slovenia. Founded by Julius Caesar and capital of the first Lombard duchy in Italy, the Tempietto Longobardo possesses the finest 8th-century sculpture to survive in Europe. Fly from Venice, arriving at London Gatwick at c. 6.30pm.
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Cumbersome by name, complex by history, the region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia is tucked within the north-eastern borders of Italy and bound by Austria, Slovenia, the Veneto and the Adriatic. Much of the region was ceded to Italy by Austria only after the First World War; a border dispute with Yugoslavia rumbled into the 1970s. Understandably, it is marked by variety – ethnic, linguistic, cultural, gastronomic and topographical. The south and centre consist of a broad alluvial plain whose glistening fecundity is fed by rivers descending from the Julian Alps and the Dolomites. The mediating foothills produce some of the finest white wines in the world. Populous and prosperous, there are many towns with historic kernels where virtually every period of Italian art and architecture is represented, from Roman to modern. Some of the early mediaeval buildings are particularly striking and important – Aquileia, Grado and Cividale. There is much fine Renaissance painting and architecture: Palladianism was the dominant creed for a couple of centuries after Palladio’s death, and in addition to painters who established themselves in Venice there are several figures of talent who are not well known outside the region. Painting reached another climax in the eighteenth century as Tiepolo spent the years of his early maturity in Udine. Udine is the base for the tour. A lively city, it has an extensive historic centre with a succession of enchantingly picturesque streets and squares and a central piazza as fine as almost any in Italy. The other big city visited is Trieste, for centuries the principal Austro-Hungarian outlet to the sea and one of the most important ports in the Mediterranean.
16th-century residence housing the art gallery, a fine collection of paintings by artists from the region. See also S. Maria di Castello, the oldest church in Udine, and S. Giacomo with its Renaissance façade.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,880 or £1,690 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,010 or £1,820 without flights. Included meals: 3 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Astoria Hotel Italia, Udine (hotelastoria.udine.it): well-established 4-star hotel located on one of the principal squares. How strenuous? The tour involves quite a lot of walking, some of which is uphill and some of which is in the town centres where vehicular access is restricted. Streets are often cobbled, and the tour should not be attempted by anyone who has difficulty with everyday walking and stairclimbing. Some days involve a lot of driving. Average distance by coach per day: 53 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Palladian Villas The greatest house builder in history Day 4: Vicenza, Lugo di Vicenza. The hilltop ‘La Rotonda’, a 10-minute drive from Vicenza, is the most famous of Palladio’s buildings, domed and with four porticoes. In the foothills of the Dolomites, Villa Godi Malinverni is an austere cuboid design with lavish frescoes inside. Some free time in Vicenza. Day 5: Bassano del Grappa, Maser, Fanzolo. At the lovely town of Bassano there is a wooden bridge designed by Palladio. The Villa Barbaro at Maser, built by Palladio for two highly cultivated Venetian brothers, has superb frescoes by Veronese, while the Villa Emo at Fanzolo typically and beautifully combines the utilitarian with the monumental. Day 6: Piombino Dese, Malcontenta. Drive along a stretch of the canal between Padua and the Venetian Lagoon, which is lined with the summer retreats of Venetian patricians. The Villa Foscari, ‘La Malcontenta’, is one of Palladio’s best known and most enchanting creations. Explore one of Palladio’s most evolved, most beautiful and most influential buildings, the Villa Cornaro at Piombino Dese. Fly from Venice to London Gatwick, arriving c. 6.30pm. Many of the villas on this itinerary are privately owned and require special permission to visit. The selection and order may therefore vary a little from the description above.
26–31 March 2019 (mf 459) 6 days • £2,270 Lecturer: Dr Michael Douglas-Scott
A survey of various surviving villas and palaces designed by Andrea Palladio (1508–80), the world’s most influential architect.
But the beauty of his villas was not solely a matter of applied ornament. As can be seen particularly in his low-budget, pared-down villas and auxiliary buildings, there is a geometric order which arises from sophisticated systems of proportion and an unerring intuitive sense of design. It is little wonder that Andrea Palladio became the most influential architect the western world has ever known. Many of his finest surviving villas and palaces are included on this tour, as well as some of the lesser-known and less accessible ones.
Stay throughout in Vicenza, Palladio’s home town and site of many of his buildings.
Itinerary
1–6 October 2019 (mf 771) 6 days • £2,270 Lecturer: Dr Sarah Pearson
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With many special appointments, this itinerary would be impossible for independent travellers.
Day 1. Fly at c. 12.35pm (British Airways) from London Gatwick to Venice. Drive to Vicenza where all five nights are spent.
Utility is the key to understanding Palladio’s villas. In sixteenth-century Italy a villa was a farm, and in the Veneto agriculture had become a serious business for the city-based mercantile aristocracy. As the Venetian maritime empire gradually crumbled before the advancing Ottoman Turks, Venetians compensated by investing in the terra ferma of their hinterland. But beauty was equally the determinant of form, though beauty of a special kind. Palladio was designing buildings for a clientele who, whether princes of commerce, traditional soldieraristocrats or gentlemen of leisure, shared an intense admiration for ancient Rome. They were children of the High Renaissance and steeped in humanist learning. Palladio was the first architect regularly to apply the colonnaded temple fronts to secular buildings.
Day 2: Vicenza. See in Vicenza several palaces by Palladio including the Palazzo Thiene and the colonnaded Palazzo Chiericati. His chief civic works here are the Basilica – the mediaeval town hall nobly encased in classical guise – and the Teatro Olimpico, the earliest theatre of modern times.
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Day 3: Bagnolo di Lonigo, Poiana Maggiore, Fratta Polesine. The Villa Pisani at Bagnolo di Lonigo, small but of majestic proportions, is considered by many scholars to be Palladio’s first masterpiece. The Villa Poiana, another early work, has restrained but noble proportions. The Villa Badoer at Fratta Polesine, from the middle of his career, is a perfect example of Palladian hierarchy, a raised residence connected by curved colonnades to auxiliary buildings.
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Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,270 or £2,130 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,570 or £2,430 without flights. Included meals: 2 lunches, 3 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Campo Marzio, Vicenza (hotelcampomarzio.com): just outside a city gate of Vicenza, this 4-star hotel is well located and comfortable, with decent-sized rooms. How strenuous? The tour involves a lot of walking, sometimes uphill and over unevenly paved ground, as the coach can rarely get close to the villas or enter town centres. There is a lot of standing outside and inside villas. Fitness is essential. Some days involve a lot of driving. Average distance by coach per day: 58 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. In March, combine this tour with: Jonathan Keates’s Venice, 18–24 March 2019 (p.128); The Birth of Mannerism, 20–24 March 2019 (p.137); Civilisations of Sicily, 1–13 April 2019 (p.161); Normans in the South, 2–10 April 2019 (p.156). Or in October: Walking in Southern Tuscany, 7–14 October 2019 (p.140); Friuli-Venezia Giulia, 7–12 October 2019 (p.123). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration: Vicenza, Villa Rotunda, drawing by Keith Mackness (an MRT client).
Verona Opera Lyric spectacle in the Veneto 22–26 July 2019 (mf 630) 5 days • £2,740 Carmen, Aida, La Traviata Lecturer: Dr Michael Douglas-Scott 15–19 August 2019 (mf 647) 5 days • £2,740 Tosca, La Traviata, Aida Lecturer: Dr R.T. Cobianchi Includes tickets to three operas, performed on consecutive evenings, in the setting of a Roman amphitheatre, the most famous of open-air opera festivals. Accommodation is a 5-star hotel in the historic centre, with an optional minibus to the operas. Both tours are accompanied by art historians who lead walks and visits during the day.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 8.00am (July) or c. 3.30pm (August) from London Gatwick to Verona (British Airways). Overnight Verona where all four nights are spent. Day 2. Visit the church of Sant’Anastasia with its Pisanello frescoes, and the spectacular medieval tombs of the ruling della Scala family. Take an introductory walk in Verona, passing through the beautiful streets and squares at the heart of the city, and visit the Romanesque church of San Fermo. Some free time. Evening opera in the Arena. (July: Carmen; August: Tosca). Day 3. A walk leads to the Romanesque cathedral, then across the River Adige to the well-preserved Roman theatre. Alternatively, there are bus and train services offering the opportunity to see more of the region, perhaps Lake Garda or Venice. In the afternoon, visit the church of San Zeno, a major Romanesque church with sculpted portal and a Mantegna altarpiece. Evening opera in the Arena (July: Aida (1913 production); August: La Traviata). Day 4. The morning walk includes the Castelvecchio, a graceful medieval castle and fortified bridge, now housing an art museum.
Lunch is at a privately owned villa in the countryside (by special arrangement). There is some free time. Evening opera in the Arena (July: La Traviata; August: Aida (1913 production). Day 5. Fly from Verona, arriving London Gatwick, arriving c. 12.30pm (July) or c. 1.00pm (August).
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,740 or £2,480 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,100 or £2,840 without flights. Supplement for poltronissime gold seats: £275 (please request at the time of booking). Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine. Music: 3 tickets are included, costing c. £300. Accommodation. Due Torri Hotel, Verona (hotelduetorri.duetorrihotels.com): luxurious 5-star situated a c. 20-minute walk from the Arena (a shuttle is provided to and from the operas). How strenuous? To participate fully in the itinerary, a fair amount of walking is involved. It is often very hot in Italy at this time of year. Average distance by coach per day: 18 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. In July, combine this tour with: Opera in Munich & Bregenz, 28 July–3 August 2019 (p.108). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport. Illustration: Verona, Arena, engraving 1887.
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The first magic moment comes well before the conductor raises his baton. Unless you have led a team onto the pitch at Wembley, or won the New Hampshire primaries, you are unlikely to have experienced anything quite like the wall of heady high spirits which hits you as you emerge from the entrance tunnel into the arena. Filling the vast ellipse of the almost twothousand-year-old Roman amphitheatre are fourteen thousand happy people, bubbling with joyous expectation of the spectacle to follow. Even the most dour of dusty-hearted opera purists cannot help but be uplifted. Then the floodlights go down, the chaotic chatter quietens to a reverential whisper, and the enveloping dusk is pierced only by flickering candle flames as uncountable as the stars above. Magic again; for these special moments the Verona Festival remains without rival. The list of unique assets continues. There is the inestimable advantage of the stage and auditorium, one of the largest of ancient amphitheatres which, though built for rather less refined spectacles (‘arena’ is Latin for sand, used in quantity after the slaughter of animals and gladiators) provides miraculously sympathetic acoustics. The elliptical form also seems to instil a sense which can best be described as resembling an embrace, bonding the audience however distant or disparate the individual members might be. Then there is the benefit of being at the heart of one of the most beautiful of Italian cities. Verona is crammed with magnificent architecture and dazzlingly picturesque streets and squares. Surprisingly, the city seems scarcely deflected from a typically Italian dedication to living well and stylishly by the annual influx of festival visitors. Enough of the spectacle, what of the music? Most performances reach high standards, with patches of stunning singing. For the (largely Italian) casts, to perform at Verona is still a special event. Besides, the younger singers know that they will be judged by more agents, casting directors and peers in one performance than usually would see them in a season. Opinions vary concerning the best place to sit. All the seats we have booked are numbered and reserved (no queuing for hours and elbowing to
seize the best of what remains), and a proportion are poltronissime gold, cushioned stalls seats, which we offer for a supplement. The rest are on the lowest tiers, the gradinate numerate, with clear sight lines, while plastic seating is mercifully interposed between you and the marble. Drawbacks are reduced leg room and distance from the stage.
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Art History of Venice Painting, sculpture and architecture in the world’s most beautiful city 11–17 November 2019 (mf 882) 7 days • £2,830 Lecturer: Dr Susan Steer Wide-ranging survey of art and architecture with an emphasis on the Renaissance. Off-peak dates and a smaller group than usual (maximum 18 participants). Includes a private, after-hours visit to the Basilica di San Marco to see the transcendental splendour of the Byzantine mosaics.
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For the world’s most beautiful city, Venice had an inauspicious start. The site was once merely a collection of mudbanks, and the first settlers came as refugees fleeing the barbarian destroyers of the Roman Empire. They sought to escape to terrain so inhospitable that no foe would follow. The success of the community which arose on the site would have been beyond the wildest imaginings of the first Venetians. By the end of the Middle Ages Venice had become the leading maritime power in the Mediterranean and possibly the wealthiest city in Europe. The shallow waters of the lagoon had indeed kept her safe from malign incursions and she kept her independence until the end of the eighteenth century. ‘Once did she hold the gorgeous East in fee, and was the safeguard of the West, Venice, eldest child of liberty.’ Trade with the East was the source of that wealth and power, and the eastern connection has left its indelible stamp upon Venetian art and architecture. Western styles are here tempered by a richness of effect and delicacy of pattern which is redolent of oriental opulence. It is above all by its colour that Venetian painting is distinguished. And whether sonorous or poetic, from Bellini through Titian to Tiepolo, there remain echoes of the transcendental splendour of the Byzantine mosaics of St Mark’s. That Venice survives so comprehensively from the days of its greatness, so little ruffled by modern intrusions, would suffice to make it the goal of everyone who is curious about the man-made world. Thoroughfares being water and cars nonexistent, the imagination traverses the centuries with ease. And while picturesque qualities are all-pervasive – shimmering Istrian limestone, crumbling stucco, variegated brickwork, mournful vistas with exquisitely sculpted details – there are not half-a-dozen cities in the world which surpass Venice for the sheer number of major works of architecture, sculpture and painting.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 12.30pm (British Airways) from London Gatwick to Venice. Cross the lagoon by motoscafo (water-taxi) to the hotel. Day 2. The morning walk includes S. Zaccaria and S. Giovanni in Bragora, two churches with outstanding Renaissance altarpieces by Vivarini, Bellini and Cima. The Scuola di S. Giorgio degli Schiavoni has a wonderful cycle of painting by Carpaccio. In the afternoon see the incomparably 126
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beautiful Doge’s Palace with pink Gothic revetment and rich Renaissance interiors. In the evening there is a special after-hours private visit to the Basilica di S. Marco, an 11th-century Byzantine church enriched over the centuries with mosaics, sculpture and various precious objects. Day 3. Cross the Grand Canal to the San Polo district, location of the great Franciscan church of Sta. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, which has outstanding artworks including Titian’s Assumption, and the Scuola Grande di S. Rocco, with dramatic paintings by Tintoretto. In the afternoon visit the church of S. Sebastiano with decoration by Veronese and the Scuola Grande dei Carmini with fine ceiling paintings by Tiepolo. Day 4. Cross the lagoon by motoscafo to the island of Torcello, once the rival of Venice but now scarcely inhabited. Virtually all that remains of the city is the magnificent Veneto-Byzantine cathedral with its 12th-century mosaics. Lunch is at the celebrated Locanda Cipriani. Continue to the pretty glass-making island of Murano. Day 5. In the morning visit the vast Gothic church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo and the early Renaissance Sta. Maria dei Miracoli with its multicoloured stone veneer. In the afternoon cross the bacino to Palladio’s beautiful island church of S. Giorgio Maggiore and then to the tranquil Giudecca to see his best church, Il Redentore. Day 6. Spend the morning in the Accademia, Venice’s major art gallery, where all the Venetian painters are well represented. The afternoon is free. Day 7. The Ca’ Rezzonico is a magnificent palace on the Grand Canal, now a museum of 18thcentury art. Travel by motoscafo to Venice airport. Fly to London Gatwick, arriving c. 6.00pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,830 or £2,650 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,420 or £3,240 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 3 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Splendid, Venice (starhotels.com): 4-star hotel situated half-way between Piazza San Marco and the Rialto bridge. How strenuous? The nature of Venice means that the city is more often than not traversed on foot. Although part of her charm, there is a lot of walking along the flat and up and down bridges; standing around in museums and churches is also unavoidable. Group size: between 8 and 18 participants. Combine this tour with: Venetian Palaces, 5–9 November 2019 (opposite); Palaces & Villas of Rome, 18–23 November 2019 (p.148); Ruskin’s Venice, 20–24 November 2019 (p.129). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration: detail from 'The Assumption', a steel engraving c. 1870 after the painting by Titian in S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice.
Venetian Palaces The greatest and best-preserved palaces of La Serenissima 12–16 March 2019 (mf 446) 5 days • £2,560 Lecturer: Dr Michael Douglas-Scott 5–9 November 2019 (mf 878) 5 days • £2,560 Lecturer: Dr Michael Douglas-Scott Explores many of the finest and best-preserved palaces, once homes to the wealthiest nobles and merchants in Venice (some of which are still in private hands). Access is mainly by special arrangement, including a private after-hours visit to St Mark’s Basilica. Stay in a 4-star hotel on the Grand Canal.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 12.30pm (British Airways) from London Gatwick to Venice. Cross the lagoon by motoscafo (water-taxi) and travel up the Grand Canal to the doors of the hotel. Luggage is transported separately to the hotel by porters. There is an evening visit to a privately owned palace, the 16th-century Palazzo Corner Gheltoff Alverà (by special arrangement). Day 2. See the palazzi on the Grand Canal from the viewpoint of a gondola. The former Casino Venier is a uniquely Venetian establishment that was part private members’ bar, part literary salon, part brothel (by special arrangement). Designed by Longhena (c. 1667) and Giorgio Massari (c. 1751), the Ca’ Rezzonico is perhaps the most magnificent of Grand Canal palaces, and contains frescoes by Tiepolo; it is now a museum of 18th-century art. Visit the grand ballroom of late 17th-century Palazzo Zenobio (by special arrangement). Day 3. Visit the Palazzo Ducale, supremely beautiful with its 14th-century pink and white revetment, late Renaissance gilded halls and paintings by Tintoretto and Veronese. The Palazzo Grimani at Santa Maria Formosa became in the mid-16th century the purpose-built site of the family collection of antiquities, which were then bequeathed to the Venetian Republic. There is an after-hours private visit to the Basilica di San Marco, an 11th-century Byzantine-style church enriched over the centuries with mosaics, sculpture and various precious objects. Day 4. With its elegant tracery and abundant ornamentation, the Ca’ d’Oro, also on the Grand Canal, is the most gorgeous of Venetian Gothic palaces; it now houses the Galleria Franchetti. The 13th-century Fondaco dei Turchi is a unique survival from the era; today it is the natural history museum. In the afternoon visit a privately owned palace, the Palazzo Contarini dal Zaffo-Polignac (by special arrangement). Day 5. Visit the privately owned 17th-century Palazzo Albrizzi which has some of the finest stucco decoration in Venice (by special arrangement). Travel by motoscafo to Venice airport. Fly to Gatwick, arriving at c. 6.15pm. This tour is dependent on the kindness of many individuals and organisations, some of whom are reluctant to make arrangements far in advance; the order of visits outlined above may change and there may be substitutions for some palaces mentioned.
Accommodation. Hotel Palazzo Sant’Angelo, Venice (palazzosantangelo.com): 4-star hotel in an excellent location on the Grand Canal near Campo Sant’Angelo and the Rialto Bridge. How strenuous? The nature of Venice means that the city is more often than not traversed on foot. Although part of her charm, there is a lot of walking along the flat and up and down bridges; standing around in museums and palaces is also unavoidable. The tour should not be attempted by anyone who has difficulty with everyday walking and stair-climbing. Fitness is essential. Group size: between 8 and 18 participants. In March, combine this tour with: Jonathan Keates’s Venice, 18–24 March 2019 (p.128); Minoan Crete, 18–27 March 2019 (p.112); Civilisations of Sicily (solo travellers), 18–30 March 2019 (p.161); The Birth of Mannerism, 20–24 March 2019 (p.137). Or in November: Florence Revisited, 11–17 November 2019 (p.138); Art History of Venice, 11–17 November 2019 (opposite). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,560 or £2,450 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,910 or £2,800 without flights. Included meals: 3 dinners with wine.
Illustration: wood engraving c. 1880 (a palace we do not visit, but it is typical of those seen on the tour).
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Just as Venice possesses but a single piazza among dozens of campi, it has only one building correctly called a ‘palazzo’. The singularity is important: the Doge’s Palace (Palazzo Ducale), like the Piazza San Marco, was the locus of the Serenissima’s public identity and seat of her republican government. Unlike her rivals in Florence and Milan she had no ruling dynasties to dictate polity, by contrast developing a deep aversion to individual aggrandizement and over-concentrated power. While the person and Palazzo of the Doge embodied their municipal identity, it was in their private houses that Venice’s mercantile oligarchs expressed their own family wealth and status. These case (in Venetian parlance ca’) were built throughout the city. In the absence of primogeniture, many branches sprung from the two hundred-odd noble families, leading to several edifices of the same name – an obstacle for would-be visitors. These houses were unlike any other domestic buildings elsewhere in the world: erected over wooden piles driven into the mud flats of the lagoon, they remained remarkably uniform over the centuries in their basic design, combining the functions of mercantile emporium (ground level) and magnificent residence (upper floors). They were however built in a fantastic variety of styles, Veneto-Byzantine, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo. Sometimes there is a touch of Islamic decoration. As new families bought their way into the aristocracy during the long period of the Republic’s economic and political decline, they had their residences refurbished in Rococo splendour by master artists such as Giambattista Tiepolo. Many of these palaces have survived the virtual extinction of the Venetian aristocracy and retain their original, if faded, glory. Palaces for nobles will be considered in conjunction with those for the non-noble cittadino (wealthy merchant) class and the housing projects for ordinary Venetian popolani, which rise cheek by jowl in the dense urban fabric. Some of the places visited are familiar and readily accessible to the public. Others are opened only by special arrangement with the owners, whether a charitable organisation, branch of local government or descendants of the original occupants. Some of these cannot be confirmed until nearer the time.
A private, after-hours visit to the Basilica di San Marco, the mosaic interior illuminated for your benefit, is a highlight of this tour. As is an opportunity to see up close ‘the most beautiful street in the world’, the Grand Canal, from that most Venetian of vantage-points, a gondola.
Jonathan Keates’s Venice History, literature, art and architecture in La Serenissima Day 4: Castello. Two palaces tell contrasting stories: Querini Stampalia offers a patrician art collection in its original setting above a modern ground floor by Carlo Scarpa, while Palazzo Grimani, a Renaissance connoisseur’s Romanstyle house with enchanting ‘natural history’ frescoes and magnificent Tribuna, has recently been recovered from its ruinous state. The Scuola di San Giorgio has the delightful cycle of paintings by Carpaccio, and San Francesco della Vigna an innovative façade by Palladio and works by Veronese and Bellini. The Basilica of San Giovanni e Paolo, the pantheon of Venetian doges, brings the afternoon to a close.
18–24 March 2019 (mf 449) 7 days • £3,040 Lecturer: Jonathan Keates Unique itinerary which reaches parts rarely visited as well as seeing major items. Led by Jonathan Keates, historian, writer and Chairman of the Venice in Peril Fund. Experience ‘village Venice’: every sestiere is examined through a personalised lens. Includes a donation to the Venice in Peril Fund.
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For all its abiding grandeur, Venice is a small city. A walk from Piazzale Roma in the west to Sant’Elena on its eastern edge takes barely an hour. Yet each of its districts, the six sestieri represented by the prongs of the metal forcola on a gondola’s prow, has its own indelible character and identity. Such robust individuality is mirrored by Venice’s history as a place of cultural ‘firsts’ in everything from the invention of the portable printed book and opera as a public art form to the use of forks at the dining table. This distinctive world of ‘village Venice’, a unique urban narrative with the sestieri as its chapters, fascinates Jonathan Keates, a noted expert on matters Venetian and currently chairman of the Venice in Peril Fund – and a companion of remarkable erudition on many matters historical, literary and artistic. As a walker in the city he loves to share his passion for the deeper townscape beyond Piazza San Marco, the Doge’s Palace and the Rialto. In this quieter, less crowded world, mapped out by fifty-odd parish churches, he focuses on the wealth of detail which personalizes each cluster of campi and calli. We learn how to read the mesmerising Venetian text amid cloisters, courts and boatyards, in decorated well-heads, Byzantine paterae, Baroque ceilings and the essential physicality of brick and marble. 128
Fortunate indeed would be a participant on this tour who was a first-time visitor to Venice, given the mix of major masterpieces and rarelyseen crannies, all with the commentary of so distinguished a Venetianist. Equally it would suit people who already have some familiarity with the city. With this in mind, we would consider requests for this tour without accommodation for a reduction in price.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 12.30pm (British Airways) from London Gatwick to Venice. Cross the lagoon by motoscafo (water-taxi) to the hotel. Day 2: Dorsoduro. Smallest and smartest of the sestieri. Starting from the great Baroque church of Santa Maria della Salute, visit the church of the Gesuati (Tiepolo ceiling), its Renaissance neighbour the Visitazione, San Trovaso (Tintoretto’s Last Supper and Michele Giambono’s St Chrysogonus) and a gondola boatyard. Campo Santa Margherita offers the complete story of Venice in buildings from the 12th to 20th centuries; Veronese adorned the church of San Sebastiano. Finally, Sant’Angelo Raffaele and San Nicolò dei Mendicoli, set in what was traditionally Venice’s poorest quarter. Day 3: San Polo, Santa Croce. Antonio Fumiani’s astonishing ceiling at San Pantalon, the world’s biggest painted canvas, begins the day. Then study the magnificent works by Tintoretto in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco before visiting the Franciscan basilica of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari with its masterpieces by Titian, Bellini and Donatello. In the Scuola di San Giovanni examine the work of Renaissance sculptor-architects Mauro Codussi and Pietro Lombardo. Continue to San Giacomo dell’Orio, one of Venice’s oldest churches, and finish with the Baroque saloni in Palazzo Mocenigo. Illustration: watercolour by R. Barratt, publ. 1907.
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Day 5: Cannaregio. The flamboyant Gesuiti church, with its mock-brocade marble draperies, is the prelude to a walk in the quiet Cannaregio district and a visit to Venice’s Jewish ghetto. At the Madonna dell’Orto we admire epic Tintoretto canvases and enjoy the contrast, at Sant’Alvise, between works by Tiepolo and oddly moving 16thcentury panels by primitive painters. The buildings of the Ghetto tell their own story of Jewish life in Venice over seven centuries. End at Ca’ d’Oro, the florid Gothic palace on the Grand Canal containing an important art collection. Day 6: San Marco. In Campo Santo Stefano we look at the making of a Venetian ‘square’; the eponymous church has a roof like an upturned boat. Detour to Museo Fortuny for a Venice of early 20th-century art and fashion, and climb the unique Scala Contarini del Bovolo for a stunning roofscape. San Salvador offers outstanding High Renaissance architecture, while little San Lio contains beautiful sculpture of the same period. Explore the area around the home of Marco Polo and Teatro Malibran, and at San Giovanni Grisostomo see two of the city’s finest altarpieces, by Sebastiano del Piombo and Giovanni Bellini. Day 7. Free morning. Travel by motoscafo to the airport and fly to Gatwick, arriving c. 5.45pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,040 or £2,890 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,520 or £3,370 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Palazzo Sant’Angelo (palazzosantangelo.com): 4-star hotel in an excellent location on the Grand Canal near Campo Sant’Angelo and the Rialto Bridge. How strenuous? Most of Venice is traversed on foot. Unavoidably, there is a lot of walking – frequently up and down bridges. Standing around in churches, museums and palaces is also inevitable. The tour should not be attempted by anyone who has any difficulty with everyday walking and stair-climbing. Fitness is essential. Group size: between 8 and 18 participants. Combine this tour with: Civilisations of Sicily, 4–16 March 2019 (p.161); Venetian Palaces, 12–16 March 2019 (p.127); Wines of Tuscany, 25–30 March 2019 (p.141); Granada & Córdoba, 25 March–1 April 2019 (p.201). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Ruskin’s Venice Through 19th-century writers and artists 20–24 November 2019 (mf 904) 5 days • £2,410 Lecturer: Christopher Newall 2019 marks the bicentenary of the birth of the enormously influential critic and philosopher John Ruskin, author of The Stones of Venice. Visits a selection of buildings and paintings which were significant to him: Byzantine, Gothic and Renaissance. The views and visions of other 19th-century writers and artists are also considered.
Day 3. Visit the Gothic church of Madonna dell’Orto with paintings by Tintoretto. Cross the lagoon by motoscafo to the island of Torcello, movingly desolate in Ruskin’s day and not much changed now; the Byzantine church and mosaics induced him to ecstasy. Continue by vaporetto (water-bus) to the island of Murano to visit S. Donato; see the inlaid floor and mosaic of the Madonna above the altar (for Ruskin, seeing this building was ‘a hard day’s work’). In the evening there is a special after-hours private visit to the Basilica of S. Marco. Day 4. As a Gothic structure, the great Franciscan church of S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari aroused Ruskin’s approbation (he detected Arabic influence in the apse). Of the paintings in the adjacent Scuola di San Rocco he wrote ‘I never was so utterly crushed to the earth before any human intellect as I was today, before Tintoret’. In the afternoon visit the Accademia, Venice’s principal art gallery, to study the painters of most interest to Ruskin: Bellini, Titian, Tintoretto. Ruskin was obsessively interested in the works of Carpaccio, identifying
Rose La Touche, with whom he had been hopelessly in love, with the figure of St Ursula. Day 5. The morning is free. Motoscafo to the airport. Fly to Gatwick, arriving at c. 5.45pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,410 or £2,230 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,790 or £2,610 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 3 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Splendid, Venice (starhotels.com): 4-star hotel situated half-way between Piazza San Marco and the Rialto bridge. How strenuous? The nature of Venice means that the city is more often than not traversed on foot – there is a lot of walking along the flat and up and down bridges; standing around in museums and churches is also unavoidable. Fitness is essential. Group size: between 8 and 18 participants. Combine this tour with: Art History of Venice, 11–17 November 2019 (p.126); Florence Revisited, 11–17 November 2019 (p.138). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration: engraving from a 1900s edition of John Ruskin's 'The Stones of Venice'.
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John Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice, published 1851–53, was an enormously influential book. It is not an exaggeration to say that the book changed the way people looked at Venice, and that to this day we still see the city with eyes and minds infused with Ruskin’s vision. Before Ruskin, Venetian Byzantine and Gothic architecture, mosaic and painting were ignored as representing a barbarous interlude before civilisation returned with the Renaissance. St Mark’s was abhorred as a monstrous blot; weathered stone was a defect to be put right, funds permitting, with mechanically cut replacements; Grand Tourists learnt that painting began with Titian and architecture with Palladio. Ruskin’s views, passionately articulated – his idealistic adoration for the Middle Ages, his love of decoration and richness of surface, his belief that the decline of Venice dated from 1418 – were a radical departure from the accepted norms of the past. Underlying his aesthetic preferences were highly original socio-political ideas and the belief that art and architecture were a barometer of the spiritual and moral health of a society. It was this philosophical cogency which gave his writings such impact. Ruskin’s brilliant polemics taught his readers to look at Venice the way he did, to love the city as he did. He was the first to make a cool-headed appraisal of the problems of Venice – political, physical, and sociological – and as one of the first modern conservationists he instituted a campaign to protect the fabric from ‘improving’ restoration and reconstruction. The tour also looks at the responses to Venice by other writers, including Wordsworth, Shelley and Byron, and to British and American artists, particularly Turner, whom Ruskin championed, and Whistler, whom he reviled.
Ruskin and reviled by others. Visit the Doge’s Palace, of which Ruskin wrote that it ‘contains the three elements in exactly equal proportions: the Roman, Lombard, and Arab. It is the central building in the world’. See also the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni with the cycle of paintings by Carpaccio which he studied deeply and analysed symbolically.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 12.30pm from London Gatwick to Venice. Cross the lagoon by motoscafo (water taxi) to the hotel. There is an introductory walk in Piazza San Marco. Day 2. See a Carpaccio painting of noblewomen in the Museo Correr which Ruskin gloriously misinterpreted, and S. Maria dei Miracoli, whose sculptures ‘should be examined with great care, as the best possible examples of a bad style’. SS. Giovanni e Paolo contains various funerary monuments, some of which were admired by Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Romantic Agony: English Poets in Italy Byron, Shelley and Keats in the ‘paradise of exiles’ Itinerary Day 1: Venice. Fly at c. 1.30pm from London Gatwick to Venice (British Airways). Cross the lagoon by motoscafo (water-taxi) and travel up the Grand Canal to the doors of the hotel. First of two nights in Venice. Day 2: Venice, Lido, San Lazzaro. Visit the Doge’s Palace, which is connected to its adjoining prison by the imposing stone ‘Bridge of Sighs’, named so by Byron. Travel by boat to the Lido, where both Byron and Shelley liked to go riding and swimming; Byron also loved the old Jewish cemetery. Shelley wrote ‘Julian and Maddalo’ based on their conversations here. In pursuit of intellectual stimulation, Byron spent time at the island monastery of San Lazarro degli Armeni, where he worked with the monks on an ArmenianEnglish dictionary. In the small museum, a room is dedicated to him. Day 3: Venice, Florence. Between 1816 and 1819, Byron lived at Palazzo Mocenigo, along with 14 servants, 2 monkeys, a fox, a wolf, an eagle and two mastiff dogs. See the palazzi of the Grand Canal from the viewpoint of a gondola. Travel by rail to Florence (first class). An afternoon walk explores locations connected with Shelley, including Cascine Park, where he wrote ‘Ode to the West Wind’ while sheltering from a rainstorm. The walk ends with a visit to Casa Guidi, whose piano nobile was inhabited by the Brownings between 1847 and 1861. First of three nights in Florence.
12–19 October 2019 (mf 793) 8 days • £3,680 Lecturer: Dr Thomas Marks Literature, history and art in Venice, Florence and Rome.
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Special arrangements in several places on the poets’ Grand Tour. Travel by first-class rail between cities. Lord Byron left England in 1816, aged 28, scandalridden and debt-stricken – never to return. After time in the Swiss Alps where he befriended the Shelleys, he settled in Venice, later spending time in Rome, Ravenna, Genoa and Pisa. Shelley, his wife Mary Godwin and her stepsister Claire Clairemont were wanderers, living in various Italian cities in their own bittersweet version of the Grand Tour. Eventually they set up home in Pisa, where Byron joined them in 1821. Byron and Shelley both became proficient in Italian and engaged deeply with the heritage, politics and literature of the country that Shelley called “a paradise of exiles”. They were in thrall to the Renaissance ideals of beauty in art and literature, and also believed that the country offered greater tolerance and freedom than their English homeland, from which they were all, in their own way, social outcasts. 130
Byron dabbled in politics, tried to learn Armenian and conducted several affairs, most lastingly with the (married) Contessa Teresa Guiccioli. Shelley remained more detached, seeing himself as a permanent expatriate. Together with the poet and editor Leigh Hunt they produced a radical journal, The Liberal. Death was pervasive. Both lost children: the Shelleys a daughter and a son; Byron the five-year old Allegra, who was previously in his care but had been sent to a convent. Shelley was not yet 30 when a sudden storm wrecked his sailing boat and he drowned in the Gulf of La Spezia. He was preceded in 1821 by John Keats, who succumbed to tuberculosis in Rome at the age of 25. Byron died in 1824, a hero of the Greek War of Independence. Among the better known works by Byron from this productive period are ‘Childe Harolde’s Pilgrimage’, ‘The Lament of Tasso’, ‘Mazeppa’, ‘Don Juan’, ‘So we’ll no more go a-roving’ and ‘Beppo’. Shelley composed ‘The Cenci’, ‘Julian and Maddalo’, ‘Prometheus Unbound’, ‘The Masque of Anarchy’ and ‘Ode to the West Wind’. ‘Adonais’ he wrote as an elegy to Keats. This tour explores their experiences in Italy and the poetry that resulted; the poets’ relationships with each other; and the art and events that fuelled their imaginations. It looks at where they lived and the places associated with their poems, both littleand well-known.
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Day 4: Florence. Byron dismissed Florence as being full of “gossip-loving English”, but he did express the feeling of being “drunk with beauty” as he took in the great artworks in the city’s galleries (especially Titian’s ‘Venus of Urbino’ in the Uffizi). Shelley also relished wandering in the Uffizi and wrote detailed, original notes on the Medici sculpture collection. Lunch is at a restaurant on the Piazzale Michelangelo before a visit to S. Miniato al Monte, the Romanesque abbey church with panoramic views of the city. Day 5: Pisa, Bay of Poets. Drive to Pisa, where the Shelleys rented the top floor of the Tre Palazzo di Chiesa and Byron lodged opposite in Palazzo Lanfranchi, now a graphics museum. Visit the Baptistry, as the Shelleys did on their first trip to Pisa in May 1818, and the Palazzo dell’Orologio, the inspiration for Shelley’s ‘The Tower of Famine’. Continue to Lerici and the Bay of Poets, where the Shelleys’ rented house still stands and bears a plaque to them. On 8th July 1822, Shelley drowned sailing to Lerici from Livorno. Byron also used to stay across the bay at Portovenere and swim across; do this journey in reverse by boat (weather permitting). Day 6: Florence, Rome. Travel by rail to Rome (first class). In Canto IV of ‘Childe Harolde’s Pilgrimage’, Byron records his impressions of Rome. Explore some of the Classical sites that excited the poets, including the Roman Forum and the Arch of Titus, the ancient frieze of which inspired Shelley as he wrote ‘Prometheus Unbound’ and ‘The Triumph of Life’. See also the Baths of Caracalla, where Shelley composed
Ravenna & Urbino Byzantine capital, Renaissance court wants to go but which are relatively inaccessible from the main art-historical centres of Italy, yet are close to each other. For many years this has been one of our most popular tours.
‘Prometheus Unbound’: “never was any desolation more sublime and lovely”. Day 7: Rome. Visit Palazzo Barberini, Rome’s National Gallery, which houses a painting by Guido Reni of Beatrice Cenci (subject of Shelley’s verse drama ‘The Cenci’). A walk takes in various places associated with the poets. Keats arrived in Rome terminally ill with tuberculosis, and died months later aged only 25. He spent his last days lovingly tended by his friend, the artist Joseph Severn. Their quarters are now a delightful and moving museum housing a collection of letters, paintings and manuscripts associated with Keats and Shelley. Private evening visit to the museum, with a talk from the Director. Day 8: Rome. Visit the Protestant cemetery, the serene final resting place of Keats and Shelley. Guided visit with historian Nicholas Stanley-Price, author of The Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome. Fly from Rome Fiumicino to London Gatwick, arriving c. 2.45pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,680 or £3,540 without flights. Single occupancy: £4,350 or £4,210 without flights. Included meals: 2 lunches, 6 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Palazzo Sant’Angelo, Venice (palazzosantangelo.com): 4-star hotel in an excellent location on the Grand Canal near Campo Sant’Angelo and the Rialto Bridge. Hotel Santa Maria Novella, Florence (hotelsantamarianovella. it): delightful, renovated 4-star hotel in a very central location. Hotel Bernini Bristol, Rome (berninibristol.com): 5-star hotel excellently located on the Piazza Barberini.
Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Friuli-Venezia Giulia, 7–12 October 2019 (p.123); Art in the Netherlands, 20–26 October 2019 (p.167); Essential Andalucía, 21–31 October 2019 (p.198). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration: Rome, Arch of Titus, etching by Benvenuto Disertori.
What else is included in the price? See page 6
Day 1. Fly at c. 3.00pm (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Bologna. Drive to Ravenna, where all four nights are spent.
24–28 April 2019 (mf 498) 5 days • £1,670 Lecturer: Dr Luca Leoncini 23–27 October 2019 (mf 809) 5 days • £1,670 Lecturer: Dr Luca Leoncini A study in contrasts: one a city with origins as a major Roman seaport, the other an enchanting little Renaissance settlement high in the hills. In Ravenna, some of the greatest buildings of late antiquity with the finest Byzantine mosaics. In Urbino the Ducal Palace, the greatest secular building of the Early Renaissance. Private evening visit to San Vitale, Ravenna’s finest church, and the adjacent Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, to see the magnificent mosaics. Ravenna was once one of the most important cities in the western world. The last capital of the Roman Empire in the West, she subsequently became capital of the Gothic kingdoms of Italy and of Byzantine Italy. Then history passed her by. Marooned in obscurity, some of the greatest buildings and decorative schemes of late antiquity and the early mediaeval era were allowed to survive unmolested until the modern age recognised in them not the onset of decadence and the barbarity of the Dark Ages but an art of the highest aesthetic and spiritual power. The Early Christian and Byzantine mosaics at Ravenna are the finest in the world. Urbino, by contrast, is a compact hilltop stronghold with a very different history and an influence on Renaissance culture out of all proportion to her size. The Ducal Palace, built by the Montefeltro dynasty over several decades, is perhaps the finest secular building of its period. Piero della Francesca, Raphael and Baldassare Castiglione were among those who passed through its exquisite halls. The justification for joining in one short tour these two centres of diverse artistic traditions is simple. They are places to which every art lover
Day 2: Ravenna. In the morning see the outstanding National Museum, with excellent Byzantine ivory carvings. The Orthodox baptistry has superlative Early Christian mosaics and S. Apollinare Nuovo has a mosaic procession of martyrs marching along the nave. In the evening there is a private visit to the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, lined with 5th-century mosaics, and the splendid centrally planned church of S. Vitale with 6th-century mosaics of Emperor Justinian and Empress Theodora. Day 3: Ravenna. The Cathedral Museum possesses fine objects, including an ivory throne. Visit the Cooperativa Mosaicista, a laboratory for the restoration of mosaics (by appointment only and subject to confirmation) and the Mausoleum of Theodoric. The afternoon is free. Day 4: Urbino. The Palazzo Ducale grew during 30 years of Montefeltro patronage into the perfect Early Renaissance secular environment, of the highest importance for both architecture and architectural sculpture. The picture collection in the palace includes works by Piero della Francesca, Raphael and Titian. There are exquisite International Gothic frescoes by Salimbeni in the Oratory of St John. Day 5: Classe, Rimini. Drive to Classe, Ravenna’s port, which was one of the largest in the Roman Empire. Virtually all that is left is the great Basilica of S. Apollinare. Continue to Rimini and visit the Tempio Malatestiano, church and mausoleum of the Renaissance tyrant Sigismondo Malatesta (designed by Alberti, fresco by Piero della Francesca, sculpture by Agostino Duccio). Drive on to Bologna airport for a late-afternoon flight arriving at Heathrow at c. 8.15pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,670 or £1,500 without flights. Single occupancy: £1,880 or £1,710 without flights. Included meals: 3 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Palazzo Bezzi, Ravenna (palazzobezzi.com): new 4-star superior hotel, located on the edge of the historic centre of town. How strenuous? There is inevitably quite a lot of walking and standing in museums on this tour. Some of the walking is uphill or over cobbles. The coach cannot be used within the town centres. Average distance by coach per day: 65 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Illustration: Ravenna, S. Apollinare Nuovo, watercolour (detail) by W.W. Collins, publ. 1911.
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How strenuous? The nature of Venice, Florence and Rome means that the cities are more often than not traversed on foot. Although part of their charm, there is a lot of walking along the flat (and up and down bridges in Venice); standing around in museums is also unavoidable. The historic area of Rome is vast, and vehicular access is increasingly restricted. Minibuses are used on some occasions. The tour should not be attempted by anyone who has difficulty with everyday walking and stair-climbing. Fitness is essential.
Itinerary
Courts of Northern Italy Princely art of the Renaissance Itinerary Day 1: Mantua. Fly at c. 8.00am (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Bologna. Drive to Mantua where the first four nights are spent. After a late lunch, visit the Palazzo Ducale, a vast rambling complex, the aggregate of 300 years of extravagant patronage by the Gonzaga dynasty (Mantegna’s frescoes in the Camera degli Sposi, Pisanello frescoes, Rubens altarpiece). Day 2: Mantua, Sabbioneta. In the morning visit Alberti’s highly influential Early Renaissance church of S. Andrea, the Romanesque Rotonda of S. Lorenzo and Giulio Romano’s uncharacteristically restrained cathedral. In the afternoon, drive to Sabbioneta, an ideal Renaissance city on an almost miniature scale, built for Vespasiano Gonzaga in the 1550s; visit the ducal palace, theatre, and one of the world’s first picture galleries. Day 3: Parma, Fontanellato. Parma is a beautiful city; the vast Palazzo della Pilotta houses an art gallery (Correggio, Parmigianino) and an important Renaissance theatre (first proscenium arch). Visit the splendid Romanesque cathedral with illusionistic frescoes of a tumultuous heavenly host by Correggio. Also by Correggio is a sophisticated set of allegorical lunettes in grisaille surrounding a celebration of Diana as the goddess of chastity and the hunt in the Camera di S. Paolo. In the afternoon, visit the moated 13th-century castle in Fontanellato, seeing frescoes by Parmigianino.
12–19 May 2019 (mf 529) 8 days • £2,410 Lecturer: Dr Michael Douglas-Scott
MAINLAND EUROPE: Italy
8–15 September 2019 (mf 682) 8 days • £2,410 Lecturer: Professor Fabrizio Nevola 13–20 October 2019 (mf 791) 8 days • £2,410 Lecturer: Dr Michael Douglas-Scott Northern Italy’s independent city states: Mantua, Ferrara, Parma, Ravenna and Urbino. Some of the greatest Renaissance art and architecture, commissioned by the powerful ruling dynasties: Gonzaga, Este, Sforza, Farnese, Montefeltro and others. Highlights include the most glorious concentration of Byzantine mosaics and important works by Alberti, Mantegna, Piero della Francesca and Correggio. Option to combine the May departure with Gastronomic Le Marche, 20–27 May 2019 (see page 142). 132
After the collapse of the Roman Empire, Italy gradually fragmented into numerous little territories. The city states became fiercely independent and were governed with some degree of democracy. But a debilitating violence all too often ensued as the leading families fought with fellow citizens for dominance of the city council and the offices of state. A common outcome from the thirteenth century onwards was the imposition of autocratic rule by a single prince, and the suspension of democratic structures: but such tyranny was not infrequently welcomed with relief and gratitude by a war-weary citizenry. Their rule may have been tyrannical, and warfare their principal occupation, but the Montefeltro, Malatesta, d’Este and Gonzaga dynasties brought into being through their patronage some of the finest buildings and works of art of the Renaissance. Many of the leading artists in fifteenth- and sixteenth- century Italy worked in the service of princely courts. As for court art of earlier epochs, little survives, though a glimpse of the oriental splendour of the Byzantine court of Emperor Justinian can be had in the mosaic depiction of him, his wife and their retinue in the church of San Vitale in Ravenna. It is not until the fifteenth century, in Mantegna’s Camera degli Sposi at Mantua, that we are again allowed an unhindered gaze into court life.
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Day 4: Mantua. After a second visit to the Palazzo Ducale and some free time in the morning, an afternoon walk takes in the exteriors of Alberti’s centrally planned church of S. Sebastiano, and the houses that court artists Mantegna and Giulio Romano built for themselves. Also visit Palazzo Te, the Gonzaga summer residence and the major monument of Italian Mannerism, with lavish frescoes by Giulio Romano. Day 5: Ferrara. Ferrara was the centre of the citystate ruled by the d’Este dynasty, whose court was one of the most lavish and cultured in Renaissance Italy. Pass the Castello Estense, a moated 15thcentury stronghold, and the cathedral. The Palazzo Schifanoia (currently closed for restoration work) is an Este retreat with elaborate astrological frescoes. Should the Palazzo Schifanoia still be closed in 2019, the excursion to Ferrara will be replaced with an excursion to Modena, an important seat of the Este dukedom. Galleria Estense houses an important collection of art with works by Boticelli, Guercino and Correggio. First of three nights in Ravenna. Day 6: Ravenna, Classe. The last capital of the western Roman Empire and subsequently capital of Ostrogothic and Byzantine Italy, Ravenna possesses the world’s most glorious concentration of Early Christian and Byzantine mosaics. Visit the Basilica of S. Apollinare Nuovo with its mosaic Procession of Martyrs. Drive to Classe, Ravenna’s port, which was once one of the largest in the Roman world; virtually all that is left is the great Basilica di S. Apollinare. In the evening, there is a private visit to the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, lined with 5th-century mosaics, and the
Dark Age Brilliance Late Antique and Pre-Romanesque splendid centrally planned church of S. Vitale with 6th-century mosaics of Emperor Justinian and Empress Theodora.
of unique range and richness. Given the intensity with which Ravenna developed between 402, when Honorius chose it as his capital, and 751, when the last of the Exarchs returned to Constantinople, it makes a fitting introduction to Early Christian and early mediaeval culture in north-eastern Italy. Arising from the need to cater for the spiritual requirements of newly emancipated Christianity, the clarity and humanism of the classical tradition were superseded by images and decoration designed to instil a kind of sacred dread, and to intimate the glories of the world to come. Mosaic was the key element in creating church interiors of awesome splendour and intense spirituality. Early Christian forms were endorsed throughout the whole of the Adriatic seaboard, and the second half of the tour embraces Aquileia, Grado, Poreč (Parenzo) in Croatia and Concordia Sagittaria. The theme is rounded off with the astonishing little eighth-century church in Cividale in the foothills of the Julian Alps which preserves the earliest monumental sculpture of the Middle Ages.
Day 7: Urbino. Drive into the hills to Urbino, the beautiful little city of the Montefeltro dynasty. See the exquisite Gothic frescoes in the Oratorio di S. Giovanni. In the afternoon, visit the Palazzo Ducale, a masterpiece of architecture which grew over 30 years into the perfect Renaissance secular environment. See the beautiful studiolo of Federico of Montefeltro and excellent picture collection here (Piero, Raphael, Titian). Day 8: Cesena, Rimini. The Biblioteca Malatestiana in Cesena is a perfectly preserved Renaissance library established by Malatesta Novello, and contains over 300 valuable manuscripts. In Rimini visit the outstanding Tempio Malatestiano, designed by Leon Battista Alberti for the tyrant Sigismondo Malatesta, which contains superb decoration by Agostino di Duccio and particularly fine sculptural detail. Fly from Bologna, arriving at London Heathrow c. 8.15pm. If combining this tour with Gastronomic Le Marche: transfer by car from Bologna Airport to Ascoli Piceno on 19th May and stay overnight at Palazzo Guiderocchi.
15–22 September 2019 (mf 714) 8 days • £2,340 Lecturer: Rowena Loverance
Practicalities
A journey through north-east Italy to Croatia, via Ravenna, Torcello and Cividale.
Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,410 or £2,250 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,680 or £2,520 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Casa Poli, Mantua (hotelcasapoli.it): 4-star hotel a short walk from the historic centre. Hotel Palazzo Bezzi, Ravenna (palazzobezzi.it): new 4-star superior hotel, located on the edge of the historic centre.
Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Price, Courts of Northern Italy and Gastronomic Le Marche combined. Two sharing: £5,740 or £5,580 without flights. Single occupancy: £6,510 or £6,350 without flights. This includes accommodation (1 night) and a car transfer between the two. These arrangements are prebooked but unescorted. Other possible combinations in 2019: there are too many to list here, but please contact us for suggestions. We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration: Ferrara, Castello Estense, engraving c. 1880.
Includes some of the finest art and architecture of the Early Middle Ages to be found anywhere. Byzantine heritage of unique range and richness, with exceptional mosaics. Option to combine this tour with Dorset Churches, 23–27 September 2019 (see page 13). It is now commonplace to believe, contrary to the assumptions of centuries, that the Dark Ages which succeeded the glories of the Roman Empire were not so dark, and that the later history of the Empire was not so glorious. A concomitant reappraisal has led to the acceptance of Early Christian and Byzantine art not as a regression to primitivism – an aspect of the decline and fall – but as one of the most brilliant chapters in the history of Western art. But it remains true that in the territories of the Western Empire from the fifth to the ninth century there was little in the way of monumental building or large-scale artistic production. Only in a few dispersed pockets was the flame of ambitious artistic and intellectual endeavour kept alive. A string of such pockets are gathered around the northern end of the Adriatic and northeast Italy, the last redoubt of the Empire in the West. Born of an Umbrian past and raised in Imperial retreat, Ravenna remains anchored in the Adriatic marshes, humbled by the rise of her great neighbours, Bologna and Venice, and unhindered by later political commerce. The effect of this marginal status has been to spare her Early Christian buildings and leave a Byzantine heritage
Day 1: Ravenna. Fly at c. 3.00pm (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Bologna. Drive to Ravenna for the first of three nights. Day 2: Ravenna. Explore the 5th-century forms at the cathedral and Orthodox Baptistery, and the superlative 6th-century ivory throne of Maximian in the Museo Arcivescovile. In the afternoon study Arian Ravenna at the Arian Baptistery and Theodoric’s great Palatine church of S. Apollinare Nuovo. Investigate the 5th-century basilica design which provided Theodoric’s court with its most immediate models, and Galla Placidia’s splendid ex-voto basilica of S. Giovanni Evangelista. Day 3: Ravenna, Classe. In the morning see the outstanding National Museum, with excellent Byzantine ivory carvings. Travel by coach to Theodoric’s superb Mausoleum and to the ancient port of Classe for the great 6th-century basilica of S. Apollinare. Private evening visit to the church of S. Vitale, the greatest 6th-century building of the West; the invention with which form, colour, space and narrative meaning are combined is breathtaking. The Mausoleum of Galla Placidia is the earliest Christian structure in Europe to retain its mosaic decoration in its entirety. Day 4: Pomposa, Concordia Sagittaria. Drive north to the Po delta. Pomposa is an important 8th-century Benedictine abbey, richly extended by Abbot Guido’s magnificent 11th-century porch and campanile. Lunch in Chioggia. The Roman road station at Concordia Sagittaria, whose modest mediaeval cathedral was built alongside a 4th-century basilica and martyrium, is splendidly revealed through archaeological excavation. First of four nights in Cividale. Day 5: Cividale. Although founded as Forum Julii in the 1st century bc, Cividale is best known to historians as the site of the earliest Longobard settlement in northern Italy, and most celebrated by art historians for the astonishing quality and quantity of 8th-century work which has survived Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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How strenuous? There is a lot of walking, much of it on steep and roughly paved streets: agility, stamina and sure-footedness are essential. Coaches are not allowed into the historic centres. Many of the historical buildings visited are sprawling and vast. Some days involve a lot of driving. Average distance by coach per day: 88 miles.
Private evening visit to San Vitale, Ravenna’s finest church, and the adjacent Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, to see the magnificent mosaics.
Itinerary
Dark Age Brilliance continued
The Via Emilia Parma, Bologna and Emilia-Romagna
here. See the superb ‘Tempietto’ of Sta. Maria in Valle, Longobardic work in the cathedral museum and spectacular early mediaeval collections in the archaeological museum. Free afternoon. Day 6: Poreč (Croatia). Drive south, cross Slovenia and enter the part of Croatia formerly known as Istria. The sole object of the excursion is to visit Poreč (Parenzo), a longish journey justified by the existence of an unusually complete 6th-century cathedral complex: basilican church, baptistery and bishop’s palace. The church proper was built above an earlier basilica c. 540 by Bishop Euphrasius, whose complete episcopal throne is set within an apse which, for once, has retained its full complement of furnishings and fittings. Day 7: Aquileia, Grado. Aquileia was a major Roman city whose influential cathedral was complete by 319. Sections of walls and mosaic pavements were preserved within the present 11thcentury cathedral, a rather wonderful survival. The Longobard sack of 568 resulted in the removal of the see to the more defensible position on the coast at Grado, whose two great 6th-century churches, Sta. Maria della Grazie and the cathedral, also have outstanding floor mosaics. Day 8: Torcello. Drive to the Adriatic to visit the island of Torcello in the Venetian lagoon, a major city while Venice was little more than a fishing village. Visit the largely 11th-century cathedral of Sta. Maria Assunta and Greek-cross reliquary church of Sta. Fosca. Continue to Venice Airport and fly to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 7.00pm.
8–14 April 2019 (mf 481) 7 days • £2,120 Lecturer: Dr R. T. Cobianchi
If combining this tour with Dorset Churches: return to London and stay overnight at Sofitel London Heathrow. Take a taxi to London Waterloo the next day to catch the train to Salisbury.
Art and architecture in major cities and lesserknown treasures strung along the Roman road from Milan to the Adriatic.
Practicalities
Particularly strong on 16th-century painting and Romanesque architecture.
MAINLAND EUROPE: Italy
Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,340 or £2,140 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,570 or £2,370 without flights.
Based in the utterly charming ducal city of Parma and in the university city of Bologna.
Included meals: 1 lunch and 5 dinners with wine.
Bound by the River Po to the north and the Apennines to the south, this wedge of Italy is replete with fascinating cities and great works of art, yet is still undeservedly neglected by cultural travellers. With probably not one hundredth of the visitors which Florence and Venice receive and many fewer than, say, Verona or Siena, one can view great architecture and world-class art works without the dispiriting intrusions of a large-scale tourist industry. Across this undulating plain, one of the most fertile in Italy, the Romans founded a large number of prosperous towns and linked them by the Via Emilia which ran from Milan to the Adriatic coast. In the Middle Ages the region fragmented into a number of independent city states which, whether under a communal or despotic form of government, constructed mighty town halls, vast churches and splendid palaces, and caused great works of art to be created. At the beginning of the modern era, they were parcelled out between a motley collection of usually foreign and invariably unenlightened rulers, and they slumped into a torpor from which they did not recover until the Risorgimento.
Accommodation. Palazzo Bezzi, Ravenna (palazzobezzi.it): new 4-star hotel, located on the edge of the historic centre. Hotel Roma, Cividale (hotelroma-cividale.it): simple, functional and friendly 3-star, located in the centre of town. How strenuous? The tour involves a lot of walking in town centres where vehicular access is restricted and a lot of standing in museums and churches. It should not be attempted by anyone who has difficulty with everyday walking and stair-climbing. Some days involve a lot of driving. Average distance by coach per day: 76 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Price, Dark Age Brilliance and Dorset Churches combined. Two sharing: £3,750 or £3,550 without flights. Single occupancy: £4,210 or £4,010 without flights. This includes hotel at Heathrow (1 night), taxi to Waterloo and train to Salisbury. These arrangements are pre-booked but unescorted. Illustration: Aquileia, Basilica, early-20th-century watercolour.
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Nevertheless, a succession of great artists continued to appear, particularly in sixteenthcentury Parma and seventeenth-century Bologna, while the relative lack of prosperity resulted in the preservation of the city centres. One aspect of the allure of Bologna and other towns here is that they successfully reconcile the often incompatible features of economic well-being and ancient, unspoilt and enchantingly picturesque streetscape. The cities now enjoy an envied reputation within Italy for quality of life and gastronomic excellence. Parma, one of the loveliest of the smaller cities in Italy, has been chosen as the first base for this tour; and Bologna as the second, whose allure lies in the successful reconciliation of features of economic wellbeing and ancient, unspoilt and enchantingly picturesque streetscape.
Itinerary Day 1: Piacenza, Parma. Fly at c. 10.30am from London Heathrow to Milan Linate. Drive to Piacenza which, situated on the border of Lombardy, has many mediaeval buildings on its Roman grid plan, among them an outstanding town hall and Romanesque cathedral (exterior only) – from the Renaissance is the equestrian statue of Alessandro Farnese is a masterpiece of Baroque sculpture. First of three nights in Parma. Day 2: Parma. Parma is of great importance in particular for its High Renaissance school of painting – the cathedral and baptistry are outstanding for their Romanesque architecture and sculpture. By Correggio, we see the astonishingly vital and illusionistic frescoes in the cathedral, the church of S. Giovanni and the Camera di S. Paolo. In the ducal palace is a good art collection and a rare Renaissance theatre.
Day 3: Fontanellato, Castell’Arquato, Fidenza. Fontanellato is a little town with an enchanting moated castle containing wonderful frescoes by Parmigianino. Drive to Castell’Arquato, a lovely town in the Apennine foothills with a clutch of mediaeval buildings in the central piazza. Continue to Fidenza, which has a beautiful Romanesque cathedral, with excellent sculpture. Day 4: Torrechiara, Modena. The castle in Torrechiara has 16th-cent. frescoes. Modena has been capital since the 16th cent. of the Este dukedom. The Romanesque cathedral is one of the best in the region, and has marvellous 12th-cent. sculpture by Wiligelmo. Continue to Bologna for the first of three nights. Day 5: Bologna. One of the most attractive of the larger cities in Italy, with Renaissance arcades flanking the streets. At the mediaeval heart are massive civic buildings and the vast Gothic church of S. Petronio, with sculpture by Jacopo della Quercia, and S. Stefano, a complex of early mediaeval buildings. Free afternoon or optional visits to the Pinacoteca Nazionale, one of Italy’s finest picture galleries (Raphael, Carracci family, Guido Reni) and S. Domenico, with the tomb of St Dominic. Day 6: Rimini, Cesena, Faenza. In Rimini visit the outstanding Tempio Malatestiano, designed by Leon Battista Alberti for the tyrant Sigismondo Malatesta, and containing superb decoration by Agostino di Duccio and particularly fine sculptural detail. The Biblioteca Malatestiana in Cesena is a perfectly preserved Renaissance library
established by Malatesta Novello, and contains over 300 valuable manuscripts. Return to Bologna via Faenza, to see the neo-classical Palazzo Milzetti, now a regional museum. Day 7: Bologna. Special arrangement to see the Carracci frescoes in former Palazzo Magnani Salem (subject to confirmation). Fly from Bologna, arriving Heathrow at c. 1.30pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,120 or £2,010 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,460 or £2,350 without flights. Included meals: 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Stendhal, Parma (hotelstendhal.it): quiet 4-star hotel, the best located in the middle of the historic centre, run by Mercure. Hotel Corona d’Oro, Bologna (hco.it): elegant 4-star hotel in the heart of Bologna. How strenuous? A demanding tour with a lot of walking and a considerable amount of coach travel. It would not be suitable for anyone who has difficulties with everyday walking or stairclimbing. Average coach travel per day: 50 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Gardens of the Bay of Naples, 31 March–7 April 2019 (p.152); Pompeii & Herculaneum, 1–6 April 2019 (p.153). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration, above: Parma, watercolour by W.W. Collins, publ. 1911. Left: Bologna, Basilica di San Petronio, engraving 1883. Below: Verdi's Villa in Sant'Agata, wood engraving c. 1880.
Verdi in Parma & Busseto MAINLAND EUROPE: Italy
October 2019 Full details available in January 2019 Please call us to register your interest, or e-mail alerts@martinrandall.co.uk The Festival Verdi takes place on the stretch of country where the composer was born, schooled, learnt his trade, and, despite youthful resentments, where he bought a farm and built a villa as a haven and retreat for the last 50 years of his life. Lying then within the Duchy of Parma, it remains predominantly rural, with the attraction of a kind of unchanging, authentic ordinariness. This was the mise-en-scène which gave rise to an artistic oeuvre displaying a range of tumultuous passions and human empathy equalled perhaps only by Shakespeare. The performances are very likely to be in two theatres which are of the highest historical importance and beauty. The Teatro Regio in Parma was built in 1829 by ex-Empress MariaLuisa, modelled on La Scala in Milan. The small horse-shoe Teatro Verdi at Busseto dates to 1856 and was built within what had been the local magnate’s residence. Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Florence Cradle of the Renaissance sculpture, then continue to the Uffizi which has masterpieces by every major Florentine painter as well as international Old Masters. Day 4. In the morning see the Byzantine mosaics and Renaissance sculpture in the cathedral baptistry, and the superbly renovated cathedral museum. See the Rucellai Chapel in the deconsecrated church of S. Pancrazio, now part of the Museo Marino Marini. Free afternoon. Day 5. Visit the Bargello, housing Florence’s finest sculpture collection with works by Donatello, Verrocchio, Michelangelo and others. Walk to the vast Franciscan church of S. Croce, favoured burial place for leading Florentines and abundantly furnished with sculpted tombs, altarpieces and frescoes. Lunch is at a restaurant on the Piazzale Michelangelo before a visit to S. Miniato al Monte, the Romanesque abbey church with panoramic views of the city.
4–10 February 2019 (mf 416) 7 days • £2,490 Lecturer: Dr Antonia Whitley The world’s best location for an art history tour: here were laid the foundations of the next 500 years of western art. Still retains a dense concentration of great works. The Renaissance is centre stage, but mediaeval and other periods also feature. Avoids the crowds of busier months, and a smaller group than usual, 8–18 participants.
MAINLAND EUROPE: Italy
A first visit to Florence can be an overwhelming experience, and it seems that no amount of revisiting can exhaust her riches, or stem the growth of affection and awe which the city inspires in regular visitors. For hundreds of years the city nurtured an unceasing succession of great artists. No other place can rival Florence for the quantity of first-rate, locally produced works of art, many still in the sites for which they were created or in museums a few hundred yards away. Giotto, Brunelleschi, Donatello, Masaccio, Botticelli, Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo – these are some of the artists and architects whose works will be studied on the tour, fully justifying Florence’s epithet as the cradle of the Renaissance. Florence is, moreover, one of the loveliest cities in the world, ringed by the foothills of the Apennines and sliced in two by the River Arno. Narrow alleys lead between the expansive piazze and supremely graceful Renaissance arcades abound, while the massive scale of the buildings 136
impressively demonstrates the wealth once generated by its precocious economy. It is now a substantial, vibrant city, yet the past is omnipresent, and, from sections of the mediaeval city walls, one can still look out over olive groves. Though the number of visitors to Florence has swelled hugely in recent years, it is still possible during winter, and with careful planning, to explore the city and enjoy its art in relative tranquillity.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 11.15am (British Airways) from London City to Florence. In the late afternoon visit the chapel in the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi which has exquisite frescoes by Benozzo Gozzoli. Day 2. Visit Michelangelo’s Laurentian Library, whose architectural components would herald the onset of Mannerism. A Medici morning includes S. Lorenzo, the family parish church designed by Brunelleschi and their burial chapel in the contiguous New Sacristy with Michelangelo’s enigmatic sculptural ensemble. In the afternoon visit S. Maria Novella, the Dominican church with many works of art (Masaccio’s Trinità, Ghirlandaio’s frescoed sanctuary). Day 3. Brunelleschi’s Foundling Hospital, begun in 1419, was the first building to embody stylistic elements indisputably identifiable as Renaissance. See Michelangelo’s David, the ‘Slaves’ in the Accademia and the frescoes and panels of pious simplicity by Fra Angelico in the Friary of S. Marco. In the afternoon visit Piazza della Signoria, civic centre of Florence with masterpieces of public
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Day 6. In the morning visit the redoubtable Palazzo Pitti, which houses several museums including the Galleria Palatina, outstanding particularly for High Renaissance and Baroque paintings. Visit S. Spirito, Brunelleschi’s last great church, with many 15th-century altarpieces, and the extensive Boboli Gardens, at the top of which is an 18th-century ballroom and garden overlooking olive groves. See the Masaccio/Masolino fresco cycle in the Brancacci Chapel, a highly influential work of art which guided all subsequent generations of Renaissance artists. Day 7. See the Renaissance statuary at the churchcum-granary of Orsanmichele, and there is a second, selective visit to the Uffizi. Fly to London City Airport, arriving at c. 9.15pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,490 or £2,360 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,820 or £2,690 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch, 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Santa Maria Novella, Florence (hotelsantamarianovella.it): delightful, renovated 4-star hotel in a very central location. How strenuous? The tour involves a lot of walking in the city centre where the ground is sometimes uneven and pavements are narrow. It should not be attempted by anyone who has difficulty with everyday walking and stair-climbing, and fitness is essential. Group size: between 8 and 18 participants. Combine this tour with: The Printing Revolution, 27 January–3 February 2019 (p.151). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration: Basilica of San Lorenzo, engraving c. 1850
For lecturers' biographies See pages 260–267
The Birth of Mannerism Painting and sculpture between Renaissance and Baroque 20–24 March 2019 (mf 455) 5 days • £2,030 Lecturer: Dr Antonia Whitley Examines the fascinating style of art which followed the High Renaissance. Complex, ultra-sophisticated and supremely elegant, yet the brilliance of Mannerism is not always easy to see; elucidation is needed. Arising in Florence, it quickly spread around Europe, but many of its masterpieces remain in cities, towns and villages in Tuscany. One hotel throughout, in Florence, with some free time there.
Itinerary Day 1: Pieve San Michele. Fly at 11.15am (British Airways) from London City to Florence. The first visit is to the church of San Michele e San Francesco in Carmignano to see the gorgeous Visitation by Pontormo. Day 2: Florence. The eponymous basilica that graces the arcaded Piazza Santissima Annunziata contains important frescoes by Andrea del Sarto, Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino. Next comes one of del Sarto’s most striking works, a set of grisaille
Day 3: Florence, Volterra. San Salvi contains Andrea del Sarto’s great Last Supper, which Giorgio Vasari described as having an ‘endless majesty with its absolute grace of all the painted figures.’ Drive to Volterra, an exceptionally attractive hilltop town bound by Etruscan walls. The municipal art gallery is installed in a 15thcentury palazzo; among the masterpieces is the Deposition by Rosso. Return to Florence. Day 4: Florence. Brunelleschi’s church of San Lorenzo has altarpieces by Rosso and Bronzino and is part of a complex that includes Michelangelo’s Medici tombs in the New Sacristy and his Laurentian Library, which were, respectively for sulpture and architecture, highly influential early manifestations of Mannerism. The Bargello, the great museum of sculpture, contains major works by Giambologna, Cellini and other Mannerist masters, who are also well represented in the nearby Piazza della Signoria. Finally, the Uffizi, to revel in the recently refurbished galleries with superb Mannerist paintings. Day 5: Florence, Poggio a Caiano. Visit the Galleria Palatina in the Palazzo Pitti, Florence’s main assembly of High Renaissance, Mannerist and Baroque paintings. A chapel in Santa Felicità is adorned by Pontorno’s great Annunciation and Deposition from the Cross. Drive to Poggio a Caiano to see the Medici Villa, begun in 1485 and in the next century filled with frescoes, notably by Pontormo in the main salon. Fly from Florence Airport, arriving at London City at c. 9.15pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,030 or £1,830 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,270 or £2,070 without flights. Included meals: 3 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Santa Maria Novella, Florence (hotelsantamarianovella.it): a delightful, renovated 4-star hotel in a very central location.
MAINLAND EUROPE: Italy
By the early sixteenth century, Italian masters such as Leonardo, Raphael and the young Michelangelo had reached such a peak of perfection that succeeding artists felt they could not improve on their achievements. Some attempted shallow imitation, in the style or ‘manner’ of these inimitable geniuses. Others reacted against that style – and a movement was born that would evolve in different ways and in different places across Europe as the century progressed. The roots of Mannerism, as it became known, are firmly in and around Florence, where practitioners such as Andrea del Sarto, Jacopo Pontormo, Rosso Fiorentino and Parmigianino developed a highly stylized technique in both paintings and frescoes, which was a marked departure from what had gone before. Reacting to the consummate poise, balance, classicism and perfection of ideals associated with their illustrious predecessors, their work is characterised by complicated compositions, arcane references, an acid palette and psychological tension, not to mention strangely elongated human forms. Rosso Fiorentino would subsequently become one of the artists responsible for transforming the Palace of Fontainebleau under François I. In Venice the Mannerist style was finessed by Tintoretto, while El Greco brought his distinctive interpretation to the courts of Italy and Spain. But it is Florence that first nurtured the stylistic bridge between the High Renaissance and the Baroque. Parmigianino’s Madonna with the Long Neck, with its strange composition and perspective (and long neck), exemplifies the method in the madness of Mannerism. It resides in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and features on our tour, which is based in the city with excursions to the towns of Poggio a Caiano, Carmignano and Volterra.
frescoes at the Chiostro dello Scalzo, The Life of St John the Baptist. In the afternoon visit the Franciscan church of Santa Croce, favoured burial place for leading Florentines, to view altarpieces by Mannerist artists, now beyond the Sacristy.
How strenuous? The tour involves a lot of walking in the city centre where the ground is sometimes uneven and pavements are narrow. It should not be attempted by anyone who has difficulty with everyday walking and stair-climbing. Fitness is essential. Average coach travel per day: 32 miles. Group size: between 8 and 18 participants. Combine this tour with: Civilisations of Sicily, 4–16 March 2019 (p.161); Venetian Palaces, 12–16 March 2019 (p.127); Wines of Tuscany, 25–30 March 2019 (p.141); Granada & Córdoba, 25 March–1 April 2019 (p.201); Palladian Villas, 26–31 March 2019 (p.124). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration: Mercury by Giambologna, which is housed in the Bargello, Florence, wood engraving c. 1880.
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Florence Revisited Art off the beaten track and in private collections Day 5. The Cenacolo di Sant’Apollonia has a Last Supper by Andrea del Castagno, and there is another by Perugino’s workshop at the Cenacolo di Fuligno. Private backstage tour of the Teatro della Pergola, an historic opera house. Free afternoon. Day 6. Poggio a Caiano was the country retreat of Lorenzo il Magnifico, and a highly important monument in the history of grand country houses. At Carmignano is the exquisite Annunciation by Pontormo. There is another Medici villa at Artimino, viewed briefly from the outside before lunch nearby. The Carthusian monastery at Galluzzo has beautiful cloisters and paintings by Pontormo. Day 7. Visit the tiny Museo del Bigallo, a lateGothic structure which houses a small collection of paintings with a religious theme. Fly from Florence to London City, arriving c. 9.15pm.
Practicalities 11–17 November 2019 (mf 883) 7 days • £2,510 Lecturer: Dr David Rosenthal Designed for those already familiar with the main sites, concentrating on places privately owned or not easy to access. A medley of pleasures, from mediaeval to modern, pursuing a number of key themes. A few places outside Florence – Fiesole, Poggio a Caiano, Carmignano, Artimino, Galluzzo. The B list? An A list by the standards of nearly everywhere else in the world.
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So abundant are Florence’s artistic riches that some masterpieces elude all but the most regular visitors. And those that are in private ownership, or for which access is only by special arrangement, are beyond the reach of all but the well-connected resident – unless you join this tour, which has been designed specially for those who are familiar with the main sights. As an introduction to Florence, it would be decidedly eccentric. As a week spent in pursuit of great art and architecture in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, it will be a delight. In quality and importance, the art seen far exceeds that on many of our tours to regions which have been less creative. But in Florence, even the second division is a world-beater. One of the reasons why many of the items on this itinerary are usually missed is simply because they are, geographically, peripheral, being located in the suburbs, or, even if within walking distance of the centre, they are away from the main clusters of monuments and museums. Subsidiary themes will emerge, such as depictions of the Last Supper, and the brief but brilliant episode of Mannerist painting. But the tour is a medley of pleasures, from medieval to (nearly) modern, from the famous to the little known, from the hard-to-find to the (nearly) impossible to get into. And then there is the beauty of Florence itself, and the charm of its surroundings. There will also be free time 138
in which you could re-visit some of the major museums and monuments. Many of the visits are by special arrangement and are dependent on the generosity of owners or institutions. There is the chance that one or two visits may have to be withdrawn, but suitable alternatives will be arranged.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 11.15am from London City to Florence. See Lippi’s Apparition of the Virgin to St. Bernard in the Badia Fiorentina, an abbey and church now home to the Fraternity of Jerusalem. Day 2. Visit Ghirlandaio’s Last Supper at Ognissanti and the Opificio delle Pietre Dure to see exquisite furniture and ornaments made from semi-precious stones. Palazzo Corsini al Prato was begun in 1591 to designs by Bernardo Buontalenti; it was acquired in 1621 by Filippo Corsini and refurbished by him. Lunch here, hosted by the owner. In the afternoon, see Villa La Pietra, once the property of Sir Harold Acton, and originally built by Francesco Sassetti, general manager of the Medici Bank in the 15th century. Day 3. The morning starts with a selective tour of the Uffizi, Italy’s most important art gallery, which has masterpieces by every major Florentine painter as well as international Old Masters. Walk through the Vasari Corridor from the Uffizi to the Pitti Palace, viewing the Medici collection of artists’ self-portraits. In the afternoon there is a private visit to parts of the redoubtable Palazzo Pitti not usually open to the public. Day 4. The Last Supper by Andrea del Sarto at San Salvi is the greatest 16th-century picture in Florence. Visit the Badia Fiesolana near Fiesole, a 15th-century church with a Romanesque façade. In Fiesole visit the cathedral and Roman theatre; also the Villa Medici, the first of its genre to provide a stunning view over Florence. Built by Michelozzo in the 15th century, it became home to Sibyl Cutting and her daughter Iris Origo. Aperitivo at Palazzo Gondi, designed in 1490 by Giuliano da Sangallo, favourite architect of Lorenzo de Medici.
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Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,510 or £2,370 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,890 or £2,750 without flights. Included meals: 2 lunches, 4 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Santa Maria Novella, Florence (hotelsantamarianovella.it): a delightful, renovated 4-star hotel in a very central location. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking. This tour would not be suitable for anyone who has any difficulties with everyday walking or stairclimbing, or standing for long periods of time in museums. Average coach travel per day: 24 miles Group size: between 8 and 18 participants. Combine this tour with: Venetian Palaces, 5–9 November 2019 (p.127); Palaces & Villas of Rome, 18–23 November 2019 (p.148); Ruskin’s Venice, 23–23 November 2019 (p.129). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Leonardo 500 29 October–4 November 2019 (mf 766) Very few spaces remaining 7 days • £3,140 Lecturer: Dr Michael Douglas-Scott Works by the artist and places associated with his life in Vinci, Florence, Milan, Amboise and Paris. Vinci, his birthplace, has a museum dedicated to Leonardo’s scientific achievements. An extended itinerary with two days in France, where Leonardo spent his final years. 2019 marks the 500th anniversary of the artist’s death – visit a blockbuster exhibition at the Louvre in Paris, among others.
Illustration: Florence, Villa Medicea, Artimino, engraving from 'Country Walks about Florence', 1926.
Tuscan Gardens The pick of Tuscan gardens and villas 6–11 May 2019 (mf 516) 6 days • £2,380 Lecturer: Dr Katie Campbell Some of Europe’s finest historic gardens, Renaissance to twentieth-century. Selected for historical importance, horticultural interest and visual impact. A constant backdrop of supremely beautiful Tuscan landscapes. Most visits are by special arrangement. Option to combine this tour with Châteaux of the Loire, 2–5 May 2019 (see page 80).
Illustration: Villa Petraia, watercolour by M. Nixon, publ. 1916.
If combining this tour with Châteaux of the Loire: travel by coach to Paris Charles de Gaulle airport on 5th May and fly to Florence (Air France). Car transfer to Fiesole, overnight at Hotel Villa Fiesole. Car transfer to Villa Gamberaia the following day. Day 1: Fiesole, Gamberaia. Fly at c. 8.30am from London Heathrow to Pisa (British Airways). On the way to Fiesole visit Villa Gamberaia near Settignano, one of the loveliest gardens in Italy; it achieved its present form during the ownership of a Romanian princess from 1896 and an American heiress after 1924. First of three nights in Fiesole. Day 2: Fiesole, Castello. Enter the enchanting world of Anglo-American gardens of the early 20th century at Villa Le Balze. Designed by Pinsent and Scott for the American philosopher Charles Augustus Strong (with Rockefeller money), it comprises a sequence of terraces, enclosed within walls or open to a spectacular view of Florence. The Villa Medicea at Castello, created from 1537 for Grand Duke Cosimo I by Tribolo and Buontalenti, is important historically – the least altered of major 16thcentury gardens – and fascinating horticulturally. Nearby Petraia was made for another Medici from 1576 and later remodelled. Day 3: Pratolino, near Florence. The once celebrated Medici garden at Pratolino was largely lost to English-style landscaping in 1819, but the colossal sculpture Appennino by Giambologna survives. The largest of the AngloAmerican gardens, La Pietra was created by Arthur Acton (father of Harold); 57 acres, ‘rooms’, vistas, a green theatre, 180 statues and much else. The afternoon is free; Fiesole is a very attractive hill-top town with Romanesque cathedral and Roman theatre; alternatively, the centre of Florence is half an hour by bus.
is also an Art Deco Spanish garden, a water theatre and a lemon garden with over 200 vases of citrus plants. The final visit is to the Baroque garden at Villa Torrigiani, the most attractive of the group of 17th-century villas around Lucca. Fly from Pisa to Heathrow, arriving c. 9.00pm.
Practicalities
Day 4: Fiesole, San Casciano in Val di Pesa, Pienza. Though altered subsequently, the broad terraces around the villa in Fiesole built for Giovanni de Medici in the 1450s are of huge importance for the primacy attached to leisure and for embracing magnificent views. Villa Poggio Torselli has undergone a recent award-winning restoration; a magnificent avenue, a grand 17thcentury house and an unexpected burst of floral and citrus abundance, surrounded by Chianti countryside. Continue south to Pienza for the first of two nights.
Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,380 or £2,280 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,750 or £2,650 without flights.
Day 5: Sovicille, La Foce. In the morning visit the Castello di Celsa, an old castle converted to a palatial villa in the 16th century, with stunning gardens built in the 17th century. La Foce was a social and agricultural project as much as a villa and garden, but here Pinsent designed for the redoubtable Iris Origo one of the last, and some say the greatest, of the Anglo-Florentine gardens.
How strenuous? A good level of fitness is essential. Some gardens are very large, many are on sloping ground and the coach will often not be able to set down at the entrance to the sites. Average distance by coach per day: 40 miles.
Day 6: Marlia, Camigliano. Drive north to the Villa Reale di Marlia, once the residence of the first King of Italy Vittorio Emanuele II of Savoy, to see its extensive gardens. The Green Theatre, made up of yew hedges, was planted in 1652 and is where Paganini would sometimes perform. There
Included meals: 2 lunches, 4 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Villa Fiesole, Fiesole (villafiesole.it): an excellently located 4-star hotel with beautiful views of Florence. Relais Il Chiostro, Pienza (relaisilchiostrodipienza.com): comfortable 4-star hotel, formerly a friary dating to the 15th century and excellently situated off the main square of the town.
Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Price, Châteaux of the Loire and Tuscan Gardens combined. Two sharing: £4,430 or £4,260 without Eurostar or the tour flights. Single occupancy: £5,120 or £4,950 without Eurostar or the tour flights. This includes the one-way flight from Paris to Florence (Air France), airport transfers and the extra accommodation in Fiesole (1 night). These arrangements are pre-booked but unescorted. Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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As for lovers of art, so also for lovers of gardens: the allure of Tuscany is irresistible, consisting of a dense concentration of historically important and magically beautiful examples which are ensconced in landscapes and urban settings of exceptional attractiveness. Some of the world’s earliest surviving gardens are here; a couple on this tour date to the fifteenth century. There’s a clutch of immensely influential gardens of the sixteenth century, creations of the ruling Medici dynasty, and fine examples from the next couple of centuries are also present. Most of the planting has periodically been renewed of course, but modern curatorship and conservation practices have brought these historic gardens closer to their original appearance than they have been for a very long time. Some of the most attractive gardens in the region do not pretend to be historicist recreations, however, but are twentieth-century variations on the ‘Italian’ style. Some have French or English ingredients, some elements are entirely original, but nevertheless they remain quintessentially Tuscan. A prime mover here was the ex-pat community in and around Florence in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was numerous, generally inclined towards matters aesthetic and not infrequently very rich. Their patronage, and the genius of English garden designer Cecil Pincent, gave rise to the Anglo-American Renaissance Revival which incorporated traditional forms and ingredients into innovative and enchanting designs. The famously distinctive Tuscan landscape, with its terraced hillsides, complex textures and subtle variety of greens – olives, cypress trees, vines, oak and pasture – not only provides a constant backdrop to these gardens but, in many cases, played a role in the designer’s scheme. The tilting topography necessitated the terraces from which the surrounding countryside and the valley settlements can be viewed. The Renaissance revival of Classical learning quickened the development of the villa as a place of retreat and as a resort for intellectual and horticultural pastimes. Allied to this was the transformation of the mediaeval, antagonistic attitude towards nature towards one of joy in the sight of nearby farmland and distant vistas.
Itinerary
Walking in Southern Tuscany Art, architecture and landscapes in the Val d’Orcia and Chianti end of a morning’s walk, sometimes during a half day spent in leisurely exploration of one of the enchanting little cities or settlements. All are seen in the enlightening company of an art historian. And while the walks are taxing enough to ensure that hearty evening meals are fully deserved, they are not so strenuous as to detract from enjoying the ever-changing views and natural, agricultural and constructed sights. We take trouble to ensure that much of what you eat is produced from fine local ingredients, including Pecorino cheese (whose pungent flavour is due to the herbs grazed by ewes on the unique clay soils south of Siena) and the prized salami of the cinta senese pigs. The food is often perfectly complemented by a glass of one of the world’s finest red wines. As this tour is based for three nights in Radda in Chianti, today still the nucleus of Tuscan viticulture and where the noble Sangiovese vine is most prevalent, opportunity is allowed for tastings of these robust reds. We also visit a producer of some of the finest Chianti Classico, in a former monastery where thirsty monks made a wine similar to the sophisticated Chianti produced today.
Itinerary
7–14 October 2019 (mf 776) 8 days • £2,770 Lecturer: Dr Antonia Whitley Five walks of between 4 and 10 kilometres through exquisite landscape of soaring cypress, olives and vines. Art history away from the tourist throngs – mediaeval fortress towns, Romanesque churches, Renaissance palazzi, Sienese painting. Based in two tiny towns in topographically diverse areas of Tuscany.
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Includes two wine tastings – in Montalcino and Badia a Coltibuono. To walk through quintessentially Tuscan landscapes, along chalky tracks lined with soaring cypress trees and flanked by neat rows of vines and well-kept olive trees, must surely be one of life’s great pleasures. The walks selected here pass through farmland and woodland, where primrose, violet and cyclamen nestle below chestnut, holm oak and beech. Pine trees grace the higher terrain. Walking is conducive to observing at close quarters the variations of plant, animal and birdlife in this enchanting countryside. But if seeing the artistic and architectural delights in these parts of Tuscany is your aim, this tour also offers opportunity to do so. We avoid the tourist throngs in the larger towns and cities and concentrate on the smaller and less-visited places. Mediaeval fortress towns, Romanesque churches, Renaissance palazzi and paintings of the Sienese school are particularly in evidence here. Sometimes these are seen at the beginning or the 140
Day 1. Fly at c. 8.30am from London Heathrow to Pisa (British Airways). Drive to Pienza, a gem of Renaissance architecture created by Pope Pius II as a tribute to his place of birth, which is the base for four nights. Day 2: San Quirico, Pienza. Drive to the little walled town of San Quirico d’Orcia. Visit the Collegiata with its splendid portals and the Horti Leonini, public gardens dating to the 17th century. A moderate walk back to Pienza through rolling, open farmland of rare beauty, visiting the Romanesque church of Corsignano before the steady climb to Pienza: c. 6 km, 2½ hours. In the afternoon, explore this little city where at the centre the cathedral, episcopal palace and Pius’s own palazzo form a harmonious group. Day 3: Sant’Antimo, Montalcino. An easy walk from near Montalcino, downhill through a pretty valley, part vineyard, partially wooded, punctuated by farmsteads, and arrive at the remote and serene monastery of Sant’Antimo: c. 7 km, 2 hours. This most beautiful of Romanesque churches is in part constructed of luminous alabaster. Once an impregnable fortress and now centre of Brunello wines, Montalcino is a hilltop community with magnificent views and a collection of Sienese paintings in the civic museum. There is a wine tasting here. Return by coach to Pienza. Day 4: Monticchiello, Montepulciano. The mediaeval hamlet of Monticchiello, with views across Val d’Orcia, is the starting point for a moderate morning walk through a valley, before continuing uphill to Pienza: c. 6 km, 2½ hours. Montepulciano is one of the most picturesque of Tuscan hill towns, with grey stone palaces piled up towards the main square at the apex. The cathedral here is rich in Renaissance works of art, while outside the walls is a centrally planned church, a Renaissance masterpiece.
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Day 5: Monte Oliveto Maggiore, Asciano. The monastery of Monte Oliveto Maggiore is a fine complex of Early Renaissance art and architecture, the cloister having 36 frescoes by Signorelli (1445–1523) and Sodoma (1477–1549). Break the journey in Asciano, a delightful town sitting in the heart of the Crete Senesi, a name referring to the clay crags typical of this area. Radda in Chianti, once the capital of the Chianti League established in 1250, is one of the most attractive of the region’s settlements. Stay three nights in Radda. Day 6: Gaiole in Chianti, Badia a Coltibuono. From Gaiole, walk a pleasantly varied, challenging route through Chianti countryside with woodland, vineyards and breath-taking vistas: c. 10 km, 3½ hours. Badia a Coltibuono, a former abbey founded by Vallombrosan monks, has an important history of viticulture. Lunch and wine tasting at the estate restaurant before a visit to the abbey’s 16th-century frescoed refectory, gardens and wine cellars. Day 7: Badiaccia Montemuro, Volpaia. An optional, moderate morning walk through variegated woods including oak and silver birch to the well-preserved hamlet of Volpaia: c. 6 km, 2½ hours. The village is dedicated to the arts and wine-making, ensuring its original architectural features remain intact. A further moderate, optional walk in the afternoon descends through the estate’s impressively maintained vineyards to the valley floor before climbing to Radda: c. 4.5 km, 2 hours. Day 8. Fly, Pisa to Heathrow, arriving at c. 2.00pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,770 or £2,650 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,100 or £2,980 without flights. Included meals: 3 lunches (two including wine tastings) and 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Relais Il Chiostro, Pienza (anghelhotels.it): 4-star former friary dating to the 15th century close to the main square. Relais Vignale, Radda in Chianti (vignale.it): 4-star 17th-century manor house with historical links to Chianti wine production. How strenuous? This is a walking tour, graded moderate (see page 8). There are 6 walks, 1 is easy, 3 are moderate (of which 2 are optional) and 1 is challenging. It is essential for participants to have appropriate walking footwear, be in good physical condition and to be used to country walking with uphill and downhill content. If you are used to them you may find walking poles useful. Average distance by coach per day: 44 miles Group size: between 10 and 18 participants. Combine this tour with: Pompeii & Herculaneum, 30 September–5 October 2019 (p.153); World Heritage Malta, 30 September–6 October 2019 (p.165); Palladian Villas, 1–6 October 2019 (p.124); Art in Madrid, 2–6 October 2019 (p.195); Mediaeval Alsace, 15–22 October 2019 (p.78). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport. Illustration: Monte Oliveto, after a drawing 1904.
Wines of Tuscany Traditional and modern in spectacular surroundings 25–30 March 2019 (mf 463) 6 days • £2,930 Lecturer: Michelle Cherutti-Kowal mw Visits and tutored-tastings at top producers, mainly by special arrangement. Traditional and modern wineries in spectacular settings. Accompanied throughout by a Master of Wine, expert in Tuscan wines. Stay in a five-star hotel in central Siena.
Day 3: Bolgheri. Today’s journey is westwards to the coast and its vineyards of Bordeaux grape varieties. Le Macchiole was one of five wineries to initiate experimental winemaking in this part of Tuscany. A private visit and tasting of three of their complex and elegant wines. Lunch at the Osteria Enoteca San Guido, where we taste Sassicaia. The afternoon is spent at Ornellaia, which has passed through the famous hands of Antinori and Mondavi and is now owned by the Frescobaldi family. Day 4: Montalcino. Free morning in Siena, whose treasures and beauties can scarcely be exhausted in a lifetime of visits. In the afternoon, travel to the Casanova di Neri estate for a Brunello di Montalcino. Varied microclimates across the 63 hectares of vines have allowed for the production of eight diverse wines. Sample a selection of these paired with local cheeses. Return to Siena for an evening lecture and tasting at the hotel. Day 5: Chianti Classico. Some free time in Siena before a mid-morning departure to the rustic Isole e Olena, surrounded by neat vineyards and spectacular views. The afternoon and early evening is spent in the hamlet of San Felice; despite its ownership by a multi-national company, the welcome is personal, and tradition and innovation are successfully combined. A light supper in the winery before returning to Siena.
Day 6: Chianti Classico. Drive north to Chianti Classico for a tour and tasting at the familial state-of-the-art Antinori winery, whose influence is felt across the region. Fly from Pisa, returning to London Heathrow at c. 4.30pm. The tour is dependent on the kindness of many individuals and organisations, some of whom are reluctant to make arrangements far in advance. The order of visits may change and there may be substitutions for some of the wineries mentioned.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,930 or £2,820 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,340 or £3,230 without flights. Included meals: 3 lunches, 3 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Grand Hotel Continental, Siena (starhotelscollezione.com): elegant, welcoming 5-star, city-centre hotel housed in a former 17th-century palazzo. Rooms vary in style. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking and standing in possibly muddy vineyards and cool, damp cellars. Coach journeys can be long via winding roads. Average number of wines tasted per day: 8. Average coach travel per day: 94 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Jonathan Keates’s Venice, 18–24 March 2019 (p.128); The Birth of Mannerism, 20–24 March 2019 (p.137); Gardens of the Bay of Naples, 31 March–7 April 2019 (p.152). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport. Illustration: Siena, by Sir Alfred East RA, publ. 1914.
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Tuscan viticulture was once dominated by the monasteries and local aristocracy, with some names such as Antinori having played an important role since the 14th century. But whereas large estates were once farmed by tenants, the region generally now comprises smallholdings, very often owned and worked by investors from outside the region, frequently from abroad. In some parts of Chianti Classico, vines grow at altitudes of 500 metres where day and night-time temperatures vary sufficiently to allow longer and finer ripening of Tuscany’s indigenous Sangiovese. Wines made here from the best Sangiovese clones can be dark but balanced, developing complex farmyard aromas over time. High yields and white grape varieties once permitted under the DOCG labelling are now banned and instead, classic Syrah, Merlot or Cabernet Sauvignon can form a small percentage of the blend. Vino Nobile di Montepulciano also allows foreign red grapes into its blend, and the white grapes grown here produce the deliciously sweet Vin Santo. Brunello is a local strain of Sangiovese around the town of Montalcino, the high prices commanded by its wines testament to its equally high quality. Though the soils are poor, the climate is kind, a winning combination for beautifully concentrated wines of considerable longevity, best first approached in their middle age. But the biggest Tuscan-wine success story at the end of the last century was at sea-level surrounding the small town of Bolgheri. Because vines were not traditionally grown there, there were no restrictions in using foreign grape varieties and thus the world-class Cabernet Sauvignon, Sassicaia, was born. Ornellaia came into being some twenty years later and so the rush began to emulate Bordeaux in this maritime amphitheatre whose backdrop is formed by the Metallifere hills. Mediaeval Siena forms a hub for our chosen itinerary and the group stays here throughout.
introduced organic and biodynamic methods to the estate. Visit the vineyards, Vinsantaia and Barricaia, followed by a tasting of wines and olive oil. After lunch, continue on to nearby family-owned Poliziano, the local Sangiovese or Prugnolo Gentile vineyards and modern installations where international style wines still reflect the local terroir.
Itinerary Day 1: Siena. Fly at c. 11.00am (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Pisa. Drive to the city of Siena, the largest of hilltop towns in Tuscany, distinguished by an architectural and artistic legacy of an exquisite elegance. Upon arrival, enjoy a private tasting with the lecturer in the hotel’s indoor courtyard. Day 2: Montepulciano. Drive south to the considerable house of Avignonesi, taken over in 2009 by the current Belgian owner, who Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Gastronomic Le Marche Food, wine, art and hilltop towns in undiscovered Italy 20–27 May 2019 (mf 543) 8 days • £3,270 Lecturers: Marc Millon & Dr Thomas-Leo True Unspoilt and exceedingly picturesque – one of the least-visited and most compelling regions of Italy. A gastronomy that reflects a varied geology, along ancient byways from the Apennines to the Adriatic. Explores the masterpieces of Lorenzo Lotto, subject of a major exhibition at the National Gallery in London from November 2018. Two lecturers accompany the tour: an art historian and a gastronomic specialist. Option to combine this tour with Courts of Northern Italy, 12–19 May 2019 (see page 132). Located on the Adriatic coast in the centre of Italy, Le Marche is one of Italy’s still-to-be-discovered regions. Its wonderful cuisine and wines, which display influences from mountain and sea and range from sophisticated flavours in the north to more robust tastes in the south, are a well-kept and delicious secret. Illustration: Urbino, after a drawing by Joseph Pennell 1886.
The region’s history dates back to ancient times. Vitally strategic Roman roads passed through: Via Salaria, the salt road that ran from Rome to the Adriatic through Ascoli Piceno; Via Flaminia, which reached the sea at Fanum Fortunae (present-day Fano), and from there linked up with Via Emilia to the north. Gastronomically there is splendid variety: hearty mountain stews contrast with fresh seaside dishes; the refined foods of northern Italy melding with the more robust and sometimes piccante flavours of the Mezzogiorno. Here coniglio – rabbit – is stuffed with fennel, garlic and chilli ‘in porchetta’, while mussels – moscioli in local dialect – are served over spaghetti. Vincisgrassi is the local baked pasta, a fulsome concoction made with lasagna, ragù, chicken livers, prosciutto, béchamel and sometimes black truffles from Acqualagna. These are foods to satisfy the appetites of hunters, country folk and fishermen. Yet, notwithstanding the simple pleasures of cibo della strada (street food) such as the fried olive ascolane or piadina hot off the griddle, Le Marche is also home to one of Italy’s greatest temples of gastronomy: at Ristorante Uliassi we’ll experience modern seaside dining at its most sophisticated. Le Marche’s cuisine is pleasurably washed down with some of Italy’s most undervalued wines. The Verdicchio grape, once used to produce indifferent wines bottled in the distinctive lollobrigida (the ‘sexy bottle’ was supposed to
suggest a Greek amphora), has become one of Italy’s most characterful white grapes, producing wines of concentration and elegance. Little-known Pecorino can be equally delightful. Red wines, notably Rosso Piceno and Rosso Conero, are simply outstanding. The region has plenty to delight and much of great merit in terms of art and architecture. Two painters in particular are associated with the area, Carlo Crivelli and Lorenzo Lotto, and we see some of the best of the pictures by these wayward geniuses. The latter is subject of a major exhibition at London’s National Gallery from November 2018 to February 2019.
Itinerary If combining this tour with Courts of Northern Italy: take a car transfer from Bologna Airport to Ascoli Piceno on 19th May and stay overnight at Palazzo Guiderocchi. Day 1: Ascoli Piceno. Fly at c. 10.45am (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Rome. Drive to Ascoli Piceno, an exceptionally attractive little city, ringed by rivers and wooded hills, where the first three nights are spent. Day 2: Ascoli Piceno. Explore the centre of Ascoli, an unspoilt agglomeration of mediaeval, Renaissance and Baroque buildings around arcaded squares and narrow streets. The walk ends at a producer of the delicate olive ascolane: sweet and juicy green olives stuffed with aromatised meat and fried in breadcrumbs. Watch how they are made and taste them here. In the afternoon visit a family-run distillery of anisetta on the outskirts of the town. Evening aperitivo at the distillery’s town-centre seat, a historic café in Piazza del Popolo.
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Day 3: Piattoni, San Savino di Ripatransone. Visit the Borgo Storico Seghetti Panichi, a bioenergetic garden and park. Tour of the garden with the Principessa Giulia Panichi Pignatelli followed by a cooking demonstration and lunch in the restaurant. North-east of Ascoli lies the Piceno wine region, a landscape characterised by vineyards interspersed with olive groves and farms. Visit the Cocci Grifoni winery and vineyards, a historic estate whose owner’s vision and tenacity facilitated the revival and success of Pecorino wine. Day 4: Monte S. Giusto, Castelfidardo, Recanati. At Monte San Giusto see the great Crucifixion by Lorenzo Lotto, described by Berenson as the finest of the 16th century. Continue to Portonovo, home to the pescatori dei moscioli (designated a Slow Food Presidio product). Meet the fishermen and taste the mussels over lunch. Drive to Garofoli, Le Marche’s oldest wine producer, for a tour and vertical tasting. Continue to Recanati, where the following two nights are spent. Day 5: Recanati, Tolentino, Colmurano. A charming town, Recanati spreads along the ridge of a neighbouring hill; four of Lotto’s paintings are in the museum, including the famous Annunciation. Now something of a backwater, the shrine of S. Nicola da Tolentino once made the town a major pilgrimage destination and the 142
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The Heart of Italy Umbria’s finest art and architecture sumptuous church has fine mediaeval frescoes. Continue to an agriturismo for a visit to the orto (vegetable garden) a tasting of local beer, salami and cheese and a traditional Marchegiano lunch. Day 6: Loreto, Senigallia, Urbino. Spend the morning in Loreto, where some of the finest artists and architects of Renaissance Italy worked, including Bramante, Signorelli, Melozzo da Forli and Lotto. Continue to Senigallia for lunch at Uliassi, one of the best restaurants in Italy, with two Michelin stars. Continue to Urbino, Duke Federico da Montefeltro’s principal residence and one of Italy’s loveliest towns, where the following two nights are spent. See the exquisite Gothic frescoes in the Oratorio di S. Giovanni. Day 7: Acqualagna, Urbino. Some consider Acqualagna to be Italy’s truffle capital. There is a truffle hunt near here this morning, then a visit to a truffle-processing plant. Sample the truffles over lunch in a nearby restaurant. Return to Urbino to visit the Palazzo Ducale, a masterpiece of architecture which evolved over 30 years as the perfect Renaissance secular environment. Day 8: Cartoceto. Visit Gastronomia Beltrami, a cheesemaker and vendor, and see the formaggio di fossa, Pecorino cheese aged in wells. Olive oil and cheese-tasting before a light lunch. Continue to Bologna airport and fly to London Heathrow, arriving c. 8.30pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,270 or £3,080 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,590 or £3,400 without flights. Included meals: 6 lunches, 4 dinners, with wine.
How strenuous? There is a fair amount of walking involved. Participants need to be used to walking unaided on uneven terrain, and surefootedness is also essential for truffle hunting in the woods. The tour also involves walking in town centres, sometimes uphill and over unevenly paved ground. Some days involve a lot of driving through hilly terrain. Average distance by coach per day: 78 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Price, Courts of Northern Italy and Gastronomic Le Marche combined. Two sharing: £5,740 or £5,580 without flights. Single occupancy: £6,510 or £6,350 without flights. This includes accommodation (1 night) and a car transfer between the two. These arrangements are prebooked but unescorted.
An excellent survey of the art and architecture of Umbria, heartland of the Renaissance. Based throughout in the hilltop town of Spello, amidst ageless undulating countryside. Perugia, Spoleto, Assisi and significant smaller towns away from the main tourist centres. Also known as the ‘green heart of Italy’, Umbria contains a vast and varied array of what visitors most love about central Italy: ancient streetscapes crammed onto hilltops, exquisitely undulating countryside of olive, cypress and vine, and an abundance of wonderful art. Rarely can the spirit of the Middle Ages be so potently felt as in the hill towns of central Italy. That such small communities could have built each dwelling so massively, raised churches and public buildings of such magnificence and created works of art of such monumentality inspires awe bordering on disbelief among today’s visitors. This is also the heartland of the Renaissance, and several of the leading artists of the era were natives who worked here before being inveigled to the great metropolises of Florence and Rome. Many of the most important and beautiful of Italy’s incomparable patrimony of paintings and frescoes are included on this tour. The great Giottesque cycle at Assisi stands at the beginning of the modern era of art, and the Last Judgement frescoes by Signorelli in Orvieto are on the cusp of the High Renaissance. While
in the field of architecture Romanesque and Gothic predominate, there are many major Renaissance buildings, including the centrally planned church at Todi. The man-made environment melds with the natural in a picturesque union of intense beauty. It is a landscape of rumpled hills, sometimes rugged and forested, sometimes tamed in the struggle to cultivate, always speckled with ancient farmsteads, fortified villages and isolated churches. Even from the central piazze of many of these towns there are views of countryside which seems scarcely to have changed for centuries.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 10.45am (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Rome Fiumicino. Drive to Spello, the small, quiet town which is the base for this tour. Day 2: Assisi. Drive the short distance to Assisi and spend much of the morning at S. Francesco, mother church of the Franciscan Order. Here is one of the greatest assemblages of mediaeval fresco painting, including the controversial cycle of the Life of St Francis. In the afternoon, walk through the austere mediaeval streets and visit the church of Sta. Chiara and the Romanesque cathedral. Day 3: Todi, Spello. Visit Sta. Maria della Consolazione in Todi, a centrally planned Renaissance church influenced by Bramante’s ideas. Walk through the town, seeing the cathedral and the church of S. Fortunato, with its richly decorated central doorway and frescoes by Masolino. Return in the afternoon to the small hilltop town of Spello, which has fine Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Accommodation. Palazzo Guiderocchi, Ascoli Piceno (palazzoguiderocchi.com): converted Renaissance palace in the heart of the city, which retains many original features. Gallery Hotel, Recanati (ghr.it): former private palazzo, the rooms are furnished and decorated in a contemporary style. Hotel San Domenico, Urbino (viphotels.it): converted from a monastery building and the most centrally located hotel, opposite the Ducal Palace.
9–16 September 2019 (mf 687) 8 days • £2,480 Lecturer: Dr Michael Douglas-Scott
The Heart of Italy continued
' Michael has a wonderful way of bringing to life centuries old sights. Never boring or dull, and always witty and on point.' J.M. & K.M., participants on The Heart of Italy in 2018.
Roman remains and richly coloured Renaissance frescoes by Pinturicchio in the church of Sta. Maria Maggiore. Day 4: Perugia, capital of Umbria, is one of the largest and loveliest of Italian hill towns and has both major works of art and architecture and the authentic, age-old liveliness of a prosperous market town. Morning visits include the Palazzo dei Priori, the mediaeval town hall now housing the National Gallery of Umbria, and a merchants’ hall. An afternoon walk includes an impressive Etruscan city gateway, the mediaeval walls and the richly carved façade of the Renaissance church of S. Bernardino. Day 5: Foligno, Montefalco. Known to the Romans as Fulginium, Foligno lies on the banks of the river Topino. It offers a range of exceptional attractions and yet is little known to tourists. See the restored palace of the Trinci family, lords of Foligno, and home to extensive frescoes now known to be the work of the greatest Italian master of International Gothic, Gentile da Fabriano. Continue to Montefalco, a delightful hilltop community with magnificent views of the valley below and hills around. In the deconsecrated church of S. Francesco are frescoes by Benozzo Gozzoli. Return to Spello for some free time.
Day 6: Gubbio. Spilling down a hillside and offering sensational views across Umbrian countryside, Gubbio is one of the most beautiful and well preserved ancient towns in Italy. The Palazzo dei Consoli is an austerely magnificent mediaeval town hall located beside a square with one side open to the view; it houses the art gallery of the Museo Civico. Higher up, the Palazzo Ducale was built by warlord Federico da Montefeltro, one of the greatest patrons of the arts in the Early Renaissance.
Practicalities
Day 7: Orvieto. Spend the day in this entrancing hilltop town, with its glistening marble Gothic cathedral. Among its treasures are the low relief sculptures by Maitani and the apocalyptic Last Judgement frescoes by Signorelli (1505). Visit also the cathedral museum, richly endowed with art, sculpture and religious artefacts.
How strenuous? Many visits take place in hill towns, with very steep, uneven inclines leading from the coach park. Agility and sure-footedness are particularly essential. There is a lot of coach travel. Average distance by coach per day: 72 miles.
Day 8: Spoleto. A morning walk in Spoleto includes the Ponte delle Torri, a mediaeval aqueduct famously painted by Turner, and finishes at the cathedral square. One of the most imposing in Italy, it slopes like an auditorium towards the cathedral façade with its mosaics and rose windows; inside there are frescoes by Pinturicchio and Filippo Lippi. Drive to Rome Fiumicino airport for an evening flight arriving at London Heathrow at c. 8.30pm.
Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,480 or £2,260 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,640 or £2,420 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel La Bastiglia, Spello (labastiglia.com): well-appointed 4-star hotel at the apex of Spello, with wonderful views from the terrace.
Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Flemish Painting, 4–8 September 2019 (p.55); Walking to Santiago, 17–27 September 2019 (p.187); The Cathedrals of England, 18–26 September 2019 (p.10); Gardens & Villas of the Italian Lakes, 19–25 September 2019 (p.117). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport. Illustration, previous page: Orvieto, low relief sculpture from the cathedral façade, wood engraving c. 1880. Below left: Perugia cathedral, lithograph by V. Faini c. 1930.
Trasimeno Music Festival 28 June–6 July 2019 Full details available in January 2019 Please call us to register your interest, or e-mail alerts@martinrandall.co.uk The fifteenth anniversary of the festival created by pianist Angela Hewitt, who traditionally appears in six of the seven performances.
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Approximately seven concerts in beautiful settings, among others usually a castle near Lake Trasimeno, the Basilica di San Pietro in Perugia and the Teatro Signorelli in Cortona. Based in Perugia, one of the largest and loveliest of Italian hill towns. One of the most acclaimed pianists of today, Angela Hewitt inaugurated her own music festival in the heart of Italy in 2005. She bought land overlooking Lake Trasimeno, and built a house as a retreat from her gruelling concert tours. The idea of a festival in the vicinity emerged and with characteristic energy Hewitt made it a reality, charming local officials into giving the necessary permissions and enlisting their enthusiastic support. For her festival, she gathers around her artists of international standing, and as they make music together the atmosphere created is one of complete enjoyment for performers and audience alike. 144
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Footpaths of Umbria Walks, art and wine between Arezzo and Assisi 6–13 May 2019 (mf 512) 8 days • £2,730 Lecturer: Dr Antonia Whitley 2–9 September 2019 (mf 670) 8 days • £2,730 Lecturer: Dr Antonia Whitley Six walks of 5–7.5 km between Arezzo and Assisi through the inimitable Umbrian countryside. Enjoy the art of Piero della Francesca, Luca Signorelli and Giotto. Visit isolated hermitages, churches and cathedrals associated with St Francis.
Illustration: Assisi, Church of St Francis, watercolour by Frank Fox c. 1900.
Day 1: Città di Castello. Fly at c. 8.15am (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Bologna. Spend the first of four nights in Città di Castello. Day 2: Montecasale, Sansepolcro. St Francis passed through the Convent of Montecasale in 1213 on his journey to the Adriatic and Jerusalem, and a small community of friars have continued to provide pilgrim accommodation since then. Walk from Montecasale to La Montagna: c. 7.5 km, c. 2 hours. A high-level walk on paths, tracks and exposed ground, and through woodland. It is graded as challenging given the uneven nature of the paths and a long downhill section at the end. Lunch in Sansepolcro, then visit the museum in the former town hall, where Piero della Francesca’s early masterpiece, Madonna della Misericordia and the marvellous Resurrection fresco are housed. Day 3: Arezzo, Monterchi. Drive to Arezzo to see Piero della Francesca’s great fresco cycle, The Legend of the True Cross, painted for the Franciscan order and executed over a 20-year period. After lunch walk from Monteautello to Monterchi: c. 5.5 km, c. 1½ hours. This is an easy, gently undulating walk on farm tracks and country roads. Piero della Francesca’s beautiful Madonna del Parto has its own museum in the village. Day 4: Le Celle, Cortona. Begin the morning’s walk from the immaculately kept Eremo Le Celle, which Francis visited in 1226: c. 5 km, c. 2 hours. This is a moderate walk that starts gently downhill, on woodland tracks outside Cortona, before joining a cobbled Roman path that leads uphill to the town centre. Cortona is highly attractive and has a good art gallery, notable for paintings by Fra Angelico and Signorelli. Day 5: Montefalco, Bevagna, Trevi (May) or Spello (September). Known as the ‘Balcony of Umbria’, Montefalco’s mediaeval church houses 15th-century frescoes of the Florentine and Umbrian school; the town is also well known for its inky and full-bodied Sagrantino wines. An easy walk on country trails and lanes from Montefalco to Fabbri: c. 5 km, c. 1½ hours. Drive to Bevagna, the Roman Mevania, home to one of Italy’s most harmonious squares. First of three nights in Trevi (May) or Spello (September). Day 6: Assisi. Morning walk from Pieve San Nicolò to Assisi: c. 6 km, c. 2 hours. This is a moderate walk on a strada bianca (rough farm track), minor roads and woodland paths. The path predominantly descends, although the last section is uphill through the Bosco Francescano. The walk ends through the city gate which leads directly to the Basilica. Here we see one of the greatest assemblages of mediaeval fresco painting, including the cycle of the Life of St Francis which some attribute to Giotto. There is time to walk through the austere mediaeval streets and visit the church of Sta. Chiara. Day 7: Collepino, Spello. Drive to Collepino, a restored mediaeval borgo with views of Monte Subasio and, on a fine day, the Monti Sibillini. Walk from Collepino to Spello: 6 km, c. 2 hours. This is an easy route is downhill and on a level
track to Spello, through olive groves running alongside the Roman aqueduct built to supply the ‘splendissima colonia Julia’. There is time to enjoy Spello’s harmonious architecture and the richly coloured Renaissance frescoes by Pinturicchio in the church of Sta. Maria Maggiore. Day 8. Drive to Rome with a break in Montegiove en route. Fly from Rome Fiumicino to Heathrow, arriving c. 8.30pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,730 or £2,520 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,920 or £2,710 without flights. Included meals: 5 lunches, 4 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Tiferno, Città di Castello (hoteltiferno.it): central, 4-star hotel, renovated respecting the original architecture. Antica Dimora alla Rocca, Trevi (May) (hotelallarocca. it): historical 4-star hotel on top of the Trevi Hillside, with wonderful views of the mediaeval centre of the town. Hotel La Bastiglia, Spello (September) (labastiglia.com): well-appointed 4-star hotel at the apex of Spello, with wonderful views from the terrace. How strenuous? This is a walking tour, graded moderate (see page 8). There are 6 walks, 3 are easy, 2 are moderate and 1 challenging. It is essential for participants to have appropriate walking footwear, be in good physical condition and to be used to country walking with uphill and downhill content. If you are used to them you may find walking poles useful. Average distance by coach per day: c. 60 miles. Group size: between 10 and 18 participants. Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Umbria brings together art and architecture of the highest importance, unspoilt countryside of breath-taking beauty and pockets of rare tranquillity. Land-locked, and located more or less in the centre of the peninsula, the region is criss-crossed by ancient paths, used for millennia by myriad travellers, traders, pilgrims and preachers. Two itinerant denizens in particular are encountered time and again on this tour, St Francis of Assisi and Piero della Francesca. Stimulated by the movement of people, goods and ideas along the Via Flaminia, the main route from Rome to Ravenna, the economic and artistic life of Umbria began to flourish in the Middle Ages. Ideas absorbed from Byzantium were encountered and transformed by stylistic novelties from Rome, Florence and Siena. In the early thirteenth century, the son of a rich cloth merchant in Assisi, one Francis, came to prominence in the region; he shunned the material excess and increasing secularization around him and embraced humility, simplicity and harmony with nature as an alternative Christian approach. Perambulating throughout Umbria and central Italy he preached with fervour, touched the hearts of thousands and attracted devoted disciples. Out of this movement the Franciscan Order grew. Building work on the Basilica di San Francesco began two years after Francis’s death in Assisi in 1226; the fresco cycles here are some of the most art historically important in Italy. Cimabue, Giotto, Cavallini, Pietro Lorenzetti and Simone Martini are all thought to have been involved in the work and, despite varying degrees of restoration and preservation, they constitute one of the great achievements of western civilisation. The early Renaissance painter Piero della Francesca is also associated with the region. Born c. 1412 in Sansepolcro, which lies just over the border in Tuscany, like all artists of his time he led a peripatetic existence, travelling wherever work took him. In many ways, he stands like a lone star, one who did not leave an obvious trail in terms of followers, but one so bright as still to shine today. Our Piero trail also includes The Resurrection, dubbed by Aldous Huxley ‘the best picture’, and the quiet power and subtle beauty of The Legend of the True Cross in Arezzo’s Basilica di San Francesco.
Itinerary
Gardens & Villas of Campagna Romana From formal to frivolous in spectacular settings Day 3: Bomarzo, Vignanello. Vicino Orsini created a Renaissance ‘theme park’ at Bomarzo of extraordinary grotesque animals and statues based on figures from Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. Visit the Renaissance Castello Ruspoli and its enchanting gardens (by special arrangement). First of three nights in Grottaferrata, near Frascati. Day 4: Tivoli. Spend the morning at Hadrian’s Villa, designed entirely by him and inspired by sites he visited during his travels in the Empire, undoubtedly the richest building project in the Roman Empire. Lunch is in a good restaurant with astonishing views. The vast garden at Villa d’Este became one of the classic visits on the Grand Tour. Day 5: Ninfa, Torrecchia Vecchia. Drive to Ninfa, one of the most famous and best-loved English gardens abroad, where the ruined buildings of a mediaeval town have been transformed into a place so extraordinarily beautiful that it has long been a place of pilgrimage for gardeners. Continue to Torrecchia Vecchia, a 15-acre Romantic garden also within the crumbling walls of a mediaeval hilltop village, designed by Dan Pearson. Day 6: Castel Gandolfo. Visit the Pope’s gardens, overlooking the lake of Castel Gandolfo and only recently opened to the public (by special arrangement). Fly from Rome, arriving Heathrow at c. 5.00pm. Some of the gardens can only be visited by special arrangement and it is possible that the order of visits will change from that listed here.
Practicalities 8–13 April 2019 (mf 477) 6 days • £2,480 Lecturer: Dr Katie Campbell Renaissance villas and gardens, many accessible only by special arrangement. Ideal time of year to see the gardens in bloom.
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Beguiling scenery of tufa hills and ‘classical’ compositions. The countryside around Rome has long been the playground of the privileged, but it was in the sixteenth century that the region of Lazio took the lead in garden design. The wealthy families of popes and cardinals such as the Farnese and Este commissioned villas and gardens in the campagna romana to escape from the noise and worldly cares of the capital to places of tranquillity and repose. Vasari wrote of Caprarola in the sixteenth century that it was ‘marvellously situated for one who wishes to withdraw from the worries and tumult of the city’. But Renaissance gardens developed to offer more than a haven of peace and a chance for contemplation; they also provided the patron with the opportunity to vaunt his knowledge of the antique world. Garden design and ornamentation were steeped in references to classical mythology. Gardens also became places of entertainment, whether formal or frivolous. The use of water 146
tricks or giochi d’acqua – allowing the owner to ‘drown’ an unsuspecting visitor at the pull of a hidden lever – is a prime example of the latter. The towns, villas and gardens to the north of Rome are set against a backdrop of an almost fantasy, surreal landscape: villages perch high on volcanic outcrops, villas and gardens are carved out of purple tufa. To the west and south of Rome this often extraordinary scenery gives way to more classically pastoral scenes, offering glimpses of Claude Lorrain’s inspiration for many of his depictions of the campagna romana, which in turn became the foundation of the landscape style of gardens in eighteenth-century England.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 10.45am (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Rome Fiumicino. Drive to the countryside near Viterbo where the first two nights are spent. Day 2: Bagnaia, Caprarola. The Villa Lante at Bagnaia, designed by Vignola, has been universally admired since its creation: the twin casinos are subordinate to the design of the delightful terraced gardens with restored giochi d’acqua and fountain by Giambologna. On a hilltop at Caprarola, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese had an imposing pentagonal villa built by Vignola, with an extensive park adorned with fountains, walled gardens and a casino.
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Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,480 or £2,210 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,720 or £2,450 without flights. Included meals: 3 lunches, 4 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Alla Corte delle Terme, near Viterbo (allacortedelleterme.it): comfortable 4-star in the countryside outside Viterbo. All rooms are suites. Park Hotel Villa Grazioli, Grottaferrata (villagrazioli.com): 4-star hotel overlooking Frascati and Rome, in a 16th-century villa containing frescoes by Ciampelli, Carracci and Pannini. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking, much of it on rough, uneven ground in the gardens. The tour would not be suitable for anyone who has difficulties with everyday walking and stair climbing. Average distance by coach per day: 60 miles Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Gardens of the Bay of Naples, 31 March–7 April 2019 (p.152); Pompeii & Herculaneum, 1–6 April 2019 (p.153). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration: Villa d’Este, after a watercolour by Walter Tyndale c. 1910
Roman Italy Major monuments, daily details 9–18 September 2019 (mf 689) 10 days • £3,670 Lecturer: Dr Mark Grahame Explore the most influential of all ancient civilisations through physical remains both in Rome itself and in Umbria and Campania. Great monuments and details of daily life, the highest achievements of art, architecture and engineering as well as everyday ephemera. A study of history, society and literary culture as well as of the built environment. Option to combine this tour with Gardens & Villas of the Italian Lakes, 19–25 September 2019 (see page 117).
Day 1. Fly at c. 10.45am (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Rome. Drive to Spoleto, where the first of two nights are spent. Day 2: Spoleto, Carsulae. Drive out to the Parco Archaeologico at Carsulae, one of the most impressive archaeological ruins in Italy. An afternoon walk in Spoleto includes the Roman theatre and triumphal arch. There is some free time to see something of mediaeval and Renaissance Spoleto. Day 3: Tivoli, Rome. Hadrian’s extraordinarily lavish villa at Tivoli was designed by the emperor himself, drawing inspiration from the sites he saw during his travels. Continue to Rome. Visit the Baths of Caracalla, the best preserved of the several such complexes that emperors constructed in the capital for general enjoyment. First of four nights in Rome. Day 4: Rome. Among today’s highlights are the Pantheon, best preserved of Roman buildings, the Ara Pacis, Augustus’s beautifully sculpted altar, and Trajan’s Markets, remarkably complete and evocative. See also the Capitoline Museums, which have some of the best ancient sculpture in Rome and provide access to the administrative heart of Republican Rome. Day 5: Ostia, Rome. Drive to Ostia, the ancient port of Rome at the mouth of the Tiber. Silt led to its decline and abandonment. In the preservation of everyday details it is comparable to Pompeii – though without the crowds. Free time in Rome.
Day 6: Rome. The Forum Romanum, the civic, religious and social centre of Ancient Rome, has the remains of many structures famed throughout the Empire. See also Monte Testaccio, a hill formed entirely of fragments of broken amphorae. Outstanding among the displays in the National Roman Museum are the frescoes and stucco work. Day 7: Rome, Seiano. Visit the Colosseum, largest of ancient amphitheatres, and the Arch of Constantine, sculpturally the richest of triumphal arches. The Palatine Hill was the site of the luxurious palaces of successive emperors. In the afternoon travel by first-class rail to Naples, then coach to the hotel. First of three nights in Seiano. Day 8: Pompeii. Since its discovery in the 18th century, ancient Pompeii has been the world’s most famous archaeological excavation. It’s fascination lies not only in the public buildings such as theatre, temples and forum but also in the numerous dwellings, from cramped apartments to luxurious houses with mosaic pavements and gaudily frescoed walls. Day 9: Herculaneum, Oplontis. At Herculaneum, fragile artefacts have been preserved by the unique conditions of burial. In the small part of the town that has been excavated, private dwellings predominate, many with wonderful decoration. The lavish villa at Torre Annunziata (ancient Oplontis), one of the loveliest of ancient sites, may have been the home of Poppaea, wife of Nero. Day 10: Naples. The Archaeological Museum in Naples is the principal repository for both the small finds and the best-preserved mosaics and
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The remains of Roman Italy continue to fascinate and astound, nowhere more so than in Rome itself. From the beating heart of the Republic in the Roman Forum to the seat of the emperors on the Palatine Hill, the monuments of Rome chart its history as it was transformed from a plucky little city-state to the magnificent capital of an empire of unprecedented size. The Colosseum, the Baths of Caracalla, Hadrian’s sprawling Villa at Tivoli – these are among the many stunningly impressive structures which bear silent testimony to political, social and cultural upheavals. But not all survivals were creations of the elite. Rome still retains traces of the quotidien, workaday city with which every Roman was familiar. Water flowed into the city through the aqueducts and goods came up from the port at Ostia via the Tiber. The piles of broken amphorae at the Monte Testaccio contrast with the luxury goods on display in museums. Spiritual life is present too, in the many temples, Augustus’s Altar of Peace or at the Temple of Fortuna at Praeneste. Many of the most intriguing and beautiful remains of Roman Italy lie outside the capital. To the north, amid the green lands of Umbria, the imprint of Rome is still present in the hilltown of Spoleto and at Carsulae, almost unknown but one of the most enthralling archaeological sites in Italy. To the south, Campania had a particularly strong bond with Rome because the wealthy, seeking refuge from city summer heat, built villas around the Bay of Naples. Campania became a playground for the rich and powerful, emperors among them. It is in this region that two of the world’s most evocative archaeological sites are to be found, courtesy of the eruption of Mount Vesuivus in ad 79. There is a paradox here: the same volcanic ash which brutally terminated many thousands of lives in Pompeii and Herculaneum also preserved the fabric of these towns down to the minutest details of daily life to an extent unparalled anywhere else. It is these ephemera of everyday life which provide unique insight into the lives of people who lived two thousand years ago. The empathy provoked is potent and moving, and counterpoints eloquently with the grander achievements of Roman architects, engineers, soldiers and statesmen.
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Roman Italy continued
Palaces & Villas of Rome From Empire to Papacy: the power of magnificence Day 4. The Villa Ludovisi houses Caravaggio’s early ceiling painting Jupiter, Neptune & Pluto. The Camerino of the Casino here was often a place for debates among Cardinal del Monte’s most learned acquaintances, including Galileo Galilei. Further up the Pincian Hill is the 16th-century Villa Medici, the seat of the French Academy. Return to the vicinity of the hotel; Palazzo Barberini is Rome’s National Gallery, with paintings by most of the Italian Old Masters. In the evening there is a private visit to the Vatican Palace. With Michelangelo’s ceiling fresco, his Last Judgement and the quattrocento wall frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, together with Raphael’s frescoes in the Stanze, this is the most precious assemblage of painting in the western world.
frescoes discovered at Pompeii and Herculaneum. Fly from Naples to Gatwick, arriving c. 8.45pm. If combining this tour with Gardens & Villas of the Italian Lakes: continue by train from Naples to Milan, take a car transfer to Bellagio and stay one extra night at Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,670 or £3,520 without flights. Single occupancy: £4,310 or £4,160 without flights. Included meals: 2 lunches (including 1 picnic) and 6 dinners with wine. Flights: this tour departs from London Heathrow airport and returns to London Gatwick. There are no flights from Naples to London Heathrow, so it is not possible to fly return from Heathrow. It is possible to fly from Gatwick to Rome, but the current flight schedule would mean a very late arrival at the hotel in Spoleto. If British Airways changes its schedule we will endeavour to secure outbound flights from Gatwick so that the tour begins and ends at the same London airport. Accommodation. Hotel San Luca, Spoleto (hotelsanluca.com): a comfortable 4-star hotel, located in an elegantly converted former tannery. It is situated conveniently just within the city walls. Hotel Bernini Bristol, Rome (berninibristol. com): 5-star hotel excellently located on the Piazza Barberini. Grand Hotel Angiolieri, Seiano (grandhotelangiolieri.it): a modern 5-star hotel on the hill-top above the town of Vico Equense. Rooms with a sea view in Seiano are available on request and for a supplement.
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How strenuous? There is unavoidably a lot of walking, some of it over very rough ground and there is a lot of standing in museums and on archaeological sites. The day spent in Pompeii can be tiring. The historic area in Rome is vast, and vehicular access is increasingly restricted. Minibuses are used on some occasions but otherwise the city is traversed on foot. The tour should not be attempted by anyone who has difficulty with everyday walking and stairclimbing. Fitness is essential. Average distance by coach per day: 43 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Price, Roman Italy and Gardens & Villas of the Italian Lakes and combined. Two sharing: £7,160 or £7,010 without flights. Single occupancy: £8,370 or £8,220 without flights. This includes accommodation (1 night), first-class rail travel and a car transfer between the two. These arrangements are pre-booked but unescorted. Other possible combinations: Flemish Painting, 4–8 September 2019 (p.55); Berlin, Potsdam, Dresden, 19–27 September 2019 (p.92); Classical Greece, 21–30 September 2019 (p.109). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration, previous page: Rome, ceiling in the Baths of Caracalla, engraving c. 1800
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18–23 November 2019 (mf 901) 6 days • £2,770 Lecturer: Dr Michael Douglas-Scott The home to the origin of the word palazzo is the perfect place to study its history. Buildings that span the millennia, from the imperial residences of the Roman empire to princely Baroque splendour. A spectrum of edifices: political headquarters, papal residences, embassies, royal apartments. Many visits by special arrangement, including an out-of-hours private opening of the Vatican.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 12.45pm (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Rome Fiumicino. Day 2. Explore the origins of the palazzo on the Palatine Hill. Visit the Domus Augusti, the House of Augustus, which forms part of the vast Palace of Domitian. The present appearance of the Capitol, first centre of ancient Rome, was designed by Michelangelo, and the surrounding palazzi are museums with outstanding ancient sculpture. Nearby Palazzo Venezia is a mediaeval house that was converted to a papal palace; it contains an art collection. By contrast, Palazzo Doria Pamphilj is Rome’s largest noble palace; the picture collection includes paintings by Caravaggio, Titian and Velázquez. Day 3. Palazzo Corsini is a late-Baroque palace which houses a gallery of antiquities, while the delightful Villa La Farnesina (opposite) has frescoes by Raphael in the Loggia of Cupid and Psyche. Next, discover Palazzo Spada, which accommodates a large art collection and the famous trompe-l’oeil gallery by Borromini.
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Day 5. Palazzo Colonna is an agglomeration of the building and decoration of many centuries, and has a collection that includes works by Bronzino, Titian, Veronese and Guercino. The 17th-century Great Hall is surely one of the most magnificent secular rooms in Europe. Continue to the magnificent Palazzo Pamphilj, the Brazilian embassy overlooking Piazza Navona, followed by Palazzo della Cancelleria, begun in 1485 by Cardinal Raffaele Riario. The latter is a masterpiece of Early Renaissance secular architecture and has frescoes by Vasari of the life of Pope Paul III. Day 6. In the morning visit the Villa Borghese, which holds Rome’s finest collection of paintings and sculptures. Some free time before driving to the airport, via the Domus Aurea, Nero’s vast landscaped ‘golden house’. Fly from Rome Fiumicino, arriving at Heathrow at c. 8.15pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,770 or £2,660 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,140 or £3,030 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 3 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Grand Hotel de la Minerve, Rome (grandhoteldelaminerve.com): 5-star hotel in a former 17th-century palace overlooking the Pantheon. How strenuous? Unavoidably, there is a lot of walking on this tour. The historic area is vast, and vehicular access is increasingly restricted. Minibuses are used on some occasions but otherwise the city is traversed on foot. The tour should not be attempted by anyone who has difficulty with everyday walking and stairclimbing. Fitness is essential. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Art History of Venice, 11–17 November 2019 (p.126); Florence Revisited, 11–17 November 2019 (p.138). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration, Rome, gardens of the Villa Borghese, watercolour by Alberto Pisa, publ. 1905.
Essential Rome The complete spectrum of art, architecture and antiquities 26 February–4 March 2019 (mf 428) 7 days • £2,780 Lecturer: Dr Thomas-Leo True Major buildings, monuments and works of art, a representative selection of all periods from Ancient Rome onwards. Led by Dr Thomas-Leo True, Assistant Director of the British School at Rome. Private visit to the Sistine Chapel, shared with participants travelling on Connoisseur’s Rome (see page 150) – otherwise there is almost no overlap between the two tours.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 9.30am (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Rome. The tour starts with the glorious Byzantine mosaics in the churches of Sta. Maria Maggiore (one of the four patriarchal basilicas) and Sta. Prassede. Evening lecture and drinks reception at the British School at Rome. Day 2. The tour starts at the very beginning: today is largely devoted to Ancient Rome, beginning with the Colosseum, largest of all amphitheatres, completed ad 80. The Forum has evocative remains of the key temples and civic buildings at the heart of the Roman Empire. The present appearance of the Capitol, first centre of ancient Rome, was designed by Michelangelo, and the surrounding palazzi are museums with outstanding ancient sculpture and a collection of paintings. Day 3. The Basilica of St Peter in the Vatican was the outcome of the greatest architects of several generations – Bramante, Raphael, Sangallo, Michelangelo – and contains major sculpture. Originally Emperor Hadrian’s mausoleum, Castel S. Angelo became a fortress in the Middle Ages and a residence in the Renaissance. After some free time, return to the Vatican in the evening for a private visit to see Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel in peace, together with Raphael’s frescoes in the adjacent Stanze.
Day 5. Among today’s highlights are the Pantheon, the best preserved of Roman monuments (whose span was only twice exceeded in the next 1,750 years); the lively and wonderfully adorned Piazza Navona, which retains the shape of the Roman hippodrome on which it was built; and the 5thcentury church of Sta. Sabina, as perfect an Early Christian basilica as survives anywhere. See also S. Ivo, a masterpiece of Baroque architecture with a cupola designed by Borromini, and two Roman temples, of Vesta and Fortuna Virile.
Day 7. Before departing for the airport, visit two churches to see paintings by Caravaggio, S. Agostino (Loreto Madonna) and S. Luigi dei Francesi (St Matthew series). Return to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 4.00pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,780 or £2,670 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,230 or £3,120 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Grand Hotel de la Minerve, Rome (grandhoteldelaminerve.com): 5-star hotel in a former 17th-century palace overlooking the Pantheon.
How strenuous? There is unavoidably a lot of walking. The historic area is vast, and vehicular access is increasingly restricted. Minibuses are used on some occasions but otherwise the city is traversed on foot. The tour should not be attempted by anyone who has difficulty with everyday walking and stairclimbing. Fitness is essential. Average distance by coach per day: 9 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Civilisations of Sicily, 4–16 March 2019 (p.161). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration: Rome, view of the San Lorenzo Gate, copper engraving by Luigi Rossini c. 1820.
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Day 4. The morning includes the superb sculpture of the Altar of Peace (Ara Pacis) erected by Augustus, paintings by Pinturicchio and Caravaggio in Sta. Maria del Popolo, and a walk in the Pincio Gardens (good views across Rome) to the Spanish Steps. The Palazzo Barberini is a great palace which became Rome’s National Gallery, with paintings by most of the Italian Old Masters. The Galleria Borghese is Rome’s finest collection of painting and sculpture.
Day 6. The morning is free. Drive in the afternoon to three contrasting churches largely or partly dating to the early Middle Ages: the 6th-century circular Mausoleum of Sta. Costanza, the historically complex but exceptionally beautiful Basilica of S. Clemente, and St John Lateran, the cathedral of Rome.
Connoisseur’s Rome With private visits including the Sistine Chapel 26 February–3 March 2019 (mf 427) 6 days • £2,810 Lecturer: Dr Michael Douglas-Scott Artistic riches which are difficult to access or are rarely open to the public, including an out-ofhours visit to the Sistine Chapel. Highlights of the Renaissance and Baroque. As appealing for those new to the city as for frequent visitors. Many of Rome’s artistic riches are not easily accessible to the visitor. The emphasis of this tour is on places which are difficult to access or which are rarely open to the public – on treasures which lie beyond normally impenetrable portals. Privileged access also takes the form of visits to places outside their normal opening hours. Instead of sharing the Sistine Chapel with hundreds of others, around forty Martin Randall Travel clients, from two tours which do not otherwise meet, will have the place to themselves for a couple of hours. The two tours overlap so that the high cost of private admission to the Vatican museums is spread between the two. What we manage to include varies each time we run the tour. Though it is likely that most of the places mentioned in the itinerary given below will be visited, arrangements depend on the generosity of owners and institutions and are occasionally subject to cancellation, but our network of contacts and know-how would enable us to arrange alternatives.
Some better-known and generally accessible places are included in the itinerary as well, so the tour should appeal both to those who are unfamiliar with the city as well as to those who have been many times before.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 12.45pm (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Rome Fiumicino. Day 2. Visit the 16th-century Villa Medici, now the seat of the French Academy. Palazzo della Cancelleria, begun in 1485 by Cardinal Raffaele Riario, is a masterpiece of Early Renaissance secular architecture and has frescoes by Vasari of the life of Pope Paul III. The delightful Villa La Farnesina has frescoes by Raphael. Also see San Giovanni Battista Decollato, a 16th-century confraternity church containing the best cycle of Mannerist frescoes in Rome. Day 3. In the morning visit the stunning collection of sculpture and painting in the Villa Borghese. Continue to the Villa Ludovisi, which houses Caravaggio’s early ceiling painting Jupiter, Neptune & Pluto. In the evening there is a private visit to the Vatican to see the Sistine Chapel and the adjacent Stanze. With Michelangelo’s ceiling fresco, his Last Judgement on the end wall and the quattrocento wall frescoes, together with Raphael’s frescoes in the Stanze, this is the most precious assemblage of painting in the western world. Illustration:Rome, Trevi Fountain, watercolour by C.T.G. Fornilli, publ.1927
Dr Michael DouglasScott Associate Lecturer in History of Art at Birkbeck College, specialising in 16th-century Italian art and architecture. He studied at the Courtauld and lived in Rome for several years. He has written articles for Arte Veneta, Burlington Magazine and the Journal of the Warburg & Courtauld Institutes. See page 260 for all lecturers' biographies.
Day 4. See Bernini’s oval church of S. Andrea, and in the attached monastery the rooms of St Stanislav Kostka with sculpture by Pierre Legros. The ceiling fresco by Guido Reni in the Casino dell’Aurora in the garden of the Palazzo Pallavicini Rospigliosi is one of the greatest works of 17th-century classicism. In the afternoon visit the Sancta Sanctorum, adjacent to St John Lateran, part of the mediaeval papal residence and decorated with Cosmati mosaics dating to 1278. Day 5. Palazzo Colonna is an agglomeration of building and decoration of many centuries, and has a collection which includes works by Bronzino, Titian, Veronese and Guercino. The 17th-century Great Hall is surely one of the most magnificent secular rooms in Europe. Palazzo Doria Pamphilj holds a famous picture collection (Caravaggio, Velasquez), and S. Ignazio has an illusionistic ceiling painting by Andrea del Pozzo. Day 6. Some free time. Fly from Rome Fiumicino, arriving at London Heathrow at c. 7.00pm. This gives a fair picture of the tour, but there may be substitutes for some places mentioned and the order of visits will probably differ.
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Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,810 or £2,700 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,150 or £3,040 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 3 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Bernini Bristol (berninibristol.com): 5-star hotel excellently located on the Piazza Barberini. How strenuous? Unavoidably, there is a lot of walking on this tour. The historic area is vast, and vehicular access is increasingly restricted. Minibuses are used on some occasions but otherwise the city is traversed on foot. The tour should not be attempted by anyone who has difficulty with everyday walking and stairclimbing. Fitness is essential. Average distance by coach per day: 9 miles Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Civilisations of Sicily, 4–16 March 2019 (p.161). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport. 150
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The Printing Revolution Renaissance print culture in Rome and Venice 27 January–3 February 2019 (mf 414) 8 days • £3,910 Lecturers: Stephen Parkin & Dr Michael Douglas-Scott The arrival and impact of printing in Renaissance Italy: manuscripts, printed books and the visual arts 1450–1600. Special displays of manuscripts and books and privileged access to spaces not usually seen by the public. Led by a British Library curator, and an art historian specialising in the Italian Renaissance. No more than 18 participants.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 12.45pm from London Heathrow to Rome Fiumicino (British Airways). Evening lecture and first of four nights in Rome. Day 2: Rome. To set the scene, the tour begins with a printing demonstration at the Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica in Palazzo Poli, which abuts the Trevi fountain. Continue to the Biblioteca Angelica, the first public library in Europe. In the afternoon there is an out-of-hours visit to see Raphael’s frescoes in Villa La Farnesina, where there was once a printing press. Day 3: Subiaco. Drive to the Roman countryside to visit the Benedictine monasteries at Subiaco,
Day 4: Rome. The Biblioteca Casanatense belonged to the Dominicans, who were in charge of attempts to control printing by means of the Index of Prohibited Books. The Biblioteca dell’Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei e Corsiniana holds the private collection of the Corsini family together with that of the Accademia dei Lincei, founded in 1603 and still Italy’s leading scientific and cultural academy. Spend the afternoon in the Vatican, visiting the Pope’s own library, the ‘Biblioteca Apostolica’. Day 5: Rome, Venice. Travel from Rome to Venice by first class rail (c. 4 hours). After settling into the hotel, visit the Biblioteca Correr, the library attached to the museum of the history of Venice, which contains many fine manuscripts and incunabula. Cross the bacino to the island of S. Giorgio Maggiore, where Palladio’s monastery has a library, now part of the Fondazione Cini, which has one of the greatest collections of 16th-century illustrated books, broadsheets and pamphlets. First of three nights in Venice.
How strenuous? There is unavoidably a lot of walking in both cities: the historic area in Rome is vast and vehicular access is restricted, and in Venice there is a lot of walking along the flat and up and down bridges. Standing around in museums and churches in both cities is also unavoidable. The tour should not be attempted by anyone who has difficulty with everyday walking and stair-climbing. Group size: between 8 and 18 participants. Combine this tour with: Florence, 4–10 February 2019 (p.136). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration: Rome, Vatican Library, wood engraving c. 1880.
Day 6: Venice. The beautiful Biblioteca Marciana, in Piazzetta S. Marco, was begun in 1536 by Sansovino and finished by Scamozzi in 1591. Among its collections are many sculptures, Fra Mauro’s 1459 world map and important manuscripts and books. The small monastic library attached to the church of S. Francesco della Vigna is the repository for all Franciscan libraries in northern Italy and houses the only copy of the first printed edition of the Koran (1537). Day 7: Cornuda. Travel to Tronchetto by vaporetto and from there drive to Cornuda, a small town in the foothills beyond Treviso. Visit the delightful Museo Tipoteca – the only museum of ‘type’ in the world. The site holds more than 180 printing presses and typecasting machines. Lunch in the restaurant here before returning to Venice for some free time. Evening visit to the Biblioteca della Fondazione Querini Stampaglia, one of the most beautiful public libraries in the city, where there is a private dinner.
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This tour explores the culture of Renaissance Rome and Venice from a new and unusual perspective – the history of printing. The arrival of printing in Rome in the 1460s, followed by the exponential growth of publishing in Venice, had far-reaching and profound consequences. It was nothing less than an information revolution. Beginning in Rome and continuing to the first site of printing in Italy, the Benedictine monastery at Subiaco, the tour introduces the new technology and what this entailed for the way books were made, bought, collected and read. It shows how the transition from manuscript to print took place, and presents the leading personalities involved in the advancement of printing – cardinals, aristocrats, scholars, printers and booksellers. Many of the great collections of manuscript codices and printed books which were built at the time survive intact today in splendidly decorated libraries. Foremost among them was the Pope’s own library, the ‘Biblioteca Apostolica’, buried within the great Vatican complex. The story continues in Venice, which in the sixteenth century became the European centre of the publishing and bookselling trades. The monumental libraries here, places of architectural beauty themselves, house some of the greatest collections of illustrated books and manuscripts. The focus of this tour leads not only to an understanding of the role of printing in Renaissance culture but also to an enhanced appreciation of the art of the period, and an understanding of the place of the book in early modern history.
the first site of printing in Italy. In the library of Sta. Scolastica there are copies of the first books printed there, including Lactantius’ De divinis institutionibus, printed in 1465.
Day 8. Travel by motoscafo to Venice airport and fly to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 2.15pm. The tour is dependent on the kindness of many individuals and organisations, so although this gives a fair picture of the itinerary, there may be substitutes for some places mentioned.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,910 or £3,790 without flights. Single occupancy: £4,370 or £4,250 without flights. Included meals: 3 lunches, 5 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Bernini Bristol, Rome (berninibristol.com): 5-star hotel excellently located on the Piazza Barberini. Hotel Splendid, Venice (starhotels.com): delightful, quiet 4-star hotel situated halfway between Piazza San Marco and the Rialto bridge. Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Gardens of the Bay of Naples With Ischia, Capri and the Amalfi Coast 31 March–7 April 2019 (mf 466) 8 days • £3,270 Lecturer: Steven Desmond Wide historical range, from the first-century gardens of Pompeii to Susana Walton’s subtropical La Mortella on Ischia. Visit a family-owned lemon grove on the Sorrento peninsula, with tastings, and two villagardens at Ravello. See the Villa Porfidia, where Emma Hamilton turned garden adviser. Many foreign visitors have left accounts of their first sight of the Bay of Naples – all have been overwhelmed. The footprints of ancient craters have left crumbled cones, semicircular inlets, islands, thermal pools and fumaroles, all presided over by the silhouette of the most famous volcano in the world. Perhaps it is this sense of foreboding which has brought so many aesthetes here to set aside their work and bask instead in the glory of the here and now. The flanks of every volcano gradually yield deep and fertile soil. This, combined with an excellent climate, has led to a landscape covered in vines, lemons, olives and figs. From the midnineteenth century onwards, expatriate settlers began to use this soil to make pleasure gardens as a foreground to the dramatic views along the Amalfi Coast. Some were earnest philanthropists, others roués with money to burn, still others refugees from social attitudes back home. Their feelings are summed up in Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio Italien. The sybarites began their work here early. Though we may only imagine the seaside villas of holidaying Roman emperors, we can actually stand in the gardens of their patrician citizens at Pompeii. The best examples of artefacts from those gardens are on view in the great Archaeological Museum in Naples. And on a larger scale,
the cascade at Caserta made for the Bourbon monarchs will give some idea of Baroque ambition. Sailing to the fabled islands of Ischia and Capri will keep us in touch with the litany of lotus-eaters who made their homes and gardens there over the centuries. The reasons they all came are still here, waiting to be explored.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 4.00pm (British Airways) from London Gatwick to Naples. First of three nights in Naples. Day 2: Naples. Visit the National Archaeological Museum, one of the world’s greatest collections of Greek and Roman antiquities. Original garden artefacts from Pompeii and Herculaneum are superbly presented here, including statues, frescoes and mosaics of startling and moving beauty. Day 3: Ischia. Travel by hydrofoil to the volcanic island of Ischia. Developed since 1956 by the late Susana Walton and overseen by Russell Page, La Mortella is one of Italy’s outstanding private gardens, a clever fusion of art and exceptional planting. Lunch at leisure before returning to Naples by boat. Day 4: Gardens of Pompeii, Sorrento. Drive to Sorrento via Pompeii. Since its first exploration during the 18th century, the site has been one of the world’s most famous archaeological excavations. The numerous dwellings offer insight into the planting schemes and garden layouts with their peristyle courtyards, water features, mosaics and frescoes. First of four nights in Sorrento. Day 5: Massa Lubrense, Capri. In the morning, visit a family-owned lemon grove followed by lunch on the estate. Free afternoon in Sorrento.
Day 6: Ravello. Drive across the Sorrento peninsula to Amalfi, where a coach completes the climb to Ravello, situated in the hills with thrilling views of the coastline. Visit the evocative garden of Villa Rufolo, a wonderful 13th-century palace. Also see Lord Grimthorpe’s vast Anglo-Italian garden at Villa Cimbrone, a charming muddle of the classical, Gothic and the Edwardian under a vast pergola. Return to Sorrento by Hydrofoil. Day 7: Capri. Travel by hydrofoil to the island of Capri to visit Villa San Michele, Axel Munthe’s visionary house and garden high on the mountain. It is a place of singular atmosphere, ideally arranged for serene contemplation. Day 8: Caserta. Situated a few miles outside Naples, the delightful gardens at Villa Porfidia, laid out in the second half of the 18th century, retain their period charm. The nearby royal palace at Caserta, begun 1751, is Italy’s most magnificent and accomplished emulation of Versailles. An awesome absolutist statement, it is set within parkland and gardens equally magnificent in scale. Lunch is in a private villa.Fly from Naples, arriving at London Gatwick at c. 10.30pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,270 or £3,050 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,780 or £3,560 without flights. Included meals: 3 lunches (including 1 picnic) and 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Excelsior, Naples (eurostarsexcelsior.com): 4-star hotel on the waterfront with spectacular views of Mount Vesuvius and the island of Capri. Sea views are available on request and for a supplement. Imperial Hotel Tramontano, Sorrento (hoteltramontano.com): 4-star, 19th-cent. grand hotel situated on Sorrento’s clifftop with a garden and good access to the town centre.
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How strenuous? There is a lot of walking. Pavements in Naples are often uneven, some roads are steep, traffic can be unpredictable. Some of the gardens are extensive with uneven ground. Participants need to be fit and sure-footed. Hydrofoil journeys can be affected by conditions at sea. Average distance by coach per day: 30 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Gardens of the Riviera, 22–28 March 2019 (p.85); Wines of Tuscany, 25–30 March 2019 (p.141); Gardens & Villas of Campagna Romana, 8–13 April 2019 (p.146); Gardens of Sintra, 8–13 April 2019 (p.175); The Via Emilia, 8–14 April 2019 (p.134); Romans in the Rhône Valley, 9–15 April 2019 (p.86); Gastronomic Provence, 9–16 April 2019 (p.84). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration: Capri, etching 1851. Vianelly.
For lecturers' biographies See pages 260–267 152
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Pompeii & Herculaneum Antiquities of the Bay of Naples 1–6 April 2019 (mf 471) 6 days • £2,260 Lecturer: Dr Mark Grahame 30 September–5 October 2019 (mf 768) 6 days • £2,260 Lecturer: Dr Nigel Spivey One of the most exciting tours possible dealing with Roman archaeology. A unique insight into everyday life in the Roman Empire. Two principal sites, both buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in ad 79 and preserved with unparalleled completeness. Important early Greek settlements, including Paestum, Cumae and Pozzuoli.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 3.15pm from London Gatwick to Naples (British Airways). Drive to the hotel in the hamlet of Seiano, above the town of Vico Equense, where all five nights are spent. Day 2: Paestum. Paestum was a major Greek settlement and is one of the most interesting archaeological sites in Italy. Three outstanding Greek Doric temples stand in a remarkable state of preservation. Visit also the excellent museum which contains a very rare ancient Greek painted tomb and fascinating sculptured panels (metopes) of the 6th-century bc, among the earliest anywhere.
Day 3: Cumae, Baia, Pozzuoli. Spend the day around the Bay of Naples at some little-visited but fascinating sites. Cumae was the first Greek settlement on mainland Italy, and material from here and other sites visited during the tour can be seen in the archaeological museum of the Phlegraean fields in the spectacularly situated castle at Baia. The port of Pozzuoli has a wellpreserved amphitheatre and market. Day 4: Pompeii. Since its first exploration during the 18th century, ancient Pompeii has been one of the world’s most famous archaeological excavations. The fascination of the site lies not only in the major public buildings such as the theatre, temples and the forum but also in the numerous domestic dwellings, from cramped apartments to luxurious houses with their mosaic pavements and gaudily frescoed walls. Day 5: Herculaneum, Oplontis. At Herculaneum, buried by the first pyroclastic surge which was cooler, timber and other fragile artefacts that normally do not survive have been preserved by the unique conditions of burial. Less than a quarter of this town has been excavated, and in the part preserved the emphasis is on private dwellings and their decoration. Visit the lavish villa at Torre Annunziata (ancient Oplontis), which may have been the home of Poppaea, wife of Nero. It is one of the loveliest of ancient sites, with rich wall paintings, a replanted garden and a swimming pool. Day 6: Naples. The Archaeological Museum in Naples has one of the finest collections in the world, and is the principal repository for both the small finds and the best-preserved mosaics and frescoes discovered at Pompeii and Herculaneum. Fly to London Gatwick, arriving at c. 9.00pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,260 or £2,050 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,540 or £2,330 without flights. Included meals: 2 lunches (including 1 picnic) and 3 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Grand Hotel Angiolieri (grandhotelangiolieri.it): modern 5-star hotel on the hill-top above the town of Vico Equense. Rooms with a sea view are available on request and for a supplement. How strenuous? There is a lot of walking on this tour, some of it over rough ground on archaeological sites and there is a lot of standing in museums and on archaeological sites. Sure-footedness is essential. The day spent in Pompeii can be tiring. Average distance by coach per day: 70 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine the April departure with: Civilisations of Sicily (for solo travellers), 18–30 March 2019 (p.161); Wines of Tuscany, 25–30 March 2019 (p.141); Palladian Villas, 26–31 March 2019 (p.124); The Via Emilia, 8–14 April 2019 (p.134); Gardens & Villas of Campagna Romana, 8–13 April 2019 (p.146). Or the September departure with: Civilisations of Sicily, 16–28 September 2019 (p.161); Walking to Santiago, 17–28 September 2019 (p.187); Classical Greece, 21–30 September 2019 (p.109); Walking in Southern Tuscany, 7–14 October 2019 (p.140); Friuli-Venezia Giulia, 7–12 October 2019 (p.123). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport. Illustration: Pompeii, steel engraving c. 1850.
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Campania’s favourable climate, fertile soils and natural harbours were attractive to the Greeks looking to trade and for places to settle. They founded their earliest colony at Cumae and others soon followed with Naples and Paestum (Posidonia) among them. The prosperity enjoyed by the Greek colonies is best seen at Paestum where three of the most complete Doric temples anywhere still stand. After falling under Roman dominion, Campania continued to prosper with wealth generated by agriculture and trade. Towns like Pompeii and Herculaneum thrived and wealthy Romans seeking to escape from the summer heat of Rome built villas along its coast. Campania became an imperial playground with the emperor among the most famous and notorious of all villa owners on the Bay of Naples. However, life on the Bay of Naples was struck by tragedy when Mount Vesuvius erupted in ad 79 and buried Pompeii and Herculaneum with volcanic ash. Paradoxically, this sudden obliteration preserved the towns with a level of completeness which has no parallel with any other archaeological site in the world. Excavation has revealed them almost in their entirety, providing a unique insight into everyday life in the Roman Empire. Even the smallest and most fragile objects of daily use have survived, along with wall paintings, floor mosaics, precious jewellery and household utensils. The immediacy and vividness with which the imagination is able to grasp a past civilisation is startling and unique.
Food & Wine Archaeology Gastronomy, oenology and archaeology in the Bay of Naples Stags, decorated with images of fruit, nuts and dates. It was a busy fishing port in antiquity, and a fishing boat is preserved in the museum. The heat of the eruption carbonised foodstuffs – see loaves, as well as grains, figs, lentils and much else. Lunch is at a modern winery on the slopes of Vesuvius. The villa at nearby Boscoreale has an antiquarium which is dedicated to the theme of agriculture, food and wine. Day 3: Pompeii, Altripalda. Since its first exploration during the 18th century, Pompeii has been one of the world’s most celebrated archaeological excavations. It is famous for its bakeries, bars and inns, and its houses with richly decorated dining rooms. See also the villa of the Mysteries, which shows both the wine-making process and the celebration of wine in the great frieze of the mysteries of Dionysus. Attached to the villa there were also vineyards, which have been excavated and reconstructed, and replanted by a leading Campanian wine-maker. Visit these before driving to the wine-maker’s enoteca for a tasting. Day 4: Naples. The Archaeological Museum in Naples has one of the finest collections in the world, and is the principal repository for both the small finds and the best-preserved relics discovered at Pompeii and Herculaneum. It contains numerous frescoes and mosaics (excavated before the 20th century), and a wide range of the objects of daily life, from the pots in which they cooked to the elaborate silver vessels which graced the best dinner parties. Fly from Naples to London Gatwick, arriving c. 7.30pm.
Practicalities
24–27 September 2019 (mf 735) 4 days • £1,570 Lecturer: Professor Andrew Wallace-Hadrill
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Visit the major sites of Pompeii and Herculaneum, but with a focus on how the Romans ate and drank. Special arrangements to see inside some houses and shops not usually open to the public. Two tastings of Vesuvian wines, including ancient grape varieties still grown in Pompeii. Food and wine were at the heart of Roman life. In the Bay of Naples we can follow every step of the process: the vineyards where grapes were grown and pressed; the bakeries in which bread was baked; the corner shops where food and drink were sold; the kitchens where feasts were prepared; the dining rooms where the food was consumed; not forgetting the latrines in which waste was disposed of. And as if that were not already enough, the Romans loved to decorate their walls with images of feasting and of the varied foodstuffs. It was an experience that verged on the religious, and images of Dionysus or Bacchus, the god of wine and intoxication, encouraged them as they drank. 154
There are plenty of standard tours of Pompeii and Herculaneum, but this one aims to follow the theme of food and drink, from antiquity to the present. We see how an ancient vineyard worked, and then compare it to a modern vineyard on the slopes of Vesuvius. We look at villas not just as museums of fine art, but places where the richness of the soil was exploited. We look at frescoes and vessels in the Naples archaeological museum, not just to admire their art, but to re-imagine their use in the great banquets which formed the culmination of a Roman day. We visit both town and country. Both Pompeii and Herculaneum open up a world of shops, bars and inns as well as grand houses with fine dining rooms. But the country villas, especially the villa at Boscoreale and the Villa of the Mysteries, take us back to how the wine was produced. And the continued tradition of wine and food production in the area means that we can ourselves eat and drink like Romans.
Itinerary
Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,570 or £1,360 without flights. Single occupancy: £1,650 or £1,440 without flights. Included meals: 2 lunches (including 1 picnic) and 2 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Miglio D’Oro Park Hotel, Herculaneum (migliodoroparkhotel.it): 4-star hotel in a renovated 18th-century Vesuvian villa, within walking distance of Herculaneum’s ruins. How strenuous? There is a lot of walking on this tour, some of it over rough ground or through vineyards, or up and down steps in wine-cellars. There is a lot of standing in museums and on archaeological sites. Sure-footedness is essential. Average distance by coach per day: 34 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Dark Age Brilliance, 15–22 September 2019 (p.133); Essential Puglia, 16–23 September 2019 (p.155); Gastronomic Crete, 29 September–7 October 2019 (p.110); World Heritage Malta, 30 September–6 October 2019 (p.165). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Day 1. Fly at c. 3.15pm from London Gatwick to Naples (British Airways). Drive to the hotel in Herculaneum, where all three nights are spent. Day 2: Herculaneum. Herculaneum has spectacular town houses, such as the house of the
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Illustration: Naples and Vesuvius, early-20th-century watercolour by Donald Maxwell.
Essential Puglia Art and architecture in the heel of Italy 16–23 September 2019 (mf 717) 8 days • £2,530 Lecturer: Dr Richard Plant Fascinating architecture, especially Norman and Baroque. Exceptionally attractive streetscapes in hilltop towns and coastal cities. Distinctive, dramatic limestone landscapes.
Day 2: Trani, Castel del Monte. A walk along the harbour of the small city of Trani includes the 12th-century church of Ognissanti and the magically beautiful Romanesque cathedral perched on the waterfront. In the afternoon drive out to Castel del Monte. Situated on an isolated peak, Frederick II’s extraordinary octagonal hunting lodge of c. 1240 is one of the most intriguing secular buildings of the Middle Ages. Day 3: Monte Sant’Angelo, San Giovanni Rotondo. High on the southern slopes of Monte Gargano sits Monte Sant’Angelo, where the apparition of the Archangel Michael in the 5th century has made the grotto sanctuary a popular destination for pilgrims. The massive castle was started by the Normans and extended by the Swabians, Aragonese and Bourbons. The Tomba di Rotari is a baptistery with 12th-century decorations and a domed roof. One of the most visited pilgrimage sites in the world, the complex of San Giovanni Rotondo includes San Pio’s new church designed by Renzo Piano.
Day 4: Bari. Capital of Puglia, Bari has a wonderful walled mediaeval quarter beside the sea, extensive and unspoilt. The Basilica of San Nicola, begun in 1087, is not only the first but also the greatest of Puglian Romanesque churches; the episcopal throne here is remarkable. Also visit the cathedral (1170) and the later mediaeval Angevin castle. Drive to Martina Franca for an overnight stay. Day 5: Martina Franca, Taranto. Before leaving Martina Franca, see the 17th-century Palazzo Ducale with its fine Baroque façade and the cathedral of San Martino. The National Archaeological Museum of Taranto houses one of Italy’s most important archeological collections, from Prehistoric times to the Middle Ages. It includes the Ori di Taranto (Golden Treasure of Taranto), a stunning collection of Hellenic-era golden artwork. Drive to Lecce where the final three nights are spent. Day 6: Lecce, Brindisi. Lecce is distinguished by an elaborate style of Baroque and Rococo decoration wrought in the soft, honey-coloured tufa of the region. The outstanding examples are the cathedral and the church of Santa Croce. See also the well preserved Roman theatre. Possessing the safest natural harbour on the Adriatic, Brindisi has been of intermittent strategic importance for over 24 centuries. Visit San Giovanni al Sepolcro with a splendid portal decorated with reliefs. Return to Lecce where there is some fee time. Day 7: Galatina, Gallipoli, Otranto. Explore the Salentine Peninsula, the southernmost tip of the heel of Italy. Drive out to the pretty little town of Galatina to see the remarkable frescoes from the first half of the 15th century in the Franciscan church of St Catherine. Gallipoli was the centre of Byzantine Italy until conquered by the Normans in 1071. The highly picturesque old town is on an off-shore island protruding into the Ionian Sea. The ancient city of Otranto, the easternmost in Italy, has a Norman cathedral with outstanding 12th-century floor mosaics. Illustration: Bari, San Nicola, engraving c. 1890.
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The heel and spur of boot-shaped Italy, Puglia is now returning to the limelight after being ignored or disparaged for centuries. While the sobriquet ‘the new Tuscany’ is a lazy cliché and dangerously misleading (with its raw limestone landscape Puglia looks and feels like a different country), it is the case that only in the last couple of decades have Italophiles and discerning travellers been taking the region seriously. Its strategic position meant that it was repeatedly invaded and conquered, and each dynasty left its mark. Roman remains are frequent but tend to have been all but eradicated by later prosperity – or warfare. The many magnificent Romanesque cathedrals bear witness to the Norman conquest of southern Italy, one of the most notable episodes in mediaeval history. Churches and castles from the subsequent Hohenstaufen and Angevin eras abound and exhibit French, Lombard, Byzantine and Saracenic influences. Much later there was another artistic outburst, appropriately international but characteristically idiosyncratic, a highly elaborate version of Baroque architecture and decoration. Lecce is a glorious example: churches and palaces with intricately embellished façades carved from the local stone line the streets and squares of this lively town, the regional capital of the Salento. A journey from the north to the south of Puglia, this tour takes in the most important mediaeval and Baroque sites and well as the noteworthy items from other eras. Particularly memorable are the unspoilt centres of ancient cities and villages built up around narrow twisting alleys, some tumbling down hillsides, most whitewashed, all full of picturesque incident. Waterfronts with ancient harbours are another feature. There is scenic variety from rolling hills to open plains, in parts enlivened by trulli, conical stone houses which are a unique vernacular phenomenon. In the autumnal light and cooler temperatures Puglia’s charms can now be enjoyed with comfort and ease. While including some of the major items visited on our nine-day Normans in the South tour, this itinerary differs by lessening the focus on that era and encompassing a wider range of architecture, art and history.
an Early Christian lower church. Continue to Trani, where the first three nights are spent.
Itinerary Day 1: Bitonto. Fly at c. 9.00am from London City to Bari via Milan Linate (Alitalia). Drive to Bitonto, which has one of the finest of Romanesque cathedrals in the region, with good sculpture and Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Normans in the South Castles and cathedrals in Puglia, Basilicata and Campania
Dr Richard Plant Architectural historian and lecturer specialising in the Middle Ages with a strong interest in the modern. He studied at Cambridge, followed by the Courtauld, where he obtained his PhD. He was Deputy Academic Director at Christie’s Education and has published on English and German architecture. See page 260 for all lecturers' biographies.
Day 8: Ostuni. Ostuni is another delightful whitewashed hilltop town with bemusingly winding streets. At its centre is a late Gothic cathedral with three fine rose windows. Fly from Bari via Milan Linate, arriving at London Heathrow at c. 8.45pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,530 or £2,270 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,820 or £2,560 without flights. Included meals: 5 dinners with wine. Accomodation. Hotel San Paolo al Convento, Trani (hotelsanpaoloalconventotrani.it): charming 4-star hotel converted from a 15th-century convent, although service and maintenance are not always quite up to standard. Relais Villa San Martino, Near Martina Franca (relaisvillasanmartino.it): converted villa 3 km outside the town. Rooms are tastefully and individually decorated but vary in size. Patria Palace Hotel, Lecce (patriapalace.com): a stylish 5-star hotel in an excellent location near the church of Santa Croce. Rooms are spacious and elegantly furnished. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking, some of it uphill as the coach cannot enter the historic centres. Some days involve a lot of driving. Average distance by coach per day: 70 miles
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Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Courts of Northern Italy, 8–15 September 2019 (p.132); Food & Wine Archaeology, 24–27 September 2019 (p.154); Crécy, Agincourt & Waterloo, 25–29 September 2019 (p.54). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
2–10 April 2019 (mf 475) 9 days • £2,780 Lecturer: John McNeill An architectural tour of one of the most sophisticated kingdoms in mediaeval Europe. Splendid Norman legacy of Romanesque, with churches of unprecedented size and grandeur. Later architecture of equal magnificence, in particular an elaborate flowering of Baroque. Attractive, well preserved town centres and a dramatic landscape of raw limestone. The Norman conquest of southern Italy was one of the most remarkable episodes in mediaeval history. Whereas England was subjugated by a sizeable and highly organised Norman army, the ‘Kingdom in the Sun’ was won by small bands of soldiers of fortune. They trickled in during the eleventh century when the tangled political situation and incessant feuding made the area ripe for exploitation by ambitious knights in search of adventure and personal gain. By the end of the century they had expelled the Byzantines from the mainland and the
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Saracens from Sicily, and by 1127 all Sicily and southern Italy was ruled by one Norman king. This cosmopolitan kingdom was one of the best administered and most culturally sophisticated in Europe. As in England, in the wake of conquest there arose splendid new churches of unprecedented size and grandeur. A mixture of French, Lombard, Byzantine, Saracenic and ancient Roman elements, south Italian Romanesque is one of the most distinct and beautiful of the variants of this truly international style. Prosperity and creativity continued after the extinction of the Norman dynasty in 1194 by the Hohenstaufen from Germany. In the first half of the thirteenth century the region was dominated by the extraordinary Emperor Frederick II, ‘Stupor Mundi’, ‘Wonder of the World’. He was as courageous and ambitious in artistic and intellectual spheres as he was in administration, diplomacy and war. Much later there was another artistic outburst, appropriately international but characteristically idiosyncratic: a highly elaborate version of Baroque architecture and decoration. The heel and spur of boot-shaped Italy, Puglia is remote from the better-known parts of the peninsula, and its raw limestone landscape wholly
' Outstandingly excellent. John McNeill has an awesome breadth of knowledge but is always approachable, never intimidating. His enthusiasm for his subjects is infectious. Nothing is ever too much trouble for him.' Participant on another of John McNeill's tours.
Day 4: Brindisi, Bitonto. Possessing the safest natural harbour on the Adriatic, the provincial capital of Brindisi has been of intermittent strategic importance for over 24 centuries. Visit S. Benedetto, with its Romanesque bell tower. Bitonto has one of the finest of Romanesque cathedrals with good sculpture and an early Christian lower church. Continue to Trani where the next four nights are spent. Day 5: Bari, Trani. Bari, capital of Puglia, has an extensive and unspoilt mediaeval quarter beside the sea. The Basilica di S. Nicola, begun in 1087, is not only the first but also the greatest of Puglian Romanesque churches; the episcopal throne here is remarkable. Also visit the cathedral (1170) and later mediaeval Angevin castle. Back in Trani, visit the magically beautiful Romanesque cathedral on the waterfront. Day 6: Castel del Monte, Barletta. Castel del Monte, situated on an isolated peak, is Frederick II’s extraordinarily sophisticated hunting lodge and one of the most intriguing secular buildings of the Middle Ages. The castle at Barletta houses a bust of Frederick II. Day 7: Canosa, Melfi, Venosa. Canosa di Puglia has an 11th-century cathedral. Continue to the hilltop town of Melfi in Basilicata, which was for a while the main centre of Norman power in Italy. The impressive but unfinished Abbazia della SS. Trinità at Venosa was built from the 12th-century over an early Christian church. Return to Puglia for the final night in Trani.
Day 9: Sant’Angelo in Formis. The Basilica di S. Angelo in Formis has outstanding 11th-century frescoes. Fly from Rome to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 7.15pm.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 9.00am (Alitalia) from London City to Brindisi, via Milan, and drive on to Lecce where the first three nights are spent. Day 2: Squinzano, Gallipoli, Otranto. Explore the Salentine Peninsula, the southernmost tip of the heel of Italy. Visit the Abbey of Sta. Maria di Cerrate, a 12th-century Romanesque complex. Gallipoli was the centre of Byzantine Italy until conquered by the Normans in 1071; the old town is on an off-shore island. Otranto, captured by Normans in 1068, has a cathedral with outstanding 12th-century floor mosaics. Day 3: Lecce. Lecce is distinguished by an elaborate style of Baroque and Rococo decoration wrought in the soft, honey-coloured tufa of the region, an outstanding example being the church of Sta. Croce. See also the Norman church of SS. Niccolò e Cataldo, founded by Tancred. Free time.
Architectural historian of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. He lectures for Oxford University’s Department of Continuing Education and is Honorary Secretary of the British Archaeological Association. Publications include articles in learned journals and guidebooks to Normandy and the Loire Valley. See page 260 for all lecturers' biographies.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,780 or £2,580 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,120 or £2,920 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 5 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Patria Palace Hotel, Lecce (patriapalace.com): stylish 5-star hotel in an excellent location near the church of Sta. Croce in the historic centre. Hotel San Paolo al Convento, Trani (hotelsanpaoloalconventotrani. it): charming 4-star hotel converted from a 15thcentury convent. Grand Hotel Angiolieri, Seiano (grandhotelangiolieri.it): modern 5-star hotel in the village of Seiano, close to the town of Vico Equense. How strenuous? The tour involves a lot of walking on uneven pavement in archaeological sites as well as in the town centres where vehicular access is restricted. It should not be attempted by anyone who has difficulty with everyday walking and stair-climbing. Fitness is essential. Some days involve a lot of driving. Average distance by coach per day: 99 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Civilisations of Sicily (for solo travellers), 18–30 March 2019 (p.161); Wines of Tuscany, 25–30 March 2019 (p.141); Granada & Córdoba, 25 March–1 April 2019 (p.201); Palladian Villas, 26–31 March 2019 (p.124). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
What else is included in the price? See page 6 For lecturers' biographies See pages 260–267
Illustration: Castel del Monte, lithograph after Edward Lear c. 1850.
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different from the silky richness of central and northern Italy. The last day of the tour is spent across the Apennines in Campania. This region presents another face of Italy, distinctly southern but with an equally cosmopolitan and panMediterranean cultural history.
Day 8: Benevento, Salerno. Cross the Apennines to Campania. Benevento was a strategic Roman colonia, Lombard Duchy and Norman from 1081. The Arch of Trajan is one of the finest surviving Roman triumphal arches. Sta. Sofia has a magnificent 12th-century cloister. The seaport of Salerno has an 11th-century cathedral with a fine sculpted portal and a 12th-century ivory altarpiece. Overnight in Seiano.
John McNeill
Gastronomic Puglia ‘L’orto d’Italia’: food and wine in the vegetable garden of Italy 28 April–5 May 2019 (mf 503) 8 days • £3,240 Lecturers: Christine Smallwood & Dr R. T. Cobianchi The ‘heel’ of Italy is one of Europe’s most bountiful agricultural areas. The staples of Italian cuisine – bread, pasta, oil and cheese – in their primitive perfection. A spectrum of traditions from family-run trattorie to Michelin-starred restaurants. Sample the architecture of one of the most sophisticated kingdoms in mediaeval Europe. Led by two lecturers: a cultural historian and a gastronomic specialist. The Pugliesi don’t just want you to eat their food, they want you to savour their territorio; and they produce a lot to savour. The long, southern region known as l’orto d’Italia (the vegetable garden of Italy) is predominantly level; and blessed with fertile soil and a benign climate of mild winters
and long, hot summers. Vast acreage is used for the cultivation of grains and the brilliant sun gives an intense flavour and fragrance to the profusion of fruit and vegetables. Readily available flat land facilitates grazing and animal husbandry, with excellent cheese-making. The long coastline provides abundant fish and shellfish, and Puglia proudly produces more olive oil than any other Italian region, using it generously. Many consider the food here to be a prime example of the Mediterranean diet. Most of the region faces east across the Adriatic, a gateway to eastern Europe, Greece, Croatia, Albania and Turkey. It is where Greek influence is felt most strongly in Italy, from the indigenous grape – Nero di Troia – to the fish soups that recall Hellenistic recipes. The influence of Frederick II, the extraordinary emperor of the Hohenstaufen dynasty that ruled the region from 1194, persists in and beyond the kitchen: his Castel del Monte is a striking physical reference point and in its environs we visit an organic farmer at a Napoleonic castle and a chef with an extraordinary kitchen garden. We see the celebrated loaves of Altamura being made (some of the best bakers in Italy are of Puglian descent), visit a traditional
Illustration: Trani cathedral, engraving 1906.
salumi producer and explore the culinary culture with the help of copious and renowned antipasti. Wines range from pale (Locorotondo white) through the best rosato in Italy, to the deepest, darkest fullest reds of the more internationally celebrated Primitivo and Negroamaro grapes – as well as lesser-known indigenous varieties, such as the sweet Moscato di Trani. We have selected authentic establishments where the warmth of welcome and genuine readiness to please is as much a part of the experience as the appetising food and wine they serve. The Milanesi have been quietly relishing Puglia for a long time, and although the famous burrata cheese is now shipped around the world daily, there is nothing like eating it fresh from the maker. In fact, there is nothing like eating in Puglia, undoubtedly one of the most colourful, generous and exuberant of all regional Italian kitchens.
Itinerary Day 1: Trani. Fly at c. 10.50am from London Heathrow to Bari, via Munich. Drive to the small city of Trani, stopping on the way to visit a producer of Moscato di Trani, a sweet wine whose history dates back to the 13th century, when the merchants of the Republic of Venice made it famous throughout much of Europe. First of three nights in Trani. Day 2: Trani, near Andria. A walk along the harbour includes the 12th-century church of Ognissanti and the magically beautiful Romanesque cathedral perched on the waterfront. Drive to the countryside near Andria to visit Giancarlo Ceci’s family-run organic and biodynamic farm and winery. Visit the vineyards, the farm and the cantina, as well as the wine cellars in the castle where the Ceci family still lives. There is a wine tasting and a simple but plentiful lunch of fresh produce from the farm.
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Day 3: Andria, Montegrosso. Nearby Andria is the home of burrata, the now world-famous mozzarella stuffed with stracciatella – an oozing mixture of cream and mozzarella scraps. Visit an artisan producer, where there is the opportunity to try your hand at making it. Also in Andria is the Museo del Confetto (sugared almonds). Continue to the small town of Montegrosso for lunch at Pietro Zito’s Antichi Sapori. A self-styled ‘chefcontadino’ (farmer chef), Zito gives a guided tour of his extensive orto – a fitting introduction to one of the best lunches in Puglia. Day 4: Castel del Monte, Altamura, near Monopoli. Castel del Monte: Frederick II’s extraordinary octagonal hunting lodge of c. 1240 is one of the most intriguing secular buildings of the Middle Ages. Continue to Altamura, where the cathedral, one of four palatine churches in Puglia, is another Frederick II legacy. Lunch is at a local restaurant with an orecchiette-making demonstration (ear-shaped pasta), and is followed by a visit to a bakery that produces Altamura’s unique bread. Continue to a converted masseria near Monopoli, where the following four nights are spent. 158
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Basilicata Italy’s undiscovered south Day 5: Martina Franca, near Locorotondo, Carovigno. The gastronomic speciality of Martina Franca is capocollo, a cold cut marinated in spiced red wine and smoked with oak and almond husk. Visit a family-run producer and taste the meat with wine. Continue through the Itria Valley to Martina Franca, a beautiful hill town of winding streets, sudden vistas and Baroque and Rococo houses and churches. In the afternoon, visit a producer of Locorotondo white wine. Dinner is at a Michelin-starred restaurant in Carovigno. Day 6: Monopoli, near Alberobello, Ceglie Messapica. Some free time in Monopoli. Visit an award-winning oleificio near Alberobello to learn the art of tasting olive oil. Ceglie Messapica is a delightful town containing a Norman castle and several churches. It has made a name for itself in recent years as a centre of gastronomy, relying on the produce of the local area where agriculture is the largest employer. Lunch is at an outstanding restaurant. Discover biscotti cegliesi, local biscuits made from almonds and cherry jam. Day 7: Lecce, Salice Salentino, Conversano. Lecce is distinguished by an elaborate style of Baroque and Rococo decoration wrought in the soft, honey-coloured tufa of the region. The outstanding examples are the cathedral and the church of Santa Croce. See also the well preserved Roman theatre. The wines of the Salento are the best-known in Puglia; visit a highly rated dynamic winery just outside Lecce. In the evening, drive to the congenial town of Conversano for a passeggiata and a final Michelin-starred dinner. Day 8. Fly from Bari to London Heathrow, via Munich, arriving c. 5.00pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,240 or £3,000 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,700 or £3,460 without flights. Included meals: 6 lunches, 4 dinners, with wine.
How strenuous? There is a lot of walking, some of it over rough ground and uneven paving. Fitness and sure-footedness are essential. The tour should not be attempted by anyone who has difficulty with everyday walking and stair-climbing. Some days involve a lot of driving, and the coach often cannot reach town centres. There is a lot of driving on this tour; Puglia is a very long region and we have decided to keep hotel changes to a minimum. Average distance by coach per day: 77 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Toledo & La Mancha, 6–13 May 2019 (p.196); Tuscan Gardens, 6–11 May 2019 (p.139). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
A region rich in archaeological collections and Norman and Romanesque architecture. Unknown and unspoilt – a chance to explore the countryside and small towns of southern Italy with few other tourists. Based throughout in Matera, a unesco World Heritage Site and a 2019 European Capital of Culture, staying in a cave hotel. While it may be tendentious to claim that anywhere in Italy remains ‘unknown’, the region of Basilicata does seem to offer one of the few remaining opportunities to experience an unspoilt and unfamiliar region. As in-step to the heel of Puglia and the toe of Calabria, Basilicata has always missed out on the flow of visitors and the concomitant income that its neighbours have attracted as springboards to the eastern Mediterranean and to Sicily. This also partially explains its historic reputation as one of the poorest regions of Italy. But while undeniably without the more spectacular or influential cultural achievements other Italian regions may boast, humble Basilicata has sufficient fascinating sites and a varied cultural heritage to enthral the visitor. Matera is the cultural capital of Basilicata – and a 2019 European Capital of Culture. Most impressive are the Sassi, the hundreds of caves attractively tiered along the two ravines that
thrust into the heart of the town. Developed, enhanced and inhabited for over a thousand years, the caves were cleared as slums in the 1950s but are now being thoughtfully and sympathetically re-developed. Equally surprising is the rest of Matera, which feels more like a vibrant historic town located in say Emilia-Romagna or the Veneto than in one of the allegedly least developed parts of Italy. This energetic if provincial atmosphere is heightened by the improvements that have recently transformed the town. But the tour enjoys the whole of Basilicata. Passing through verdant and rolling hills, there are visits to Melfi and Venosa, both of which possess mighty Norman fortresses and evocative Romanesque churches, and lovely Montescaglioso to the south, sprawling across the hills and whose imposing Benedictine abbey flourished under the Norman lords. On the coast, there are the important Ancient Greek settlements of Metaponto and Policoro. Basilicata seems set to become a major destination for discerning visitors. We would recommend this tour to those who would like to experience it before this happens.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 9.00am from London City to Bari via Milan Linate (Alitalia). Drive to Matera where the tour is based throughout. Day 2: Matera. The morning walk includes the church of San Giovanni Battista (1220), the Baroque church of San Francesco d’Assisi and the archaeological museum. The cathedral, a fine example of southern Italian Romanesque, Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Accommodation. Hotel San Paolo al Convento, Trani (hotelsanpaoloalconvento.it): charming 4-star hotel converted from a 15th-century convent, although service and maintenance are not always quite up to standard. Il Melograno, near Monopoli (melograno.com): very comfortable 5-star hotel in a converted masseria; traditionalstyle rooms are furnished with antiques.
16–21 March 2019 (mf 448) 6 days • £2,070 Lecturer: John McNeill
Basilicata continued
dominates the city. In the afternoon, walk down the Sasso Caveoso to see a handful of cave churches, many of them with frescoes. Day 3: Venosa, Melfi. Drive to Venosa to visit the impressive but unfinished monastery of La Trinità, built over an early Christian church. Walk through the charming town centre and see the archaeological collection in the late 15th-century castle. Continue to Melfi, where the impressive Norman castle hosts a good archaeological museum. The Norman origins of the cathedral, rebuilt in the late 17th century, are still visible in the splendid bell tower. Day 4: Matera, Montescaglioso. The Crypt of Original Sin outside Matera is known as the ‘Sistine chapel’ of cave wall paintings; it is not only an outstanding discovery for the history of early mediaeval art but is also an example of the most advanced conservation techniques. Drive to the hilltop town of Montescaglioso, overlooking the Bradano valley, to visit the Benedictine abbey of St Michael the Archangel, one of the largest and most impressive abbeys in southern Italy. The afternoon is free. Day 5: Metaponto, Santa Maria d’Anglona, Policoro. The ancient city of Metaponto was one of the most important Greek settlements in the West; though its site is ruinous the museum display charts most of its history. Isolated in countryside, Santa Maria d’Anglona is a lovely church, rich in late 12th-century frescoes. There is a picnic lunch here. Visit the Museo Archeologico della Siritide in Policoro which has exhibits from the former Greek colonies of Siris and Heraclea. Day 6: Matera. On the way to the airport, visit Altamura, whose Cathedral was built in 1232 by Emperor Frederick II. Fly from Bari to London City, via Linate, arriving c. 7.30pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,070 or £1,910 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,290 or £2,130 without flights.
SICILY As much part of the experience as these masterpieces, however, are the picturesque hill towns, coastal settlements lapped by a gentle sea, and haphazard alleys and vibrant city boulevards ornamented with wrought iron balconies. In every town there are buildings of unexpected magnificence and a plenitude of modest structures of ineffable charm. Some are well preserved, some are crumbling – witness to a deeper malaise.
Sicily is the pre-eminent island in the Mediterranean – the largest, and the most eventful historically. It is also more or less in the middle, a stepping stone between Europe and Africa and a refuge between the Levant and the Atlantic. Throughout history Sicily was viewed as a fortuitous landfall by migrating peoples and a prized possession by ambitious adventurers and expansionist princes. And as the Mediterranean has been catalyst and disseminator of a greater variety of civilisations than any other of the world’s seas, the island has accumulated an exceptionally rich and incomparably varied inventory of art, architecture and archaeological remains.
For much of its history, Sicily was regularly one of the most prosperous of European territories, but political mismanagement and social dislocation led to a long, deep slump. Into the space vacated by absentee landlords and self-serving authorities, the ‘Honoured Society’ inserted itself as protector – though it has been even more exploitative and malign than the worst of earlier tyrants. And the region remains low in the tables of prosperity.
Here are to be found some of the finest surviving ancient Greek temples and theatres; Roman floor mosaics which have no peer in Europe; and wall and vault mosaics by Byzantine craftsmen which are unequalled anywhere. Mediaeval churches and Baroque palaces abound, and there are many memorable paintings, sculptures and other works of art.
Matters are improving, however. Conservation and curatorship have made great strides in recent years, the Mafia has lost its dominance, poverty has lessened, and other indicators of well-being – the high quality of cuisine among them – are more evident as each year goes by. Sicily has been a part of a unified Italy since 1861 and ethnically and culturally it is unmistakably Italian. But it is also distinctly Sicilian, a world apart. Forming the backdrop to all this are some ineluctable landscapes, the formidable stark hills of the interior and the glittering greens of intensely farmed valleys. The smoking bulk of Mount Etna, Europe’s largest active volcano, is visible from much of the eastern part of the island. OUR TOURS IN SICILY Civilisations of Sicily Page 161 Opera in Southern Sicily Page 162 Gastronomic Sicily Page 163 Palermo Revealed Page 164
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Included meals: 3 lunches (including 1 picnic) and 3 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Sant’Angelo Luxury Resort, Matera (santangeloresort.it): stylish 5-star hotel in the Sasso Caveoso, overlooking the ravine. How strenuous? Matera’s topography and the hotel’s location mean that there is a lot of walking up and down hills and cobbled steps which can be slippery. Coaches cannot be used within the town centres. Good mobility, surefootedness and agility are essential. Average distance by coach per day: 66 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Civilisations of Sicily, 4–16 March 2019 (p.161); Gastronomic Andalucía, 8–15 March 2019 (p.200); Venetian Palaces, 12–16 March 2019 (p.127); Gardens of the Riviera, 22–28 March 2019 (p.85). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport. Illustration, previous page: 18th-century engraving.
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Messina
Palermo Monreale
Trapani
Reggio di Calabria
Cefalù
Segesta Taormina
Marsala Selinunte
Sicily
Catania
Agrigento
Syracuse Mediterranean Sea Noto
Civilisations of Sicily Mediterranean crossroads: three thousand years of creativity 4–16 March 2019 (mf 435) 13 days • £4,570 Lecturer: Dr Philippa Joseph 18–30 March 2019 (mf 460) Exclusively for solo travellers 13 days • £5,280 Lecturer: Dr Luca Leoncini 1–13 April 2019 (mf 469) 13 days • £4,780 Lecturer: Christopher Newall 16–28 September 2019 (mf 750) 13 days • £4,860 Lecturer: Eireann Marshall 14–26 October 2019 (mf 799) 13 days • £4,860 Lecturer: John McNeill Covers all the island, showcasing the main s ights and many lesser-known ones. The whole gamut – Greek, Roman, Norman, Renaissance, Baroque and nineteenth century. Full but carefully paced and with only three hotels. Cross the Straits of Messina to Reggio di Calabria to see the Riace Bronzes. Several special arrangements to visit places not normally open to the public.
and an art gallery with a painting by the 15thcentury artist Antonello da Messina. Day 4: Segesta, Selinunte. Set in an unspoilt hilly landscape, the almost complete but fascinatingly unfinished 5th-century temple at Segesta was built by indigenous if thoroughly Hellenised Sicilians. On an adjacent hill is a spectacularly sited theatre with views to the sea. Selinunte, founded by Greeks from the Attic city of Megara c. 650 bc, is a vast archaeological site, renowned for its many temples and acropolis. Day 5: Agrigento. The remains of the Greek colony of Akragas at modern-day Agrigento constitute one of the greatest sites bequeathed by the ancient world. A relatively late foundation (580 bc), it rose rapidly to riches and constructed eight peripteral temples, the most numerous group in the Greek world. That dedicated to Olympian Zeus was the largest of all Doric temples before being felled by Carthaginians and earthquakes, while the Temple ‘of Concord’ is the best preserved. Day 6: Palermo. San Giovanni degli Eremiti is a Norman church with five cupolas and a charming garden. The cathedral, a building of many periods though largely mediaeval, has grand royal and imperial tombs. Visit the archaeological museum (reopened in 2017) and displays one of the richest collections of Punic and Ancient Greek art in Italy. Illustration: Syracuse, Temple of Minerva, 18th-century copper engraving.
Day 7: Palermo, Piazza Armerina. Visit Castello della Zisa, an Arab-Norman Palace. Then leave Palermo and drive through the hilly interior of Sicily. At Piazza Armerina are the remains of one of the finest villas of the late-Roman Empire, whose floor mosaics comprise the most vital and colourful manifestation of Roman figurative art in Europe. Continue to the east coast for the first of three nights in Taormina. Day 8: Taormina. Free day in this extremely pretty town. The Teatro Greco (actually largely Roman) is incomparably sited with far-reaching views encompassing smouldering Mount Etna, the Ionian sea and the Calabrian coast of mainland Italy. The town itself, clinging to a hillside with beaches far below, has buildings from five centuries as well as further Roman structures. A smart resort since the 19th century, our hotel has shaded gardens which spill down a series of terraces. (Also a swimming pool which is usually open between March and October). Day 9: Messina, Reggio di Calabria. Drive along the coast to Messina. The city was one of Caravaggio’s Sicilian refuges, and in the art gallery there are two paintings by him and the best surviving work by the 15th-century painter Antonello da Messina. Cross the Straits of Messina by hydrofoil to Reggio di Calabria on mainland Italy to see the Riace Bronzes, over-life-size male nudes associated with Phidias and Polyclitus, among the finest Greek sculpture to survive.
Option to combine the September departure of this tour with World Heritage Malta, 30 September–6 October 2019 (see page 165).
Itinerary
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Day 1: Palermo. March: fly at c. 9.00am from London City, via Milan or Rome, to Palermo (Alitalia). April, September & October: fly at c. 3.00pm from London Gatwick to Catania (British Airways) and drive across the island to Palermo. The largest and most interesting city on the island, Palermo has been capital of Sicily since the period of Saracenic occupation in the 9th century. It reached a peak under the Normans and again during the Age of Baroque. First of six nights here. Day 2: Palermo. A morning walk through the old centre includes visits to several oratories and outstanding Norman buildings including La Martorana with fine mosaics. Lunch is at a private palace, by special arrangement. In the afternoon see the collection of pictures in the 15th-century Palazzo Abatellis. In the evening there is an out-of-hours visit to the Palatine Chapel in the palace of the Norman kings. Entirely encrusted with Byzantine mosaics, this is perhaps the finest assembly of Byzantine art to survive anywhere. Day 3: Monreale, Cefalù. The small town of Monreale dominates a verdant valley southwest of Palermo. Its cathedral is one of the finest Norman churches on the island and possesses the largest scheme of Byzantine mosaic decoration to survive anywhere. Cefalù, a charming coastal town, has another massive Norman cathedral, also with outstanding mosaics, Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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' One reason we enjoy travelling with Martin Randall is for the special access an individual tourist could not have. A major highlight for the trip was the private viewing of the Palatine Chapel in Palermo. It was an unforgettable experience.' S.B. & E.B., participants on Civilisations of Sicily in 2018.
Day 10: Catania, Siracusa. Sicily’s second city, Catania was largely rebuilt after the earthquake of 1693 with long straight streets lined with Baroque palaces. Special arrangements to see a magnificent private palazzo and a Byzantine chapel, and visits to the enormous monastery of St Nicola and harmonious cathedral square. Continue to Syracuse, founded as a Greek colony in 733 bc, became the most important city of Magna Græcia. Late-afternoon visit to the 5th-century bc theatre, the largest of its type to survive, and the Roman amphitheatre. First of three nights in Syracuse. Day 11: Syracuse. The Island of Ortygia, the ancient heart of Syracuse, is densely packed with structures from ancient Greek to Stile Liberty, one of the largest areas of unremittingly picturesque townscape to be found anywhere. The day’s walks thread through meandering alleys, little piazze and seaside promenades, lingering at buildings such as the cathedral, unique in incorporating a Doric temple of c. 480 bc, and the mediaeval Catalan-style Palazzo Bellomo. Great paintings include Antonello’s Annunciation and Caravaggio’s Burial of St Lucy. Day 12: Noto, Syracuse. Rebuilt after an earthquake in 1693, the hill town of Noto is one of the loveliest and most homogenous Baroque towns in Italy. All of honey-coloured stone, vistas are enlivened with carved stone balconies with elaborate ironwork. Visit the cathedral, a convent and a suite of Empire-style rooms in a palazzo. Return to Syracuse in the late afternoon and visit the excellent Museum of Antiquities. Day 13: Syracuse. March: fly from Catania, via Milan or Rome, arriving London Heathrow at c. 7.15pm. April, September & October: fly from Catania, arriving London Gatwick at c. 11.15pm. In September, if combining this tour with World Heritage Malta: fly from Catania to Malta (Ryanair or Air Malta) and take a taxi to the hotel. Two extra nights in Valletta.
Practicalities MAINLAND EUROPE: Italy
Prices, per person: 4–16 March 2019. Two sharing: £4,570 or £4,410 without flights. Single occupancy: £5,350 or £5,190 without flights. 18–30 March 2019 (exclusively for solo travellers): £5,280 or £5,120 without flights. 1–13 April 2019. Two sharing: £4,780 or £4,470 without flights. Single occupancy: £5,650 or £5,340 without flights. 16–28 September & 14–26 October 2019. Two sharing: £4,860 or £4,550 without flights. Single occupancy: £5,760 or £5,450 without flights. Included meals: 5 lunches (including one picnic) and 7 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Grand Hotel Piazza Borsa, Palermo (piazzaborsa.it): centrally-located 4-star hotel housed in an assortment of historical buildings. Hotel Villa Belvedere, Taormina (villabelvedere.it): charming 4-star family-run hotel in the old town, with its own garden (rooms 162
5–11 NOVEMBER 2019 CELEBRATING MUSIC AND PLACE A new and unprecedented private festival in southeastern Sicily. Half a dozen Baroque and Classical operas (concert performances and semi-staged).
A choice of hotels on the island of Ortigia in Syracuse, amid utterly charming townscape and sea views. Operas here and in Noto, Modica and other picturesque small towns.
Top rank opera ensembles and soloists: Classical Opera, La Nuova Musica, Odhecaton, the Early Opera Company and Hampstead Garden Opera. Wonderful historic theatres, which have been beautifully restored.
vary in size and outlook). Algilà Ortigia Charme Hotel, Syracuse (algila.it): charming seafront 4-star hotel on the island of Ortygia. How strenuous? This tour involves a lot of walking, some of it over rough ground at archaeological sites and cobbled or uneven paving in town centres. Fitness and sure-footedness are essential. There are also some long coach journeys. Average distance by coach per day: 73 miles. Flights. We opt to travel to and from Sicily indirect with Alitalia in March because the only direct flights to the island in this period are with low-cost airlines, with whom it is not currently viable for us to make a group booking. British Airways only flies directly from London Gatwick to Catania from late-April to October (these flights are also subject to confirmation). Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Price, Civilisations of Sicily (September departure) and World Heritage Malta combined. Two sharing: £8,030 or £7,720 without the tour flights. Single occupancy: £9,680 or £9,370 without the tour flights. This includes accommodation in Valletta (2 nights), one-way flight Catania to Malta and airport transfers. These arrangements are prebooked but unescorted.
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Please contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com/festivals
Other possible combinations: Combine the 4–16 March departure with: Connoisseur’s Rome, 26 February–3 March 2019 (p.150); Essential Rome, 26 February–4 March 2019 (p.149); Basilicata, 16–21 March 2019 (p.159); Minoan Crete, 18–27 March 2019 (p.112). Or the 18–30 March departure with: Venetian Palaces, 12–16 March 2019 (p.127); Gardens of the Bay of Naples, 30 March–5 March 2019 (p.152); Pompeii & Herculaneum, 1–6 April 2019 (p.153); Classical Turkey, 1–10 April 2019 (p.207); Normans in the South, 2–10 April 2019 (p.156). Or the 1–13 April departure with: Wines of Tuscany, 25–30 March 2019 (p.141); Granada & Córdoba, 25 March–1 April 2019 (p.201); Palladian Villas, 26–31 March 2019 (p.124). Or the 16–28 September departure with: Courts of Northern Italy, 8–15 September 2019 (p.132); The Heart of Italy, 9–16 September 2019 (p.143); Gastronomic Crete, 29 September–7 October 2019 (p.110); Pompeii & Herculaneum, 30 September–5 October 2019 (p.153); Aragón: Hidden Spain, 30 September–8 October 2019 (p.192); Palladian Villas, 1–6 October 2019 (p.124). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Gastronomic Sicily Food and wine in the west 11–18 November 2019 (mf 885) 8 days • £3,060 Lecturer: Marc Millon Colourful Palermo street markets, authentic salt flats near Trapani, historic cellars in Marsala. Learn about making wine, olive oil and artisan foods from the craftsmen and women who carry on these age-old traditions. Spectrum of culinary experiences from street food in Palermo to dinner in a palazzo. Emphasis on authentic methods rather than haute cuisine. Option to combine this tour with Opera in Southern Sicily, 5–11 November 2019 (opposite).
Itinerary Day 1: Palermo. Fly at c. 9.00am from London City to Palermo, via Milan (Alitalia). Palermo is the largest and most interesting city on the island: capital of Sicily from the period of Saracenic occupation in the 9th century, it reached a peak under the Normans and again during the Age of Baroque. First of four nights in Palermo. Day 2: Palermo. A morning walk to the city’s best market, sampling authentic street food. See also key cultural sites such as the cathedral, a building of many periods, and the church of S. Cataldo. In the afternoon see outstanding mosaics at the 12th-century Palace of the Normans, including the Palatine Chapel. Dinner at a private palazzo. Day 3: Monreale, Mondello. Monreale dominates a verdant valley southwest of Palermo, and its cathedral is one of the finest Norman churches with the largest scheme of mosaic decoration to survive from the Middle Ages. Lunch is at a Michelin-starred restaurant in Mondello, a charming seaside town known for its Art Nouveau villas, once the seat of the Palermitano high bourgeoisie and aristocracy. In the early evening the lecturer leads a wine tasting in the hotel.
Day 5: Erice. Depart Palermo, stopping for lunch and a wine-tasting at a superb winery. Continue to Erice, a mediaeval town perched on top of a hill, which boasts spectacular views of the coast and surrounding area. Demonstration and tasting of traditional pastries here, before continuing on to the charming port town of Marsala where the following three nights are spent. Day 6: Marsala, Mazara del Vallo, Menfi. A tour of Marsala in the morning includes the archaeological museum, most of which is taken up by an extremely well-preserved Punic warship. Visit Il Museo del Satiro Danzante in Mazara del Vallo after a couscous cooking demonstration and lunch. The afternoon is spent at an award-winning olive oil estate, which includes an oil tasting.
Day 8. Fly from Palermo to London City Airport, via Milan, arriving at c. 3.45pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,060 or £2,780 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,300 or £3,020 without flights.
Included meals: 4 lunches, 5 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Eurostars Centrale Palace, Palermo (eurostarshotels.co.uk): centrally located 4-star hotel housed in a historical building with recently renovated rooms. Hotel Carmine, Marsala (hotelcarmine.it): small, charming 3-star hotel, with occasionally erratic service. Flights. We opt to travel to and from Sicily with Alitalia because the only direct flights to Palermo are with low-cost airlines, with whom it is not currently viable for us to make a group booking. It is possible to choose our ‘without flights’ option and book your own flights with Ryanair, which usually flies directly to Palermo in this period (Easyjet’s flights only run until around the end of October). Please contact us for advice or further information about this. How strenuous? There is a lot of walking, some of it over rough ground and cobbled or uneven paving. Fitness and sure-footedness are essential. Some days involve a lot of driving. Average distance by coach per day: 47 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Opera in Southern Sicily, 5–11 November 2019 (see opposite); Venetian Palaces, 5–9 November 2019 (p.127); Palaces & Villas of Rome, 18–23 November 2019 (p.148); Ruskin’s Venice, 20–24 November 2019 (p.129). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Marc Millon Wine, food and travel writer. Born in Mexico, he was raised in the USA and then studied at the University of Exeter. He lives in Devon where he is closely involved with the West Country food scene. He is author of The Wine Roads of France, The Wine Roads of Italy, The Food Lover’s Companion to France, The Food Lover’s Companion to Italy and The Taste of Britain. See page 260 for all lecturers' biographies.
Illustration: Monreale, Cathedral, German engraving c. 1870.
What else is included in the price? See page 6 For lecturers' biographies See pages 260–267 Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Day 4: Segesta, Partinico. With its magnificently sited temple and theatre, Segesta is one of the most evocative of Greek sites. Travel on to visit Mary Taylor-Simeti’s organic farm in Partinico, one of the earliest of its kind in Sicily, to have a simple and abundant lunch with the freshest produce from the farm and local area.
Day 7: Mozia. Drive north of Marsala to see the saltpans that have been in use since Phoenician times, and take a boat across the lagoon to visit the ancient ruins of Mozia. Visit the small Whitaker Museum which houses the 5th-century bc Auriga (charioteer), one of the most exquisite of surviving Greek sculptures. The afternoon is free in Marsala. Private dinner, visit and tasting at the cellars of a historic Marsala producer.
Palermo Revealed Art, archaeology, architecture and gastronomy themselves as far as is imaginable from their rugged northern roots. From a Palermo-based cosmopolitan court they ruled an affluent and cultured nation with efficiency and tolerance. The unique artistic blend of this golden age survives in Romanesque churches with details of Norman, Saracenic, Levantine and classical origin. Byzantine mosaicists were extensively employed, and more wall and vault mosaics survive here than in all of Byzantium. The tour includes not only the Norman buildings in Palermo but also the cathedral at Monreale. The prosperity and power of Sicily began to wane from the later Middle Ages, but pockets of wealth and creativity remained, as Gothic and Renaissance creations demonstrate. Artistically, however, a final flourish was reached in the Age of Baroque when churches and palaces were erected in Palermo and throughout the island which are as splendid and exuberant as anywhere in Europe. Always a seething, vibrant city, an enlightened local government has made Palermo cleaner, safer, and altogether more enjoyable in recent years.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 9.00am from London City via Milan or Rome to Palermo (Alitalia). Overnight Palermo where all five nights are spent. Day 2: Palermo. A morning walk through the old centre includes a visit to several oratories. The afternoon is spent at the Galleria Regionale della Sicilia (Palazzo Abatellis), which has an excellent collection of 15th-century pictures, and at La Martorana and S. Cataldo, two outstanding Norman buildings. Dinner at a private palazzo.
12–17 November 2019 (mf 888) 6 days • £2,360 Lecturer: Christopher Newall A captivating city, richly encrusted with the art and architecture of many periods.
MAINLAND EUROPE: Italy, Latvia, Lithuania
Exclusive visits: meals at two private palazzi and drinks at another; see the outstanding Palatine Chapel outside public opening hours. Includes an excursion to see the spectacular mosaics at Monreale. Option to combine this tour with Opera in Southern Sicily, 5–11 November 2019 (page 162). Sicily’s heritage of art, architecture and archaeological remains is exceptionally rich and varied, and Palermo is by far the most interesting of the island’s cities. Staying here for all six days, the tour also has excursions to some of the best of the area’s patrimony just outside the city. In the ninth century ad, when Byzantine rule was supplanted by that of Muslim Arabs, Palermo became the leading city on the island and famous throughout Europe for the beauty of its hillside position, its tradition of craftsmanship and its enlightened administration. In the eleventh century Arab rule was swept aside by conquering Normans. By succumbing to the luxuriant sophistication of their predecessors they distanced 164
Day 3: Monreale, Palermo. Monreale dominates a verdant valley southwest of Palermo; its cathedral is one of the finest Norman churches with the largest scheme of mosaic direction to survive from the Middle Ages. Free afternoon before a private evening visit to the Palatine Chapel. Day 4: Palermo. Visit the Chiesa del Gesù, an extraordinary example of Palermitan Baroque with a profusion of marble inlay, stucco and sculpture. S. Giovanni degli Eremiti is a Norman church with five cupolas and a charming garden. The cathedral, a building of many periods, has grand royal and imperial tombs. Free afternoon. In the evening, there is a visit and reception by special arrangement to an otherwise inaccessible palazzo, with astonishing Rococo interiors and many original furnishings (used as a set in Visconti’s film of The Leopard). Day 5: Palermo. Spend most of the day with the Duchess of Palma in an 18th-century palazzo facing the Bay of Palermo. The palace is the former residence of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, author of The Leopard, now the home of his adoptive son. Visit the city’s best market with the Duchess herself to select fresh seasonal produce, before returning to the palazzo for a cooking class, lunch in the grand dining room and a tour with the Duke and Duchess. Illustration: Palermo, Palatine Chapel, watercolour by F. Fox, publ. 1913.
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Christopher Newall Art historian, lecturer and writer. A specialist in 19th-century British art he also has a deep interest in southern Italy, its architecture, politics and social history. He studied at the Courtauld and has curated various exhibitions including John Ruskin: Artist & Observer at the National Gallery of Canada and Scottish National Portrait Gallery. See page 260 for all lecturers' biographies.
Day 6: Palermo. Visit the Castello della Zisa, an Arab-Norman palace. Fly from Palermo via Milan or Rome to London City, arriving c. 7.15pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,360 or £2,180 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,700 or £2,520 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Grand Hotel Piazza Borsa, Palermo (piazzaborsa.it): centrally-located 4-star hotel housed in several historical buildings. How strenuous? There is a lot of walking on this tour, and it would not be suitable for anyone who has difficulties with everyday walking or stairclimbing. Fitness and sure-footedness are essential. Average distance by coach per day: 10 miles. Flights. We opt to travel to and from Sicily with Alitalia in November because the only direct flights to the island in this period are with low-cost airlines, with whom it is not currently viable for us to make a group booking. British Airways only flies directly from London Heathrow to Palermo from late March to October. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Opera in Southern Sicily, 5–11 November 2019 (p.162); Palaces & Villas of Rome, 18–23 November 2019 (p.148).
What else is included in the price? See page 6 See page 67 for Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania.
World Heritage Malta From Neolithic to now 30 September–6 October 2019 (mf 800) 7 days • £2,960 Lecturer: Juliet Rix A wonderful exploration of this fascinating, diverse island. Some of the world’s earliest stone temples, among a concentration of major historic sites. Rural and picturesque Gozo Island, with its stunning natural features. Option to combine thist tour with Civlisations of Sicily, 16–28 September 2019 (see page 161).
Day 3: Valletta. The morning is spent in the National Museum of Archaeology, home of the unique ‘Fat Ladies of Malta’ and other original carvings from the Neolithic Temples. Visit the charming Manoel Theatre, a rare survival of the early 18th century and the Co-Cathedral of St John, one of the most interesting of Baroque buildings, which has lavish carved wall decoration, ceiling paintings by Mattia Preti, magnificently carved tombs and two paintings by Caravaggio. Finally, a private visit of the Casa Rocca Piccola, providing unique historical evidence into the customs and traditions of the Maltese nobility over the last 400 years. Day 4: Paola, Valletta. In Paola, the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum is a unesco World Heritage Site and the only prehistoric underground temple in the world. The Tarxien Temple site is the most complex in Malta and would have been the most decorative. The afternoon is free in Valletta. Day 5: Gozo. A 30-minute ferry crossing to the island of Gozo, which is more rural and less populated than Malta. See the temple of Ggantija, one of the oldest of Malta’s prehistoric monuments. The chief town is Victoria, which has a cathedral, museum and Sicilo-Norman houses. Fungus Rock, Gharb and Ramla Bay are all of geological, historical and mythical interest, respectively. Day 6: Mdina, Rabat. Mdina, Malta’s ancient capital, is an unspoilt citadel of great beauty, centre of the indigenous aristocracy, with mediaeval walls, grand palazzos and Baroque cathedral. Spreading below is the town of Rabat, with Early Christian catacombs.
Day 7: Vittoriosa. Cross the Grand Harbour by boat, to see churches, forts, and the Second World War museum in Vittoriosa. Fly to London Heathrow arriving at c. 7.30pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,960 or £2,760 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,540 or £3,340 without flights. Included meals: 2 lunches, 3 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Phoenicia, Valletta (phoeniciamalta.com): 5-star hotel in Valletta, recently refurbished and furnished with style and character, the best in Valletta and just outside the city gates. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking on this tour, some of it over the rough ground of sites. Valletta is relatively hilly so you will need to be comfortable with everyday walking and stair climbing. Average distance by coach per day: 15 miles. Group size: between 10 and 20 participants. Price, Civilisations of Sicily and World Heritage Malta combined. Two sharing: £8,030 or £7,720 without the tour flights. Single occupancy: £9,680 or £9,370 without the tour flights. This includes accommodation in Valletta (2 nights), one-way flight Catania to Malta and airport transfers. These arrangements are pre-booked but unescorted. You can also combine this tour with: Walking in Southern Tuscany, 7–14 October 2019 (p.140). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration: part of the prehistoric complex at Hagar Qim, wood engraving from ‘The Illustrated London News’, 1868.
MAINLAND EUROPE: Malta
Malta has an extraordinary 7,000-year history beginning with the arrival of a little-known people from Sicily who became the creators of Malta’s unique Neolithic temples. Older than the Great Pyramids and the famous standing stones at Stonehenge, Malta’s megalithic temples were built between 3600 and 2500 bc – a millennium before Mycenae. All the temples are unesco World Heritage Sites, as is the unique Hal Saflieni Hypogeum, the extraordinary triple-layered tomb complex cut from solid rock where the ‘Temple People’ buried their dead. The complex was recently restored and re-opened to the public. And this is just the start of the story. Malta, with its perfect natural harbours, was desired by every trading or invading nation in the Mediterranean from the Phoenicians and Romans to both sides in the Second World War. Each occupier has left its mark, be it Roman-Byzantine catacombs or British red letter boxes The greatest impression is perhaps that made by the Knights of St John Hospitaller, commonly referred to as ‘The Knights of Malta’. Ousted from Jerusalem and then Rhodes, this order of maritime warrior monks arrived in Malta in 1530 and ruled until 1798. After nearly losing the country to the Ottoman Turks in The Great Siege of 1565, the Knights built a near-impregnable new city on a rocky peninsula between two harbours: Malta’s delightful diminutive capital, Valletta. Despite the ravages of the Second World War, Valletta remains fundamentally the Knights’ city although one area has just received a very 21stcentury makeover. Badly bombed and minimally restored, the City Gate area has been redesigned by the architect of the Pompidou Centre and the London Shard, Renzo Piano.
Day 2: Qrendi, Marsaxlokk, Dingli. Drive through attractive countryside to the prehistoric temples overlooking the sea, Hagar Qim and Mnajdra. After some free time for lunch in the picturesque, traditional fishing village of Marsaxlokk, see the ancient track works, Clapham Junction cart ruts in Dingli.
Itinerary If combining this tour with Civilisations of Sicily: fly from Catania to Malta on 28th September (Ryanair or Air Malta) and take a taxi to the hotel. First of two extra nights in Valletta. Day 1: Valletta. Fly at c. 10.45am from London Heathrow to Malta. Drive to Valletta, a peninsula flanked by fine natural harbours and once the most strongly fortified city in Christendom. Here, survey the massive fortifications protecting the landward approach and view the Grand Harbour from the ramparts. Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Valletta Baroque Festival Music and art in the heart of the Mediterranean Juliet Rix Award-winning journalist, writer and broadcaster specialising in the history of Malta. She studied History of Art at Cambridge and is the author of the Bradt Guide: Malta & Gozo. Her career in journalism has involved working for the BBC and writing for British national newspapers, magazines and online media. See page 260 for all lecturers' biographies.
Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, performed by Armonia Atenea and George Petrou. Day 6: Gozo. 30-minute ferry crossing to the island of Gozo. See the temple of Ggantija, among the oldest of Malta’s prehistoric monuments. The chief town is Victoria, which has a citadel, cathedral and Sicilo-Norman houses; stop here for lunch to try homemade Gozitan food.
20–27 January 2019 (mf 401) 8 days • £3,020 (including tickets to 5 performances) Lecturer: Juliet Rix Baroque music in one of the most complete and compact of Baroque cities. World-class musicians include The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Charlie Siem. Guided tours of Malta’s principal archaeological and architectural treasures.
MAINLAND EUROPE: Malta, Montenegro
Malta is a highly apposite setting for the performance of Baroque music. During this period the island was ruled by the Knights of Malta or Knights Hospitaller, Valletta was completely rebuilt and the knights themselves were vigorous patrons of the arts, including music and architecture. One of Europe’s oldest working theatres is the Teatru Manoel, built in 1731 at the behest of the Grand Master of the order, Fra António Manoel de Vilhena. With only 600 seats, the theatre is a masterpiece of carpentry, with three tiers of wooden boxes, gilded and painted, and a trompel’oeil ceiling. Opera companies visited Malta regularly, performing works by Hasse, Piccinni and Galuppi. Other buildings hosting concerts during the festival include the President’s (formerly Grandmaster’s) Palace; St John’s Co-Cathedral, begun in 1573 and gradually embellished to become a great ensemble of Baroque art; and the Church of St Catherine d’Italie (1713). Valletta’s beautiful position on one of the world’s greatest natural harbours, and the fine buildings that still dominate the city, make it a splendid location in which to hear the music of Bach, Handel and their contemporaries. 166
Itinerary Day 1: Valletta. Fly at c. 11.30am (Air Malta) from London Heathrow to Malta. Drive to Valletta. Day 2: Valletta. Survey the massive fortifications protecting the landward approach and view the Grand Harbour from the ramparts. Visit the National Museum of Archaeology, home of the unique ‘Fat Ladies of Malta’ and other carvings from the Neolithic Temples. A guided tour of the Manoel Theatre, followed by some free time and dinner. Evening concert: ‘Charlie’s Baroque Angels’ performed by Charlie Siem. Day 3: Hagar Qim, Mnajdra, Marsaxlokk, Valletta. Drive through attractive countryside to the prehistoric temples overlooking the sea, Hagar Qim and Mnajdra. Return to Valletta after lunch in the picturesque fishing village of Marsaxlokk. Evening concert: Bach, St Matthew Passion, with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Day 4: Paola, Tarxien. In Paola, the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum is a unesco World Heritage Site and the only prehistoric underground temple in the world. The Tarxien Temples site is the most complex in Malta and would have been the most decorative. It was rediscovered by farmers in 191314 and is the source of outstanding carved reliefs and statues. Evening concert: Niccolò Jommelli, Dixit Dominus; Pergolesi, Mass in D; performed by Coro e Orchestra Ghislieri and Giulio Prandi. Day 5: Mdina, Rabat. Mdina, Malta’s ancient capital and centre of the indigenous aristocracy, is an unspoilt citadel of great beauty, with mediaeval walls, grand palazzos and Baroque cathedral. Visit Palazzo Falson, a 13th-century private residence and the second oldest building in Mdina. Spreading below is the town of Rabat, with Early Christian catacombs. Evening concert: Handel, Il
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Day 7: Valletta. Guided tours of the Grand Master’s Palace and Armoury and the CoCathedral of St John, with lavish carved wall decoration, ceiling paintings, magnificent tombs and two paintings by Caravaggio. A private tour of the Casa Rocca Piccola, a 16th-century palazzo owned by the Marquis de Piro. Evening concert: Bach, Brandenburg Concertos, performed by Les Passions de l’Ame and Meret Lüthi. Day 8: Vittoriosa. Cross the Grand Harbour by boat (weather permitting) to see churches, forts, and the Second World War museum in Vittoriosa. Fly to London Heathrow, arriving c. 7.30pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,020 or £2,830 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,360 or £3,170 without flights. Included meals: 3 lunches, 4 dinners, with wine. Music: five first category concert tickets are included, costing c. £300. Accommodation. Grand Hotel Excelsior, Valletta (excelsior.com.mt): 5-star just outside the city gates of Valletta. It is surrounded by 16th-century fortifications and the interior is a balance of modern and traditional décor. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking on this tour, some of it over the rough ground of sites. Valletta is relatively hilly so you will need to be comfortable with everyday walking and stair climbing. Average coach travel per day: 12 miles. Group size: between 10 and 20 participants. Illustration: Valetta, steel engraving c. 1850.
Looking for Montenegro? See page 56 for The Western Balkans.
Art in the Netherlands A spectrum of the finest 20–26 October 2019 (mf 840) 7 days • £2,770 Lecturer: Dr Guus Sluiter A study of Dutch art in some of the finest museums of the Netherlands. Features artists of the seventeenth-century Golden Age (Hals, Rembrandt, Vermeer), Van Gogh and other major figures. Also architecture and design from mediaeval to modern, and several highly picturesque historic town centres.
Day 3: Utrecht. One of the best-preserved historic cities in the Netherlands, Utrecht features canals flanked by unbroken stretches of Golden Age houses. The excellent art museum has a major collection of paintings of the 17th-century Utrecht School. See also the Rietveld House (1924), a landmark of 20th-century architecture. Day 4: Otterlo. Located in gardens and surrounded by an extensive heath, the KröllerMüller Museum has the second great collection of works by Van Gogh as well as an eclectic holding of paintings, furniture and sculpture. A leisurely visit here allows time to explore the 75-acre park with its outdoor sculptures. Day 5: The Hague. The Mauritshuis at Den Haag contains a superb collection of paintings including masterpieces by Rembrandt and Vermeer. Exhibited in the Gemeentemuseum are 19thcentury Hague School paintings, the realist milieu from which Van Gogh emerged, and works by the pioneer abstractionist Mondriaan. Visit also the illusionistic Mesdag panorama and the centre of the city, seat of the court and parliament. Day 6: Amsterdam. Return to Amsterdam. Visit the Hermitage Museum, which celebrates the historical ties between Amsterdam and St Petersburg. The afternoon is free for revisiting the Rijksmuseum (there is much to see other than the Golden Age paintings), the Van Gogh Museum, or the Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art.
Day 7: Rotterdam. Rotterdam is a thriving city and a centre of contemporary architecture. The Boijmans van Beuningen Museum is the second largest art gallery in the Netherlands and has many important Dutch paintings and good decorative arts. Fly from Amsterdam to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 4.30pm. We sometimes change the visits on this itinerary to take advantage of temporary exhibitions.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,770 or £2,590 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,130 or £2,950 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. The Grand Hotel Karel V, Utrecht (karelv.nl): 5-star hotel converted from a 19th-century hospital in a quiet location within the city walls. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking and standing around, and the tour would not be suitable for anyone with difficulties with everyday walking and stair-climbing. Average distance by coach per day: 70 miles. Group size: between 10 and 20 participants. Combine this tour with: Romantic Agony: English Poets in Italy, 12–19 October 2019 (p.130). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport. Illustration: ‘Self-portrait with Saskia’, after Rembrandt's 1636 etching.
MAINLAND EUROPE: Netherlands
The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, one of the world’s great museums, closed for major refurbishment for over ten years. It reopened in 2013, allowing us to offer comprehensive art history tours to the Netherlands once again. In the last few years the Van Gogh Museum and the Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art have also reopened to great acclaim after periods of closure. The seventeenth century was the Golden Age in the history and art history of the northern Netherlands. (Much of this activity was concentrated in Holland, though that was but one of seven provinces which constituted the United Provinces, now the Kingdom of the Netherlands.) This was the time of Frans Hals, Rembrandt, Vermeer and innumerable other great masters. The Dutch School is of universal appeal, with its mix of realism, painterliness and potency, though it is best appreciated in the excellent art galleries of their native country – and against the background of the well preserved and wonderfully picturesque towns and cities. With their canals, cobbled alleys and gabled mansions, many have changed little in three hundred years. There is also focus on Vincent Van Gogh, the bulk of whose output is in the Netherlands. Painters of the Hague School of the nineteenth century have a presence, as do pioneers of modernism in painting and architecture, the architects Van der Velde and Gerrit Rietveld for example, and the abstract painter Piet Mondriaan. More recent art and architecture also features. The base for the tour is a five-star hotel in Utrecht, whose central location means relatively short journeys to all places visited.
and four Vermeers among them. The house where Rembrandt lived and worked for nearly 20 years is well restored and has a display of prints. Also newly extended, the Van Gogh Museum houses the biggest holding (over 200) of the artist’s works, largely from his brother Theo’s collection.
Itinerary Day 1: Haarlem. Fly at c. midday from London Heathrow to Amsterdam (British Airways). Haarlem was the chief artistic centre in the northern Netherlands in the 16th century and home of the first of the great masters of the Golden Age, Frans Hals, whose finest works are in the excellent museum here. Drive to Utrecht. Timing is tight on this day, and the visit may have to be cut short if the flight is delayed. Day 2: Amsterdam. With its rings of canals lined with merchants’ mansions, Amsterdam is one of the loveliest capitals in the world. Our visit to the brilliantly refurbished Rijksmuseum concentrates on the major works in its unrivalled collection of 17th-century paintings, Rembrandt’s Night Watch Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Dutch Painting Art in Amsterdam, Haarlem and The Hague 26–29 June 2019 (mf 601) 4 days • £1,940 Lecturer: Dr Sophie Oosterwijk
Day 4. Opened in June 2014 after long closure for refurbishment, the Mauritshuis at The Hague houses a superb collection of paintings includes masterpieces by Rembrandt and Vermeer. Visit also the illusionistic Mesdag panorama before driving to the airport. Fly from Amsterdam and return to London Heathrow at c. 6.00pm.
Painting of the Dutch Golden Age – Frans Hals, Rembrandt, Vermeer and contemporaries – as well as art of other eras.
We sometimes change the visits on this itinerary to take advantage of temporary exhibitions.
Plenty of time for the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam which reopened in 2013 as Europe’s best-displayed national gallery.
Practicalities
The Mauritshuis in The Hague also reopened in 2014 after complete refurbishment and ‘looks set to become northern Europe’s most alluring small museum’ (Financial Times). The refurbished Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has been greeted with universal praise. Much extra space has been quarried from within the footprint of the 1885 building, and while some of the original decoration has been revealed and restored, the latest museum technology has been adopted and the artworks are beautifully lit. Paintings, sculpture, drawings, tapestries, ceramics, gold and silver – the whole gamut of fine and decorative arts are on display, often in meaningful juxtaposition. Though the gallery has the finest collection by far of the Dutch Golden Age (the seventeenth century, the age of Rembrandt and Vermeer), it has much else besides, including significant international collections. There are two visits to the museum, and visits to a number of Amsterdam’s other main galleries and historic buildings, as well as city centre walks through the enchanting streetscape and along the canals. To enlarge upon the theme, two key galleries in other towns are also visited. The Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem, housed in the almshouse where the eponymous artist spent his last years, provides a perfect introduction to Golden Age art, while the paintings in the Mauritshuis, also benefiting from brilliant re-display, form one of the richest small collections anywhere.
Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,940 or £1,810 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,250 or £2,120 without flights. Included meals: 3 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Estheréa, Amsterdam (estherea.nl): centrally located 4-star hotel in an historic building with comfortable rooms. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking and standing; this tour would not be suitable for anyone with difficulties with everyday walking. Average distance by coach per day: 23 miles. Group size: between 10 and 20 participants. Combine this tour with: Danish Castles & Gardens, 1–7 July 2018 (p.65); French Gothic, 1–7 July 2019 (p.77). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
leading Dutch painters of the 17th century (subject to closure for royal functions). Return to the Rijksmuseum for a second visit. There is some free time to visit two other major art museums nearby which have also recently been refurbished and extended, the Van Gogh Museum and the Stedelijk Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art.
Itinerary MAINLAND EUROPE: Netherlands
Day 1. Fly at c. midday from London Heathrow to Amsterdam (British Airways). Haarlem was the chief artistic centre in the northern Netherlands in the 16th century and home of the first of the great masters of the Golden Age, Frans Hals, whose finest works are in the excellent small museum here. Drive to Amsterdam, where all three nights are spent. Timing is tight on this day, and the visit may have to be cut short if the flight is delayed. Day 2. With its concentric rings of canals and 17th-century merchants’ mansions, Amsterdam is one of the loveliest capitals in the world. Our first visit to the brilliantly refurbished Rijksmuseum concentrates on Rembrandt, Vermeer and their contemporaries. In the afternoon walk to Museum Van Loon, a private residence built in 1672, and to the house where Rembrandt lived and worked for nearly 20 years. Walk back to the hotel through some of Amsterdam’s most attractive streets. Day 3. Visit the Hermitage, followed by the Royal Palace, formerly the town hall, decorated by the 168
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Illustration: Amsterdam, Jewish Quarter, engraving c. 1890 by Bellanger after Ph. Zilken. Photograph below: Hilversum’s Town Hall, Dudok 1930 ©Fiona Charrington.
For lecturers' biographies See pages 260–267
Dutch Modern 20–24 June 2019 (mf 595) Very few spaces remaining 5 days • £2,030 Lecturer: Professor Harry Charrington Please contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com An immersion in the last one hundred years of Dutch urban design. Highlights of early modernism include the Rietveld Schröder House in Utrecht, Hilversum Town Hall and the Van Nelle Tobacco Factory in Rotterdam. City centres are balanced by the Hoge Veluwe National Park, the Voorlinden estate and the docklands of Amsterdam. Stay throughout in beautiful Utrecht. Option to combine this tour with Berlin: New Architecture, 25–29 June 2019 (see page 94).
Gardens & Landscapes of the Dutch Wave Piet Oudolf and modern garden design
7–12 September 2019 (mf 679) 6 days • £2,310 Lecturer: Amanda Patton Garden and landscape designs of internationallyrenowned Piet Oudolf and the Dutch Wave. Beautiful new-perennial planting that is at its best in September. Privileged access to private gardens and meetings with key designers are a feature. Utrecht is one of the best-preserved historic cities in the Netherlands; Zwolle’s moated medieval centre is charming.
Itinerary Day 1: Amstelveen, Utrecht. Fly at c. 11.45am (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Amsterdam Schiphol. Visit the Jac P Thijssepark, a suburban oasis of water and woodland, beautifully designed with native plants in the 1930s to create one of the first examples of a stylised natural landscape. Drive to the hotel in Utrecht for the first of three nights. Day 2: Utrecht, Vianen. The Vlinderhof, a large new garden (2014) within Utrecht’s Maxima Park designed by Piet Oudolf, originated from an initiative by local residents and is maintained by them. The landscape surrounding the Miele Inspiration Centre in Vianen (2008) has been designed with grasses and late-season perennials adjoining large pools for rain water harvesting, and fountains for noise abatement. Free time for lunch in the small historic town of Vianen before a visit to a private garden (subject to permission). Day 3: Rotterdam, Utrecht. Largely destroyed in the Second World War, Rotterdam has emerged as a centre of post-modern architecture. Piet Oudolf has been responsible for designing three very different public spaces within the city. The Leuvehoofd features Oudolf’s painterly planting in triangular beds that step down to the river; the Westerkade forms part of the revitalisation of the quays with a new cobblestone tree-lined esplanade; the Ichtushof is a magical wooded courtyard space created on a pedestrian route in an urban setting. The afternoon is free to explore Utrecht.
Piet Oudolf's plan for the garden at Vlinderhof (reproduced here with the kind permission of the Piet).
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MAINLAND EUROPE: Netherlands
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the Netherlands has been at the forefront of a new direction in planting design, in which a more naturalistic approach to planting, using perennials and ornamental grasses and known as The Dutch Wave (and latterly the New Perennial Movement), has quietly been gathering momentum. Two significant Netherlanders have been at the heart of this movement; Mien Ruys and Piet Oudolf. Oudolf, inspired by Mien’s earlier work, has become the most significant and acclaimed landscape designer working within this genre, and a private visit to his own garden and nursery, along with visits to several of his designed public spaces and private gardens, is a major feature of this tour. The English origins of the naturalistic planting movement flourished in the form of the Victorian plantsman William Robinson whose book, the Wild Garden, is still in print 135 years after first being published. His friend, Gertrude Jekyll, shared his ideas and added colour theories learnt from the Impressionist painters in her
acquaintance. These ideas proved to be highly influential to a young Dutchwoman, Wilhelmina (Mien) Ruys, who was raised at the famous Moorheim nursery in Dedemsvaart. Here, her father experimented with propagating new forms of perennial plants, making these available to the wider public as demand increased through the writings of Robinson and Jekyll. Mien’s interest however lay not in producing plants but in using them. After meeting Jekyll in England, she studied at the Bauhaus in Germany before embarking on a lifetime of experimentation with perennials, mixing the naturalism of Robinson, the painterly qualities of Jekyll and the clean lines she had learnt from Modernism to create something that was not only original but has also proved to be a continuing inspiration for designers today. 'It all begins with Mien' says Piet Oudolf of the influence Mien Ruys has had on contemporary planting design. Oudolf, now in his early seventies, began creating gardens in the 1970s and, frustrated at the difficulty of acquiring enough plant material for his work, started a nursery to grow the plants he needed to meet his own demand. Through a small group of like-minded artists and growers, ideas began to emerge around the appeal of seedheads and ornamental grasses, extending the season of interest in a flower border beyond the traditional 6-week flowering period, into a style where form takes precedence over flowers and colours. Resulting in a more naturalistic planting, the style complements both contemporary urban spaces and country gardens. Piet’s work has spread far beyond his native Dutch borders in the creation of the High Line in New York and the Lurie Garden in Chicago, but more importantly, has opened a wider debate on the value of naturalistic planting within garden and urban settings.
Gardens & Landscapes of the Dutch Wave continued
Lofoten Chamber Music Festival Concerts and walks in the Arctic archipelago
Day 4: Hummelo, Deventer, Zwolle. The morning is dedicated to the private garden of Piet Oudolf and his wife Anja (by special arrangement) where Oudolf’s experiments offer an insight into his personal development and current thinking. Free time for lunch in the attractive medieval market town of Deventer. In the afternoon, visit the Mien Ruys Experimental Gardens. From 1924 until her death in 1999, Ruys created a series of 30 gardens trialling different planting schemes and architectural ideas. Ahead of her time, the gardens are still as fresh and inspirational as when she first conceived them. First of two nights in Zwolle. Day 5: de Wilp, Eestrum (Friesland). Our two gardens today show the latest development of the Dutch Wave, including the influence of the American prairies, whose native plants formed the basis of the Dutch Wave palette. Lianne’s Siergrassen (by special arrangement) is a private nursery with parterre garden created solely using grasses, and a large experimental prairie garden. Jacobstuin (by special arrangement) is a private modern garden designed in a naturalistic planting style with late season perennials and pale grasses creating a painterly feel. Day 6: Hoorn. Spectacular drive over the 20 mile long Houtribdijk which spans the IJsselmeer lake separating Flevoland from North Holland, home to numerous sea birds. Visit a private garden designed by Piet Oudolf in 1999 (by special arrangement) on reclaimed land (polder). Some free time for lunch in Hoorn, one of the main ports of the Dutch East India Company, before continuing to the airport. Fly from Amsterdam Schiphol and return to Heathrow at c. 6.00pm
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,310 or £2,150 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,620 or £2,460 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine.
MAINLAND EUROPE: Netherlands, Norway
Accommodation. The Grand Hotel Karel V, Utrecht (karelv.nl): 5-star hotel converted from a 19th-century hospital in a quiet location within the city walls. Grand Hotel Wientjes, Zwolle (bilderberg.nl): 4-star hotel, formerly a mansion, close to historic city centre. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking and some of the gardens are extensive with uneven ground. The tour would not be suitable for anyone with difficulties with everyday walking and stair-climbing. There are some long coach journeys but facilities are good. Average distance by coach per day: 75 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: St Petersburg (for solo travellers), 13–20 September 2019 (p.179); Georgia Uncovered, 14–23 September 2019 (p.88); The Age of Bede, 14–17 September 2019 (p.15). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
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July 2019 Lecturer: Dr Michael Downes Full details available in January 2019 Please call us to register your interest, or e-mail alerts@martinrandall.co.uk Concerts featuring national and international artists; András Schiff and the Doric String Quartet among them. The Lofoten islands are an area of outstanding natural beauty, experienced under the majesty of the midnight sun. A number of walks against a backdrop of dramatic mountains, lakes, fjords and coast. In the fifteen years since its foundation, the Lofoten International Chamber Music Festival has quickly acquired an enviable reputation for the quality of its programmes, which juxtapose the very best Scandinavian performers with eminent musicians from throughout the world, attracted by the unique environment for music-making that the festival offers. The 2019 line-up is particularly impressive. Sir András Schiff, doyen of the Viennese classical tradition, leads an enticing roster of pianists that also includes the hugely talented young Frenchwoman, Lise de la Salle, and the even younger Canadian Jan Lisiecki, still in his midtwenties but attracting attention throughout the world for his recordings of Chopin. Chamber groups include the euphoniously named Trio con Brio from Copenhagen, whose debut CD was praised by the American Record
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Guide as ‘one of the greatest performances of chamber music I’ve ever encountered’, the Doric String Quartet, one of Britain’s most exciting young groups, and the Engegård Quartet, formed in Lofoten itself. Meanwhile the tango-influenced sounds of Per Arne Glorvigen, born in Norway and one of the world’s greatest exponents of the bandoneon, will add both variety and atmosphere to this beguiling festival. Concert venues include intimate churches (many with their own Steinway Grands), and the Lofoten ‘Cathedral,’ the largest wooden building north of Trondheim. Most days feature two or three concerts across the islands, between an hour and an hour and a half in length, a musical intensity amplified by the winding coastal journeys themselves; on more than one occasion, late night concerts take advantage of the wonder of the midnight sun. Our itinerary starts with a night in Oslo before flying north to the Lofoten islands, and a private tour of the opera house, a glacial construction of marble and glass dominating the Oslo Fjord. Based in Svolvær throughout thereafter, the tour returns to London via Oslo on the final day. The tour includes several walks in areas of outstanding natural beauty, led by an experienced guide. Lying within the Arctic circle, distinctive scenery of deep fjords and dramatic mountains make up the landscape of the Lofoten archipelago and the islands boast archaeological finds from the Iron and Viking Ages.
Photograph: Hauklandssanden in the Lofoten Islands, ©Baard Loeken and courtesy of the Lofoten Islands Festival.
Eastern Pomerania Gdańsk and Toruń, with Warsaw 19–26 August 2019 (mf 655) 8 days • £2,970 Lecturer: Dr Agata Gomólka Some of the finest achievements of medieval architecture in Northern Europe. Several unesco world heritage sites, among them Toruń and Malbork Castle. Examine the legacy left by the Teutonic Order and the Hanseatic League. Gdańsk and the region of eastern Pomerania possess a fascinating history and a complex identity. Power shifted variously over the last millennium between the Piast dynasty, the Teutonic Order, the Hanseatic League, the Kingdom of Poland and the strange phenomenon of Prussia. Each left behind an eclectic group of remarkable monuments: castles, churches and monasteries, palaces, urban spaces and town houses. Gdańsk (Danzig), the great Hanseatic port on the Baltic, is one of the finest sights in Northern Europe. Its fortunes bear witness to the fiercely contested history of these lands. First mentioned in the tenth century, the settlement became a stronghold of the Polish Piast rulers. In the fourteenth century the Teutonic Order took over the town and its hinterland and began the Germanisation of the region. They constructed a fortress and a number of Brick Gothic buildings (among them the world’s secondlargest brick church), and made the city a member of the Hanseatic League.
The following centuries saw a continuous struggle between the Polish and Prussian rulers for control of the city. Gdańsk suffered extensive damage during the Second World War, but was painstakingly rebuilt to rescue the former historic beauty of the old town and the harbour. Today, Gdańsk is at once a monument to its maritime and international past as well as a bustling and ambitious modern city with much to see, explore, and savour. The city of Toruń (Thorn), once a rich military stronghold and thriving cultural and economic centre, offers a fine assembly of medieval, Renaissance and Baroque architecture. It came to prominence when the early medieval settlement was turned into a fortress by the Teutonic Knights, who were brought to Poland to assist in the subjugation of the Pomeranian pagans. The Knights were followed by the mendicant orders, who continued to expand the city and built vast churches in the Brick Gothic style. A member of the Hanseatic League, Toruń soon established itself as an important trading post and centre of manufacturing, which is reflected in the surviving fabric of the city. Though geographically removed from the tour’s primary focus, it would be remiss not to include a sojourn in Warsaw, Poland’s vibrant capital. A fascinating blend of turbulent history and cultural treasures, it provides counterpoint and context, as well as the magnificent collection of medieval art in the National Museum, an essential ingredient in this tour.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 10.15am (LOT Polish Airlines) from London Heathrow to Warsaw. Drive north to Toruń. Dinner and first of two nights here. Day 2: Toruń. Picturesquely located on the banks of the Vistula River, Toruń is one of the most attractive and least spoilt of Europe’s medieval towns. Visit the ruins of the first Teutonic castle to be built in Poland and the church of St James, with its monumental, five-storey tower crowned with a pair of hip roofs. The Old Town Hall is an outstanding achievement of medieval civic architecture. Overnight Toruń. Day 3: Chełmno, Gniew, Gdańsk. Downstream along the Vistula lies Chełmno, the first political and administrative centre of the Teutonic Order. On a hilltop site, the town is very well preserved, with medieval walls, fine Gothic churches and a splendid Renaissance town hall. Continue to the commanding castle at Gniew, one of Poland’s first privatised monuments. Arrive in Gdańsk early evening. First of three nights here. Day 4: Gdańsk, Oliwa. Morning walk in and around the Long Market (Długi Targ): the imposing Gothic-Renaissance Town Hall, the Artus Court – with its magnificent 16thcentury Renaissance stove – and the vast Brick Gothic Church of St Mary (1343). After lunch visit the National Museum’s branch for early art, which houses Hans Memling’s Last Judgement altarpiece. Drive to the medieval cathedral in the suburb of Oliwa and hear its famous organ. Overnight Gdańsk.
Illustration: Gdańsk, early-18th-century copper engraving.
MAINLAND EUROPE: Poland
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Eastern Pomerania continued
Kraków & Silesia Art, architecture and history in southern Poland
Day 5: Malbork, Pelpin. Drive to Malbork Castle, an awesome structure of three linked castles comprising the largest medieval fortress in Europe. Cross the Vistula to Pelpin – an outstanding Cistercian abbey boasting portal structure and spectacular vaults. Final night in Gdańsk. Day 6: Gdańsk, Warsaw. Walk along the picturesque waterfront to the Crane (1442), a defining symbol of Gdańsk and a relic of the city’s great trading age. After the war it was rebuilt and donated to the Polish Maritime Museum, of which it remains a part today. Fly at c.2.55pm from Gdańsk to Warsaw (LOT Polish Airlines). First of two nights in Warsaw. Day 7: Warsaw. The Royal Castle is a Renaissance and later building whose magnificent interiors have been scrupulously reconstructed and enhanced with original furnishings and paintings. After lunch visit the National Museum, a magnificent collection of Polish art which is particularly strong on the medieval and Romantic period. The rest of the day is free; there are many museums, galleries and historic buildings to chose from. Day 8: Warsaw, Wilanów. With its spreading layout and splendid Baroque interiors, the country palace of Wilanów was built by King Jan Sobieski in the 1680s, though during the next two centuries fine furnishings, pictures and an English park were added. Drive to Warsaw airport for the return flight to London Heathrow arriving c. 5.20pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,970 or £2,640 without all flights. Single occupancy: £3,400 or £3,070 without all flights. Internal flight, Gdańsk to Warsaw. The internal flight on day 6 is not included in the price if you take our ‘without flights’ option. We can book this on your behalf, quoting the price at the time, or you can choose to book this independently. The average cost of this flight is currently c. £60. Included meals: 2 lunches, 6 dinners, with wine.
MAINLAND EUROPE: Poland
Music: we hope to be able to offer an optional performance as part of the Chopin festival in Warsaw. Details available in January 2019. Accommodation. Hotel Bulwar, Toruń (hotelbulwar.pl): 4-star hotel in a converted building with modern interiors by the Vistula river. Radisson Blu Hotel, Gdańsk (radissonblu. com): 5-star hotel on the Long Market. Hotel Bristol, Warsaw (hotelbristolwarsaw.pl): elegant 5-star in an art deco building, 10-minutes' walk from the Royal Castle. How strenuous? This tour involves a lot of walking in the historic centres so you will be on your feet for lengthy stretches of time. There is also a lot of standing in museums and churches. A good level of fitness is essential. Average distance by coach per day: 45 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Vienna’s Masterpieces, 27–31 August 2019 (p.50). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport. 172
14–21 June 2019 (mf 577) 8 days • £2,830 Lecturer: Dr Agata Gomółka Wrocław and Kraków, two of the most impressive and fascinating historic cities in Central Europe. Passed between Bohemia, Prussia and Poland, the multi-layered region of Silesia is of outstanding interest, historically and architecturally. Wrocław and Silesia are surprisingly little visited. Wrocław is the capital of Silesia, in the early modern period one of the wealthiest regions of Central Europe. Prosperity has returned to Wrocław (it has the fastest growing economy of any Polish city), but otherwise contrasts outweigh similarities with Kraków. The mediaeval origins of Silesia were Polish, but under Bohemian, Austrian and Prussian rule, and as an integral part of a united Germany until 1945, German culture came to dominate (Wrocław was known as Breslau). When Silesia was added to Poland after World War II the German-speaking population was replaced by Polish settlers – many of them displaced from territory lost in the east. There ensued ambivalence about its status: much was made of Wrocław’s Polish origins, but a veil was drawn over its later history. It is only since the end of Communism that Wrocław has really come to terms with its multilayered past and the glories of its artistic heritage, now painstakingly restored: the imposing Gothic churches, magnificent Baroque sculpture and pioneering modernist architecture. The impressive old town centre is one of the grandest in Central Europe – evidence of the city’s status as a great metropolis in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It was to remain an important place of cultural interchange between the German west and the Slavic east, and between the Protestant north and the Catholic south.
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Kraków is one of the treasures of Europe, an unspoilt cityscape of the highest architectural importance. Famed for its royal castle, university, great churches and art collections, it was for centuries Poland’s capital, at a time when the country was one of the major kingdoms of Europe. After the dismemberment of Poland at the end of the eighteenth century, the city was subsumed within the Austrian Habsburg Empire and reduced to provincial impotence. Its independent spirit and intellectual life continued undimmed, however. After the revival of Poland as an independent nation in 1918, and during the tribulations it sustained during much of the twentieth century, Kraków acquired the status of cultural capital, and its literary and artistic life continues to thrive. Miraculously, it largely escaped war-time destruction, but its fabric suffered neglect under Communism. In recent years it has undergone another transformation, restored, cleaned, and once again prosperous. Cafés, shops, restaurants and enterprises of all sorts now fill the historic centre, and it has become a popular city-break destination.
Itinerary Day 1: London to Wrocław. Fly at c. 2.00pm from London Heathrow to Kraków (British Airways). Drive to Wrocław with a break for dinner en route. First of four nights in Wrocław. Day 2: Wrocław. Slav by origin, for centuries Wrocław was predominently German (Breslau). The main square is dominated by the elaborate Gothic town hall and lined by a colourful assortment of Renaissance and Baroque mansions. In the academic quarter, and inside the 171mlong Collegium Maximum, the Aula Leopoldina is an ornate Baroque hall with illusionistic ceiling frescoes. Cross the Piaskowy Bridge to Cathedral Island. Among the highlights of the National Museum are Matejko’s Vows of King Jan Kazimierz Waza and an important collection of mediaeval sculpture.
Day 3: Brzeg, Małujowice, Kamieniec Ząbkowicki. A second excursion into the Silesian countryside. The Renaissance castle at Brzeg has a remarkable sculptured entrance gateway, and there are extensive 15th-century wall paintings in the nearby village church of Małujowice. Kamieniec Ząbkowicki, a huge neo-Gothic country residence, was the last major project by Prussian architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1838). Day 4: Kzreszów, Świdnica. The magnificent Baroque abbey at Krzeszów, with imposing interiors, sculpture and paintings, is remarkably well preserved. Polish nuns expelled from Ukraine settled here after the War. The huge ‘Peace Church’ at Świdnica is an extraordinary building, constructed of timber and brilliantly exploiting the tight constraints of the terms under which Lutherans were permitted to build three churches in Catholic Silesia after the 1648 Treaty of Munster. Day 5: Wrocław, Kraków. Before departing for Kraków visit the Racławice Panorama, an enormous cycloramic painting (120m x 15m) commemorating the centenary of the defeat of the Russian army in 1794 during the Kościuszko Insurrection. Upon arrival in Kraków lunch is followed by an introductory walk. In the heart of the old town, the enormous mediaeval market square (the largest in Europe) has fine façades of many styles. The soaring Gothic church of St Mary contains the greatest of all late-mediaeval German sculpted altarpieces, by Veit Stoss. First of three nights in Kraków. Day 6: Kraków. A walking tour of the Old Town includes the St Florian Gate and the Furrier’s
Dr Agata Gomółka Art historian, lecturer and researcher specialising in Romanesque architectural sculpture. She obtained her MA at the University of Warwick and her PhD at the University of East Anglia. Her research interests include medieval art and architecture, pre-modern building methods, sculptural techniques, and representation of the human body in art. See page 260 for all lecturers' biographies.
Tower above it, constructed (1300–07) as part of the city’s fortifications. See also the 15thcentury university complex including the cloister, Collegium Maius and St Anne’s Church, a major work of Polish Baroque. In the afternoon visit the City History Museum and the Cloth Hall, still a covered market below and with a gallery of magnificent 19th-century Polish art above. Day 7: Kraków. Wawel Castle was rebuilt by Italian designers in the 16th century to become one of the earliest and greatest of Renaissance palaces north of the Alps, with arcaded courtyard and splendid interiors. Works of art include an excellent tapestry collection. The cathedral is also situated on Wawel Hill; essentially a Gothic structure, it is a Polish pantheon, with tombs of 41 monarchs and national heroes. Adjacent to Kraków but across a branch of the Vistula, Kazimierz was an
independent town until the 19th century. Here the Jewish population was concentrated, but there are fine churches as well as synagogues and the former ghetto. It is a place of beauty as well as poignancy. Day 8: Kraków to London. In the morning visit the main building of National Museum whose collection includes Leonardo’s Lady with an Ermine. After lunch visit the National Museum’s branch of 12th–18th-century sacred art, in an early Renaissance Palace. St Andrew’s church is possibly the best preserved example of early Romanesque architecture in Poland. Fly to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 7.50pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,830 or £2,650 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,270 or £3,090 without flights. Included meals: 3 lunches, 5 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Sofitel, Wroclaw (sofitel.com): a comfortable 5-star hotel in the old town. Stary Hotel, Krakow (stary.hotel.com.pl): boutique 5-star hotel in a 14th-century towhouse located close to the mediaeval main square. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking, much of it on roughly paved streets. There are long drives on four of the days. Average distance by coach per day: 109 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Illustration, opposite: Wrocław, town hall, watercolour by E.T. Harrison Compton, publ. 1912. Below: Krakow, University, lithograph c. 1820.
MAINLAND EUROPE: Poland
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The Douro From Porto to Pinhão Day 5: São João de Tarouca, Lamego. In the church of São João de Tarouca there are paintings by Grão Vasco (1506–42) and Gaspar Vaz (1490–1569) beside which are the ruins of the first Cistercian abbey in Portugal (1169). Continue to the busy little town of Lamego, replete with Baroque mansions and dominated by the pilgrimage church of Nossa Senhora dos Remédios atop a ceremonial stairway. The town museum in the former episcopal palace contains a series of panels by Grão Vasco. See also the cathedral, largely Renaissance behind a Romanesque belfry. Day 6: Vale do Côa. Up the Douro is the small town of Vila Nova Foz Côa with church with Manueline doorway. Close to the border with Spain the River Côa valley holds one of the greatest archaeological finds of recent years, an extensive array of outdoor Paleolithic art, the largest in Europe. There are well-preserved engravings of auroch, horse, deer and goat along a long stretch of steeply slate-banked river. Visit one of the key sites by 4WD, then continue on foot. Return to Pinhão on the train beside the Douro.
2–9 September 2019 (mf 674) 8 days • £2,960 Lecturer: Martin Symington One of the most remote and picturesque corners of Europe.
This is not a tour in pursuit of masterpieces, rather an exploration of delicious scenery and ancient townscapes in a most beautiful but often overlooked corner of Europe. The port wine industry is a subsidiary theme, along with the excellent red wines now produced here. The pace on this tour is slower than on many.
Visit the major museums of Porto as well as some fine mediaeval and Baroque architecture.
Itinerary
Further highlights include palace gardens, Paleolithic art and wine tastings. Journeys of immense beauty by rail and boat along the Douro valley.
MAINLAND EUROPE: Portugal
The upper reaches of the Douro in Portugal present a landscape of extraordinary beauty and tranquillity. The banks rise steeply into the surrounding hills which are clothed with terraced vineyards, patches of woodland, little villages and quintas. Until recently one of the remotest clefts in western Europe, the region remains remarkably unspoilt and difficult of access. It is best approached by train; a journey into mountains that begins at the mouth of the river in Porto (Oporto). The capital of northern Portugal, Porto is synonymous with the port wine trade, which since time immemorial has been dominated by the British. Hence an architectural peculiarity of Porto: the serene Neo-Palladianism of buildings by John Carr of York and his imitators cheekby-jowl with the highly wrought, startlingly pigmented and lavishly gilded Baroque style of churches and public buildings. Baroque was virtually introduced by another foreigner, the Tuscan painter-architect Nicolau Nasoni who had a hand in the design of many churches and houses in the city and along the Douro. Porto is also relatively unspoilt, retaining a jumble of historic architecture on its undulating even precipitous site, but it is also a city of parks and gardens and the occasional flash of ultramodern architecture. 174
Day 1: Porto. Fly at midday from London Gatwick to Porto (TAP Air Portugal). Introductory talk and time for a stroll along the Douro before dinner. First of three nights in Porto. Day 2: Porto. Begin at the cathedral, basically 13th-century with later embellishments, many by the painter-architect Nicolau Nasoni. The Clerigos Church with its wonderful Baroque tower is also by Nasoni, the church of the Misericordia has good Flemish paintings and São Francisco has an amazingly rich carved and gilded interior. Also see the magnificent decorative tiles, azulejos, in the railway station and visit the Factory House (by special arrangement), a club of British port wine traders founded in the 18th century. Day 3: Porto. See the façade of the Hospital de São António designed by John Carr of York (1770). The Soares dos Reis was Portugal’s first national museum and has collections of Portuguese fine and decorative arts, and the nearby Museu Romântico in the Quinta da Macieirinha has a garden and 19th-century furnishings. Álvaro Siza’s Fundação de Serralves is set in an attractive park and houses contemporary art. Cross the Douro for a tasting at a port lodge. Day 4: Porto, Douro Valley, Pinhão. Free morning in Porto. Early afternoon train journey up the Douro Valley which becomes increasingly rural and beautiful, with vineyards and quintas clinging to the hills. Pinhão is a tiny town with a hotel in a former port lodge overlooking the Douro. First of four nights in Pinhão.
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Day 7: the Douro by train and boat. A leisurely day in the heart of the wine-making area. Travel by rail downstream to the Quinta do Vallado; visit and lunch here. Sail back to Pinhão on a private rabelo boat. Day 8: Vila Real. The Palácio de Mateus at Vila Real, a Nasoni design made familiar by the rosé wine label, is a fine 18th-century manor house, well furnished and with gardens including a box tree avenue. Continue to Porto airport for the flight to London Gatwick, arriving c. 8.30pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing, with a standard room in Pinhão: £2,960 or £2,770 without flights; or with a suite in Pinhão: £3,020 or £2,830 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,540 or £3,350 without flights. Included meals: 2 lunches, 5 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Pestana Vintage, Porto (pestanacollection.com): situated on the Douro river bank in a series of historic houses. Vintage House, Pinhão (csvintagehouse.com): delightful hotel surrounded by vineyards, with gardens overlooking the river. Both rated locally as 5-star. How strenuous? Visits in Porto are on foot and uphill (via some flights of steps). The archaeological park requires sure-footedness. Travel is by coach, train (luggage is transferred separately) and boat. Average distance by coach per day: 37 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Great Houses of the Czech Lands, 23–31 August 2019 (p.62); King Ludwig II, 26–31 August 2019 (p.107); The Schubertiade, 26 August–1 September (p.52); Vienna’s Masterpieces, 27–31 August 2019 (p.50); Connoisseur’s Prague, 10–16 September 2019 (p.60). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport. Illustration: Porto, aquatint c. 1830.
Gardens of Sintra Bussaco, Lisbon and the Portuguese Riviera 8–13 April 2019 (mf 478) 6 days • £2,710 Lecturer: Dr Gerald Luckhurst Portugal’s most enchanting palaces, botanical gardens and dramatic parklands. Four nights in Sintra; meet owners and park directors of the town’s romantic country estates. Walk within Bussaco’s monastic walled estate with ancient trees protected by a Papal bull. In Lisbon, visits to the extensive greenhouse Estufa Fria and the enigmatic gardens of the Palácio dos Marqueses de Fronteira. Led by Dr Gerald Luckhurst, who has worked on the restoration of Portugal’s historic gardens, including Monserrate at Sintra.
Itinerary Day 1: Buçaco (Bussaco). Fly at c. 12 noon from London Gatwick to Porto (TAP Air Portugal). Drive south to our hotel, a neo-Manueline Gothic fantasy, that sits in the Buçaco forest. Enclosed by a giant wall, the 260-acre forest was protected by two Papal bulls, one to prevent the felling of trees. Overnight Buçaco. Day 2: Coimbra, Sintra. Capital of Portugal from 1139 to 1385, Coimbra’s reputation outweighs its beauty, though monuments are rich. Cross the River Mondego to the Old Town for the densely historic church of Santa Cruz, founded 1131, with fine azulejos (decorative tiles). The nearby Jardim da Manga, ‘garden of the sleeve’, was sketched by João III on the sleeve of his coat. The University’s botanic garden contains recently restored greenhouses, avenues, fountains, tropical plants, systemic beds and a bamboo grove. Continue to
our hotel in Sintra, an elegant former palace with gardens that retain 18th-century features. Day 3: Sintra. Monserrate, an English landscape garden transplanted to southern climes, is full of literary associations and exotic plants: tree ferns, cactus, araucarias, palms, lotus and cycads. Lunch at a private home with one of Sintra’s best gardens; the design owes much to the South of France in its order and harmony, yet is coloured by local conditions and landscape. The idiosyncractic and thoroughly misunderstood garden of Regaleira was created at the close of the 19th century by Luigi Manini for his eccentric patron Antonio Augusto Carvalho Monteiro. Day 4: Sintra. The Capuchos Convent is a former Franciscan monastery founded in 1560, famous for extremely sparse living conditions. Hidden in the woods of Pena Palace is the recently restored Chalet da Condessa and its gardens, a refuge for the widowed king Dom Fernando II and an American opera singer. Lunch at the prettiest house in Sintra, with frescoed rooms by JeanBaptiste Pillement and a magnificent view of the town and its mountain. Free time in Sintra. Day 5: Queluz, Lisbon. Drive to the royal palace at Queluz. Continuously developed from 1747
MAINLAND EUROPE: Portugal
The Serra de Sintra. A small range of granite hills to the north-west of Lisbon, they occupy the westernmost point of continental Europe, jutting out into the Atlantic. It is this proximity to the ocean that defines the gardens of Sintra and allows them to luxuriate with year round verdure. This brings too the sweet poetic air and soft rosy light of the setting sun. Gardens have been made here by the Romans and the Moors, by the Portuguese re-conquerors and discoverers, and by merchants enriched by the diamonds and gold of Brazil. These gardens been described by poets, travellers, diplomats and soldiers from the Peninsular campaigns. In the nineteenth century Sintra became the centre for Portuguese Romanticism which celebrated this rich history and wild landscape. This in turn engendered a new round of gardenmaking which sought to emulate the cosmopolitan influences of the Portuguese discoveries and Moorish heritage. Palaces were built in the decorative style of the sixteenth-century king Dom Manuel, but were soon accompanied by others whose looks belied the links with India, Arabia, and China. Their gardens were filled with exotic plants from Brazil, Australia, South Africa and Mexico, transforming the terraces of Moorish orchard gardens into sub-tropical forests and extravagant floral paradises. This tour begins in the centre of Portugal at Bussaco, originally a spiritual retreat created by Carmelite monks in 1628. The forest still contains a representation of Jerusalem and the Via Sacra. Following the abolition of the monastic orders in 1834, this landscape was discovered by Romantic artists and transformed into a sensuous garden. The convent buildings were partially demolished to make way for a luxurious hotel designed by an opera set designer from La Scala. Moving south to Sintra the connection is maintained by that set designer, Luigi Manini, architect of one of the town’s most extravagant buildings, the Quinta da Regaleira. But the Romantic capabilities of Sintra are not exhausted by this giant folly. The wooded hills reveal, one after another, the most extraordinary richness and concentration of amazing gardens: Sir Francis Cook’s Monserrate, once described as the world’s largest greenhouse; Ferdinand Saxe-Coburg
Gotha’s gardens surrounding the Pena Palace that have transported the Black Forest to Portugal; the contemporary gardens of Quinta da Alegria inspired by the owner’s former garden in the South of France; and our hotel the Palácio de Seteais, built by the richest man of his day, holder of the Crown Monopoly of Brazilian Diamonds.
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Gardens of Sintra continued
Moldavia & Transylvania Towns, villages and painted churches on the edge of Europe
until the French invasion of 1807, the garden shows Rococo influences and is filled with classical sculpture from England. In Lisbon, Fronteira’s 16th-century garden celebrates Portugal’s victory in the Wars of Independence (1640–1664). The Ajuda Botanical Garden stretches over several marble-lined terraces with a spectacular zoological fountain at the centre. The Estufa Fria, an enormous greenhouse in a former quarry, preserves 19th-century horticultural practice and plant collections. By special arrangement, visit an 18th-century noble garden decorated extensively with exquisite azulejos. Day 6: Lisbon. Portugal’s Presidential Residence at Belém became a royal palace in 1726 when acquired and reconstructed by King Dom João V. The gardens contain mythological sculptures, tile panels, cascades, pavilions and an aviary. Fly from Lisbon, arriving London Heathrow at c. 6.45pm. Please note that this tour departs from London Gatwick and returns to London Heathrow.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,710 or £2,530 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,230 or £3,050 without flights.
12–20 October 2019 (mf 787) 9 days • £2,480 Lecturer: Alan Ogden 15th and 16th-century Orthodox churches featuring exquisite authentic frescoes on both internal and external walls, a unique phenomenon in Byzantine art. Mediaeval towns which rank with the most picturesque in central and eastern Europe. Scenic coach journeys through enchanting countryside where traditional rural life continues. During the second Millennium, Romanian history was defined by its geographical juxtaposition to expansionist states. Resistance to foreign domination from the 14th to the 16th centuries led to the gradual establishment of independent principalities – Wallachia (c. 1310), Moldavia (1359) and Transylvania (1541). Four years after the fall of Constantinople (1453), Stefan cel Mare (Stephen the Great) became Prince of Moldavia and for the next fifty years
Included meals: 3 lunches, 4 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Palace Hotel do Buçaco, Bussaco (almeidahotels.pt): former royal hunting lodge with a romantic setting in an extensive forest; rooms vary in size and décor. Tivoli Palácio de Seteias, Sintra (tivolihotels.com): luxury hotel in a former 18th-century residential palace with gardens and outdoor pool. How strenuous? A good level of fitness is essential. Unless you enjoy entirely unimpaired mobility, cope with everyday walking and stair-climbing without difficulty and are reliably sure-footed, this tour is not for you. There are steep streets, cobbles and steps. The parks and gardens are extensive with uneven ground and terraces. Average distance by coach per day: 53 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
MAINLAND EUROPE: Portugal, Romania
Combine this tour with: Gardens of the Bay of Naples, 30 March–7 April 2019 (p.152). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration, previous page: the Palace at Sintra, lithograph c. 1810 after a drawing by W.H. Burnett.
What else is included in the price? See page 6 176
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led a spirited defence against constant Turkish invasions, safeguarding much of Western Europe in the process. It was against this backdrop that Stefan and his son, Petru Rares, established almost thirty fortified monasteries and churches deep in the foothills of the Eastern Carpathians, the north-eastern region of presentday Romania. Peasant armies would gather for battle inside the monasteries’ walls, and to educate and entertain the illiterate soldiers and campfollowers the exteriors of the churches were adorned with paintings of biblical stories and other Christian themes, including a number of anti-Ottoman messages. Byzantine in style as befits their Orthodox congregation, the frescoes have remarkable finesse of draughtsmanship and chromatic refinement. Although the north-facing walls have been damaged by centuries of rain and wind, the images on the other walls have astonishingly retained their original vivacity, including the remarkable intensity of colour - from the greens of Suceviţa, to the pinks of Humor and the famous blue at Voronet.
Across the Carpathians, in the former Principality of Transylvania, there remain many Saxon villages which date from the 12th century when north Europeans, predominantly from the Luxembourg region, were recruited to migrate to Europe’s borderlands to farm, build, mine and trade. In due course, they also became bulwarks against incursions from the East. Hence the extraordinary fortifications around their village churches, constructed as citadels to protect the whole village, permanently stocked in expectation of a sudden siege. The landscapes of the Bucovina (as the northern part of old Moldavia is known) and Transylvania are those of gently rolling hills, dense woods, broad rivers and villages with pastel painted houses and riotous flower beds. Horses are still to be found in harness, ploughing the fields and transporting produce to markets. The towns are marvellous survivals, emerging from decades of neglect to reveal cityscapes as lovely and architecturally interesting as anywhere in the former Austro-Hungarian empire. The welcome you will receive in Romania is sure to be warm and the hospitality generous.
Itinerary Day 1: Bucharest. Fly at c. 2.50pm from London Heathrow to Bucharest (Tarom Airlines). Overnight Bucharest. Day 2: Bucharest, Gura Humorului. Visit the National Art Museum with its comprehensive collection of 14th- to 20th-century Romanian art; Cotroceni Palace, the former home of Queen Marie and now the official residence of the Romanian Head of State, and the Village Museum with its outdoor collection of traditonal peasant houses. Internal flight from Bucharest to Suceava. Drive to Gura Humorului. First of three nights in Gura Humorului.
Day 4: Arbore, Suceviţa, Moldovița. Arbore’s (1501) superbly executed frescoes on the western wall, with a notably green cast, contain scenes from the Lives of St Nicholas, St George and St Paraskeva. In bucolic surroundings, Suceviţa (1595) with its beautifully preserved frescoes is the last of the great painted monasteries in Bucovina. Moldovița’s (1532) remote position and fortifications have protected its frescoes from invaders and marauders alike. Overnight Gura Humorului. Day 5: Târgu Mureș, Sighișoara. Cross the Carpathians into Transylvania. Târgu Mureș is endowed with an array of buildings in a Hungarian version of Arts & Crafts and Secessionist styles. The 1913 Palace of Culture – concert hall, art gallery, ceremonial halls - is as
Travel writer and historian. His books include Moons & Aurochs: Romanian Journeys and Revelations of Byzantium: The Monasteries & Painted Churches of N.E. Moldavia. He has written four histories of the Special Operations Executive covering Eastern Europe, Italy, Greece and the Far East. See page 260 for all lecturers' biographies.
fine as any comparable building in Central Europe. Located on top of a hill, natural defensiveness supplemented by impressive military engineering, Sighișoara is a highly picturesque little town. Buildings range from the 13th to the 19th centuries with a fine 15th-century church with good furnishings and a superb altarpiece of 1490. First of two nights in Sighișoara. Day 6: Criș, Mălâncrav, Biertan, Richiș, Alma Vii, Mediaș. Located in an exceptionally lovely valley, hillsides striated with terraces for (now vanished) vines, the splendid Gothic church of Biertan soars above its formidable fortifications and the charmingly modest village below. The village church at Mălâncrav is celebrated for the remarkably well-preserved murals of 1421. Overnight in Sighișoara. Day 7: Prejmer, Brașov, Sinaia. On the way to Brașov, stop at Prejmer for one more fortified church. The inner face of the 12-metre curtain wall is spectacularly encased with emergency accommodation and storage chambers. With a wonderful jumble of facades from, principally, the 18th to the early 20th centuries, Brașov is as handsome a provincial city as anywhere in eastern Europe. The Black Church is the largest Gothic church in Romania, and the interior is enlivened with nearly 100 oriental carpets. Much of the day is free to enjoy the streetscape, the cafes and the museums. Outside the walls, there is a cable car to the top of an adjacent hill. The road south passes through the Transylvanian Alps and the royal summer resort of Sinaia. First of two nights in Sinaia. Day 8: Sinaia. Here visit the summer retreat of the Romanian royal family, Peleș and Pelișor Castles, built, extended and embellished 1875– 1914. The sequence of sumptuous interiors, with astonishingly richly carved woodwork, is as fine as any of its sort in Europe, and the original contents are intact. Overnight in Sinaia. Day 9: Sinaia, Bucharest. Descend to the Wallachian plain and fly from Bucharest, returning to Heathrow c. 2.05pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,480 or £2,250 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,680 or £2,450 without flights. Included meals: 5 lunches, 7 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Athenee Palace Hilton, Bucharest (hiltonbucharest.com): centrallylocated 5-star hotel with excellent service and facilities. Best Western Bucovina, Gura Humorului (bestwesternbucovina.ro): modern 3-star hotel 37km south-west of Suceava, ideally located for exploring the surrounding area Bathrooms have showers, not baths. The standards of comfort, equipment and service are quite acceptable and commensurate with its category. Central Park Hotel, Sighișoara (hotelcentralpark. ro): elegant 4-star hotel, located close to the city centre. International Hotel, Sinaia (internationalsinaia.ro): modern 4-star conference hotel situated in the foothills of the Bucegi Mountains. How strenuous? Participants must be reasonably fit as you will be on your feet for long periods. The tour would not be suitable for anyone who has difficulties with everyday walking and stairclimbing. Some long coach journeys and one internal flight. Average distance by coach per day: 74 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Albania: Crossroads of Antiquity, 2–11 October 2019 (p.46); Ancient & Islamic Tunisia, 4–11 October 2019 (p.215); Art in the Netherlands, 20– 26 October 2019 (p.167); Classic Catalan Wines, 21–26 October 2019 (p.193); Essential Andalucía, 21–31 October 2019 (p.198). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration, left: Brașov, the Black Church, wood engraving c. 1880. Above: woodcut c. 1930.
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Day 3: Humor, Râșca, Voroneț. The interior frescoes at the church at Humor (1530) are unsurpassed. Râșca (1540), located in a remote valley, is a charming working monastery and boasts a Ladder of St John on its South wall. Voroneț Monastery (1488), considered by many to be the most splendid in Bucovina, offers a magnificent Last Judgement. Overnight Gura Humorului.
Alan Ogden
Enescu Festival Bucharest World-class music in Romania’s fascinating capital Dr John Allison Editor of Opera magazine, he is music critic for the Daily Telegraph and former critic for the Sunday Telegraph and The Times. He has written two books and has served on the juries of various international music competitions. See page 260 for all lecturers' biographies. Day 6. A second guided walk, this time around the more southerly part of the historic centre, scheduled to be totally erased by Ceaușescu. Several Byzantine-style churches are seen. A visit to the History Museum is suggested for the afternoon. Evening concert with the Orchestre National de France, Emanuel Krevin (conductor), Evegny Kissin (piano): Liszt, ‘Mazeppa’ symphonic poem, Piano Concerto No.2 in A; Mussorgsky/ Ravel, ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’.
1–7 September 2019 (mf 686) 7 days • £2,830 (including tickets to 8 performances) Lecturer: Dr John Allison Top category tickets for eight concerts at this biennial international music festival with an impressive programme. Joyce DiDonato, Diana Damrau, Evgeny Kissin, Tasmin Little, Charles Richard Hamelin, LSO, Orchestre National de France. Guided visits and free time to explore Bucharest, an alluring Balkan capital. Grand classical buildings, Byzantine churches, picturesque alleys and arcades, art museums.
MAINLAND EUROPE: Romania
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c.11.45am from London Heathrow to Bucharest (British Airways). Time to settle into your room before drinks and dinner. Day 2. The daily lecture is followed by a guided walk around the Kalea Victoriei and Revolution Square, passing major buildings and sites of significant moments in Romanian history. Free time until the 5.00pm recital in the Athenaeum, surely one of the loveliest concert halls in the world: Joyce DiDonato (mezzo-soprano), Henry Bonamy (piano), programme to be confirmed. After a quick supper, 8.00pm concert at the Grand Palace Hall (where all the evening concerts take place): London Symphony Orchestra, Gianandrea Noseda (conductor), Denis Matsuev (piano): RimskyKorsakov, ‘Kitezh’ prelude; Prokofiev, Piano Concerto No.2 in G minor, Op.16; Shostakovich, Symphony No.6 in B minor, Op.54.
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Day 3. The Village Museum is a famous and fascinating assembly of traditional Romanian buildings and crafts. Lunch is included here. Muzeul Georg Enescu, a small music museum, is housed in the Cantacuzino Palace, home of an early 20th-century prime minister. Evening concert with the London Symphony Orchestra, Gianandrea Noseda (conductor), Radio Academic Choir, Diana Damrau (soprano), Cosmin Ifrim (tenor): Enescu, ‘Vox Maris’ symphonic poem, Op.31; Iain Bell, ‘The Hidden Place’; R.Strauss, final scene of ‘Capriccio’; Britten, ‘Four Sea Interludes and Passacaglia’ from Peter Grimes. Day 4. Art and artefacts, particularly Byzantinestyle paintings and textiles, are excellently displayed in the Gallery of Old Romanian Art. To continue the theme, the Museum of Collections is recommended for the afternoon. Evening opera (concert performance) Die Frau Ohne Schatten (R. Strauss) with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Vladimir Jurowski (conductor), Torsten Kerl (the Emperor), Anne Schwanewilms (the Empress), Thomas Mayer (Barak, the Dyer), Christine Goerke (the Dyer’s Wife). Day 5. Apart from the daily lecture, the day is free. There is yet much to see, but highly recommended is the Gallery of European Art, particularly strong on Italian, Spanish and Netherlandish Old Masters and French Impressionists. The Muzeul Theodor Aman should not be missed. Afternoon concert in the Athenaeum with Orchestre Pelléas, Benjamin Levy (conductor), Tasmin Little (violin): Debussy, ‘Sarabande’; Enescu, Violin Sonata No.3 (arr. for orchestra); Ravel, ‘Tzigane’; Chabrier, ‘Bourrée Fantasque’; Bizet, Symphony in C. Break for dinner. Evening concert with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Vladimir Jurowski (conductor), Julia Fischer (violin): Britten, Violin Concerto, Op.15; Enescu, Symphony No.3 in C, Op.21.
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Day 7. Morning recital in the Small Palace Hall with Charles Richard Hamelin (piano): Debussy, ‘Images Oubliées’; Rachmaninov, Morceaux de fantaisie, Op.3; Enescu, Suite for Piano No.1 in G minor, Op.3; Prokofiev, Piano Sonata No.4 in C minor, Op.29. Monstrous in conception, ghastly in design but stunningly, hilariously and creepily magnificent, the Ceaușescu-built Palace of Parliament has to be seen, sadly. (Please note interior visits can only be confirmed one week in advance). Fly from Bucharest to London Heathrow, arriving c. 8.55pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,830 or £2,520 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,190 or £2,880 without flights. Included meals: 2 lunches, 4 dinners, with wine. Music: tickets (top category) for 8 performances are included, costing c. £360. Accommodation. Athenee Palace Hilton, Bucharest (hiltonbucharest.com): 5-star hotel with excellent service and facilities, 5 minutes’ walk from the concert venues. How strenuous? A good level of fitness is necessary. It should not be attempted by anyone who has difficulty with everyday walking and stair-climbing. Average distance by coach per day: 4 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Great Houses of the Czech Lands, 23–31 August 2019 (p.62); The Lucerne Festival, 26–31 August 2019 (p.205); King Ludwig II, 26–31 August 2019 (p.107); Vienna's Masterpieces, 26–31 August 2019 (p.50); Literary England, 8–16 September 2019 (p.27); Courts of Northern Italy, 8–15 September 2019 (p.132). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport. Illustration: after a drawing of 1897.
St Petersburg Pictures and palaces in the imperial capital 10–17 May 2019 (mf 544) 8 days • £3,110 Lecturer: Dr Alexey Makhrov 13–20 September 2019 (mf 705) Exclusively for solo travellers 8 days • £3,370 Lecturer: Dr Alexey Makhrov St Petersburg is perhaps the grandest city in Europe, and one of the most beautiful. Magnificent architecture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, especially the palaces of the Romanovs, nobility and merchants. Outstanding art collections, the Hermitage being the largest art museum in the world.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 9.15am from London Heathrow to St Petersburg (British Airways; time in the air: c. 3 hours 15 minutes). There is time to settle in before a short walk in the vicinity of hotel and dinner. Day 2. Explore the north bank of the Neva and Vasilyevsky Island which, as the original intended site of the city, has some of St Petersburg’s earliest
buildings including the Twelve Colleges and the Peter-Paul Fortress. Visit the Menshikov Palace, an early 18th-century residence with impressive Petrine decoration. In the afternoon, visit the Russian Museum in the imposing Mikhailovsky Palace, which houses Russian painting from mediaeval icons to the vast canvases of the Romantics and Realists of the 19th century. Day 3. The first of two visits to the Hermitage, one of the world’s greatest art collections, housed in Rastrelli’s Winter Palace and contiguous buildings; walk around to understand the layout and to see the magnificent interiors. Walk to the remarkable Neo-Classical buildings of the Synod, Senate and Admiralty. Continue by coach, taking in the sumptuous Marble Palace (exterior), designed by Rinaldi in Baroque and Neo-Classical style, and the wonderful group of Smolny Convent and Cathedral by Rastrelli. Early access to the Hermitage by special arrangement is subject to confirmation two weeks before each visit. Day 4. A full-day excursion to two of the summer palaces about 20 miles from St Petersburg, both set in extensive landscaped parks with lakes and pavilions. At Tsarskoye Selo, formerly Pushkin, the main building is the outsized Rococo Catherine Palace by Rastrelli, its richly ornamented interiors painstakingly restored after war damage. At Pavlovsk, also well restored, the graceful NeoClassical Great Palace with encircling wings was in part built by Scotsman Charles Cameron. Day 5. A morning excursion to Peterhof (by hydrofoil, weather permitting), the magnificent palace on the Gulf of Finland with cascades and fountains. Some free time for independent exploration. Day 6. A second visit to the Hermitage to concentrate on specific aspects of the collections and to pursue individual passions.Drive through the city. The Baroque Cathedral of St Nicholas, with its gilded domes, is a memorial to Russian navy sailors who perished at sea. Visit the late
19th-century Yusupov Palace, one of the finest in the city and scene of Rasputin’s murder. Day 7. A visit to the world’s largest collection of Fabergé works, displayed in the Shuvalov Palace. In the afternoon, drive via the Kazan Cathedral with colonnaded forecourt to the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, an extensive Baroque layout and cemetery with graves of many famous Russians. Day 8. A free morning; perhaps the Hermitage again, or places not yet visited such as the Dostoyevsky Museum, Academy of Arts, or Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood. Fly to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 5.00pm.
Practicalities Price, per person in May. Two sharing: £3,110 or £2,870 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,570 or £3,330 without flights. Price in September (exclusively for solo travellers): £3,370 or £3,130 without flights. Included meals: 5 dinners with wine. Music: details of opera and ballet performances will be sent to participants about one month before the tour and tickets can be requested. Visas: see page 181. Accommodation. Hotel Angleterre (angleterrehotel.com): excellently-located 5-star hotel in the city centre, within easy walking distance of the Hermitage. How strenuous? There is a fair amount of standing in galleries and walking on this tour. Traffic congestion means coach journeys can be long and frustrating. Average coach travel per day: 13 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
Illustration: St Petersburg, Alexander Nevsky Monastery, late 18th-century engraving.
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Founded by Peter the Great in 1703, the city of St Petersburg was intended to demonstrate to the world not only that Russia was a European rather than an Asian nation, but also that it was an immensely powerful one. This ‘window on the West’ became the capital of the Russian Empire until the government moved back to Moscow in 1918. Peter’s wish was amply fulfilled: with the assistance of Dutch, Italian and French architects – Russians were to take over later in the century once they had mastered the mysteries of Western art and architecture – St Petersburg was laid out as the grandest city in Europe, with buildings on a monumental scale. The palaces of the imperial family and of the fabulously wealthy magnates vied with each other, and with the military establishments and government institutions to dominate the river front, the broad avenues and the vast squares. Although one of the newest of Europe’s great cities, St Petersburg is the one least affected by 20th-century building. Despite the well-publicised economic and political troubles Russia has undergone in recent years, there has been a surge of cleaning and restoration which has accentuated the beauty of the city. As impressive as the architecture of St Petersburg are the contents of the museums and art galleries. The Hermitage is one of the world’s greatest art museums, with an immensely rich collection of paintings, sculpture, antiquities and decorative arts filling the enormous Winter Palace of the Romanovs. The Russian Museum comes as a revelation to most visitors, for apart from icons (and there is a wonderful collection) the great achievements of Russian painters, particularly during the 19th century, are scarcely known outside the country.
Ballet in St Petersburg Russian dance during the White Nights
18–23 May 2019 (mf 537) 6 days • £2,970 (including tickets to 3 performances) Lecturer: Jane Pritchard mbe Two performances at the Mariinsky and one at the Mikhailovsky Theatre, including Giselle and George Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. St Petersburg is perhaps the grandest NeoClassical city in Europe, and the birthplace of ballet in Russia. Privileged access and special arrangements are a feature of the tour.
MAINLAND EUROPE: Russia
Visit the city’s outstanding art collections and witness its magnificent architecture. Option to combine this tour with: Moscow & the Golden Ring, 25 May–3 June 2019 (see opposite). For the dance-lover, St Petersburg is a city synonymous with ballet at its best. It was there that the training of dancers reached a peak and for over half a century the master choreographer, Marius Petipa, worked creating ballets such as La Bayadère and The Sleeping Beauty, which have become the cornerstones of the international repertory. To visit St Petersburg – a city with a rich, layered history – is to walk in the footsteps of Anna Pavlova and Vaslav Nijinsky, and almost feel you are within the setting of the Stravinsky-Fokine masterpiece, Petr ouch kea. This tour takes place during the long days of White Nights when the whole city comes alive. Performances include the great romantic ballet, Giselle, in which the Mariinsky excel and George Balanchine’s Neo-Classical A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Balanchine, himself was a product 180
of the Imperial Ballet School and his Dream updates many of the traditions of the nineteenth century classics. The programme includes a visit to the legendary Vaganova Academy where star dancers including Pavlova, Nureyev and Baryshnikov trained and a backstage visit to the Mariinsky, on whose historic stage The Nutcracker was first danced. In addition, we will watch ballet at the revitalised Mikhailovsky and discover the unique dance treasures of the St Petersburg Theatre Museum. Visits to art galleries and imperial palaces also feature, as well as the magnificent Art Nouveau home of prima ballerina assoluta Matilde Kschesinskaya, from the balcony of which Lenin made one of his historic speeches. It is now the Museum of Political History of Russia but incorporates a display on the ballerina who is now the subject of a controversial film.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 9.15am from London Heathrow to St Petersburg (British Airways; time in the air: c. 3 hours 15 minutes). Time to settle in before dinner. Day 2. In the morning visit the Hermitage, one of the world’s greatest art collections, housed in Rastrelli’s Winter Palace (early access to the Hermitage by special arrangement is subject to confirmation two weeks before the visit), and the Menshikov Palace, an early 18th-century residence with impressive Petrine decoration. An early evening lecture precedes afternoon tea and an evening performance at the Mariinsky Theatre: A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Choreography by George Balanchine to music by Mendelssohn, featuring the Mariinsky Theatre Children’s Choir.
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Day 3. Explore the north bank of the Neva and Vasilyevsky Island which, as the original intended site of the city, has some of St Petersburg’s earliest buildings including the Twelve Colleges and the Peter-Paul Fortress. Visit (by special arrangement) the Vaganova Academy, established in 1738 as the Imperial Ballet School, and in the afternoon, a curator-led tour at the Museum of Political History of Russia, with an exhibition dedicated to Matilda Kshesinskaya. The evening is spent in the company of a soloist of the Mikhailovsky theatre and graduate of the Vaganova Academy. Day 4. Morning excursion to Peterhof (by hydrofoil, weather permitting), the magnificent palace on the Gulf of Finland. Some free time. Evening performance at the Mariinsky Theatre: Giselle. Choreography by Jean Coralli, Jules Perrot and Marius Petipa to music by Adolphe Adam. Day 5. In the morning, visit the Russian Museum in the imposing Mikhailovsky Palace, which houses Russian painting from mediaeval icons to the vast canvases of the Romantics and Realists of the 19th century. The Samoilov Family Museum has an exhibition dedicated to the history of Russian ballet and in the afternoon, a private backstage tour of the Mariinsky theatre. Evening ballet performance at the Mikhailovsky Theatre to be confirmed. The date and time of the backstage tour at the Mariinksy Theatre can only be confirmed one week prior to the tour and is dependent on rehearsal schedules. There is a chance we may not be able to include this visit, or that it may be substituted with a backstage tour of the Mikhailovsky theatre. Day 6. Free morning. Fly to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 5.00pm.
Moscow & the Golden Ring Icons and monuments of Holy Russia Russian visas British citizens and most other foreign nationals require a tourist visa. The current cost for UK nationals is around £110, including service charge. This is not included in the price of the tour because you have to procure it yourself. You will need to complete an online application in the two month period before departure, and submit this along with your passport. As of 10th December 2014, it is obligatory for UK residents of all nationalities to attend one of three application centres, in London, Manchester or Edinburgh, in order to submit biometric data (fingerprints) as part of the visa application process. Visa issuing times vary from country to country but UK residents should expect to be without their passport for approximately one week.
If combining this tour with Moscow & the Golden Ring: take the train from St Petersburg to Moscow on 24th May and transfer by taxi to the hotel. Overnight in Moscow.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,970 or £2,710 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,390 or £3,130 without flights.
25 May–3 June 2019 (mf 552) 10 days • £3,980 Lecturer: Andrew Spira Russia’s sacred icons and frescoes and the masters who painted them. A selection of some of the most spectacular churches and monasteries of Tsarist Russia. Begins in Moscow; the Kremlin Armoury and its treasures, finest Russian art in the Tretyakov Gallery. Timeless countryside and the Volga landscapes that inspired Isaac Levitan. A history of the Russian Orthodox Church that provides great insight into Russia today. Option to combine this tour with Ballet in St Petersburg, 18–23 May 2019 (see opposite). Zalesye, or ‘Land beyond the forest’ in the northeastern periphery of Kievan Rus, became the birthplace of the Russian state. In the vast area between the Volga and Oka rivers, a powerful Vladimir-Suzdal principality emerged in the twelfth century. Moscow, initially a marginal settlement, took the lead in the fourteenth century
and embarked on the mission of ‘gathering Russian lands’. Today Moscow is a dazzling metropolis with remarkable architectural monuments, superb museums and a rich cultural life; it is also the point of departure for exploration of the country’s historical legacy along the route of old Russian cities known as the ‘Golden Ring’. Orthodox Christianity underpinned culture and daily life in mediaeval Russia. It has continued to exert a dominant influence down the ages, even through the Communist era. Despite the damage done by Soviet attempts to impose atheism, religion has enjoyed a remarkable revival in recent years: churches are again used for worship, many monasteries have been reinstated, and there has been much restoration and reconstruction – supported by the government. The architectural and artistic heritage of the Orthodox faith are sometimes found in spectacular locations. We see churches and monasteries that are striking landmarks in the landscape, while the chiming of bells, the splendour of ritual and the shimmering magnificence of icons and frescoes create a lasting impression. Illustration: Monastery of St Sergius, near Moscow, wood engraving from the 'Illustrated London News' 1883.
Included meals: 3 dinners and 1 afternoon tea with wine. Ballet performances: tickets to 3 performances are included, costing c. £315 in total. Tickets are confirmed early spring 2019. Visas: see above. Accommodation. Hotel Angleterre (angleterrehotel.com): excellently-located 5-star hotel in the city centre, within easy walking distance of the Hermitage.
MAINLAND EUROPE: Russia
How strenuous? There is a fair amount of walking on this tour. Traffic congestion means coach journeys can be long and frustrating. Average coach travel per day: 12 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Price, Ballet in St Petersburg and Moscow & the Golden Ring combined. Two sharing: £7,120 or £6,800 without flights. Single occupancy: £8,250 or £7,930 without flights. This includes extra accommodation in St Petersburg (1 night) and Moscow (1 night), and train (business class) and car transfers between the two. These arrangements are pre-booked and escorted by a tour manager. Other possible combinations: Prague Spring, 12–18 May 2019 (p.61). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration: St Petersburg, mid-19th-century lithograph.
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once part of a princely residence. St Euphimius Monastery includes the magnificent Cathedral of Transfiguration, a bell-tower and a prison used both in the tsarist and Soviet periods.
Although rooted in Byzantine tradition, Russian mediaeval art and architecture display originality and receptiveness to western European ideas. The white stone churches in Vladimir and Bogoliubovo feature Romanesque sculptural decoration, whereas Renaissance influence was brought to the Moscow Kremlin and elsewhere by Italian builders. The Moscow school of icon painting of the early fifteenth century, epitomised by Andrei Rublev, produced images of perfect harmony and beauty. The high iconostasis, a screen with tiers of icons separating the altar from the congregation, developed into a distinctive element of Russian ecclesiastical architecture. Study of this glittering artistic legacy, explored in its geographical, historical and religious context, is richly rewarding both in its own right and as an essential means better to understand Russian national identity.
Day 8: Suzdal, Vladimir. In Vladimir, focus on a magnificent ensemble of unesco-listed masonry structures originally erected under the auspices of Andrei Bogolyubsky (‘The Pious’) in the 12th century: the Golden Gate, the Cathedral of the Assumption – with frescoes by the celebrated iconists Andrei Rublev and Daniil Chorny – and St Demetrius Cathedral, fabulously decorated with stone carvings. A short distance northeast, walk across water meadows to the perfectly proportioned Church of Intercession on Nerl, a masterpiece of Russian medieval architecture.
Itinerary If combining this tour with Ballet in St Petersburg: travel by train from St Petersburg to Moscow on 24th May and transfer by taxi to the hotel. Overnight at the Hotel National. Day 1: London to Moscow. Fly at c. 10.50am from London Heathrow to Moscow (British Airways). Drive (c. 1 hour) to the city centre and settle in to the hotel. First of three nights in Moscow. Day 2: Moscow. A short coach tour is a profitable introduction to the capital. The Tretyakov Gallery holds the finest collection of Russian icons in the country, many of which formerly belonged to churches and monasteries visited on this tour. After lunch, return to the Gallery to contemplate the national narrative depicted in significant 18th- and 19th-century history paintings. The lustrous landscapes of Isaac Levitan (1860–1900) are a highlight and a precursor to our visit to Ples. Leo Tolstoy’s Moscow residence offers an intimate glimpse into the domestic life of the novelist.
MAINLAND EUROPE: Russia
Day 3: Moscow. Walk through Alexandrov Gardens to the Kremlin, which dates back eight centuries as a centre of Russian government. Many of the tsarist and ecclesiastical buildings have survived the Communist era, among these the spectacular group comprising the icon-rich Cathedral of Assumption, the Cathedral of the Archangel (with tombs of Grand Dukes and Tsars of Muscovy) and the Cathedral of the Annunciation, private church of the Tsars. The Armoury Museum has a remarkable collection of gold and silver, and other precious objets d’art, gifts to the tsars. The Novodivichy Convent, baroque-style Moscow architecture at its finest, was a retreat – at times enforced – for some of Russia’s most famous noblewomen. Day 4: Moscow, Pereslavl Zalessky, Rostov, Yaroslavl. An early start as we quit Moscow for the provinces. Simple and exquisite, the church of St Saviour of Transfiguration in Pereslavl Zalessky, completed in 1157, is one of the earliest churches on the Ring. Rostov Veliky (the Great), on the banks of Lake Nero, flourished as a trade and cultural centre from the 9th to 18th centuries. The Kremlin complex, with its enchanting silver and 182
gold cupolas, has been sensitively reconstructed after a tornado wreaked havoc in 1953. The enamel museum represents the living tradition of miniature painting on enamel, which originated in France in the 17th century. Overnight Yaroslavl. Day 5: Yaroslavl, Kostroma. On the west bank of the Volga, the ancient city of Yaroslavl retains much of its 18th- and 19th-century mercantile appearance and layout. The museum within the former Monastery of the Saviour of the Transfiguration is one of the best of its kind. At the heart of the town, the 17th-century Church of Elijah the Prophet is decorated with outstanding frescoes on subjects from the Old and New Testament. Under the reign of Boris Godunov, whose relatives built it, Kostroma’s Ipatiev monastery was the wealthiest in the country; the 17th-cent. Trinity Cathedral, which retains a magnificent iconostasis, once boasted over 100 icons. The first Romanov tsar, Mikhail, left from here to be crowned in the Moscow Kremlin in 1613. Overnight Kostroma. Day 6: Kostroma, Ples, Suzdal. Now considered one of the most desirable country getaways by wealthy Muscovites, the little town of Ples on the banks of the Volga was made famous by the 19thcentury artist Isaac Levitan who found the light and birch strewn landscape irresistible. His former lodging among the fish-smoking shacks on the riverbank is now a modest museum. Drive 180km to the city-museum of Suzdal, with its impressive assemblage of ancient churches and monasteries. First of three nights in Suzdal. Day 7: Suzdal. The ethnographic museum of wooden architecture, with its historic samples of vernacular buildings, is an insight into rural living in old Russia. Within the Suzdal Kremlin stands the Cathedral of the Nativity with its 13th-century white stone reliefs; its ancient doors are rare surviving examples of the technique of fire gilding. Dedicated to the first Russian saints, the 12th-cent. Church of St Boris and St Gleb at Kideksha was
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Day 9: Alexandrov, Sergiev Posad, Moscow. The private residence of the tsars, Alexandrov was used by Ivan the Terrible as the alternative capital of Russia. Nearby at Sergiev Posad, Trinity-Sergius Lavra is our final stop on the Ring. The extensive monastery complex of St Sergius, the ancient centre of Russian Orthodoxy, with churches and buildings dating from the 15th to the 18th centuries, remains a thriving site of pilgrimage and worship today. An exuberant, ‘peopled’ site, as the other historical sites on the Ring would all once have been, it makes a fitting end to the tour. Ovenight Moscow. Day 10: Moscow. Free morning. Midday transfer to Domodedovo Airport for the flight to Heathrow, arriving at c. 6.00pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,980 or £3,660 without flights. Single occupancy: £4,490 or £4,170 without flights. Included meals: 7 lunches, 8 dinners, with wine. Visas: see page 181. Accommodation. Hotel National, Moscow (national.ru): elegant, comfortable 5-star hotel in the city centre, within easy walking distance of the Kremlin. Ring Premier, Yaroslavl (ringhotel. ru): functional and corporate, this 4-star hotel is the best of a limited choice. Hotel Ya, Kostroma: comfortable, modern hotel. Pushkarskaya Sloboda, Suzdal: accommodation is in traditional dacha-style log cabins within the hotel complex. How strenuous? There is a fair amount of walking, as well as standing in churches and galleries on this tour. Some coach journeys are longer than 2 hours. Average coach travel per day: 48 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Price, Ballet in St Petersburg and Moscow & the Golden Ring combined. Two sharing: £7,120 or £6,800 without flights. Single occupancy: £8,250 or £7,930 without flights. This includes extra accommodation in St Petersburg (1 night) and Moscow (1 night), and train (business class) and car transfers between the two. These arrangements are pre-booked and escorted by a tour manager. Illustration: Moscow, Cathedral of the Assumption, steel engraving c. 1850.
Moscow & St Petersburg Cultural highlights of Russia’s greatest cities 2–10 September 2019 (mf 669) 9 days • £4,170 Lecturer: Dr Alexey Makhrov The two great cities of Russia, monumental and vibrant, both historically and today. Spectacular art collections, spanning the finest icons to masterpieces of Impressionism. Baroque palaces, onion-domed cathedrals and a country estate, centre of the Slavophile art movement in the 19th century. The art and architecture are enhanced by a private concert with the Dominant Quartet, one of Russia’s leading string ensembles.
Itinerary Day 1: London to Moscow. Fly at c. 11.00am from London Heathrow to Moscow (British Airways). There is time to settle into the hotel before dinner. First of four nights in Moscow. Day 2: Moscow. A short coach tour provides orientation and an overview of the capital. Red Square, part framed by the walls of the Kremlin and crowned by St Basil’s Cathedral, is best seen on foot. The Tretyakov Gallery holds the finest collection of Russian icons in the country, as well as examples of portraits and landscapes by leading Russian artists of the 18th and 19th centuries. After lunch, return to the Gallery for further independent exploration.
Day 7. Walk to the Hermitage, one of the world’s greatest art collections; walk around to understand the layout and to see the magnificent interiors. Continue on foot to the remarkable Neo-Classical buildings of the Synod, Senate and Admiralty. In the afternoon, drive via the Kazan Cathedral with colonnaded forecourt to the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, an extensive baroque layout and cemetery with graves of many famous Russians. Day 8. Morning excursion to Peterhof (return by hydrofoil, weather permitting), the magnificent palace on the Gulf of Finland. In the afternoon, a private backstage tour of the Mariinsky theatre before some free time. The date and time of this appointment can only be confirmed by the theatre one week prior to the tour and is dependent on rehearsal schedules. There is a chance we may not be able to include this visit. Day 9. A morning visit and time for lunch at the summer palace at Pavlovsk, a well restored, graceful Neo-Classical Great Palace with
encircling wings, built in part by Scotsman Charles Cameron. Continue by coach and fly to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 5.00pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £4,170 or £3,750 without flights. Single occupancy: £4,710 or £4,290 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 5 dinners with wine. Music: details of performances in St Petersburg will be available c. 1 month before the tour. Visas: see page 181. Accommodation. Hotel National, Moscow (national.ru): elegant and comfortable 5-star hotel in the city centre, within easy walking distance of the Kremlin. Hotel Angleterre, St Petersburg (angleterrehotel.com): excellently-located 5-star hotel in the city centre, within easy walking distance of the Hermitage. How strenuous? There is a fair amount of standing in galleries and walking on this tour. Traffic congestion means coach journeys can be long and frustrating. Average coach travel per day: 24 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Great Houses of the Czech Lands, 23–31 August 2019 (p.62); The Lucerne Festival, 26–31 August 2019 (p.205); The Schubertiade, 26 August–1 September 2019 (p.52). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport. Illustration: Moscow, the Kremlin, engraving c. 1830.
MAINLAND EUROPE: Russia
Day 3: Moscow. Walk through Alexandrov Gardens to the Kremlin. Many of the tsarist and ecclesiastical buildings have survived the Communist era, among these a spectacular group of cathedrals. The Armoury Museum has a remarkable collection of gold and silver, and other precious objets d’art, gifts to the tsars. In the afternoon, see the superb Impressionist paintings at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, central repository for Russia’s extensive European art collection. Evening concert with the Dominant Quartet, one of the country’s foremost string ensembles, who perform an all-Russian programme exclusively for our group.
by Rinaldi in Baroque and Neo-Classical style, and the wonderful group of Smolny Convent and Cathedral by Rastrelli. Explore the north bank of the Neva and Vasilyevsky Island, which, as the original intended site of the city, has some of St Petersburg’s earliest buildings including the Twelve Colleges and the Peter-Paul Fortress. Visit the Menshikov Palace, an early 18th-century residence with impressive Petrine decoration. In the afternoon, see the Russian Museum in the imposing Mikhailovsky Palace, which houses Russian paintings from mediaeval icons to the vast canvases of the Romantics and Realists of the 19th century.
Day 4: Moscow, Abramtsevo. A day’s excursion into the countryside 50 miles north of Moscow. Owned in the 1840s by a well-connected Muscovite, Sergey Aksakov, and subsequently by the railway magnate, Savva Mamontov, the estate at Abramtsevo became known throughout the 19th century as a creative colony for the Slavophile movement. Many well-known artists and writers stayed there, engaging a distinctly Russian artistic identity, one which included a revival of interest in traditional arts and crafts. Day 5: Moscow to St Petersburg. The Novodivichy Convent, baroque-style Moscow architecture at its finest, was a retreat – at times enforced – for some of Russia’s most famous noblewomen. In the afternoon travel by train (business class) to St Petersburg. Dinner in the hotel upon arrival. Day 6. In the morning, a tour by coach, taking in the sumptuous Marble Palace (exterior), designed Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Journey through Slovakia Ruthenia to the Danube via the High Tatras The Hlavná, a long broad boulevard which courses through the middle of the little city, links many fine buildings, including the elaborately ornamented and richly furnished Gothic cathedral and the turn-of-the-century theatre. Among the narrow streets and squares are other churches and two striking synagogues, Moorish-style of 1889 and Hungarian modernist of 1927. Dinner in an Art Nouveau restaurant. Overnight Košice. Day 3: Krásna Horké, Betliar, Jasov. Excursion through the forested hills and green valleys of the Košice district. The 1905 mausoleum of Františka and Dionýz Andrássy near Krásna Horka is a superb confection of marble and mosaic. Another Andrássy property is the mansion at Betliar where 50 richly furnished rooms are exactly as left by the family in 1944. The late-Baroque monastery complex at Jasov, designed by the Viennese architect Anton Pilgram, is particularly distinguished for its great library. Overnight Košice.
7–15 June 2019 (mf 507) 9 days • £2,430 Lecturer: Dr Jana Gajdošová A fascinating but little visited nation in eastcentral Europe formerly part of Czechoslovakia. Little walled towns, particularly rich in Gothic art and architecture, and dramatically sited castles. Also Renaissance, Baroque, and Classical buildings, and good 20th-century painting. Memorable landscapes of hills, forests, fertile valleys and a dramatic range of mountains.
MAINLAND EUROPE: Slovakia
Slovakia is a nation that was never a truly independent until 1993. Prior to that it had constituted the slightly ill-fitting eastern end of Czechoslovakia (from which it was temporarily separated during the Second World War), and before 1919 it had for centuries lain within the vast multinational kingdom of Hungary – through which it had, since 1526, been subject to Habsburg suzerainty. Culturally and economically, however, and sometimes politically, the territory was sometimes closer to Poland and Ukraine than to Austria, Hungary or the Czech lands. Towards the end of the Middle Ages the region was a significant artistic centre, and that there remains here an exceptional concentration of churches that retain their pre-Reformation appearance, their interiors an explosion of carving, colour, gold and imagery. It is amazing so much has survived in situ, in miraculous defiance of upsets caussed by Hussites, Turks, Hungarian rebels and (in the twentieth century) Nazi and Soviet soldiery and home-grown Communists. It is less surprising that this turbulent history made it a country of castles, often sited on hilltops or unscalable outcrops, many ruined but some 184
still roofed and furnished. Another repeatedly striking feature are the towns, the centres of which consist almost entirely of historic buildings. Like many in central and eastern Europe, its spacious urban thoroughfares are composed of Renaissance burgher houses or 18th- and 19th-century buildings in various classical guises. Stirred into this well-mannered mix are a handful of more aspirational constructions, town halls from mediaeval to Neo-Baroque, churches of many eras, a synagogue or two and maybe a flamboyant turnof-the-century theatre. The landscape setting of these urban centres forms one of the most memorable features of the tour. Predominantly hilly, the High Tatras is a truly spectacular mountain range. Forests are common, but so is the charming agricultural countryside of the valleys. Population density is low, and the area does indeed feel remote, archetypal east-central Europe, at the edge of an empire. Slovakia is one of the most recent recruits to the EU, and one of its more conservative and least developed members. Part of the appeal of the country is that it has not enjoyed the wealth which might have enabled it to restore its historic patrimony to sparkling perfection, and that there is an appealing workaday authenticity about the life that is carried on amid historic fabric. One more thing: more unesco World Heritage Sites are seen than on most of our other tours.
Itinerary Day 1: London to Košice. Fly c. 11.30am from London Heathrow to Budapest (British Airways) and then drive (3 hours) to Košice, with a break for supper in Hungary. First of three nights in Košice. Day 2: Košice. Extensive, evocative and well kept, the historic centre of Košice is a delight.
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Day 4: Hervatov, Bardejov. The village of Hervatov possesses a 15th-century timber church, the earliest in Slovakia. The delightful little walled town of Bardejov has at its centre a large oblong square, a town hall with some of the earliest Renaissance ornament outside Italy, and a church with an outstanding collection of Gothic altarpieces, brilliantly carved and painted. Spišský Hrad is one of the most spectacular ruined castles in Europe, its white limestone masonry capping a conical hill amidst green fields and wooded hills. Overnight Levoča. Day 5: Levoča and around. Levoča wonderfully preserves its regular mediaeval layout and houses which have been refaced in Renaissance, Baroque and later styles. With its profusion of artworks and furnishings, the interior of the Church of St James is an amazing survival of the mediaeval world. Some of the dozen major altarpieces are by the great sculptor Master Pavol. Some free time here before an excursion to two village churches and a town to see a masterly Gothic chapel, a remarkable 13th-cent. wall painting and, in Kežmarok, an altarpiece by Master Pavel. Overnight Levoča. Day 6: Oravskỳ Podzámok, Vlkolinec, Banská Bystrica. Drive to Oravskỳ Podzámok to visit the magnificent castle. Begun in the 13th century and frequently enlarged and reinforced thereafter, it clasps a hill high above the river below. Continue to the village of Vlkolinec (the hill road requires taxis for the final stretch) which consists entirely of traditional wooden buildings (unesco site). Banská Bystrica is a lively town with a beautiful central square. First of two nights here. Day 7: Poniky, Banská Štiavnica, Hronsek. A drive through particularly attractive countryside takes us to Poniky where the modest village church is filled with fine 14th- and 15th-cent. frescoes. Spread over a conjunction of hillsides with steep cobbled streets, Banská Štiavnica is an exceptionally lovely town, mining wealth creating many imposing mansions. Among its fascinations are a monastery converted to a fortress to guard against Ottoman incursions, and an art gallery devoted to Jozef Kollár, ‘the Slovakian Van Gogh’.
The Road to Santiago The pilgrimage route through northern Spain Hronsek has a large 18th-century wooden church. Overnight Banská Bystrica. Day 8: Zvolen, Trnava, Bratislava. The white walled Renaissance castle with swallow-tail battlements at Zvolen displays the National Gallery’s excellent collection of Gothic art. Trnava became a religious and cultural centre when the Esztergom archbishop retreated here from the Turks in 1543 – and the departure of the episcopal establishment 300 years later led to a decline which allowed much of its fabric to survive. Attractive streetscape, seminaries churches, city walls. Reach Bratislava in time for a pre-dinner walk through the historic centre. Overnight Bratislava. Day 9: Bratislava. Bratislava was the capital of Christian Hungary when most of the country was under Ottoman rule. Now it is capital of Slovakia, and the old centre is one of the loveliest and most interesting on the banks of the Danube. There is an abundance of highly attractive streets and square and historic buildings of all sorts. Places visited include the Gothic cathedral, the 18th-cent. archiepiscopal palace, an Art Nouveau church and a collection of 20th-century art. Fly from Vienna (an hour away), arriving at Heathrow c. 9.00pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,430 or £2,230 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,630 or £2,430 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 5 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Double Tree by Hilton, Košice (doubletree3.hilton.com): modern, high-rise 4-star hotel located close to the historic centre. The next two hotels are well located in the main town squares, adequately clean and comfortable, somewhat quirky, locally rated as 3-star and the best in their area: Hotel U Leva, Levoca (uleva.sk) and Hotel Arcade, Banská Bystrica (arcade.sk). Radisson Blu Carlton, Bratislava (radissonblu. com): stylish and very comfortable 4-star hotel on one of the old town squares, the best in the city.
Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Connoisseur’s Vienna, 17–23 June 2019 (p.49). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration: Levoča, church and town hall, watercolour by J. Mothersole, pucl. 1926.
What else is included in the price? See page 6 In Slovenia: The Imperial Riviera See page 119
One of the great historic journeys of the world. Includes all the major sites and deviates to many lesser-known ones. An architectural pilgrimage by coach – not a spiritual one on foot – for lovers of Romanesque and Gothic. ‘By land it is the greatest journey an Englishman may go.’ So wrote Andrew Boorde, physician and former bishop of Chichester in his 1542 First Book of the Introduction of Knowledge. The road to Santiago has rarely been without plaudits, from Godescalc, bishop of Le Puy in 950, to Paula Gerson, scholar and sceptic in 1993. What was claimed to be the tomb of St James was discovered in 813 in the wilds of Galicia and soon began to attract pilgrims. Roads and bridges were built along the approaches which soon coalesced into a standard route. Hospices and monasteries were founded and secondary shrines became established. Variously described as the Camino Francés, the Milky Way and the Road Beneath the Stars, the route exerted a pull which was pre-Christian, but the discovery of an Apostolic tomb and the renewal of the infrastructure conspired to make Santiago the most celebrated of all mediaeval journeys – a byword for Chaucer’s pilgrims, a destination to vie with Jerusalem and Rome. The funds poured into such an enterprise were immense, resulting in an incomparable range of mediaeval – particularly Romanesque – and Renaissance monuments. With cathedrals such as Burgos, León and Santiago, monasteries
of the calibre of San Millán de la Cogolla, Silos and Leyre, the paintings of Jaca and Miraflores, the metalwork of San Isidoro, the textiles of Las Huelgas, the road to Santiago does not want for masterpieces. But equally impressive is the landscape, a memorial backdrop through which all must pass – the limestone cliffs and tumbling watercourses of Aragón and Navarra, the forests of chestnut, oak and acacia of the Rioja, the vast wheat fields of Castile and the green, slate-divided fields of Galicia. We have two itineraries in 2019: The Road to Santiago – travelling by coach – and Walking to Santiago. They are markedly different in focus; the former is very much an architectural tour, and the latter a walking tour. But both are journeys in which you are conscious always of participating in a thousand-year-old flow of humankind which constitutes one of the most powerfully felt shared experiences in the spiritual and aesthetic history of Europe.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 3.45pm (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Bilbao. Drive to Argómaniz (80 km), arriving at c. 9.00pm. Overnight here. Day 2: Pamplona, Roncesvalles. The day is spent in the foothills of the Pyrenees. Reflecting its proximity to France, Pamplona cathedral has a cloister which constitutes perhaps the finest achievement of High Gothic in Spain. Roncesvalles Pass was scene of the famed rearguard action of Charlemagne’s paladin Roland, and has a renowned pilgrims’ church and hospice. Drive through the spectacular gorge of the Urrobi river. First of two nights in Sos del Rey Católico. Illustration: Burgos, cathedral, Constable Chapel, engraving c. 1850.
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MAINLAND EUROPE: Slovakia, Spain
How strenuous? There is unavoidably a lot of walking, and trip hazards are endemic. Fitness and surefootedness are essential. Average distance by coach per day: 87 miles.
3–15 May 2019 (mf 508) 13 days • £3,820 Lecturer: Dr Richard Plant
The Road to Santiago continued
Day 3: Sos del Rey Católico, Sangüesa, Leyre, Jaca. Stroll through the picturesque town of Sos to the church of San Esteban. Sta María la Real in the little town of Sangüesa has superb architectural sculpture, including some by a craftsman from Burgundy. The monastery of San Salvador de Leyre maintains Gregorian offices in a fascinating church with a good crypt and western portal. Jaca, below the Somport pass, has a Romanesque cathedral with a magnificent collection of mediaeval wall paintings. Day 4: Eunate, Puente la Reina, Estella. At Eunate a mysterious round chapel with encircling arcade rises from the midst of a cornfield. Puente la Reina is the point where pilgrim roads from France converged, and is equipped with hospices, churches and an amazing bridge. Estella, once a largely French-speaking, new town with an important collection of churches including the magnificent San Miguel. Overnight Sto Domingo de la Calzada. Day 5: Nájera, Sto Domingo de la Calzada, Burgos. See the Royal tombs at Santa María la Real in Nájera. Sto Domingo cathedral has Renaissance and Baroque accretions, and a cockerel still crows over the shrine of the saint. Arrive at Burgos,
which grew up at the foot of the fortress of the Kings of Castile. The magnificent cathedral combines French and German styles; remarkable vaults, 16th-cent. choir stalls and a wealth of sculpture. First of two nights in Burgos. Day 6: Burgos, Quintanilla de las Viñas, Sto Domingo de Silos. Free morning in Burgos. In the afternoon drive to the Visigothic chapel at Quintanilla de las Viñas. Sto Domingo de Silos is the largest and finest Romanesque monastery in Spain, and has an epoch-making 12th-cent. cloister with magnificent sculpture. Day 7: Burgos, San Miguel de Escalada. The Carthusian monastery and royal mausoleum of Miraflores has superb 15th-cent. sculpture by Gil de Siloé. Just outside Burgos is the Early Gothic convent of Las Huelgas Reales, a place of royal burial. Pressing westwards, we stop at San Miguel de Escalada, an elegant Mozarabic gem. First of two nights in León. Day 8: León. Former capital of the ancient kingdom of León, the city has many outstanding mediaeval buildings. The royal pantheon of San Isidoro (our hotel) is one of the first, and finest, Romanesque buildings in Spain, with important
sculptures. The cathedral is truly superb: Rayonnant Gothic, with impressive stained glass. Day 9: Lena, Orbigo, Villafranca del Bierzo. Drive through the Puerto de Pájares (mountain pass) to Sta Cristina de Lena, an exquisite 9th-cent. church. Puente de Orbigo is a 13th-cent. bridge which carried pilgrims over the River Orbigo. Villafranca del Bierzo was an ancient haunt of hermits and anchorites and subsequently studded with churches and hospices. Overnight Villafranca del Bierzo. Day 10: Villafranca to Santiago. Three churches punctuate the final stretch of the journey: O Cebreiro, site of a great Eucharistic miracle; Portomarín, a Templar foundation guarding the bridge over the Miño; and Vilar de Donas, decayed and evocative knights’ church. Finally: Santiago de Compostela, goal of the pilgrimage. Three nights in Santiago. Day 11: Santiago de Compostela. The morning is dedicated to the great pilgrimage church, the shrine of St James, one of the most impressive of all Romanesque churches; also outstanding treasuries. Explore the university quarter and the narrow picturesque streets and visit Sta María del Sar, where walls splayed and buttressed support a charming Romanesque church against its cloister. Day 12: Santiago de Compostela. Free day. Day 13: Noia. Continue westward to the coastal town of Noia, whose mediaeval quarter is dominated by the 15th-cent. church of San Martiño. Drive in the afternoon to La Coruña for the flight to London Heathrow (Vueling), arriving at c. 7.15pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,820 or £3,710 without flights. Single occupancy: £4,330 or £4,220 without flights. Included meals: 2 lunches, 10 dinners, with wine.
MAINLAND EUROPE: Spain
26 or 28 SEPTEMBER–2 OCTOBER 2019 CELEBRATING MUSIC AND PLACE A glorious celebration of sacred music with five private concerts in Santiago de Compostela, one of the world’s greatest pilgrimage destinations. There is the option to begin by following a pilgrimage route of staggering beauty through Galicia to Santiago with four additional concerts. Sacred music of many countries from the Middle Ages to the present day, a programme created in collaboration with Nigel Short, director of Tenebrae. 186
Musicians of the highest calibre – Gabrieli, Marian Consort, El León de Oro, Dufay Collective, Tenebrae, La Serenissima, Julia Doyle, Hilary Summers, Renata Pokupić, Robert Murray, Neal Davies, and Alumni of Clare College Choir.
Please contact us for full details, or visit www.martinrandall.com/festivals
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Accommodation. Parador de Argómaniz (parador.es): 4-star hotel; simple rooms. Parador de Sos del Rey Católico (parador.es): 4-star parador with views of surrounding countryside. Parador de Sto Domingo de la Calzada (parador. es): 4-star parador in the heart of town. NH Collection Palacio de Burgos (nh-collection. com): 4-star modern hotel in the centre of town. Hotel Real Colegiata de San Isidoro, León (hotelrealcolegiata.com): attractive 3-star hotel occupying one of the first and finest Romanesque buildings in Spain. Parador de Villafranca del Bierzo (parador.es): 4-star parador in a contemporary building. Parador de Santiago de Compostela (parador.es): 5-star parador, for centuries the abode of the grander pilgrims. How strenuous? We stress that this is a long tour with a lot of coach travel, seven hotels and a lot of walking, often on uneven ground. The tour would not be suitable for anyone who has difficulties with everyday walking and stair climbing. Average distance by coach per day: 85 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
Walking to Santiago On foot for selected sections of the pilgrims’ way 11–22 June 2019 (mf 576) 12 days • £3,540 – flights not included Lecturer: Dr Rose Walker
carved portal. Time is allowed for those who wish to attend Pilgrim’s mass at midday. The rest of the day is free. Day 12. Drive to Santiago Airport in time for the flight to London Gatwick (Easyjet, currently departing at c. 10.15am).
17–28 September 2019 (mf 672) 12 days • £3,540 – flights not included Lecturer: Dr Rose Walker
Practicalities
The last great pilgrimage route in Christendom which still attracts walkers; scenically wonderful with much fine architecture.
Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,540. Single occupancy: £3,980. Included meals: 8 lunches (2 are picnics) and 8 dinners, with wine.
Selected sections from the Pyrenees through northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela. Walking in comfort: good hotels; luggage transferred separately. Option to combine this tour with Sacred Music in Santiago, 28 September–2 October 2019.
Itinerary Day 1: Biarritz to Roncesvalles. Leave from Biarritz Airport following the arrival of the flight from London Gatwick (Easyjet, currently 4.00pm) (flights are not included – see ‘Practicalities’). Drive to Roncesvalles for the night. Day 2: Roncesvalles to Lintzoaín/Erro: 14.7 km, c. 4 hours. Weather permitting, we start at the summit of the pass and drop down on foot to Roncesvalles, traditional starting point of the pilgrimage in Spain. It has a fine collegiate church preserving memories of Sancho the Strong of Navarre. From here, walk downward through rustic, gentle sub-Pyrenean landscape and stately stone-built villages.
Day 4: Villafranca Montes de Oca to Agés: c. 16 km, c. 4 hours. Begin with an hour’s walk uphill into mildly mountainous country, passing a disturbing monument to victims of Civil War assassination. Cross a plateau and continue through pine and oak forest to a beautiful valley enclosing the monastery of San Juan de Ortega (fine Gothic church). Picnic in the woods. Continue to the village of Agés. Drive to Burgos for the first of two nights.
Day 7: Hospital de Orbigo to Astorga: c. 16 km, c. 5 hours. About one hour into the walk, we make a modest ascent and suddenly the plains are over. There are two or three small climbs this morning through remote-feeling countryside and wheat fields ending in shady corners under small oaks. We finish just outside Astorga, with views down to the cathedral. Continue into town by coach. Here, the bishop’s palace was designed by Gaudí and there is a charming town hall. Overnight Astorga. Day 8: Foncebadón to Acebo: 11 km, c. 4 hours. From the charming village of Foncebadón with its reticulated slate roofs and crooked balconies, climb to the highest point of the Camino, with spectacular views. Lunch in a pilgrim’s restaurant in Acebo. Drive from here to Villafranca del Bierzo for the night. Day 9: Triacastela to Sarriá: c. 18.5 km, c. 5.5 hours. Drive to Triacastela via O Cebreiro, first port of call in Galicia for pilgrims, with Celtic buildings and an ancient church. The walk starts low and climbs through Galician-green valley and into country of tiny hamlets where cows chew the cud in dark mediaeval sheds. Sunken tracks, ferns and ivy abound and there is later a fine upland feel. After lunch in a bar en route we begin a slow descent to Sarriá. Overnight Sarriá.
Day 5: Burgos, rest day. Rest, nurse feet and loiter in this Castilian city rich in memories of El Cid and mediaeval pilgrimage, Wellington and Franco. There is time to see the magnificent cathedral, the charterhouse of Miraflores (superb sculpture by Gil de Siloé), and the monastery of Las Huelgas (fine architecture and images relevant to the camino). Overnight Burgos.
Day 10. Phase 1, Sarriá to Ferreiros: c. 13 km, c. 4 hours. Phase 2, Monte del Gozo to Santiago de Compostela: c. 4 km, c. 2 hours. Walk from Sarriá to Ferreiros and have lunch in a bar before driving on to Monte del Gozo. Here pilgrims once fell to their knees at the first view of the cathedral spires of Santiago (harder to see now through eucalyptus). Walk a further 4 km through suburbs into increasingly ancient city centre and right into the Parador, another important and beautiful historic building. First of two nights in Santiago de Compostela.
Day 6: Rabé de las Calzadas to Hontanas, c. 19 km, c. 4 hours. A fine if strenuous walk, swinging
Day 11: Santiago. Visit the cathedral, a Romanesque masterpiece with a magnificent
Accommodation. Hotel Roncesvalles (hotelroncesvalles.com): 3-star hotel in an 18thcentury building. Hotel Los Agustinos, Haro (hotellosagustinos.com): 4-star in a converted convent. Parador de Santo Domingo de la Calzada (parador.es): 4-star parador, former mediaeval pilgrim hospital. NH Collection Palacio de Burgos (nh-collection.com): 4-star hotel in a converted palace. In June: NH Collection León Plaza Mayor, León (nhcollection.com): 4-star hotel in an 18th-century converted military building in the main square. In September: Hotel Real Colegiata de San Isidoro, León (hotelrealcolegiata.es): attractive 3-star hotel occupying one of the first and finest Romanesque buildings in Spain. Hotel Spa Ciudad de Astorga (hotelciudaddeastorga.com): modern 4-star hotel in the centre. Parador de Villafranca del Bierzo (parador.es): 4-star parador in a contemporary building. Hotel Alfonso IX, Sarriá (alfonsoix. com): modern 4-star hotel near the river. Parador de Santiago de Compostela (parador.es): 5-star parador in the former pilgrims’ hospital. How strenuous? This is our most strenuous walking tour, graded challenging (see page 8 for details). We cover up to 134 km of the full 780 km pilgrimage route with an average of 17 km of walking per day, on 8 of the 12 days. Terrain is moderate in difficulty, but the durations and cumulative effects of walking every day make it a strenuous tour. It is essential for participants to be in good physical condition, with strong knees, and to be used to country walking with uphill and downhill content. You must wear a pair of well-worn hiking boots with good ankle support. Safety and comfort are our main concern and while there are opportunities to rest, the coach is intended as back-up rather than an alternative means of transport. Group size: between 8 and 18 participants.
Illustration: procession leaving Santiago Cathedral, after Muirhead Bone 1938.
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Day 3: Nájera to Santo Domingo de la Calzada: 21 km, c. 5 hours. Drive to Nájera, another of the burial places of the royal house of Navarre. Climb through red sandstone with vines in rocky corners, through varied irrigated crops and out into rolling wheat country with mountains lying north and south - this is a good day for striding out. Lunch is in a village café. Continue to Santo Domingo de la Calzada where there is time to visit the cathedral. Overnight Santo Domingo.
through hills with an upland feel, plenty of skylarks, wide views, scant shade and stone built villages. There are three manageable climbs, each one shorter than the last. Drive to nearby Castrojeriz for lunch and then to León with its fine Gothic cathedral and Spain’s finest stained glass. Overnight León.
Flights are not included in the cost of the tour as the most convenient flights are with Easyjet and we cannot make a booking without knowing the passenger name. We can book flights on your behalf, quoting the fare at the time of booking, or you can make the bookings yourself. Suggested flight details are provided with your Confirmation of Booking, but please contact us if you require details sooner.
Gastronomic Galicia Food and wine in an enchanting corner of north-west Spain 3–10 June 2019 (mf 559) 8 days • £3,340 Lecturer: Gijs van Hensbergen Galicia is famed for its abundance of fresh fish and seafood, the quality of meat from its lush inland pastures, and has a burgeoning reputation for excellent wines. Four Michelin-starred meals cooked by ‘Grupo Nove’ chefs, a new generation who have revolutionised Galician cuisine. A captivating region steeped in mythology, with dramatic landscapes from the wild coastline of the Rías Baixas to the soaring hills of the Ribeira Sacra. Menhirs and meigas – the standing stones and the benign woodland witches – are central to Galicia’s spirit world and its world of spirits, where the refined after-dinner liqueurs play a central role in mediating between earth, sea and sky. In the pilgrimage city of Santiago de Compostela we burn the firewater orujo in a ritual queimada to the sound of bagpipes, beginning a culinary adventure that takes in the fjords of the Rías Baixas, amazing vineyards, freshly caught fish, the world’s most exclusive beef, artisan cheeses and a bounty of organic vegetables.
Up in the hills, the great octopus dish pulpo a feira is prepared for us by the world champion chef who regularly fed Graham Greene and Sir Alec Guinness; a rare paprika-spiced, tender delicacy to nourish us after a long morning in the vertiginous vineyards of the Ribeira Sacra (officially designated ‘heroic’), where pickers scale the mountain terraces in mountaineering harness to harvest their rare crop. Pioneering winemakers are transforming Galicia into an oenological paradise, building on the heritage of the old Pazo, or estate vineyards. Our visits take in a Pazo with one of the greatest gardens in Europe, with a private visit to the country palace. On a more architecturally humble note, the stone drying stores – hórreos – set up high on staddle stones display the genius of popular architecture. From a shellfish mariscada feast at the end of the world at Finisterre, at which we savour the rare percebes (goose neck barnacles) from the Costa da Morte, we move further south to take in the more benign rolling seas, where Michelin-starred chefs team up with ecological gardeners to produce subtle masterpieces. Galicia boasts some of the finest produce in Spain and a new generation of chefs bring their quirky Celtic genius to the table in cities as ancient and enchanting as Santiago and the meandering mediaeval streets of Pontevedra. They make up the Grupo Nove, a mythic group of revolutionary Galician chefs who have forged a renaissance in Galician cuisine. For lovers of authenticity and charm and an almost otherworldly dedication to excellence, Galicia is a gastronomic goldmine. The chefs, proud of their heritage, are only too keen to share tips, show off their techniques and join us in the market as we graze our way down from the Atlantic city of A Coruña further south towards neighbouring Portugal.
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MAINLAND EUROPE: Spain
Day 1. Fly at c. 12.00 noon from London Gatwick to Porto (TAP Portugal). By coach into Spain, continuing northwards to Santiago de Compostela. A light introductory dinner offers a modern take on Galician cuisine, followed by a traditional queimada ritual. First of four nights in Santiago. Day 2: Santiago. Visit Santiago’s food market with the chef at Abastos 2.0, followed by lunch in his restaurant. The menu changes daily to include the finest produce from the market. After visiting the cathedral, the great pilgrimage destination and a Romanesque masterpiece, a tasting of tarta de Santiago handmade by nuns at a nearby convent. Day 3: A Coruña. Drive north to the coastal city of A Coruña. A stroll along the promenade takes in the 2nd-century Torre de Hércules, the oldest Roman lighthouse still in use today. Visit the Casa Museo Picasso, the former family home containing reproductions of works by Picasso and his father. Lunch is at the Michelin-starred seafront restaurant Alborada. Day 4: Costa da Morte. The ‘Coast of Death’ takes its name from the countless ships to have met their demise on the jagged rocks of Galicia’s western shore. Venture as far as the lighthouse at Finisterre (the end of the world), taking in 188
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dramatic coastal landscapes and the charming town of Noia en route. Lunch in Finisterre takes the form of a mariscada, a feast of shellfish including the local speciality of percebes, collected from the treacherous rocks along the coastline. Day 5: Carril, Cambados. The Pazo de Rubianes is an 18th-century country palace with extensive vineyards and spectacular gardens. The visit concludes with a wine tasting. Continue to a small, family-run canned seafood factory to sample their artisanal produce. Lunch is at Yayo Daporta (1 Michelin star), whose innovative modern Galician cuisine is based around regional seafood of the highest quality. Continue to Pontevedra for the first of three nights. Day 6: Ribeira Sacra, Ourense. Ascend into the hills of the Ribeira Sacra, where vineyards are carved into the steep river gorges. Wine tasting at Abadia da Cova, overlooking the Cabo do Mundo peninsula. Lunch at an award-winning pulpería (octopus restaurant). Afternoon wine tasting at a family-run vineyard in the restored ruins of a 12th-century monastic winery. Dinner is at Casa Solla, one of Galicia’s most famous restaurants that has held a Michelin star since 1980. Day 7: Combarro, O Grove. The coastal town of Combarro has many hórreos, traditional elevated stone structures used to store grain and fish. Continue to O Grove for lunch at Culler de Pau (1 Michelin star). Chef Javier Olleros has a ‘km -1’ philosophy, with most ingredients coming from within 15 km of the kitchen. Visit an organic vegetable garden that supplies the restaurant before tasting the produce with lunch. Day 8. Free morning in Pontevedra. Drive to Porto for the flight to Gatwick, arriving at c. 8.30pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,340 or £3,170 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,780 or £3,610 without flights. Included meals: 6 lunches and 3 dinners (including one light cheese tasting) with wine. Accommodation. Parador de Santiago de Compostela (parador.es): 5-star parador opposite the cathedral, in the former pilgrims’ hospital. Parador de Pontevedra (parador.es): 4-star parador occupying a 16th-century palace in the historic centre of Pontevedra. Menus: fish and shellfish are integral to nearly every meal. We suggest this tour would not be appropriate for non-fish / shellfish eaters. How strenuous? Evening meals tend to begin at 9.00pm and some late nights are inevitable. There is a fair amount of walking on roughly paved streets and standing around at the visits, sometimes on uneven ground in gardens or wineries. There are some long distances travelled by coach, particularly on days 1, 6 and 8. Average distance by coach per day: 95 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Illustration: Santiago, cathedral, wood engraving c. 1880.
Bilbao to Bayonne Food, art and architecture in the Basque lands 14–21 October 2019 (mf 792) 8 days • £3,560 Lecturer: Gijs van Hensbergen Long, lazy lunches including two in restaurants with three Michelin stars. Excellent wines of La Rioja-Alavesa. Architecture by Gehry, Calatrava, Moneo, and varied landscapes of coast, plain and mountain. Three bases: Bilbao, Laguardia and Vera de Bidasoa in the Spanish Pyrenees.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 8.30am (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Bilbao. In the afternoon, visit the Fine Arts Museum. Overnight in Bilbao.
Day 3: Laguardia, Granja de Remelluri. Laguardia is the most picturesque of Riojan villages, perched on a hillock within a circuit of fortified walls. Walk the ramparts and see the outstanding 14th-century portal of Santa María de los Reyes. Morning tasting at Bodega El Fabulista, where 32,000 litres of wine are produced annually by treading the grapes. Lunch and vineyard walk at the bodegas of Nuestra Señora de Remelluri, installed in 14thcentury monastic buildings in countryside. Day 4: Marqués de Riscal, Lasarte-Oria, Vera de Bidasoa. The Ysios winery below Laguardia is a magnificent building by Calatrava. The bodegas of Marqués de Riscal are among the most venerable in the region. The visit includes a tasting in the cellars of their Gehry-designed hotel. Lunch at Martín Berasategui’s three Michelin-star restaurant in Lasarte-Oria. Vera de Bidasoa nestles in the Pyrenean foothills close to the French border. First of four nights in Vera. Day 5: France: Ainhoa, Espelette, Bayonne. Cross into the French Pyrenees to the spick and span villages of Ainhoa and Espelette with their red and white timbered houses sporting clusters of red peppers, a local speciality. Sample ewe’s milk cheese with cherry compote. Encircled by formidable Vauban ramparts and straddling the River Nive, Bayonne is a colourful town with Gothic cathedral, arcaded streets, riverside markets and famed for fish, ham and chocolate. Day 6: San Sebastian. This is the gastronomic capital of Spain, sweeping elegantly around one of the finest beaches on the northern coast. Behind the ancient fisherman’s quarter is the compact grid of the old town with a wonderfully harmonious arcaded square at the centre and traffic-free streets lined with bars. A tapas trawl is followed by lunch in a private dining club, a rare privilege. Some free time to see the elaborate historicist architecture of the 19th-century extension and Moneo’s arts centre. Day 7: Hondarribia, San Sebastian. Hondarribia is a superbly preserved fortified town on an outcrop overlooking the sea with narrow streets, balconied palaces, a 14th-century castle and a Gothic church. Return to San Sebastian for lunch at the most famous restaurant in Spain, Arzak (subject to confirmation). Despite its three Michelin stars and status as one of the best restaurants in the world, it remains very much a family business. Day 8. Drive to Bilbao for the flight arriving into London Heathrow at c. 1.00pm.
Illustration: San Sebastian, wood engraving c. 1880.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,560 or £3,450 without flights. Suite supplement in Vera: £50 (per person based on 2 sharing). Single occupancy: £3,810 or £3,700 without flights. Included meals: 5 lunches and 4 dinners (three of which are light) with wine. Accommodation. Gran Hotel Domine, Bilbao (hoteldominebilbao.com): 5-star hotel opposite the Guggenheim; contemporary in style. Hotel Villa de Laguardia (hotelvilladelaguardia.com): 4-star hotel on the outskirts of the town; comfortable rooms and attractive public areas. Hotel Churrut, Vera de Bidasoa (hotelchurrut.com): 3-star hotel installed in an 18th-century military building; family owned with 17 spacious, well decorated rooms and comfortable sitting areas. How strenuous? Evening meals tend to begin at 9.00pm and some late nights are inevitable. There is a fair amount of walking on this tour, some of it uphill or on roughly paved streets. Although distances travelled are not vast, there is the need to use a coach every day of the tour. Average distance by coach per day: 60 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Classic Catalan Wines, 21–26 October 2019 (p.193). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport. Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Straddling the Pyrenees and divided between France and Spain, the Basque Country has wonderful and varied scenery, a magnificent range of art and architecture and a culinary tradition which ranks with the best in the world. It is a land of abundance in many things, though there is one striking exception: tourists are in short supply. The landscape reaches from the Atlantic coast, indented with natural harbours and the fishing communities from which the wealth of the region has derived since ancient times, to the hills and mountains majestically clothed with broadleaf forests. Both the highlands and the fertile rolling lowlands provide the raw ingredients which supplement the seafood and inspire gastronomic greatness. The best of Basque cooking mixes a strong sense of tradition with startling innovation. From the all-male dining clubs, where friends cook for each other, to the indoor markets spilling over with smoked idiazabal cheeses and gleaming fresh fish, from the rustic cider clubs to the chic new bars vying for the ‘tapas of the year’ prize, Basques remain obsessed with the quality and provenance of their food. Juan-Mari Arzak is the most famous restaurateur in Spain. As godfather to New Basque Cuisine, he has inspired an entire generation of chefs including Martín Berasategui, Pedro Subijana and Hilario Arbelaitz. Together they share no fewer than ten Michelin stars. Today Juan Mari cooks alongside his daughter, Elena, voted best Female Chef in the World in 2012, and their restaurant consistently ranks among the world’s best. From Bilbao we drive a loop through the RiojaAlavesa, the northern rim of the most prestigious wine-making area in Spain and up to the Pyrenees. Between visits to restaurants, wineries and specialist food shops, we linger in mediaeval villages, Gothic churches and Baroque interiors. There is here some fine contemporary architecture by Gehry, Calatrava and Moneo, while nestling in the upland valleys and clamped to hillsides is a doughty vernacular of remarkable distinctiveness and beauty. San Sebastian, arguably the most gastronomic city in the world, has a swathe of flamboyant turn-of-the-century buildings and was named European Capital of Culture in 2016.
Day 2: Bilbao, Laguardia. The morning is spent studying Gehry’s extraordinary titaniumclad Guggenheim Museum. Lunch is at the restaurant here run by innovative chef Josean Alija who learned his trade at El Bulli. Leave city and industry behind and drive south through increasingly attractive countryside to the undulating plains of the wine-growing region of La Rioja-Alavesa and the mediaeval village of Laguardia. Introductory tasting in the hotel cellar. First of two nights in Laguardia.
Ancient Kingdoms of Castile & León The magnificent heart of Spain 16–25 September 2019 (mf 706) 10 days • £2,930 Lecturer: Gijs van Hensbergen Architectural excellence throughout including the cathedrals of Burgos and León. Much fine sculpture as well. Walled villages, grand monasteries, hilltop castles and a backdrop of vast, undulating landscape. Includes the 16th-century Palace of El Escorial. Good food: suckling pig, slow-roast lamb and kid; good wine of the Ribera del Duero. Option to combine this tour with Sacred Music in Santiago: The Camino, 26 September–2 October 2019, which begins in Zamora (see page 186). Since their fusion under one crown in the eleventh century, the ancient kingdoms of Castile and León have been responsible for some of the most emblematic periods of Spanish history. These former rival territories established themselves as the heart of Spain and exerted great influence over language, religion and culture far across the mediaeval map. Innumerable castles were built here (hence ‘Castile’) for this was the principal battleground of the Reconquista, the five-hundredyear war of attrition against the Moors which reclaimed Spain for Christendom.
The region occupies much of the Meseta, the vast and austere plateau in the centre of the Iberian peninsula. Here are many of Spain’s finest cities, buildings and works of art. Lovers of Romanesque will feel particularly satisfied for there are many excellent examples of the style. Great Gothic churches are another magnificent feature, the cathedrals at León, Burgos, Segovia and Salamanca among them. French, German and English influences are to be found, though the end result is always unmistakably Spanish. Another striking aspect of the tour is the wealth of brilliant sculpture, especially of the late-mediaeval and Renaissance periods. Castles, of course, abound, and some of the defensive curtain of frontier cities such as Ávila are remarkably well preserved. As well as the prominent cities, we include a number of lesser-known places, all strikingly attractive, many with outstanding buildings or works of art, all barely visited by tourists.
Itinerary Day 1: Ávila, Salamanca. Fly at c. 9.15am from London Heathrow to Madrid (Iberia Airlines). Drive to Ávila: a fortress town built during the Reconquista, it retains its entire circuit of 11thcent. walls complete with battlements and 88 turrets. The 12th-cent. Basilica of San Vicente has fine sculpture. First of two nights in Salamanca.
Day 2: Salamanca. Distinguished by the honey-coloured hue of its stone, Salamanca is one of the most attractive cities in Spain and home to its most prestigious university. See the magnificent 16th-cent. Gothic ‘New Cathedral’ and austere Romanesque ‘Old Cathedral’, the 18th-cent. Plaza Mayor and superb, elaborate Plateresque sculpture on the façades of the university and church of San Esteban. The University has 15th- and 16th-cent.quadrangles, arcaded courtyards and original lecture halls. The Convento de las Dueñas has a Plateresque portal and an irregular, two-tiered cloister. Day 3: Zamora, León. On the Roman road that connected Astorga to Mérida, Zamora rose to importance during the Reconquista as a bastion on the Duero front. Much of its Romanesque architecture survives, including the cathedral of Byzantine influence. Drive to León, former capital of the ancient kingdom and visit the monastery of San Marcos with an exuberant Plateresque façade, magnificent late-Gothic church, Renaissance chapels and fine choir-stalls. First of two nights in León. Day 4: León. A morning walk to some of the outstanding mediaeval buildings of the city. The royal pantheon of San Isidoro is one of the first, and finest, Romanesque buildings in Spain, with important sculptures. The cathedral is truly superb Rayonnant Gothic with impressive stained glass. The afternoon is free to visit the archaeological or contemporary art museums. Day 5: San Miguel de Escalada, Lerma, Santo Domingo de Silos. The beautiful, remote church at San Miguel de Escalada displays a fusion of Visigothic and Islamic building traditions. The village of Lerma has a wealth of buildings from the early 17th cent. including an arcaded main square with ducal palace and the Collegiate church of San Pedro. Drive in the late afternoon to Santo Domingo de Silos, which has the finest Romanesque monastery in Spain, outstanding for the sculpture of the 12th-cent. cloister. First of two nights in Lerma.
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Day 6: Burgos, Quintanilla de las Viñas, Covarrubias. Drive to Burgos, the early capital of Castile, whose cathedral combines French and German Gothic styles and has remarkable vaults and 16th-cent. choir stalls. On the outskirts is the convent of Las Huelgas Reales with its important early Gothic church. Visit the Visigothic chapel at Quintanilla de las Viñas. Covarrubias is an attractive walled village with a mediaeval Colegiata containing fine tombs. Day 7: El Burgo de Osma, San Esteban de Gormaz, Segovia. El Burgo de Osma is a walled town with arcaded streets and one of the finest Gothic cathedrals in Spain. At San Esteban de Gormaz see the 12th-cent. churches of San Miguel and Del Rivero with exterior galleries. Built on a steep-sided hill, Segovia is one of the loveliest cities in Spain and architecturally one of the most richly endowed. First of three nights in Segovia. Day 8: Segovia. Straddling the town, the remarkable Roman aqueduct is one of the biggest in Europe. See the outstanding Romanesque 190
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The Renaissance in Castile & León A selection of masterpieces exteriors of San Martín, San Millán and San Esteban and the circular Templar church of La Vera Cruz. An afternoon walk includes the cathedral, a soaring Gothic structure, and the restored Alcázar (castle), dramatically perched at the prow of the hill. Day 9: El Escorial, La Granja. This vast retreat-cum-palace-cum-monastery-cumpantheon was built from 1563 to 1584 for Philip II, successfully embodying his instructions for ‘nobility without arrogance, majesty without ostentation, severity in the whole’. Continue to La Granja de San Ildefonso, the palace constructed for Philip V in the early 18th cent., with magnificent formal gardens. Day 10: Segovia. Free morning; suggestions include the contemporary art museum of Esteban Vicente and the Museum of Segovia. Fly from Madrid, arriving at London Heathrow at c. 6.30pm. (Participants joining Sacred Music in Santiago: The Camino spend an extra night in Segovia and travel to Zamora the next morning.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,930 or £2,800 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,250 or £3,120 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 6 dinners with wine. Price for this tour if combining it with Sacred Music in Santiago: The Camino. Two sharing: £3,030 or £2900 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,360 or £3,230 without flights. This includes an extra night in Segovia and transfer to the festival hotel in Zamora.
How strenuous? This is a long tour with a lot of walking in town centres, some of it on cobbled streets and uphill. It should not be undertaken by anyone who has difficulty with everyday walking and stairclimbing. Average distance by coach per day: 73 miles. Dinners tend to be at 8.30 or 9.00pm in Spain, so you might get to bed later than you would usually. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Other possible combinations: Courts of Northern Italy, 8–15 September 2019 (p.132). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration: Segovia, the Roman aqueduct, watercolour by Frank Brangwyn, publ. 1915.
Some of the greatest examples of Spanish Renaissance painting, sculpture and architecture. Sculptors from across Europe executed ambitious schemes in churches, while locally-born Alonso Berruguete returned from Rome to propogate a Gothic hybrid version of Michelangelo’s style. Differs substantially from Ancient Kingdoms of Castile & León in the concentration on smaller, lesser-visited towns. Doesn’t neglect the region’s important mediaeval and Baroque artistic archievements. Option to combine this tour with Sacred Music in Santiago: The Camino, 26 September–2 October 2019, which begins in Zamora (see page 186).
Itinerary Day 1: Valladolid. Fly at c. 9.15am from London Heathrow to Madrid (Iberia Airlines) and drive to Valladolid (c. 3 hours, with a stop en route). Settle into the hotel before an introductory walk to include Nuestra Señora de las Angustias with Juan de Juni’s highly expressive Virgin of Sorrows. First of two nights in Valladolid. Day 2: Valladolid, Paredes de Nava, Palencia. Visit the convent of Santa Ana with three paintings by Goya. Alonso Berruguete was born in Paredes de Nava and the church of Santa Eulalia contains works by him and his family. Pedro Berruguete, Gil de Siloé and Simon of Cologne are all represented in Palencia cathedral. Day 3: Valladolid, Medina de Rioseco, León. Morning visit to the Colegio de San Gregorio, now the National Museum of Sculpture, with Gil de Siloé’s intricately carved stone portal and works by all the great Renaissance masters including Berruguete. Drive from Valladolid to Medina de Rioseco, suffused with faded glory. Here see the Benavente Chapel in Santa María del Mediavilla, decorated in 1543 with coloured carvings by the brothers Juan and Jerónimo Corral, and the church of Santiago with a Churrigueresque retable. Continue to León for the first of two nights. Day 4: León, Astorga. Morning walk, including two great mediaeval buildings: the royal pantheon of San Isidoro, with the greatest Romanesque frescoes to have survived, and the cathedral, with Spain’s finest stained glass. Afternoon excursion to Astorga whose cathedral has a magnificent 16thcent. altarpiece by Gaspar de Becerra. Day 5: Toro, Zamora. Drive south to the small town of Toro and see the superb mediaeval sculpture in the collegiate church. The Romanesque cathedral at Zamora on the banks of the Duero contains a beautifully carved choir, ironwork and silver. Overnight Zamora. Day 6. Drive to Madrid airport (c. 3½ hours, including a stop en route) for the mid-afternoon flight, arriving at London Heathrow at c. 4.30pm.
(Participants joining our music festival, Sacred Music in Santiago: The Camino have a free day in Zamora, before the festival begins in the evening.)
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,940 or £1,820 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,130 or £2,010 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Coloquio, Valladolid (hotelelcoloquio.es): modern and centrally-located 4-star hotel in a converted 19th-cent. residence beside the cathedral. Hotel Real Colegiata de San Isidoro, León (hotelrealcolegiata.es): attractive 3-star hotel occupying one of the first and finest Romanesque buildings in Spain. Parador de Zamora (parador.es): 4-star Parador occupying the 15th-cent. family home of the first count of Alba de Aliste. How strenuous? The tour involves a lot of walking in town centres, where coach access is restricted, and a lot of standing in museums and churches. Uneven ground and irregular paving are standard. Some days involve a lot of driving. Average distance by coach per day: 109 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Other possible combinations: Ancient Egypt at the British Museum, 20 September 2019. Illustration: Valladolid, San Gregorio, steel engraving 1851.
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Accommodation. NH Palacio de Castellanos, Salamanca (nh-hotels.com): attractive 4-star hotel in a converted palace, close to the Cathedrals and other key sites. Hotel Real Colegiata, León (hotelrealcolegiata.es): attractive 3-star hotel occupying one of the first and finest Romanesque buildings in Spain. Parador de Lerma (parador. es): 4-star parador in the Ducal Palace. Hotel Real Segovia, Segovia (hotelrealsegovia.com): 4-star hotel adjacent to the cathedral and aqueduct.
21–26 September 2019 (mf 731) 6 days • £1,940 Lecturer: Dr Xavier Bray
Aragón: Hidden Spain Teruel, Zaragoza, Sos Day 2: Teruel. A full day of visits in Teruel, including the mausoleum of the famous Lovers of Teruel who perished for love of one another, and the fine Provincial Museum housed in an Aragonese mansion. See also the little city’s famous Mudéjar towers and the cathedral’s painted ceiling. Overnight Teruel. Day 3: Albarracín, Zaragoza. Albarracín is a gorge-ringed hill town founded by Arabs and long ruled by its Christian reconquerors. The defensive wall high on the ‘landward’ side, mediaeval streets and narrow site make it a remarkable spot. Close by lies a tract of wellwooded country above red sandstone cliffs. Here Palaeolithic and Neolithic communities painted animals and humans in rock shelters. Walk to see some of the most revealing paintings, mostly in woods, but also visiting a magnificent cliff top with wide views. Continue to Zaragoza, capital of Aragón. First of three nights in Zaragoza.
30 September–8 October 2019 (mf 769) 9 days • £2,660 Lecturer: Dr Zahira Bomford One of the least-visited regions of Spain, and yet one of the richest in history, architecture and landscapes. As diverse a tour as we offer with Paleolithic and Neolithic cave painting and Roman remains. Continue through Moorish palaces, Spain’s finest examples of Mudéjar architecture, Romanesque castles and churches. Goya is well represented; we visit his birthplace and see his Horrors of War. Other themes include military history: El Cid, Peninsular War, Civil War.
MAINLAND EUROPE: Spain
You cannot know Spain unless you know Aragón, that former kingdom rich in fine landscape, history and architecture, including Arab works and the Arab-Christian style known as Mudéjar, here at its most extravagant and surprising. It is the swiftly-flowing River Aragón, running down from the High Pyrenees, which gave its name to one of the most dynamic minikingdoms of early mediaeval Europe. Soon Aragón advanced to meet the Moorish occupiers of the Ebro basin and wrested Zaragoza (Roman Caesar Augusta) from them. From there, it was on to smaller Teruel and the rugged sierras which flank it, to establish, in the end, a shield-shaped territory. With Catalunya, Aragón came to rule Sicily, southern Italy and most of Greece, truly a power in the Mediterranean. Later, in the fifteenth century, it became a partner for Castile in forging the identity for what we know today as Spain. But since then it has been side-lined in the political structure, enabling it, through misfortune, to retain and still convey a sense of its early origins. 192
The landscape is as dramatic as the history. The peaks and summer pastures of the highest Pyrenees fall almost entirely within Aragón. Dropping south, the Ebro valley is like a winding oasis between deeply eroded, dry clay banks. South again lies steppe country, sometimes desert-like, turning finally to a territory of cliff and gorge. Here Neolithic man left paintings in rock shelters. The architectural legacy is outstanding. The early stonemasons and architects of Aragón, in tandem with French craftsmen on the Pilgrims’ Way to Santiago, produced some of the most charming Romanesque buildings in Spain, marked by particularly engaging stone carving. The castle of Loarre is arguably Spain’s finest Romanesque military construction. This is matched in beauty and surprise-value by the Arabesques and interlocking arches of the (Arab) Aljaferia Palace in Zaragoza. The four Mudéjar towers of Teruel are among the wonders of Spain. Military history gives us El Cid Campeador. Though touted as a Christian hero, he worked for years as a mercenary general for the Moorish rulers of Zaragoza. During the Peninsular War – known in Spain as the War of Independence – Zaragoza endured two exceptionally bitter sieges. During the civil war of 1936–39, Belchite, close to Zaragoza, was furiously contested – and left in ruins as a warning for the future. The three-month battle for Teruel, fought in sub-zero temperatures from December 1937, was one of the most cruel of defeats for the Spanish Republic. Add to all of this four different wine regions, each with its own denominación de origen; pottery still made in the Arabic tradition; intriguing country towns; and robust, big-city Zaragoza, studded with major monuments.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 1.30pm (British Airways) from London Gatwick to Valencia. Drive to Teruel arriving at the hotel at c. 7.45pm. First of two nights in Teruel.
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Day 4: Zaragoza. Visit the mediaeval/Renaissance cathedral with Mudéjar work and La Lonja, the fine Gothic/Renaissance exchange. The Basilica of El Pilar is the 18th-century site of modern pilgrimage built around the pillar on which the Virgin Mary appeared to St James. Ceiling paintings include works by Goya. See also the Fine Arts Museum in the newer part of town. Day 5: Belchite, Fuendetodos, Zaragoza. Belchite was the site of fierce fighting in 1937 which left the town completely ruined. In open and semidesert country, the visit is an eerie experience. At Fuendetodos, in equally bleak country, Goya’s birthplace has been well-restored. The Museum of Etching contains the Caprichos, Disparates, and Horrors of War. Return to Zaragoza and visit the Aljaferia, an Arab palace incorporating brilliant additions by Ferdinand and Isabella. Day 6: Huesca, Loarre, Sos del Rey Católico. Huesca, second ‘capital’ of infant Aragón, has a cathedral with a dramatic altarpiece. Follow the river Gállego as it flows past the extraordinary rock formations of Riglos de los Mallos. Emerge from the sierras to encounter the Castle of Loarre, arguably the finest Romanesque military building in Spain. Drive to the picturesque town of Sos for the first of three nights. Day 7: San Juan de la Peña, Santa Cruz de la Serós, Jaca. The monastery of San Juan de la Peña, dramatically sited under a bulging rock face, is the burial place of the kings and queens of early Aragón and key to understanding Aragón’s religious sentiment and history. See the magnificently carved mini-cloister. The 11th-cent. church at Santa Cruz de la Serós is a fine example of Aragonese Romanesque. Continue to the cathedral of Jaca with fine stone carvings. Day 8: Sos del Rey Católico, Leyre. In remote hill country, Sos del Rey Católico is one of the chief sites of the mediaeval kingdom: Ferdinand of Aragón was born here in 1452 and the town retains much of its mediaeval atmosphere. The monastery of San Salvador de Leyre maintains Gregorian offices in a fascinating church with a good crypt and western portal.
Classic Catalan Wines Priorat, Montsant, Penedès and The Empordà Day 9: Pamplona. Drive north out of Aragón to Bilbao (143 miles), stopping at Pamplona en route. Take the early evening flight arriving at London Gatwick at c. 7.15pm (Vueling).
21–26 October 2019 (mf 807) 6 days • £2,610 Lecturer: Linda Hanks
Practicalities
Taste characterful wines and meet their makers, who exude passion and pride.
Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,660 or £2,510 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,940 or £2,790 without flights. Included meals: 4 lunches, 6 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Gran Hotel Botánicos, Teruel (granhotelbotanicos.com): modern, centrallylocated 4-star hotel with well-equipped rooms. Hotel Catalonia el Pilar, Zaragoza (hotelescatalonia.com): modern 4-star hotel in an attractive 1900s building in the historic centre. Parador de Sos del Rey Católico, Sos (parador.es): 4-star parador with views of the countryside. How strenuous? The tour involves a lot of walking in town centres, where coach access is restricted, and standing in museums and churches. Uneven ground and irregular paving are standard. The optional, more strenuous walk on day 3 requires you to be a practised country walker, used to some up and down. It should not be undertaken by anyone who is not sure-footed or who has difficulty with gradients. Some days involve a lot of driving – average distance by coach per day: 80 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
A Schubertiade in Catalonia 21–26 August 2019 (mf 658) 6 days • £2,680 Lecturer: Richard Wigmore Please contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com
Song recitals by world-class international artists – Joyce DiDonato, Matthias Goerne, Christoph Prégardien and Andrè Schuen. Schubert’s three most famous and beloved song cycles – Schwanengesang, Die Schöne Müllerin and Winterreise, plus assorted songs by Schubert, Wolf, Mahler and others. Visits to the attractive, historic city of Girona and Figueres, hometown of Salvador Dalí and home to his self-curated surrealist ‘Theatre-Museum’. 5 nights at the Hotel Peralada, a 5-star spa hotel situated in the Albera mountains, with one meal at its nearby Michelin-starred restaurant.
Illustration: Zaragoza, after a drawing 1915.
Visit a selection of wineries from rustic farm buildings to spanking-new constructions. It was long considered that the Garnacha grape in northern Spain produced powerful, full-bodied red (or negre, meaning black) wines, but which were short-lived and not capable of maturing to achieve balance, finesse and complexity. However, modern technology and international techniques and know-how have striven to turn that idea on its head. Foreign wine competitions, journalists and importers have all helped in spreading the word to a thirsty and demanding public that Catalan wines are worthy of gracing the finest tables. As its fame spread at the turn of this century, the whole Catalan wine industry benefited from this upsurge of interest to produce cleaner, fresher and altogether better wines. But red wine is not the only story. The indigenous white grapes, Macabeu, Xarel. lo and Parellada form the original trio for the production of Cava. Inspired by Champagne, the traditional method of making sparkling wines was introduced to Catalonia in the middle of the nineteenth century, and most Cava houses are now concentrated around the town of San Sadurni d’Anoia. As we shall taste, still white wines from the Penedès and Alta Alella are usually fresh, floral and quaffable, whereas white or grey Garnacha from the Empordà or the Priorat is unctuous and more serious. After two nights in the centre of vibrant, sophisticated Barcelona, the mood becomes more tempered and rural for the rest of the tour. We pass through villages that time seems to have forgotten, some set in soft and gently undulating countryside; others at altitude surrounded by a dramatic landscape of vertiginous vineyards. From rustic farm buildings to grand and spanking-new constructions, the wineries we visit reflect the remarkable variety of geography and climate, which brings such individuality to the wines. And as characterful as the wines are the producers themselves, who exude passion and pride.
Day 3: Barcelona, Falset. Free morning in Barcelona. Drive to Falset in the heart of the Priorat and Montsant in time for a lecture and tasting at the hotel. Dinner in a nearby restaurant. First of three nights in Falset. Day 4: Poboleda, Porrera. Drive to the most northerly of the sub-zones of the Priorat to Mas Doix, a small, family-run winery whose acclaimed wines are made from the nearby 100 year-old vines. Vineyard visit and tasting. Lunch in the village before visiting the recently-constructed winery Ferrer-Bobet on the outskirts of Porrera. Tour of the modern facilities and tasting. Return to Falset for a free evening. Day 5: Gratallops, Falset, Bellmunt. Visit the traditional installations of Clos Mogador, one of the pioneering wineries in bringing the DOQ Priorat to the attention of the world. Drive to the vineyards and finish with a tasting. The next generation of two of the pioneering families, Pérez and Barbier, is based at Venus in humble, but innovative surroundings on the outskirts of Falset in the Montsant. Late afternoon visit and light evening meal at the large, biodynamic estate of Mas d’en Gil on the edge of Bellmunt.
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This tour includes four performances at the Schubertíada de Vilabertran, with concerts in the 12th-century Romanesque monastery of Santa María de Vilabertran.
Spend time in vibrant Barcelona as well as Catalonia’s gently undulating countryside.
principally white wine, with some red. Drive by coach to the Empordà and the substantial and influential winery, Castell de Peralada. While its Cava is renowned, in more recent years singlevineyard wines which are expressive of the slate soil and Mediterranean climate have increased its prestigious profile both at home and abroad. Lunch, winery visit and tasting.
Itinerary Day 1: Barcelona. Fly at c. 10.45am from London Heathrow to Barcelona (British Airways), arriving in time for a lecture and wine tasting before dinner. First of two nights in Barcelona. Day 2: Alella, Peralada. To Alta Alella just beyond the outskirts of Barcelona. Perched at the top of a steep hill with views across the Mediterranean, the organic winery has been producing wine since the beginning of this century, although wine was made in the region from Roman times to the arrival of phylloxera in the late 19th cent. Taste Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Classic Catalan Wines continued
Barcelona Mediaeval to Modernista
Linda Hanks After working in the wine trade in London and gaining her WSET diploma, Linda moved to Girona where she set up and ran a wine business for nearly 15 years. She talked and tasted her way across the province to compile the company’s portfolio of almost exclusively Catalan wines, often discovering extraordinary producers in lesser-known places. Linda also works for MRT as an Operations Manager. See page 260 for all lecturers' biographies. Day 6: San Sadurni d’Anoiay. The prestigious Cava house Gramona is also a biodynamic estate carefully combining tradition with modernity. Coach transfer to Barcelona. Fly to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 7.45pm. This gives a fair picture of the tour, but there may be substitutes for some places mentioned and the order of the visits will possibly differ.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,610 or £2,350 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,870 or £2,610 without flights. Included meals: 4 lunches and 3 dinners (one of which is light) with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Condes de Barcelona (condesdebarcelona.com): 4-star hotel, very well placed for buildings by Gaudí; rooms are modern and comfortable. Hostal Sport, Falset (hotelpriorat-hostalsport.com): welcoming, familyrun, rustic but comfortable hotel in the centre. Both hotels are rated 4 star, but the Falset hotel is probably more like a 3 star, with few modern amenities in the rooms.
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How strenuous? Although the itinerary is designed to give some free time and breaks between visits, some days may prove quite taxing when there is walking in vineyards which are often on steep slopes, as well as time spent standing in what can be cool and damp cellars. The drives are not usually very long, but access to some wineries is over rough terrain. The tour should not be undertaken by anyone who has the slightest problem with everyday walking and stair-climbing and is not sure-footed. Average distance by coach per day: 73 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Romantic Agony: English Poets in Italy, 12–19 October 2019 (p.130); Moldavia & Transylvania, 12–20 October 2019 (p.176); Courts of Northern Italy, 13–20 October 2019 (p.132); Romans in Western Iberia, 14–20 October 2019 (p.197). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport. Illustration, previous page: Barcelona, La Rambla, engraving c. 1890.
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14–18 May 2019 (mf 533) 5 days • £2,170 Lecturer: Gijs van Hensbergen A short and sharp immersion in the art and architecture of the capital of Catalonia. Contrasting the mediaeval treasures of the Gothic quarter with the flamboyant Modernista buildings of Gaudí and his contemporaries. Led by Gaudí biographer Gijs van Hensbergen. Over two thousand years, Barcelona has created a rich, unique and vibrant culture. As Spain’s undisputed second city, both ambitious and cosmopolitan, it has forged its identity as a dynamic European metropolis. Paradoxically, its cutting-edge self-image rests in equal measure on its dreams for the future and celebration of its glorious past. Its Catalan character is both mediaeval and daringly modern – and Catalonia has always played off that mythic tension between seny and rauxa – sober common-sense and explosive energy. The breathtaking grace of Sta Maria del Mar’s gothic tracery, spare and elegant, acts as a perfect foil for Jean Nouvel’s proud high-rise cucumber or the twin communication towers of the starchitects Foster and Calatrava that punctuate the skyline while Gaudi’s outrageously ambitious Sagrada Familia inevitably steals the show. In the cobbled streets and blind alleys of the Barri Gòtic – Europe’s best preserved Gothic quarter – antiquarians and atmospheric cafes sit side by side a recently discovered tenth-century synagogue and the splendid fourteenth-century palaces built when Barcelona was capital of kingdom of Aragon and the great trading entrepôt of the Mediterranean. The wealth and colour of the Gothic retablos that filled the trade guild churches are upstaged only, in perfect displays at the National Museum of Catalan Art, by the fresco cycles of six Romanesque churches, brought down in their entirety from villages high up in the nearby Pyrenees. In the mid-nineteenth century, Barcelona was allowed to break out of its restrictive mediaeval walls. Its new Eixample – ‘extension’ – exploded with creative energy, the Modernista style becoming all the rage as it still is today, transforming the city into the design capital of Europe. At the end of the century, rapid industrialisation based on the textile boom, and trade with Cuba, brought with it social tensions and the fabulous wealth of the ‘Indiano’ millionaires and chocolate barons, who had their exuberant palaces built by architects of the calibre of Gaudí, Domenech and the great historian of the Gothic, Puig I Cadafalch. This is the city that provided the creative energy for the extraordinary talents of Picasso, Ramon Casas and Santiago Rusiñol at the legendary bohemian Els Quatre Gats, still perfectly preserved today. A city in which Gaudí would become its architectural pope, as lesser known artists, such as Joaquin Mir and Isidre Nonell, laid the ground for revolutionary masters of the avant-garde like Joan Miró and Antoni Tapies.
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Again and again Barcelona has reinvented itself. It is a city in constant dynamic flux, where state of the art museums appear perfectly at home alongside glorious restaurants serving traditional Catalan food sourced from its splendid nineteenthcentury markets, where the revolutionary genius of Ferran Adrià is but the most recent chapter in its creative search and yearning for the new. Meanwhile, its secret, seductive world is still to be found around every corner and through the only partially closed door.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at 10.45am from London Heathrow to Barcelona (British Airways). Explore Las Ramblas and neighbouring streets, squares and churches: Richard Meier’s sleek Museum of Contemporary Art, jewels of the Modernista-Art Nouveau style including La Boquería, the most beautiful market in the world, and the arcaded Plaça Reial. Day 2: Mediaeval Barcelona. The Barri Gòtic is a marvellously well-preserved mediaeval quarter. Visit the magnificent and richly adorned cathedral, with a superb Flamboyant cloister. Soaring Santa Maria del Mar is the finest Gothic church in Catalonia. The Museum of the City of Barcelona is housed in the Chapel of St Agatha
Art in Madrid The great galleries and Royal Palace with fascinating Roman and Visigothic remains. In the afternoon walk to the Picasso Museum which, installed in neighbouring mansions, ranks second only to Paris for the size and quality of its collection. Day 3: Modernista Barcelona. Begin at Casa Vicens, one of Gaudí’s earliest commissions in multi-coloured Moorish style, re-opening in 2018 after restoration. Drive to his Parc Güell, the incomplete ‘garden suburb’ with sinuous ceramic-clad tiles and the house Gaudí lived in for 20 years, now a museum. The Monestir de Pedralbes is a 14th-century monastery complex with exquisite cloister arcades and frescoes. In the afternoon drive to the Sagrada Familia, Gaudí’s extraordinary church, still years from completion. Finish the day with a rooftop walk of La Pedrera. Day 4: Montjuïc. On the Montjuïc hill visit the Miró Foundation, a huge collection of works by the Barcelona artist. The National Museum of Catalan Art, with altarpieces and detached frescoes from all over the region, is one of the finest collections of mediaeval art anywhere. Free afternoon for independent exploration. Day 5: Pedralbes. Walk to some outstanding modernist buildings and decoration starting with Domènech i Montaner’s sumptuous Palau de la Música Catalana (concert hall). The grid-plan 19th-century Eixample is lined with houses and offices of unusual and disputable beauty such as Gaudí’s Casa Batlló, Casa Amatller and Palau Montaner. End the tour at the crypt of the Colònia Güell, Gaudí’s greatest work. Fly early-evening to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 7.45pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,170 or £1,920 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,490 or £2,240 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 3 dinners with wine.
How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking on this tour. A good level of fitness is necessary. It should not be attempted by anyone who has difficulty with everyday walking and stairclimbing. Average distance by coach per day: 7 miles. There is also use of the Metro. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Classical Greece, 4–13 May 2019 (p.109); Toledo & La Mancha, 6–13 May 2019 (p.196); Footpaths of Umbria, 6–13 May 2019 (p.145); Tudor England, 8–13 May 2019 (p.26); Organs of Bach's Time, 8–13 May 2019 (p.102); Mediaeval Upper Normandy, 20–27 May 2019 (p.71); Gastronomic Le Marche, 20–27 May 2019 (p.142). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration: Barcelona Cathedral, lithograph c. 1840.
Two visits to the Prado plus the ThyssenBornemisza Collection and the Reina Sofía, home to Picasso’s Guernica. Lesser-known places include the Sorolla Museum, Archaeological Museum and Goya frescoes at San Antonio de la Florida. Option to combine this tour with Sacred Music in Santiago, 26 or 28 September–2 October 2019 (see page 186). While the Museo del Prado alone might justify a visit to Madrid – and this tour has two sessions there – the city has other excellent collections which reinforce its reputation as one of the great art centres of Europe. This city of Velázquez and Goya has been enormously enhanced over the years by the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection and the Reina Sofía Museum. Both these and the Prado boast superb facilities and exhibiting spaces thanks to the work of architects Jean Nouvel (Reina Sofía), Manuel Baquero and Francesc Plá (Thyssen) and Rafael Moneo (Prado) converting them into worldclass galleries. Our stints at the ‘big three’ are interspersed with less-visited collections. The great Spanish painters – including El Greco, Murillo, Velázquez, Goya and Picasso – are of course magnificently represented on the tour, but the collecting mania of the Habsburgs and Bourbons and their subjects has resulted in a wide range of artistic riches which will surprise and delight. There is a large number of outstanding paintings by Titian and Rubens, for example, and the Prado has by far the largest holding of the bizarre creations of Hieronymus Bosch.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 9.15am from London Heathrow to Madrid (Iberia Airlines). Begin with the Archaeological Museum, good on ancient Iberian civilisation and Roman Spain. Dinner in the hotel. (Participants combining this tour with Sacred Music in Santiago fly unaccompanied from Santiago to Madrid at 9.20am, are met at the airport and then taken for a tapas lunch.) Day 2. Start with a first visit to the Prado Museum, which is among the world’s greatest art galleries, concentrating on the Spanish school. In the afternoon visit the Lázaro Galdiano Museum with works by El Greco, Goya and Murillo and then the Sorolla Museum, in the charming house of the eponymous Impressionist painter. Day 3. Visit the Royal Tapestry Factory, founded in 1721 by Phillip V with designs by Goya, many of which are still reproduced today. Continue to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, home to works by Goya, Zurbarán, Ribera and Murillo. Spend the afternoon at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, housed in the 18th-cent. Palacio de Villahermosa, one of the world’s largest private art collections until its purchase by the Spanish state in 1993.
Day 4. Travel by coach to the church of San Antonio de la Florida, with fine Goya frescoes, before returning to the Prado, this time primarily to see the Italian and Netherlandish schools. The afternoon is free to allow for temporary exhibitions (details nearer the time) or a visit to the 18th-century Royal Palace. Day 5. Walk via Herzog & de Meuron’s CaixaForum to the Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, one of the greatest modern art museums and home to Picasso’s Guernica plus works by Miró, Dalí and Tàpies. Fly to Heathrow, arriving at c. 6.30pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,940 or £1,750 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,270 or £2,080 without flights. Included meals: 3 dinners with wine. Price for this tour if combining it with Sacred Music in Santiago. Two sharing: £2,090 or £1,900 without international flights. Single occupancy: £2,420 or £2,230 without international flights. This includes additionally a flight from Santiago to Madrid, transfer from the airport and tapas lunch. Accommodation. NH Collection Palacio de Tepa, Madrid (nh-collection.com): small and excellently located 5-star hotel. Rooms are comfortable and décor is contemporary. How strenuous? The tour involves a lot of walking and standing in museums (which can be more tiring than moving around). Fitness is essential. Group size: between 9 and 19 participants.
Illustration: Madrid, Long Gallery in the Prado, after a drawing by Joseph Pennell publ. 1903.
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Accommodation. Hotel Condes de Barcelona (condesdebarcelona.com): 4-star hotel, very well placed for buildings by Gaudí; rooms are modern and comfortable.
2–6 October 2019 (mf 772) 5 days • £1,940 Lecturer: Gail Turner
Toledo & La Mancha Art, architecture, landscape and literature 6–13 May 2019 (mf 511) 8 days • £2,420 Lecturer: Gijs van Hensbergen Mediaeval walled cities, unspoilt towns and remote villages in the vast plains of La Mancha, playground of Don Quixote. As rich a tour as Spain can offer with Roman, Visigothic, Moorish, Jewish and Christian art and architecture. Works of El Greco a major theme, alongside Spanish masters. Three nights in laid-back Belmonte are balanced by four in imperial Toledo.
Illustration: Toledo, bridge and cathedral, mezzotint c. 1920 by Fred Milland, after a painting c. 1900 by Henry Charles Brewer (1866–1950).
‘Somewhere in La Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing.’ Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes. Vast plains, flocks of dun-coloured sheep lifting clouds of dust, hundred-year-old gnarled vines in serried rows to the distant horizon, windmills, and cirrus clouds high overhead…this is La Mancha; a secret and arcane world, still astonishingly authentic and wonderfully unspoilt. We begin in the sleepy town of Belmonte, a case study in the history of Spain. Beneath the castle walls, the Jewish and Arab quarters remain intact. Once home to craftsmen who created some of the country’s finest and most intricate artesonado ceilings, this historic core was transformed later by Empress Eugenie of France into a nineteenthcentury romantic hideaway before the great Alba dynasty took control. No wonder it formed the
set of the epic El Cid – with Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren gracing the landscape. Pastrana possesses a rare and remarkable set of fifteenth-century tapestries, created in response to historical events, while Villaescusa de Haro houses a completely unknown yet spectacular high altar and sacristy – a pocket-sized Pantheon – one of the great unsung masterpieces of the Renaissance genius Andrés de Vandelvira. From Belmonte we search out the archaeological site of Roman Segobriga, built on the wealth of the lapis specularis mines, and Cuenca with its precipitous hanging houses and Gothic cathedral built over the recently rediscovered Arab palace. Here, too, is the pioneering Museum of Abstract Art. Travelling west to Toledo we stop at the Bourbon palace of Aranjuez, with romantic gardens and formal parterres, stretching out along the banks of the Tagus; a favourite late-spring escape from hell-hot Madrid. Toledo is closely associated with El Greco, and a private viewing of the breathtaking Burial of the Conde Orgaz offers a valuable insight into why the Cretan artist dared to imagine this masterpiece; a triumphant response to Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. But this Imperial City of the three faiths is much more than El Greco: the Visigothic museum is an eclectic marriage of Arab, Gothic, Renaissance and Romanesque and a perfect example of Toledo’s Janus-headed capacity to play off the Inquisition versus stylistic tolerance; the Renaissance Hospital de Tavera is the ideal counterpoint to the great fourteenth-century Synagogue of El Transito and the exquisite tenth-century mosque of Bab al-Mardum; and then to surrealists Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí, who adored getting lost in the meandering Arab street plan, enjoying alcohol fuelled ‘Toledan Nights’ as they feasted on pickled partridge and convent marzipan.
Itinerary MAINLAND EUROPE: Spain
Day 1: London to La Mancha. Fly at c. 9.15am (Iberia Airlines) from London Heathrow to Madrid. Drive east into La Mancha to the mediaeval town of Pastrana. See some of the finest surviving Gothic tapestries, depicting the conquests in Morocco by Alfonso V, King of Portugal (1432–1481). Continue to the walled town of Belmonte for the first of three nights. Day 2: Belmonte, Segobriga, Villaescusa de Haro. In Belmonte visit the Gothic church of San Bartolomé and the superbly sited 15thcentury castle. The Roman city of Segobriga reached its peak in the 1st century ad and was abandoned during the Islamic conquest of Spain. Ruins of the theatre, forum and baths remain in a pleasingly remote setting. Return via the remarkable parish church of Villaescusa de Haro. Dinner in nearby Las Pedroñeras. Day 3: Cuenca. The old town sits high on a narrow ridge bound by rivers, the castle ramparts at the top affording spectacular views. The predominantly Gothic cathedral has Plateresque portals and carved wooden ceilings. 196
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Romans in Western Iberia In the footsteps of Trajan and Hadrian One museum has two works by El Greco, another has Roman remains. The Museum of Abstract Art has an important collection of Saura, Tàpies, Chillida and others.
14–20 October 2019 (mf 788) 7 days • £2,340 Lecturer: Professor Simon Esmonde Cleary
Day 4: Aranjuez, Toledo. To Aranjuez, with its 18th-century royal landscaped park and elaborately decorated palaces. Visit the best of Toledo’s Mozarabic churches, San Román now the Visigothic museum. First of four nights in Toledo.
Historic cities of Portugal & Spain: Évora, Mérida, Carmona and Seville.
Day 5: Toledo. The Gothic cathedral is Spain’s largest and the most richly endowed with paintings (El Greco, Velázquez, Titian) and also has furnishings and sculpture of the highest quality. The Museo de Santa Cruz is housed in a remarkable early 16th-century hospital built to the designs of Antón and Enrique Egas, and is best known for its late mediaeval and later paintings, including works by El Greco. Day 6: Toledo. Visit the church of Santo Tomé with El Greco’s Burial of Count Orgaz, his greatest work (private view). See more of his work and his burial place at the convent of Sto Domingo. Beyond the city gates is the 16th-century Hospital de Tavera, now a museum containing El Greco’s final work, Baptism of Christ. Day 7: Toledo. Morning spent in the old Jewish quarter, starting with a pair of former synagogues. Ibn Shoshan (Santa María la Blanca) from the 13th century retains its original stuccowork and wooden ceiling, while El Tránsito is a more lavish galleried synagogue financed by Samuel Levi in the 1360s. San Juan de los Reyes is the breathtakingly ambitious Franciscan monastery constructed under Ferdinand and Isabella. El Greco’s house and museum contains his finest series of apostles and View of Toledo. Day 8: Illescas. El Greco spent two years in the undistinguished town of Illescas and the Hospital de la Caridad contains five of his works. Fly to Heathrow (British Airways) arriving at c. 7.40 pm.
Practicalities
Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Infante Don Juan Manuel, Belmonte (hotelspainfantedonjuan manuel.es): 4-star hotel built on the ancient fortress of Belmonte. Hotel Fontecruz, Toledo (fontecruzhoteles.com): 4-star hotel in a converted palace in the Jewish Quarter with smart rooms. How strenuous? The tour involves a lot of walking in town centres where coach access is restricted. Many streets are narrow, steep and unevenly paved. There is a lot of standing in museums and churches. Average distance by coach per day: 63 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Barcelona, 14–18 May 2019 (p.194). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Explore little-visited Portuguese sites of Conímbriga, São Cucufate & Pisões villa. It took the Romans two hundred years to conquer the entire Iberian peninsula, from their landings on the east coast in the late third century bc during the war against Hannibal, to the final capture of the far north-west under Augustus (25– 20 bc). With access to plentiful natural resources, inhabitants of the peninsula became peaceful and rich, with Roman citizenship becoming increasingly widespread as time went on. This tour visits two of the three provinces into which Hispania was divided, namely Baetica in the south, Lusitania in the west and Tarraconensis in the east. We start in Lusitania (roughly modern Portugal and west-central Spain), before crossing into the western part of the province of Baetica, around Seville. Both provinces are home to a series of spectacular Roman sites attesting to the prosperity of the local aristocracies under Roman rule. Many of them are off the beaten track and consequently have not attracted the attention they deserve today. Two of Rome’s greatest emperors, Trajan (98–117) and Hadrian (117–138) heralded not from Rome but from Baetica. Both were born in Italica, north of Seville, whose ‘Old Town’ (Urbs Vetus) was founded in 206 bc by the great general Publius Cornelius Scipio as a colony for the victorious veterans of the second Punic War. Hadrian expanded the city northwards, tripling it in size and placing at the centre of his ‘New Town’ (Urbs Nova), an immense Temple of Trajan, in honour of his predecessor. North of Baetica, the capital of Lusitania, Augusta Emerita (present day Mérida), stood on the river Guadiana. Named after its founder, Augustus erected a number of exceptional public buildings and monuments here, many of which survive, including the theatre and amphitheatre, among the finest extant examples in Spain. Three centuries later, by now the central hub of the entire Iberian peninsula, the city was restored under Constantine I. Conímbriga (modern Condeixa-a-Nova), occupies a long-inhabited site. Though not the largest, this is certainly the best preserved Roman settlement of Lusitania, with walls largely intact and the mosaic floors and foundations of many houses and public buildings visible. Water was always a scarce resource in this region; the ability to capture, control and use it tell us much. In the baths at Conímbriga, the network of stone heating ducts (the hypocaust) is evident beneath long-vanished floors. Beyond the cities, the incorporation of elaborate water features into the luxurious villas testify to the wealth
and sophistication of their owners and the huge Portuguese villa of São Cucufate boasted a large reflecting pool. At the villa of Pisões, an extensive complex with many rooms floored in mosaic, the remains of a dam and lake survive to the north. Both Baetica and Lusitiania fell to the Visigoths in the course of the fifth century, with Mérida remaining an important Christian centre. In the eighth century, the region was conquered by the Moors from North Africa. The remains of their five centuries of civilisation are also impressively visible today, particularly in Carmona, Mérida and Seville.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 11.45am (TAP Portugal) from London Gatwick to Porto. Drive to Buçaco for one night. Day 2: Conímbriga, Évora. Drive south to Portugal’s most important Roman site, Conímbriga, where the modern display places emphasis on private housing and gardens with their layout, planting and use of water. A highlight is the House of the Fountains, an aristocratic residence, where the original hydraulic infrastructure has been preserved, allowing 500 water jets to function, surrounded by wellpreserved mosaics depicting monsters and sea creatures. Continue to Évora for two nights.
Illustration: Mérida, Roman cistern, steel engraving c. 1850.
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Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,420 or £2,280 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,860 or £2,720 without flights.
Mérida, the capital of Lusitania, has an outstanding national museum, theatre and amphitheatre.
Romans in Western Iberia continued
Essential Andalucía Spain’s southern province
Day 3: São Cucufate, Pisões. South of Évora lies the Villa of São Cucufate, the 4th-cent. residence of a wealthy landowner. Used as a convent in the 9th–12th cents., some beautiful frescoes remain in the chapel. The remote Villa of Pisões has particularly well-preserved baths. Day 4: Évora, Elvas, Mérida. A morning walk in Évora includes Portugal’s best-preserved Roman temple (2nd or 3rd century ad), and the town museum has a collection of local archaeology. Some free time to explore the cathedral, 16th-cent. Jesuit university or church of São João Evangelista, with some of the finest azulejos in Portugal. Drive to Mérida via Elvas, site of the 16th-cent. Amoreira Aqueduct. First of two nights in Mérida. Day 5: Mérida. In addition to the theatre and amphitheatre, the Temple of Diana, parts of the forum and fine houses survive. Outside the walls are the circus, the bridge over the Guadiana, restored under Visigothic rule in the fifth century, and the astonishing ‘Los Milagros’ triple-tiered aqueduct, one of at least three bringing water into the city. The Spanish National Museum of Roman Art, with a collection of international quality, was designed by Rafael Moneo. Day 6: Itálica, Carmona. Drive from Mérida to Itálica, near Seville, whose theatre and part of the forum are still visible. Continue to Carmona, whose Roman Necropolis contains more than 300 tombs, mausoleums and crematory ovens. Overnight in Carmona.
21–31 October 2019 (mf 848) 11 days • £3,640 Lecturer: Dr Philippa Joseph
Day 7: Seville. Spend the morning at Seville’s outstanding archaeological museum, which contains a substantial collection of remains from Itálica. Some free time to visit Seville’s Cathedral and Alcázar. Fly from Seville (British Airways) arriving at London Gatwick at c. 9.30pm.
Visits the Picasso Museum in Málaga, the Alhambra in Granada and the small Renaissance towns of Úbeda and Baeza.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,340 or £2,080 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,560 or £2,300 without flights. Included meals: 3 lunches, 4 dinners, with wine.
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Accommodation. Buçaco Palace Hotel, Buçaco (almeidahotels.com): grandiose hotel in a former royal hunting lodge with gardens. Mar de Ar Muralhas, Évora (mardearhotels.com): contemporary 4-star hotel on the edge of the historic centre. Parador de Mérida (parador.es): comfortable, centrally-located, 4-star parador in a former 18th-cent. convent. Hotel Alcázar de la Reina, Carmona (alcazar-reina.es): functional 4-star hotel in the historic centre, comfortable but simple. How strenuous? The tour involves a lot of walking on archaeological sites, so a good level of fitness is essential. Uneven ground, irregular paving, steps and hills are standard. Some days involve a lot of driving; average distance per day: 90 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Essential Andalucía, 21–31 October 2019 (right). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport. 198
Three nights in each of the major cities: Granada, Córdoba and Seville.
Varied itinerary covering the great Moorish sites, mediaeval, Renaissance and Baroque architecture, fine art collections and gardens.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 9.20am from London Gatwick to Málaga (British Airways). Arrive in time for an introductory walk and lecture in the hotel. Overnight in Málaga. Day 2: Málaga. Begin at Picasso’s birthplace, which houses a small collection of his belongings. The Picasso Museum is magnificent, both the 16th-century building and the collection, which places emphasis on his earlier works. The Carmen Thyssen museum has a fine collection of old masters and 19th-century Spanish painting. Drive to Granada in the late afternoon for the first of three nights. Day 3: Granada. The 13th-century Arab palaces of the Alhambra ride high above the city. They are often reckoned to be the greatest expression of Moorish art in Spain, with exquisite decoration and a succession of intimate courtyards. Adjacent are the 16th-century Palace of Charles V and the Generalife, summer palace of the sultans, with gardens and fountains. Day 4: Granada. Morning walk through the Albaycín, the oldest quarter in town, including
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El Bañuelo (Arab baths). Climb up to San Nicolás from where there are fine views of the Alhambra. In the late afternoon visit the Cathedral and Royal Chapel which retains Isabel of Castile’s personal collection of Flemish, Spanish and Italian paintings. Day 5: Baeza, Úbeda. Drive to Baeza, once a prosperous and important town and now a provincial backwater of quiet charm set among olive groves stretching to the horizon. It has a 16th-century cathedral by outstanding regional architect Andrés de Vandelvira and many grand houses of an alluring light-coloured stone. In Úbeda walk to the handsome Plaza Vázquez de Molina, flanked by elegant palaces including Vandelvira’s Casa de las Cadenas and the present day parador. The church of El Salvador was designed by Diego de Siloé in 1536. Continue to Córdoba for the first of three nights. Day 6: Córdoba. From the middle of the 8th century Córdoba was the capital of Islamic Spain and became the richest city in Europe until its capitulation to the Reconquistadors in 1236. La Mezquita (mosque) is one of the most magnificent of Muslim sites, for some the greatest building of mediaeval Europe. It contains within it the 16thcentury cathedral. In the afternoon drive out to the excavations of Medina Azahara, with remains of a huge and luxurious 10th-century palace complex. Day 7: Córdoba. Morning visit to the Archaeological Museum, housed in brand new galleries and a Renaissance mansion, with a fine collection of Roman and Arab pieces. Visit the Alcázar, mediaeval with earlier architectural remains (and good Roman mosaics), and the narrow streets of the old Jewish quarter, including the 14th-century synagogue. The Fine Arts Museum (optional visit), with Plateresque façade and one delightful ceiling, houses some good Spanish paintings, and the Museo Julio Romero
de Torres (optional visit), the former residence of the Cordoban painter, contains a collection of his works. Free afternoon in Córdoba. Day 8: Ecija, Seville. The many church towers of Ecija are visible from afar across the surrounding plain. Of the numerous Baroque mansions see the Palacio de Peñaflor and Palacio del Marqués de Benameji, and visit the Gothic-Mudéjar church of Santiago. Drive to Seville; first of three nights here.
́ ANDALUCIA The unification of Spain which was ensured by the marriage in 1469 of the ‘Catholic Kings’, Ferdinand and Isabella, ushered in the period when Spain became the dominant power in Europe. This also coincided with the discovery of the Americas. The cities of the south, particularly Seville, were the immediate beneficiaries of the subsequent colonisation and inflow of huge quantities of bullion and of boundless opportunities for trade and wealth creation.
Day 9: Seville. Walk to the church and hospital of the Caridad, Seville’s most striking 17th-century building, with paintings by Murillo and Valdés Leal. The cathedral is one of the largest Gothic churches anywhere (‘Let us build a cathedral so immense that everyone...will take us for madmen’). The Capilla Mayor, treasury and sanctuary are of particular interest. Free afternoon. Day 10: Seville. The Alcázar, the fortified royal palace, is one of Spain’s greatest buildings; built by Moorish architects for Castilian kings, it consists of a sequence of apartments and magnificent reception rooms around courtyards and gardens. Walkthrough the Barrio de Santa Cruz, a maze of whitewashed alleys and flower-filled patios, to the Casa de Pilatos, the best of the Mudéjar style palaces, with patios and azulejos. Visit the Fine Arts Museum, the best in Spain after the Prado.
The result was a boom in building and a cultural renaissance, a Golden Age which lasted into the eighteenth century, long after the economy had cooled and real Spanish power had waned.
Day 11. Free day in Seville. Fly from here to London Gatwick arriving at c. 9.45pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,640 or £3,480 without flights. Single occupancy: £4,330 or £4,170 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 7 dinners with wine.
How strenuous? This is a long tour with four hotels, a lot of walking, often on uneven streets and uphill. You need to be fit. A fair amount of coach travel; average distance per day: 33 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Moldavia & Transylvania, 12–20 October 2019 (p.176); Courts of Northern Italy, 13–20 October 2019 (p.132); Romans in Western Iberia, 14–20 October 2019 (p.197); The Thomas Tallis Trail, 1–3 November 2019 (p.29); Historic Musical Instruments, 1–4 November 2019 (p.120). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Varied geographically: stretching southwards from the Sierra Morena to the Mediterranean, it encompasses the permanent snow of the Sierra Nevada as well as the sun-scorched interior. And varied culturally: here it is possible to see great art and architecture of both Islamic and Christian traditions side by side – even, at Córdoba, one within the other. For Spain is unique in Western Europe in having been conquered by an Islamic power. The Moors first crossed from Africa in ad 711, and in the south of the country they stayed for nearly eight centuries. The Moorish civilisation of the cities of Andalucía was one of the most sophisticated of the Middle Ages.
There are also tantalising glimpses of the preceding Visigothic kingdom, and remains of the still earlier Roman occupation – the province of Baetica was one of the most highly favoured in the Roman Empire. Later, both Jews and gypsies made their influence felt, but overwhelmingly the dominant contribution to man-made Andalucian heritage has been created by and for unwavering adherents to Catholicism. The Christian religion does not get much more intense than in southern Spain, and its artistic manifestations rarely more spiritually charged.
OUR TOURS IN ANDALUCÍA Essential Andalucía Page 198
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Accommodation. Hotel Molina Lario, Málaga (hotelmolinalario.com): functional 4-star in the centre. AC Palacio de Santa Paula, Granada (marriott.com): comfortable, contemporary hotel in the centre, comparable to a 4-star. NH Amistad, Córdoba (nh-hotels.com): 4-star in an 18thcentury mansion, a short walk from the mosque. Hotel Alfonso XIII, Seville (hotel-alfonsoxiiiseville.com): centrally located 5-star hotel, an iconic cultural landmark commissioned by the King of Spain in 1929; single occupancy rooms here have queen-size beds.
Andalucía is Spain’s most fascinating and varied region.
The poverty and torpor of subsequent centuries allowed much of the beauty of the glory days to survive to the present time, when a revival of prosperity has enabled extensive restoration and proper care of the immense artistic patrimony.
Gastronomic Andalucía Page 200 Granada & Córdoba Page 201
Illustration, left: Seville Cathedral, copper engraving c. 1750. Above right: wood engraving c. 1880 from 'Spanish Pictures'.
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Gastronomic Andalucía Food, wine, art and architecture 8–15 March 2019 (mf 442) 8 days • £3,320 Lecturer: Gijs van Hensbergen Journey south from Las Pedroñeras in La Mancha in a sweeping curve through Andalucía: Úbeda, Córdoba, Seville, Jerez, Aracena. Surveys the history of the region with its cuisine: Roman, Jewish, Moorish, Christian; from the simplest cooking to the elaborate and contemporary. Some of Spain’s greatest monuments, including the mosque at Córdoba and Seville Cathedral, as well as lesser-known treasures: wonderful museums, small towns and spectacular countryside. ‘Al-Andalus’ (the Andalucía of the Moors) are words which immediately evoke fantasies of displays of sweetmeats, saffron-stained rice and jewels of livid red pomegranate. Exotic flavour combinations are countered by the simplicity of perfectly prepared fish; flaking, moist and ivory white. Sophisticated techniques are often tempered by the deeply felt philosophy that, yes, less can be more. Gastronomic Andalucía is a true feast of the senses: earthy smells are countered by elusive and piquant tastes; sherries, montillas and punchy red caldos of La Mancha wine stand up perfectly to the pickled escabeches of game, the deep-flavoured fish soups, and the marriage of almonds, lemon-
steeped olives and air-dried tenderloin of albacore tuna. The backdrop of Gastronomic Andalucía is no less exotic: Úbeda and Baeza, the twin cities of Spain’s Renaissance, are surrounded by stands of olive trees that lead the eye out to the horizon and the sierras beyond. The mosque in Córdoba, at the very heart of the Caliphate, makes a complete nonsense of the received wisdom about the socalled Dark Ages. Seville’s barrio of Santa Cruz still offers up phantom vistas of an extraordinary cosmopolitan past. Andalucía, it must be remembered, has a large variety of climates. In the mountains above Seville, the hams of the wild Iberian pig dry perfectly into a product that is second to none. Sea breezes around Sanlucar signal the flavour of salt on the tongue. South to Baeza, off the tourist track, we enter the land of olives, and a tasting at the family run Castillo de Canena, where Spain’s former Business Woman of the Year, Rosa Vañó, inducts us into the arcane wonders of olive oil tasting. Córdoba, of course, needs no advertising; our lunch here at Michelin-starred Noor transports us back to Al-Andalus, with a menu made exclusively from ingredients available in the Caliphate in the tenth century. Perfectly fried aubergines are a foil for the oxtail, fillets of fish with herbs and oil are trapped in a flash, in a film of the lightest batter and laid out on a bed of the speciality, fried lettuce. Oaky Montilla wine is taken standing. Seville and Jerez are worlds of their own. Sherry houses are famous for producing unique tastes. Less known are the almacenistas, passionate
amateurs, whose houses, basements, shops and even living rooms are turned over to storing and nursing their barrels. In Seville, Michelin-starred Julio Fernández Quinteiro offers us his take on Andalusian cuisine at Restaurante Abantal. The tour culminates with a seafood feast at Aponiente in El Puerto de Santa María, Spain’s latest restaurant to be awarded three Michelin stars. Ángel León, the self-proclaimed ‘Chef of the Sea’, comes from a fishing background and has built his imaginative menu around his love for seafood, while his use of avant-garde techniques and unusual ingredients have earned him a reputation as a visionary chef.
Itinerary Day 1: London to La Mancha. Fly at c. 9.15am (Iberia) from London Heathrow to Madrid. Drive south into La Mancha to the small walled town of Belmonte. In the surrounding countryside visit the vineyards of Pesquera, of Ribera del Duero fame, for a tasting and dinner. Overnight in Belmonte. Day 2: La Mancha to Andalucía. In Belmonte visit the Gothic church of San Bartolomé and the superbly sited 15th-century castle before leaving for lunch in nearby Las Pedroñeras. Here chef Manolo de la Osa marries bohemian bonhomie with a passion for garlic. Drive through the magnificent pass of Desfiladero de Despeñaperros and enter Andalucía. The handsome town of Úbeda has streets and squares lined with palaces, one of which is our hotel. First of two nights here. Day 3: Úbeda. The town of Úbeda thrived in the 16th century and is richly endowed with Renaissance monuments. Lunch is at the town’s most innovative restaurant, Antique. The Arab Castle of Canena is deep in olive-grove country of the Guadalquivir valley and home to the Vañó family, famed producers; tasting and visit here.
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Day 4: Córdoba, Seville. Drive west to Córdoba and focus on La Mezquita, one of the largest and most beautiful mosques in the world, and within it the 16th-century cathedral. Walk through the old Jewish quarter, with 14th-century synagogue, before a Moorish lunch at Noor (1 Michelin star), where chef Paco Morales only uses ingredients from 10th-century Al-Andalus. Continue to Seville for the first of four nights. Day 5: Seville. Begin at the Alcázar, one of Spain’s greatest buildings, built by Moorish architects for Spanish kings, with its courtyards, gardens and magnificent tapestries. The 15th-century cathedral is one of the largest Gothic churches anywhere, with a Late Gothic retable and paintings by Murillo, Zurbarán and Goya. In the afternoon visit the Fine Arts Museum, the finest collection in Spain after the Prado. Dinner is at a renowned Sevillian restaurant. Day 6: Sierra de Aracena, Jabugo. Drive north to the Sierra de Aracena, the low mountains which form the border with Extremadura. Here we taste the exquisite jamón ibérico. There is an optional walk in the foothills along farm tracks lined with oak, chestnut and olive trees and livestock. Illustration: Córdoba, La Mezquita, engraving 1816.
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Granada & Córdoba with Úbeda and Baeza Alternatively remain in the town of Aracena. The evening is spent at Restaurante Abantal, whose chef was the first in Seville to win a Michelin star. Day 7: Jerez de la Frontera, El Puerto de Santa María. Drive south to Jerez, at the heart of sherry production. Visit and tasting at Bodegas Tradición, also home to an impressive art collection. Continue to El Puerto de Santa María for lunch at Aponiente, recently awarded its third Michelin star. Chef Ángel León is known for his creativity and experimental techniques, and his menu offers an innovative take on seafood. Day 8: Seville. Free day in Seville perhaps to visit the 15th-century Casa de Pilatos, a mix of Mudéjar, Gothic and Renaissance styles, or the church and hospital of the Caridad, Seville’s most striking 17th-century building, with paintings by Murillo and Valdés Leal. Drive to Seville airport for the flight to London Gatwick (British Airways) arriving at c. 9.45pm. Please note this tour departs from London Heathrow and returns to London Gatwick.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,320 or £3,180 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,530 or £3,390 without flights. Included meals: 5 lunches and 4 dinners (including 1 light) with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Infante Don Juan Manuel, Belmonte (hotelspainfantedonjuanm anuel.es): 4-star hotel built on the ancient fortress of Belmonte. Parador de Úbeda (parador.es): 4-star parador in a Renaissance palace on the most handsome square in town; comfortable rooms, traditionally furnished. Hotel Las Casas de la Judería, Seville (lascasasdelajuderiasevilla. com): charming 4-star hotel in the Barrio Sta Cruz created from several contiguous buildings connected by open-air patios.
25 March–1 April 2019 (mf 464) 8 days • £2,620 Lecturer: Gail Turner Ample time at the key sites of Moorish Spain: the Alhambra in Granada and the Mosque in Córdoba, with time also for the lesser-known.
Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
Itinerary
Combine this tour with: Basilicata, 16–21 March 2019 (p.159); Jonathan Keates's Venice, 18–24 March 2019 (p.128); Minoan Crete, 18–27 March 2019 (p.112); Civilisations of Sicily (for solo travellers), 18–30 March 2019 (p.161). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Note that days 2–7 of this tour are identical to days 2–7 of Essential Andalucía (page 198).
For lecturers' biographies See pages 260–267
Visit the Picasso Museum and Carmen Thyssen collection in Málaga and the small Renaissance towns of Úbeda and Baeza.
Day 1. Fly at c. 11.15am from London Gatwick Airport to Málaga (British Airways). Arrive in time for an introductory walk and lecture in the hotel. Overnight in Málaga. Day 2: Málaga. Begin at Picasso’s birthplace, which houses a small collection of his belongings. The Picasso Museum is magnificent, both the 16th-century building and the collection, which places emphasis on his earlier works. The Carmen Thyssen museum has a fine collection of old masters and 19th-century Spanish painting. In the afternoon drive north to Granada. First of three nights in Granada.
Day 4: Granada. Morning visit to the Cathedral and Royal Chapel which retains Isabel of Castile’s personal collection of Flemish, Spanish and Italian paintings. In the late afternoon there is an optional walk through the Albaycín, the oldest quarter in town, including El Bañuelo (Arab baths). Climb up to San Nicolás from where there are fine views of the Alhambra. Day 5: Baeza, Úbeda. Drive to Baeza, once a prosperous and important town and now a provincial backwater set among olive groves stretching to the horizon. It has a 16th-century cathedral by outstanding regional architect Andrés de Vandelvira and many grand houses of an alluring light-coloured stone. In Úbeda walk to the handsome Plaza Vázquez de Molina, flanked by elegant palaces including Vandelvira’s Casa de las Cadenas and the present day parador. The church of El Salvador was designed by Diego de Siloé in 1536. Continue to Córdoba for the first of three nights. Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking over uneven ground and up and down hill (as well as an optional countryside walk) and some days involve a lot of driving. Average distance by coach per day: 100 miles. Dinners tend to be at 8.30 or 9.00pm in Spain, so you might get to bed later than you would usually.
Day 3: Granada. The 13th-century Arab palaces of the Alhambra ride high above the city. They are often reckoned to be the greatest expression of Moorish art in Spain, with exquisite decoration and a succession of intimate courtyards. Adjacent are the 16th-century Palace of Charles V and the Generalife, summer palace of the sultans, with gardens and fountains.
Granada & Córdoba continued
' A fascinating and enriching tour. Excellent lecturer and tour manager and the usual high standard of service which Martin Randall Travel never fails to deliver. A really lovely group of fellow travellers too. Thank you very much!' J.G., participant on Granada & Córdoba in 2017.
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Day 6: Córdoba. From the middle of the 8th century Córdoba was the capital of Islamic Spain and became the richest city in Europe until its capitulation to the Reconquistadors in 1236. La Mezquita (mosque) is one of the most magnificent of Muslim sites, for some the greatest building of mediaeval Europe. It contains within it the 16thcentury cathedral. In the afternoon drive out to the excavations of Medina Azahara, with remains of a huge and luxurious 10th-century palace complex. Day 7: Córdoba. Morning visit to the Archaeological Museum, housed in brand new galleries and a Renaissance mansion, with a fine collection of Roman and Arab pieces. Visit the Alcázar, mediaeval with earlier architectural remains (and good Roman mosaics), and the narrow streets of the old Jewish quarter, including the 14th-century synagogue. The Fine Arts Museum, with Plateresque façade, houses some good Spanish paintings. Free afternoon in Córdoba. Day 8. Drive to Málaga airport for the earlyafternoon flight, arriving at London Gatwick airport at c. 4.00pm. Illustration, previous page: Granada, the Alhambra, engraving from 'The Magazine of Art' 1894. Above: Málaga Cathedral 18th-century engraving.
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Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,620 or £2,350 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,050 or £2,780 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Molina Lario, Málaga (hotelmolinalario.com): functional 4-star in the centre. AC Palacio de Santa Paula, Granada (marriott.com): comfortable, contemporary hotel in the centre; comparable to a 4-star. NH Amistad, Córdoba (nh-hotels.com): 4-star in an 18thcentury mansion, a short walk from the mosque. How strenuous? The tour involves a lot of walking in town centres, where coach access is restricted, and a lot of standing in museums and churches. Uneven ground and irregular paving are standard. Average distance by coach per day: 52 miles.
Gail Turner Art historian, lecturer and artist with a particular interest in Spanish history and art. She read Modern History at Oxford and completed her MA at the Courtauld. She lectures for the National Trust and Art Fund, and teaches on courses at the V&A. She has also lectured on the Courtauld Institute Summer School. See page 260 for all lecturers' biographies.
Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Jonathan Keates’s Venice, 18–24 March 2019 (p.128); The Birth of Mannerism, 20–24 March 2019 (p.137); Pompeii & Herculaneum, 1–6 April 2019 (p.153); Classical Turkey, 1–10 April 2019 (p.207); Civilisations of Sicily, 1–13 April 2019 (p.161); Normans in the South, 2–10 April 2019 (p.156). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
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See page 199 to read more about the region of Andalucía.
Gastronomic Sweden Nordic gastronomy from land to sea 31 May–7 June 2019 (mf 554) 8 days • £3,680 Lecturer: Urban Laurin 14–21 June 2019 (mf 580) Very few spaces remaining 8 days • £3,680 Lecturer: Urban Laurin Journey from a coastline renowned for its fresh seafood, to the veritable pantry of Sweden at the country’s southernmost tip. Linking the Viking legacy of hunting, preserving and foraging with exciting New Nordic cuisine. The most humble local delicacies to Michelinstarred meals; established spirits alongside burgeoning young wines.
Itinerary
against the backdrop of the Bohuslän archipelago. Final night in Gothenburg. Day 3: Gothenburg, Helsingborg, Skåne. A private tour of the Neoclassical Gunnebo House, a country villa with organically managed gardens and an award-winning bakery. Drive south, skirting the coast, to Helsingborg to visit Sofiero Palace, one of the Swedish royal family’s country mansions for more than a century. The garden has more than 500 rhododendron varieties. Dinner in Helsingborg before continuing to Skåne, where the following three nights are spent.
Day 1: Gothenburg. Fly at c.10.00am from London Heathrow via Copenhagen to Gothenburg (Scandinavian Airlines). An afternoon tasting at the ‘fish church’ indoor market, built in 1874 and styled after a combination of stone Gothic and Norwegian stave churches. An introductory lecture precedes dinner at Michelin-starred Koka. Chef Johan Björkman uses only the finest local ingredients and has held his star since 2015. First of two nights in Gothenburg.
Day 4: Skåne. Start the day with a chocolate tasting in the sleepy town of Österlen, led by the producers in their red brick factory. Visit a cheese maker and meet the owner of the small factory and farm. Some free time for lunch in seaside Kivik, home to an annual apple market, before a tasting of unsweetened must, in an area where the first apple trees were planted in the late 1800s. Dinner is in the hotel restaurant; the kitchen is run by the owners, former chefs in Stockholm, who make excellent use of the on-site bakery and gardens.
Day 2: Gothenburg, Ljungskile. An introduction to Sweden’s famed kanelbullar (cinnamon bun) under a beautiful 19th- century glass ceiling, before a walking tour of Gothenburg. Time to explore the city’s Museum of Art, which houses a collection dating back to the 15th century, before driving north to Uddevalla. Sail to Ljungskile and observe a mussel harvest, mooring for a private dinner sampling the fjord’s delicacies
Day 5: Skåne. A morning walk through the Scanian countryside with an expert forager before lunch at a traditional gästgifveri (inn). An afternoon berry-picking at a family-run fruit farm precedes a visit to Ellinge Castle, one of Skåne’s oldest manor houses, dating from the 12th century. Vodka is distilled on site here using mineral-rich water from the castle spring and estate-grown wheat and barley. For the final night in Skåne, a
MAINLAND EUROPE: Sweden
The 2004 manifesto of New Nordic Cuisine, signed by 12 visionary chefs, including Sweden’s renowned Mathias Dahlgren and Denmark’s revolutionary René Redzepi (of Noma fame), triggered a gastronomic renaissance in the Nordic countries. At the heart of this culinary movement are ideals of simplicity, purity, freshness and a conscious use of seasonal produce, elevating regional ingredients to create traditional Nordic dishes using new methods. Spanning a diverse range of climatic regions, over 1500 kilometres of high mountains and long coastlines, Sweden boasts a rich variety of flora and fauna and with it an abundance of local culinary traditions. Our tour crosses from the northernmost point of the west coast, the stark beauty of the Bohuslän archipelago, whose waters team with native oysters, to the wild forests and the vast plains of Söderslätt and Österlen in the south, whose soil – among the most fertile in the world – yields most of the country’s cereal and crops. It is this variation of landscape and climate that has necessitated the preserving of food, a practice finely honed by the Vikings. The drying, salting, smoking and pickling of herring was supplemented by a diet of hunted elk and bear, foraged wild apples and berries, and cultivated vegetables, barley, oats and wheat. Through this fresh, highly nutritious diet, the average Viking ate much better than the equivalent English peasant. The Vikings also had a long tradition of cheesemaking and were experts at refining cream into butter, a product they innovatively exported to Europe in aged oak casks. In southern Sweden, where some of the most fascinating and individual micro-climates create ideal opportunities for foraging and farming (organically and sustainably, of course), artisan producers are crafting wonderful cheeses, spirits, beers and, surprisingly, rather delightful young wines. Accepted by the EU as a wine-producing country in 1999, almost a third of Sweden’s wine producers can be found in Skåne in the mild far south, a number of them revitalising the development of fortified fruit and berry wines that was prevalent in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
We finish our tour in Malmö, a hub of international gastronomy (due, in part, to the migration of Middle Eastern cuisine), with a number of excellent small coffee roasteries. Sampling falafel here is a must. Other highlights include an excursion by boat to the tiny island of Ven, several Michelinstarred meals, a private dinner cooked by one of the country’s most renowned chefs and a leisurely walk through the Scanian (of Skåne) countryside under the guidance of an expert forager.
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Drottningholm & Confidencen Two operas, two historic theatres
private dinner is cooked by Sweden’s first female Michelin-starred chef, Titti Qvarnström. Day 6: Skåne, Malmö. Cross the fertile province of Skåne towards Malmö, its largest city. A morning visit to one of the country’s wine producers, a supplier to several Michelin-starred restaurants. Walk the Solaris vines and taste the distinctive Scandinavian grape. Continue to Katrinetorp, a 19th-century manor house with landscaped gardens, for a traditional herring lunch, arriving in Malmö in the afternoon. A lesson in the art of fika (the Swedish coffee break) with a tour and tasting at a coffee roastery. First of two nights in Malmö. Day 7: Ven, Malmö. Take the ferry to Ven, a tiny Swedish island in the Öresund strait with 370 inhabitants. The ‘green island’, historically under Danish rule, houses one of the world’s smallest pot still distilleries and an observatory and museum dedicated to the 16th-century Danish astronomer, Tycho Brahe. After lunch, return to the Swedish mainland and drive to Malmö for some free time before dinner at Vollmers (two Michelin stars), where chef Mats Vollmer creates intricate, innovative modern dishes in a 19th-century townhouse. Final night in Malmö. Day 8: Malmö, Copenhagen. Free morning in Malmö. Cross the Öresund Bridge to Copenhagen and fly to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 5.30pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,680 or £3,460 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,990 or £3,770 without flights. Included meals: 3 lunches, 6 dinners, with wine.
MAINLAND EUROPE: Sweden
Accommodation. Elite Plaza Hotel, Gothenburg (elite.se): 5-star, central hotel in a palatial historic building with original features. Rooms are modern and comfortable. Talldungens Gårdshotell, Skåne (talldungen.se): tranquil family-run 3-star country hotel with an on-site bakery and restaurant. While each room has its own bathroom, in some cases this is a few yards along a corridor. Elite Savoy Hotel, Malmö (elite.se): historic 4-star hotel with classically-styled communal areas. Rooms are modern and comfortable. Menus: fish and shellfish are integral to some meals. We suggest this tour would not be appropriate for non-fish or non-shellfish eaters. How strenuous? There is a lot of walking and standing on this tour, and it would not be suitable for anyone who has difficulties with everyday walking or stair-climbing. One day involves a lot of driving. Average coach travel per day: 77 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. In late-May, combine this tour with: Mediaeval Burgundy, 8–15 June 2019 (p.81). Or in June, with: The Schubertiade, 23–29 June 2019 (p.52). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration, previous page: Swedish sea buckthorns, blueberries, blackberries and raspberries, gathered in Skåne ©Emily Brown 2018.
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August 2019 Full details available in January 2019 Please call us to register your interest, or e-mail alerts@martinrandall.co.uk Very few theatres survive unchanged from the eighteenth century. Only the Drottningholm Court Theatre survives without having needed modern restoration or refurbishment, with the original stage machinery and scenery intact, and as home of a living operatic tradition of international renown. Built in 1766 for Queen Louisa Ulrika of Sweden as part of a marvellous ensemble of palace, park and lake outside Stockholm, the theatre enjoyed its heyday during the reign of her son Gustav III. But after his death in 1792, it ceased to be used and was virtually forgotten for over a century. Performances recommenced in 1922, and subsequently an annual festival developed which specialises, appropriately enough, in Baroque and Classical repertoire – 2019's production is Handel's Ariodante.
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Drottningholm is not the only eighteenthcentury theatre in Stockholm’s watery environs. Confidencen, the theatre built in 1752 at Ulriksdal, is also part of a palace complex in a beautiful lakeside setting and, again like Drottningholm, a long period of neglect preceded its revival. But the festival here is of much more recent origin and as yet is little known outside Sweden. Artistically, it has to be said, it sets its sights lower, but productions have become increasingly accomplished. The tour is based in Stockholm, a city with many architectural and artistic riches spread across the archipelago where the waters of Lake Mäleren meet the Baltic. There is quite a lot of free time to explore the city independently.
Illustration: Drottningholm Palace, copper engraving c. 1700.
For lecturers' biographies See pages 260–267
The Lucerne Festival Music in Switzerland 26–31 August 2019 (mf 661) 6 days • £3,580 (including ticket to 4 performances) Lecturer: Dr Michael Downes A summer music festival of the first rank in the loveliest of Swiss cities. Performers in 2019 include the Berlin Philharmonic with Kirill Petrenko (conductor), Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin) and the Mariinsky Orchestra with Valery Gergiev (conductor). Guided walks and an excursion in the surrounding hills are balanced with plenty of free time. Ever since its inauguration over seventy years ago, with a concert conducted by Arturo Toscanini in the grounds of the lakeside house where Wagner had stayed, the Lucerne Festival has been regarded as one of the most prestigious music festivals in Europe. The event has been further enhanced by a brilliant venue. The KKL (Kultur- und Kongresszentrum) is a giant glass-and-steel arts complex located right on the lake just a few hundred yards from the old town of Lucerne. Designed by Frenchman Jean Nouvel and completed in 2000, this is modern European architecture at its finest. Its colossal cantilevered roof projects over the water’s edge, bringing the changing moods of the lake right into the building, and water channels separate the various wings. The most advanced acoustical science has been lavished on the beautiful Konzertsaal. And could there be a lovelier city in which to attend a summer music festival? Lucerne occupies one of the most picturesque settings in Switzerland, divided into two parts by its river, bordering on the dramatic shores of the Vierwaldstätter Lake and overlooked by craggy mountains. Its mediaeval prosperity is still visible in the squares, guildhalls and churches that line its riverbanks. The nineteenth century was a heyday for Lucerne as it led the way in attracting tourism to Switzerland.
Day 1. Fly at c. 12.15pm from London Heathrow to Zurich (British Airways). Drive to Lucerne, a lively, historic city amid lake and mountain. Day 2. A morning walking tour of Lucerne, starting at the oldest road bridge in Europe, the richly decorated Chapel Bridge, and continuing to the Spreuerbrücke, another historic covered bridge notable for its ‘Dance of Death’ roof panels. Visit the Rococo interior of the huge Jesuit Church and the 13th-century Franciscan Church. Free afternoon. Evening concert at the KKL with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Jakub Hrusa (conductor): Schumann, Symphony No.2; the remainder of the programme is to be confirmed. Day 3. A morning visit to the Sammlung Rosengart, an extraordinary collection devoted to 20th-century art including many works by Picasso. Free afternoon. Evening concert at the KKL with the Berlin Philharmonic, Kirill Petrenko
Day 4. A second walking tour includes Hofkirche, a 17th-century church with a lovely Italianate cloister and two Romanesque towers, visit the city’s chief 19th–century monuments including the famous Löwendenkmal, a great lion-statue hewn from a cliff-face in 1821 in honour of Swiss mercenaries killed in the French Revolution, and the Bourbaki Panorama, a giant circular mural depicting events of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Optional afternoon visit to Richard Wagner’s home on a headland by the lake where the composer spent some of his happiest years. Evening concert at the KKL with the Berlin Philharmonic, Kirill Petrenko (conductor), Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin), Arnold Schoenberg, Violin Concerto; Tchaikovsky, Symphony No.5. Day 5. All-day excursion to Mount Rigi, traversing lake Lucerne by boat and taking the funicular to the start of the walk. Lunch on the mountainside with a majestic 360° panorama of the Swiss plateau before returning to Lucerne. Evening concert with Mariinsky Orchestra, Valery Gergiev (conductor), Behzod Abduraimov (piano): Rachmaninov, Piano Concerto No.2; Tchaikovsky, Symphony No.6. Day 6. Drive to Zurich Airport for the return flight to London Heathrow, arriving c. 2.00pm. Illustration: Lake Lucerne, mid-19th-century steel engraving by R. Wallis Scott after a painting by J.M.W. Turner.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,580 or £3,400 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,920 or £3,740 without flights. Included meals: 2 lunches, 3 dinners, with wine. Music: tickets (first category) for 4 concerts are included, costing c. £850. Tickets are confirmed in December 2018. Accommodation. Romantik Hotel Wilden Mann (wilden-mann.ch): 4-star hotel dating back to the 13th century located in the heart of the historic town centre. All double rooms in the hotel have two single mattresses on one bed frame, as is the usual style in Switzerland. How strenuous? A good level of fitness is necessary. It should not be attempted by anyone who has difficulty with everyday walking and stair-climbing. The concert hall is located half a mile from the hotel. The drive from Zurich Airport to Lucerne takes approximately 1 hour. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Music Along the Danube, 31 August–7 September 2019 (p.50); Enescu Festival Bucharest, 1–7 September 2019 (p.178). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
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Itinerary
(conductor), Marlis Petersen (soprano),Elisabeth Kulman (mezzo-soprano), Benjamin Bruns (tenor), Kwangchul Youn (bass): Alban Berg, ‘Lulu Suite’; Beethoven, Symphony No.9.
Istanbul Revealed Byzantine and Ottoman metropolis 30 September–6 October 2019 (mf 757) 7 days • £2,710 Lecturer: Jeremy Seal An extraordinarily diverse city: Roman remains; outstanding Byzantine buildings; Ottoman mosques and palaces. Stay in the heart of the Sultanahmet area. Explore the well-known highlights and gain insight into contemporary Istanbul, with an expert who knows the city intimately.
MAINLAND EUROPE: Turkey
The radical transformations this city has undergone are vividly expressed by its changes of name: Byzantium, Constantinople and Istanbul. The capital successively of the Byzantine and Ottoman empires, and now modern Turkey’s booming metropolis, it is one of the most beautiful and fascinating cities in the world. But it is also a place of strange and sometimes subdued moods, a city that was eclipsed for much of the twentieth century. Initially a modest Greek city, it was chosen by Constantine as the site of the new capital of the Roman Empire and inaugurated in ad 330. The Byzantine Empire continued in direct succession to the Roman, and its capital became one of the largest cities in medieval Europe, the guardian of classical culture and a bastion of Orthodox Christianity. The city walls were the most powerful in the western world, and while the Byzantine empire gradually shrank before the onslaughts of Persians, Arabs and Latin crusaders, it was not finally extinguished until 1453 when Ottoman Turks captured the city. In the century and a half after the Ottoman conquest the city steadily acquired some of the finest Islamic architecture in the world, aided by the example of Haghia Sophia, the architect Sinan and the brilliant tile factories at Iznik. Minarets and mosques now dominate the skyline, but churches, temples, palaces and other pre-Ottoman buildings, whole or fragmentary, and the arts which decorated them, are to be found in abundance. Istanbul has evolved into a melting-pot of cultures, with a lively streetlife and colourful bazaars. The city’s international outlook is epitomised by its division between Europe and Asia, now linked by modern bridges crossing the mighty Bosphorus, and a new underwater railway tunnel.
Byzantine Great Palace is largely lost but at the Mosaic Museum, a vast expanse of its mosaic pavement can be seen, rich in marvellous domestic detail. In the afternoon a visit to the Archaeological Museum, known for its outstanding collection of ancient art and artefacts, Hellenistic and Roman sculpture. For a shift of perspective, a short walk through Gulhane Park takes us to Sirkeci Station, formerly the terminus for the famed Orient Express. Day 3. The Topkapı Palace was the Sultan’s residence and the political heart of the Ottoman Empire. Explore the palace courtyards, gardens, pavilions and harem, as well as the contents of the Imperial Treasury with its collection of sacred Islamic relics including the Prophet’s Mantle. In
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c.11.30am (Turkish Airlines) from London Heathrow to Istanbul. Arrive early evening and drive to the historic quarter of Sultanahmet for the first of six nights. Day 2. A short stroll around the Hippodrome, originally constructed c. ad 200 by Septimius Severus and completely rebuilt on a larger scale by Constantine. The morning is then spent concentrating on the Byzantine monuments. Begin with 6th-century Haghia Sophia, the mother church of Orthodox Christianity. The 206
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the grounds we visit Haghia Eirene, the Church of the Divine Peace. After lunch visit Sultan Ahmet Camii (Blue Mosque), the last of Istanbul’s imperial mosques. Then to the great Covered Bazaar, trading hub of the Ottomans, before we take in the magnificent Sülemaniye Camii, masterpiece of the great architect Sinan and his exquisite Rüstem Pasha Camii, clad in the finest 16th-century Iznik tilework. Day 4. In the morning take the ferry up the Golden Horn to Eyup, among the holiest places in Islam and the shrine of the Prophet’s standard bearer. See parts of the Byzantine city walls en route to the nearby Kariye Museum (church of St Saviour in Chora), which contains the finest assemblage of Byzantine mosaics and frescoes to survive
Classical Turkey Greeks and Romans in Anatolia anywhere. In the afternoon we cross to Pera/ Beyoglu, increasingly home to the Greek Orthodox and other minorities after the Muslim conquest of the city. After taking in the grand fin-de-siècle apartments along the city’s foremost boulevard, Istiklal Caddesi, formerly Le Grand Rue de Pera, we visit Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk’s beguiling Museum of Innocence, a swansong to the city of Pamuk’s childhood. Day 5. Travel by private boat along the Bosphorus, the historic and beautiful strait that divides Europe from Asia. Enjoy superb views of Istanbul and the villas and castles of its suburbs. We visit the Sadberk Hanim Museum, a private mansion museum with artefacts from across the span of Anatolian civilisation, and also Beylerbeyi Palace, an imperial summer residence during the late Ottoman era. Day 6. In the morning visit the Şale Köşku, the huge pavilion that Sultan Abdulhamid built to house visiting monarchs and magnates in the early-20th century, which houses the world’s largest carpet. The nearby Naval Museum contains an impressive collection of imperial caiques. We cross by ferry to the Asian side for a visit to Kadikoy, former Chalcedon, for lunch in the renowned Guneslibahce Sokak foodie quarter. On our return to the European side there is some free time to saunter or take in one of the many museums, mosques and other attractions we haven’t yet seen. Day 7. Fly from Istanbul, arriving at London Heathrow at c. 2.55pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,710 or £2,460 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,970 or £2,720 without flights. Included meals: 2 lunches, 5 dinners, with wine. Visas: entry visas for Turkey must be secured prior to arrival (this can be done online).
How strenuous? You will be on your feet a lot, there is a considerable amount of walking and standing around, and Istanbul is quite hilly. This tour is not suitable for anyone with walking difficulties or difficulties negotiating stairs. Average distance by coach per day: 9 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Civilisations of Sicily, 16–28 September 2019 (p.161); Walking to Santiago, 17–28 September 2019 (p.187); Classical Greece, 21–30 September 2019 (p.109); Crécy, Agincourt & Waterloo, 25–29 September 2019 (p.54); FriuliVenezia Giulia, 7–12 October 2019 (p.123); Walking in Southern Tuscany, 7–14 October 2019 (p.140). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration: Istanbul, Haghia Sophia, watercolour by Jules Guérin, publ. 1913.
The most prosperous region of the ancient Mediterranean world. The finest collection of Hellenistic and Roman city ruins to be found anywhere. All the major sites, many of which are off the beaten track or difficult to get to. Scenically varied and spectacular: coast, mountain and plain. The western coast of Anatolia is one of the most brilliant expressions of the ancient Mediterranean. It was the meeting place of two worlds – a maritime one of commerce, contact and ideas and an inland one of agriculture, but also wealth and power. The legendary Midas, whose hand turned everything to gold, was from Phrygia in inland Anatolia, and successive territorial powers in these regions were the Hittites, Assyrians, Persians and Greeks under Alexander and his successors. Nearly two millennia after Alexander, the Ottoman Turks arrived to create an empire that lasted for over four centuries until the birth of modern Turkey. In the centuries following the end of the Bronze Age (from c. 1100 bc onwards) Greeks settled along the coast: traditionally Aeolians in the north, Ionians further down the coast and Dorians yet further south. They founded cities all along the Aegean, up the river valleys and down the Mediterranean coast to the south. Most of the local peoples in these areas took on Greek culture. The new civic form of the polis – a city, with territory attached for food production, and, in the coastal areas, a harbour for trading – was perfectly suited to this region. Cities took off from the seventh century bc in parallel with those of the Greek mainland. In the sixth and fifth centuries bc one of the greatest advances in human thought – the attempt to explain the natural world according to laws based on scientific observation – took place in these cities. The key early philosophers, Thales, Anaximenes and Anaximander, were all based in the city of Miletus. Town planning was
also associated with this city, where a rigorous street plan survives, thanks to the father of urban planning, Hippodamus (fifth century bc). A remarkable manifestation can also be seen at the fourth-century city of Priene. According to a traditional ‘Hellenophile’ view, ‘everything beautiful is Greek, everything ugly is Roman’. Apart from this not being true, Roman city-building was a continuation of Greek, aided by the way local communities worked within the Roman empire. It was politically necessary for leaders to adorn their cities with monuments, and they tapped into the marvellous architectural and sculptural traditions of the region, as we see at Aphrodisias most spectacularly. Most of what remains to be seen today on this tour is of Hellenistic and Roman origin through to Byzantine. From the fourth century, the cities reconfigured themselves in a Christian guise. However, with a falling-away of maritime commerce and political disruption marked by Arab advances overland in the seventh century, the ancient cities went into severe decline. Even the greatest of them, such as Ephesus or Sardis, became villages or were abandoned entirely. Most did not revive in the economic world of the Middle Ages. Some – notably Izmir and Antalya – did. The cities now comprise the most magnificent set of remains: whether coastal, mountain or plateau, the ravishing landscapes provide a backdrop for this tour of extraordinary beauty.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 11.25am (Turkish Airlines) from London Heathrow to Izmir, via Istanbul. Dinner in the hotel. First of three nights in Izmir. Day 2: Pergamon. Under the Hellenistic Attalid dynasty, Pergamon became the most powerful city-state in Asia Minor, rivalling Athens and Alexandria as a centre of culture. On a steep-sided hill are remains of Attalid palaces, a Temple of Dionysus and an Altar of Zeus (most of which is now in Berlin), the Greek theatre and remains of the library, and the Temple of Athena. The Asclepieon and ‘Temple of Serapis’ (Red Fort) lie on flat ground below. Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Accommodation. Hotel Sultanhan, Istanbul: traditionally-furnished 4-star hotel located in the central district of Old Istanbul.
1–10 April 2019 (mf 479) 10 days • £3,660 Lecturer: Henry Hurst
Classical Turkey continued
Day 3: Sardis, Izmir. Drive inland to Sardis, capital of the Kingdom of Lydia, whose last independent ruler was the fabulously wealthy Croesus (560–546 bc); it later became an important Roman city. See the impressive remains of the Temple of Artemis, the reconstructed ‘Marble Court’, gymnasium and the 3rd-century synagogue, the largest in the ancient world. Free time in Izmir, Greek Smyrna. Day 4: Ephesus. Drive south to Ephesus, the principal centre on the Aegean coast under the Roman Empire and capital of the province of Asia, with a population of 400,000 in the secondcentury ad. The most popular pagan pilgrimage destination in the Graeco-Roman world, the city was also key to the development of Christianity. Ruined by the sedimentation of its estuary and finally sacked in the seventh-century, Ephesus has become the most extensively excavated site of the ancient world. Among the more striking buildings are the Library of Celsus and the theatre, originally seating 24,000 and scene of the protest against St Paul described in the Acts of the Apostles. First of three nights in Kusadasi.
Day 5: Priene, Didyma, Miletus. A small city of the Dodecapolis in southern Ionia, Priene is sited above the Maeander plain. Its hillside site illsuiting it for Roman commerce, the remains date largely from the late Classical and early Hellenistic periods, and it exhibits one of the earliest of grid street layouts. The Temple of Athena Polias at the summit was designed by the architect Pythius. Didyma was a sanctuary with an oracle which, for a time, rivalled that at Delphi. Impressive remains of the colossal Hellenistic Temple of Apollo. Miletus: massive, well-preserved Roman theatre, baths of Faustina, wife of Marcus Aurelius. Day 6: Selçuk, Ephesus. Morning visit to the Temple of Apollo at Claros before returning to Selçuk to see the restored Basilica of St John at the top of Ayasuluk Hill, and the Isla Bey mosque at the bottom. A second visit to the vast site of Ephesus, or a free afternoon in the coastal town of Kusadasi. Day 7: Aphrodisias. Leave the coast and drive into the interior of Anatolia. One of the most beautiful classical sites in Turkey, Aphrodisias was
the centre of a Roman cult of Aphrodite. An important school for the production of high-quality and widely exported sculpture, there are many fine examples in the museum. Among the architectural remains are the Temple of Aphrodite and the largest and most complete stadium to have survived from the ancient world. Drive to Antalya for the first of three nights there. Day 8: Antalya. Founded by (and named after) Attalus II of Pergamum, Antalya was the principal port in Pamphylia in ancient and Byzantine times. The morning is spent exploring the old town with its restored Ottoman period houses, followed by a free afternoon. Day 9: Perge, Aspendos, Antalya. Colonised by the Greeks after the Trojan War, Perge has substantial Hellenistic and Roman gates and colonnaded streets. While the Roman aqueduct at Aspendos is the best-preserved in Asia Minor, the marvellously complete theatre is the bestpreserved in the whole of the Roman world. Afternoon visit to the one of the country’s finest archaeological museums with exhibits from prehistory to Ottoman. Final night in Antalya. Day 10. Fly from Antalya (via Istanbul) arriving at London Heathrow at c. 3.15pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,660 or £3,350 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,970 or £3,660 without flights. Included meals: 8 lunches, 8 dinners, with wine. Visas: required for most foreign nationals, and not included in the tour price. You will need to apply online in advance. Accommodation. Hilton, Izmir (hilton.co.uk): large, modern 5-star hotel overlooking the Citadel and old port. Double Tree by Hilton, Kusadasi (doubletree3.hilton.com): modern 4-star hotel. Tuavana Hotel, Antalya (tuvanahotel.com): beautiful converted traditional house, now a boutique hotel within the old city walls.
MAINLAND EUROPE: Turkey
How strenuous? The tour covers long distances by coach, and on some days there are several hours of driving. There are two hotel changes. There is a lot of walking over the very rough terrain of partially excavated archaeological sites. Some visits require an uphill walk to reach the site. Agility and stamina are essential. Average distance by coach per day: 80 miles. Group size: 10 to 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Civilisations of Sicily (for solo travellers), 18–30 March 2019 (p.161); Gardens of the Riviera, 22–28 March 2019 (p.85); Wines of Tuscany, 25–30 March 2019 (p.141); Palladian Villas, 26–31 March 2019 (p.124). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport.
Illustration, previous page: Didyma, elevation of the Temple of Apollo (now a ruin), steel engraving c. 1850. Left: Sardis, steel engraving c. 1850.
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Essential Jordan The major Nabataean, Roman, Christian and Islamic sites 6–14 April 2019 (mf 474) 9 days • £3,990 Lecturer: Felicity Cobbing 26 October–3 November 2019 (mf 868) Exclusively for solo travellers 9 days • £4,590 Lecturers: Sue Rollin & Jane Streetly Outstanding monuments of several civilisations – Nabataean, Roman, Early Christian, Umayyad and Crusader. The lecturer has travelled widely in the Middle East and is an authority on Jordan. Petra is the most spectacular archaeological site in the Middle East; we spend three nights here. Jordan possesses the most spectacular archaeological site in the Middle East – Petra, ‘rose-red city, half as old as time’, that easternly fascinating, westernly Baroque, altogether extraordinary city of the desert. Hidden in the mountains at the confluence of several caravan routes, many of its finest monuments are hewn from the living rock, brilliantly coloured sandstone striated with pinks, ochres and blue-greys. Its creators, the Nabataeans, drew on a range of Mediterranean and oriental styles to create a novel synthesis – uniquely Nabataean but with architectural evocations of the Hellenistic world, Egypt, Assyria and Imperial Rome. The Nabataeans were an Arab people, first recorded in the fourth century bc, who grew rich by controlling the trade routes across an empire stretching from Saudi Arabia to Syria. With Petra their capital, these nomadic desert traders became administrators and
Israel & Palestine
Please contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com Some of the most significant and evocative archaeological sites in the western hemisphere. Ancient, mediaeval and modern architecture, from Herod to Bauhaus – Judean, Roman, Christian and Islamic. Lecturer Dr Garth Gilmour is a Biblical archaeologist who lives and works in Israel. Enthralling vernacular buildings in ancient walled towns; varied landscapes, from rocky deserts to verdant valleys. Several days in Jerusalem – surely the most extraordinary city on earth?
hills and valleys – themselves the settings of many events recorded in the Old Testament. The varied arts of Islam are seen in the hunting lodges and desert retreats of the sophisticated and pleasureloving Umayyad dynasty of the mid-seventh to mid-eighth centuries. And the castles of the Crusaders and their Arab opponents are among the most impressive examples of mediaeval military architecture anywhere. A constant backdrop to all this are the awesomely beautiful mountains, gorges and deserts of today’s Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Created after the First World War and the downfall of the Ottoman Empire, Jordan’s borders are an almost arbitrary outcome of the Franco-British re-ordering of the Levant. Something of a backwater then, and constantly buffeted since by the disputatiousness of larger neighbours, Jordan has – against all odds – succeeded in steering a precarious course to survival, stability and modest prosperity.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 4.00pm (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Amman (time in the air: c. 5 hours 30 minutes). Arrive at the hotel at c. 11.45pm. First of three nights in Amman. Day 2: Amman, Jerash. The impressive new Jordan Museum presents an overview of the history and cultural heritage of Jordan in a series of beautifully designed galleries. Drive north through red earth hills with olive groves and Aleppo pine woods. Jerash, ancient Gerasa, a leading city of Illustration, above: Petra, Ed-Deir (‘The Monastery’), lithograph by Louis Haghe after David Roberts c. 1850. Left: Jerusalem, Mosque of Omar, watercolour by Phoebe Allen, publ. 1913.
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5–14 March 2019 (mf 440) Very few spaces remaining 10 days • £4,960 Lecturer: Dr Garth Gilmour
city-dwellers, whose kingdom was eventually incorporated into the Roman Empire. But decline set in, and by the eighth century ad Petra had become virtually uninhabited. In Roman times part of the wealthy provinces of Syria and Arabia, Jordan is also rich in traces of other civilisations. Jerash is one of the best preserved and most beautiful of Roman cities. Remains of Byzantine churches, with very fine floor mosaics, lie scattered through the Jordanian
Essential Jordan continued
'Exceeded our expectations!! Excellent in every aspect.'
the Decapolis and very prosperous in the 2nd and 3rd centuries ad, is one of the best-preserved and most beautiful of ruined Roman cities and we spend the afternoon there. Among the more spectacular remains are a triumphal arch, an oval piazza, the Cardo, with its flanking colonnades, a food market, hippodrome, theatres, magnificent temples of Zeus and Artemis and several early Christian churches.
wealth of sculptured monuments and those that follow on the ‘Street of Façades’. These are mainly tombs, created in the living rock. There are also impressive remains in the heart of the city, from grand temples, public buildings and churches to houses. Not the least striking feature is the multicoloured, striated but predominantly red sandstone. After lunch, return to the hotel or climb, via the Soldier Tomb complex, up to the High Place of Sacrifice (c. 800 steps) where the cultic installations are still clearly visible.
Practicalities
Day 6: Petra. For the second day in Petra walk again through the Siq, past the ‘Street of Façades’ and the theatre to study the more open area around the paved and colonnaded street. The remains of various structures include two mighty buildings, the ‘Great Temple’ and Qasr al Bint. Recent excavations have revealed what is almost certainly a cathedral with 5th- and 6th-century mosaic floors. Climb up (over 900 steps) to one of the finest rock-cut façades, Ed-Deir (the Monastery), and some staggering views of hills and valleys of contorted rock.
Visas: required for most foreign nationals. Passports do not have to be submitted in advance. A group visa is issued on arrival (the cost is included in the price of the tour as long as you are travelling with the group). Passports must be valid for six months beyond the dates of the tour.
Day 3: Amman, Umayyad desert residences. The citadel in Amman was the religious and political centre of the ancient city. Here are the remains of the Temple of Hercules, the rebuilt Umayyad palace. To the east of Amman, in the desert, are remarkable survivals from the Umayyad Caliphs, the first dynasty of Islam – early 8th-century small pleasure palaces and hunting lodges. The fortress-like desert complex of Qasr Kharana; the fort of Azraq, originally Roman, rebuilt in the 13th century and used by T.E. Lawrence as his HQ for two months in 1917–18. Break for lunch at the Azraq Lodge, a former British military field hospital, before continuing to the unesco world heritage site of Qasr Amra, whose unique and exceptionally beautiful wall paintings were recently restored in a project coordinated by the World Monuments Fund.
MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA: Jordan
Day 4: Amman, Madaba, Karak. Leaving Amman, drive southwards along the Biblical King’s Highway to the archaeological park at Madaba, before proceeding to Umm ar-Rasas, a unesco World Heritage site, which started as a Roman military camp and grew to become a town from the 5th century. The 12th-century Crusader castle of Karak, modified by the Mamluks in the 13th century, is an impressive example of mediaeval military architecture with many chambers surviving. First of three nights in Petra. Day 5: Petra. The Siq, the narrow mile-long crevice with its Nabataean carvings and hydraulic system would itself merit a detour, but it is just the prelude to one of the most astonishing archaeological sites in the Middle East (also a unesco world heritage site). Emerging from the Siq, the visitor is confronted by the temple-like façade of the ‘Treasury’, vast in scale, both oriental and classical in vocabulary, Hellenistic in inspiration but uniquely Nabataean – supreme among Petra’s 210
M.N. & J.N., participants on Essential Jordan in 2017.
Day 7: Little Petra, Dead Sea. ‘Little Petra’, a narrow gorge with three natural widenings, thought to be an ancient commercial centre with carved façades and chambers and a fragment of naturalistic Nabataean painting. A spectacular descent through rugged sandstone leads to Wadi Araba, part of the Jordanian section of the Great Rift Valley. Stop at the Museum at the Lowest Place on Earth featuring important archaeological finds recovered from the region, including artefacts from the church and monastery of St Lot. Reach the hotel on the Dead Sea shore mid-afternoon to relax and swim. First of two nights in Sweimeh. Day 8: Mount Nebo, Madaba. Drive up from the Dead Sea, flanked by dramatic mountain scenery. Visit the Byzantine church with remarkable mosaics on Mount Nebo, the reputed burial site of Moses. The nearby Church of SS Lot & Procopius, with its mosaic decoration dates from the 6th century. From the same period, the unique mosaic map of the Holy Land in the church of St George at Madaba is another highlight. Day 9: Drive to Amman airport (1 hour). Arrive at London Heathrow c. 1.00pm.
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Price, per person in April. Two sharing: £3,990 or £3,450 without flights. Single occupancy: £4,670 or £4,130 without flights. Price in October (exclusively for solo travellers): £4,590 or £4,050 without flights. Included meals: 7 lunches (including 2 picnics) and 5 dinners (plus a snack on arrival on day 1) with wine.
Accommodation. The Intercontinental, Amman (intercontinental.com): modern and excellently located 5-star hotel. Mövenpick Hotel, Petra (moevenpick-hotels.com): modern and excellently located hotel close to the site. Rated 5-star but more comparable to a 4-star hotel. Mövenpick Dead Sea Hotel, Sweimeh (moevenpick-hotels. com): slightly fatigued 5-star hotel comprised of buildings scattered through lush tropical gardens; shady lounges, antique or traditional-style furnishings, spa and health centre. How strenuous? This tour is quite demanding and you must be capable of walking all day over rough sites. A good level of fitness and surefootedness is essential throughout, especially in order to manage the climbs in Petra to Ed-Deir and the High Place. Many sites are exposed with little or no shelter from the sun. Average distance by coach per day: 72 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
Illustration: Jerash, mid-19th-century engraving.
What else is included in the price? See page 6
Morocco Cities and empires 9–20 March 2019 (mf 441) 11 nights • £4,470 Lecturer: James Brown From Marrakech to Tangier, including the imperial cities of Fez and Meknes. Spectacular landscapes: the Atlas Mountains, valleys, palm groves, woodland, desert. See the sun set over the sand dunes at Merzouga and visit the magnificent Roman ruins at Volubilis.
Morocco, from fertile olive groves to snow-capped mountains and long deep green palm oases that taper into the desert like ribbons trailing from mountain to desert.
Itinerary Day 1: Marrakech. Fly from London Gatwick (British Airways) to Marrakech currently arriving c.5.20pm. Dinner at the hotel. First of three nights in Marrakech. Day 2: Marrakech. The Koutoubia minaret is the oldest of the three Almohad towers constructed in the 12th century in Marrakech, Rabat and Seville, and it stands 70 metres high. The late-19th-century Bahia Palace of the chief minister Ba Ahmad shows the continuity of artistic styles from the Saadian era. In the afternoon visit the worldfamous markets and Djemaa el-Fna Square. Day 3: Marrakech. A morning devoted to the architectural achievements of the Saadian dynasty, paid for by the sale of sugar produced nearby. The dazzling decorative excess of the Saadian tombs and the gaunt simplicity of the ruins of the El Badi Palace are balanced by the calm munificence of the Ben Youssef Madrassa. There is an optional afternoon visit to the Marjorelle gardens, with its bamboo groves and date plantations. Day 4: The High Atlas. Ascend through woodland from Marrakech on the northern slopes. Cross the High Atlas stopping at Taourirt and the celebrated kasbah village of Aït Benhaddou before twisting through the high passes. Overnight Ouarzazate. Day 5: Ouarzazate to Erfoud. Leave the main road for the Todra Gorge with its vividly contrasting colours of bright green vegetation set against red, brown and orange rock faces. Follow a chain of palm-filled valleys north-east, crossing through the old market town of Tinerhir and the Dades
valley. See the extraordinary tapering towers of the kasbahs dotted along the route. First of two nights in Erfoud. Day 6: The Tafilalt Oasis, Merzouga. Visit Tafilalt, including the exposed mounds and ruined mud walls that were once the glittering mediaeval city of Sigilmassa. Evening excursion to see the sunset over the sand dunes of the desert of Merzouga. Second night in Erfoud. Day 7: The Middle Atlas. Erfoud to Fez. ascending along the Ziz valley to the Tafilalt oasis on the edge of the Sahara, before crossing the nomad-grazed high plateau of the Middle Atlas. Pick up the old caravan trail north. First of three nights in Fez. Day 8: Fez. A full day to explore the extraordinary walled mediaeval city of Fez that stands at the heart of Moroccan culture. Highlights include the Bou Inania Madrassa and the Karaouyine Mosque, as well as the pungent Tanneries. Afternoon tour of the city walls and free time. Day 9: Volubilis, Meknes. In impressive isolation on the edge of the olive-covered Zerhoun hills lie the ruins of Volubilis, the capital of Roman Morocco, with triumphal arch, basilica and mosaics. Though it boasts an old walled trading city, a Merenid Madrassa and an intimate palace museum to rival Fez, Meknes is yet overwhelmed by the vast ruins of the 17th-century imperial city established by the powerful Sultan Moulay Ismail to house his Negro slave army. Day 10: Tetouan, Chefchaouen, Tangier. The heirs of Granada. Drive north to Chefchaouen to visit the Kasbah. Continue over the Anjera hills to the city of Tetouan, settled by refugees from Andalucía, whose Moorish culture is clearly identifiable in the streets of the old city and the products of the artisan school. First of two nights in Tangier. Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA: Morocco
Morocco, just a cannon’s shot from Gibraltar and the ports of Spain, has always commanded the respect and fascinated the imagination of Europe. It was one of the last nations to fall under colonial occupation in 1912 and the first to win its independence from the French in 1956. The very same Grand Vizier who greeted the first French Governor had the satisfaction of ushering out the last colonial ruler before his death. Even to fellow Muslims, it was the near legendary ‘al-Maghrib al-Aqsa’, the land of the setting sun, perched on the north-west corner of the African continent where the known world ended and the sea of darkness began. Its boundaries are defined by four mountain ranges which shelter the fertile Atlantic plains and by three seas: the Mediterranean, the Atlantic and the sand sea of the Sahara. Unlike some parts of the Middle East and North Africa, Morocco was not heavily settled by Arabs after the Islamic conquest in the late seventh to early eighth century. Instead the indigenous Berber tribes of the area converted gradually to Islam and created cities and empires with a uniquely Moroccan flavour. One of the first of these cities was Sigilmassa in the Tafilalt oasis, a tribal watering hole which became a thriving Saharan port city from whence camel caravans set out for West Africa laden with salt from mines in the desert and other northern products, which were exchanged in ancient Ghana and Mali for gold, slaves, ostrich feathers, ivory and gum. From Sigilmassa, caravans wended their way north and east to the great entrepots of North Africa, Egypt and the Middle East. Within a couple of decades, Fez was founded in North Morocco as a rival political centre and another stage in the great caravan trade across the Maghrib. In the late eleventh century Marrakech emerged in the same way. This rich trade could not help but attract Christian European attention and by the fifteenth century, the Portuguese had captured Ceuta, hoping for a share of the profits. Spain, England, the Netherlands and even the Scandinavian countries were quick to follow, using the Mediterranean ports like Tangier to access the riches of Morocco. Sultanates rose and fell on the profits of this trade, which finally dwindled in the nineteenth century. The sites along the tour’s route tell of the mediaeval Islamic empires of Morocco, founded by Arab conquerors and the Berbers of the region, and of the European trading powers, lured to Africa by tales of gold and other exotic treasures. The long drives, often winding along the ancient trade routes, reveal the dramatic landscapes of
Oman, Landscapes & Peoples
Morocco continued
Desert, coast and mountains James Brown Historian specialising in Morocco with a wider interest in the history of the Muslim world. He studied at Oxford, Cambridge and SOAS and has worked as a journalist and teacher. His research has focused on Morocco’s relations with Europe and the history of the country’s culture of political legitimacy. See page 260 for all lecturers' biographies. Day 11: Tangier. A morning walk investigates both the traditional walled Muslim city and the relics of the famous turn-of-the-century international city. Visit the Anglican Church, the Kasbah quarter, including the museum, the Petit Socco square and the Mendoubia garden. Some free time. Day 12: Tangier to London. Fly at c. midday (Iberia) from Tangier to London Heathrow via Madrid, arriving at c. 5.00pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £4,470 or £4,170 without flights. Single occupancy: £5,150 or £4,850 without flights. Included meals: 7 lunches, 8 dinners, with wine. Visas: not required for nationals of the United Kingdom, Australia or United States for tourist stays of up to 90 days. Nationals of other countries should check their requirements.
MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA: Morocco, Oman
Accommodation. Les Borjs de la Kasbah, Marrakech (lesborjsdelakasbah.com): comfortable 4-star boutique hotel, in the heart of the Medina. Berbere Palace, Ouarzazate (leberberepalace.com): modern 5-star, in an excellent location. Palais du Desert, Erfoud (palaisdudesert.com): recently completed complex set in palm-lined gardens. Riad Dar Bensouda, Fez (riaddarbensouda.com): restored 17th-century riad near the Qaraouyine Mosque. The Grand Hotel Villa de France, Tangier (leroyal.com): 5-star hotel with extensive gardens in the former diplomatic quarter. With the exception of the Riad Dar Bensouda, all hotels have swimming pools. How strenuous? This is a fairly demanding tour with a lot of coach travel and five hotels. There is a lot of walking through narrow streets and busy markets, and on rough, steep and slippery ground on archaeological sites. Average distance by coach per day: 80 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
5–15 January 2019 (mf 402) Very few spaces remaining 11 days/10 nights • £5,570 Lecturer: Professor Dawn Chatty 26 October–5 November 2019 (mf 865) 11 days/10 nights • £5,570 Lecturer: Dr Peter Webb 4–14 January 2020 Lecturer: Professor Dawn Chatty Full details available in December 2019 Please call us to register your interest, or e-mail alerts@martinrandall.co.uk Remarkable landscape, hill forts, traditional souqs, archaeological sites. The toehold of Arabia, with a diverse population reflecting its mercantile past.
Illustration, previous page: Fez, after a painting from 'Les Merrailles de L’Autre France', publ. 1924.
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A night in a desert camp and two nights in a luxury hotel in the mountains of the Jebel Akhdar.
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Wilfred Thesiger was motivated to cross the Empty Quarter not only by his desire to gain further recognition as a traveller but by the hope that he would find peace and solitude in the remote desert landscapes. He also yearned to gain the friendship of the Bedu who journeyed with him and whom he encountered during his traverse. The opportunities for travelling to little-visited locations, relaxing in inspiring surroundings and encountering new peoples is no less possible in Oman in 2019 than it was in 1946. The country provides a diverse range of extraordinary natural beauty: deserts, mountains, wadis, beaches. Visitors also experience the kindness and friendliness of the Omanis. With relatively low – although gradually increasing – numbers of visitors a year, Oman is still not over-developed, unlike some of its neighbouring Gulf states. Evidence of settlement dates back to the fourth millennium bc with early indications of dependence on trade. First copper and then frankincense (southern Oman is one of the few places in the world where the ‘sacred
' I felt immersion in the history and culture of Oman. Muscat was a glittering new city. The mountains were devouring, vast, lumbering, ragged, beautiful in the heart. Loved the deserted villages, the odd oasis in the midst of scrubby desert.' B.D., participant on Oman, Landscapes & Peoples in 2017.
frankincense’ still grows) played a key role in the country’s history. Desire to control the supply of frankincense led to incorporation in the Achaemenid and Sassanian empires until the Persians were forced out in the seventh century. Omanis readily embraced Islam and submitted to the Umayyad and the Abbasid Caliphate. Trade and naval power continued to expand. Occupied by the Portuguese from 1507 to 1650, Oman flourished again after their departure with an empire reaching into East Africa, particularly Zanzibar, and the Indian Ocean. Treaties agreed with the British to protect communications with India marked the beginning of a special relationship, which continued beyond the formal termination of the protectorate in 1971. Meanwhile, the division of the Omani empire between the sultan of Zanzibar and the sultan of Muscat in 1856 resulted in economic decline for both and internal conflicts in the latter. Successive sultans failed to tackle the problems and Oman stagnated. The coming to power of Sultan Qaboos bin Said in 1970 heralded a new era. Though its oil revenues are relatively small, they have been used wisely to the benefit of the Omani people, for infrastructure, employment and education. Development has been rapid but controlled, guided by a determination to preserve Omani traditions. Our comprehensive itinerary includes the highlights of this vast country: from the inland forts of Nizwa and Jabrin to the little-visited archaeological sites of Al-Balid and Khor Rori, from the mountain scenery in the Western Hajar to the remoteness of the Wahiba Sands, from the bustling capital Muscat to the contrasting landscapes of the southern region of Dhofar. Other features of this tour are the opportunity to camp overnight in the Wahiba Sands, bathe in the Indian Ocean, stay high in the mountains of the Jabal Akhdar and shop in souqs suffused with the scent of frankincense. Oman is opening up to a privileged few.
Itinerary | 2019
Day 2: Muscat. Land at c. 7.20am. Hotel rooms are at your disposal for the morning. Greater Muscat is spread out along the coast with a dramatic mountain backdrop. Visit the privately owned Bait al Zubair Museum housing the family collection of Omani artefacts. First of two nights in Muscat. Day 3: Barka, Nakhl. By 4-wheel-drive to the traditionally furnished 17th-century fortified house Bait Na’aman. Continue onto the impressive Rustaq and Nakhl Forts, the latter perched grandly on the foothills of the Western Hajar Mountains. Overnight Muscat. Day 4: Muscat, Jabrin. With seven minarets, the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque is impressively ornate. Leave Muscat by 4-wheel- drive. The most impressive fort in Oman is at Jabrin; sensitively restored, the plasterwork, wood carvings and painted ceilings are magnificent. Ascend the Al Hajar mountains for the first of two nights in the Jabal Akhdar.
Price, per person. Two sharing: £5,570 or £4,920 without all flights. Single occupancy: £6,450 or £5,800 without all flights. Note that if you take the tour without flights, the internal flight from Salalah to Muscat on day 8 is not included. Included meals: 9 lunches (including 2 picnics) and 9 dinners with wine.
Day 5: Nizwa area. Visit to the 17th-century Nizwa Fort, palace, seat of government and prison. Some time to explore the fascinating souqs and markets. The rarely-visited archaeological site of Al Ayn is a collection of Bronze Age beehive tombs sitting atop a rugged ridge with the Jebel Misht as a backdrop. Overnight Jabal Akhdar. Day 6: Nizwa, Wahiba. Set off early for Ibra, the once opulent market town that stood on the trade route linking the interior to the coast. Arrive at Wahiba Sands, a sea of high rolling dunes. Watch the sunset and camp overnight in the desert. Day 7: Wahiba, Sur. Travel by 4-wheel-drive through the spectacular desert scenery. Until the 20th century Sur was famous throughout Arabia as a major trading port with East Africa. See the charming fishing village of Al Aijah, the shipyards still in operation, and the displays of traditional dhows at Fath al Khair Park. Overnight Sur. Day 8: Sur, Salalah. 4-wheel-drive to Muscat, via the ancient port of Qalhat, to catch an afternoon flight to Salalah, which despite its size is considered Oman’s second city and capital of the Dhofar region. First of three nights in Salalah. Day 9: Al Balid. Ancient Zafar, flourished in the 11th and 12th centuries and was visited by Marco Polo. The museum exhibits finds from the ruins of Al Balid and other artefacts from the area. The afternoon is free to relax by the Indian Ocean. Overnight Salalah.
Internal flight: the flight from Muscat to Salalah on day 8 is not included in the price if you take our ‘without flights’ option. We can book this on your behalf, quoting the price at the time, or you can choose to book this independently. The average cost of this flight is c. £100. Visas: British citizens and most foreign nationals require a tourist visa. You apply individually for an E-visa through the Royal Oman Police portal (ww.rop.gov.om/english), which costs 20,000 OMR (c. £40). This is not included in the price of the tour because you have to procure it yourself. Visa applications can only begin three months before the tour departs. Passports must be valid for at least 6 months after the tour ends. Accommodation. Intercontinental, Muscat (ihg. com): beach front 5-star resort. Anantara, Jabal Akhdar (jabal-akhdar.anantara.com): located in the Al Hajar mountains with spectacular views. Desert Nights Camp, Wahiba Sands (desertnightscamp.com): luxury camp; individual tents with private facilities. Hotel Plaza, Sur (omanhotels.com): modern 4-star hotel. Hotel Crowne Plaza, Salalah (crowneplaza.com): 5-star hotel, high standards of comfort and service. How strenuous? This is a busy and active tour and participants need stamina and fitness. There are some long journeys by 4x4 vehicles or coach (average distance per day: 102 miles), two internal flights and 4 changes of accommodation. Walking is often on uneven terrain at archaeological sites, hill forts and in the desert. Group size: between 10 and 18 participants.
MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA: Oman
Day 1. Fly at c. 7.30pm from London Heathrow (Oman Air) to Muscat (7 hours, overnight).
Practicalities | 2019
Day 10: Khor Rori. Spend the morning at Mirbat, scene of the well-documented battle in 1972, which saw Pakistani and Omani British soldiers defend the town during the Dhofar Rebellion. The impressive archaeological site at Khor Rori, formerly known as Sumhuraman, preserves the remains of an important frankincense trading port from where, 2000 years ago, this precious commodity commenced its transportation to Damascus and Rome. Overnight Salalah. Day 11. The mid-morning flight to Muscat connects with an early-afternoon flight to London, arriving at Heathrow at c. 6.00pm. For those not taking the group flights, the tour ends in Salalah.
Illustration, opposite: this could be Oman (due to the water system and architecture) but is infact Algeria, engraving c. 1875. Above centre: 16th-century woodcut.
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Palestine, Past & Present Archaeology and culture on the West Bank 14–22 October 2019 (mf 789) 9 days • £4,130 Lecturer: Felicity Cobbing A pioneering tour that includes the major archaeological sites and the most significant historic buildings on the West Bank. The lecturer, Felicity Cobbing, is curator of the Palestine Exploration Fund. There are two nights in East Jerusalem. Provides an insight into a territory much in the news but little visited in recent years. Palestine is a land of limestone hills with the humped contours of a children’s picture-book. The surface is generally a grey-green impasto of olives and scrub, sometimes beautified with the striations of ancient terraces, farmed intermittently in clefts and nooks, grazed where vegetation is harsh and coarse. Then there are the hills of the Judaean desert, crinkled, barren rock, khaki with a dusting of white.
Straggling along crests and down hillsides, Palestinian towns and villages are given visual unity by white limestone cladding – a requirement introduced during the British mandate and still adhered to. They express individualism, enterprise and struggle. By contrast, the Israeli settlements crowning many a peak are fortress-like highdensity clusters. Recent history and current affairs cannot be ignored in this part of the world but the focus of the tour is archaeology, architecture and more distant history. Scattered across the West Bank are some very remarkable sites and buildings. There are unique remains from the very earliest periods, some fascinating remnants of the Canaanite and Israelite civilisations of the Bronze and Iron Ages, often with biblical associations. The creations of Herod the Great, among the most impressive structures of the ancient world, feature prominently, and there are significant remains from the Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Umayyad, Crusader and Ottoman eras. A particular feature are the desert monasteries, often in dramatic and inaccessible locations.
Tourism is hardly new to Palestine: pilgrimage tours follow well-worn routes, quickly bouncing back after sporadic periods of strife, but other sorts of specialist tours are relatively rare. There has been investment in hotels and infrastructure in recent years, and the people are very welcoming.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 8.10am (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Tel Aviv (Israel) and drive through the Separation Wall to Bethlehem (Palestine). Reach the hotel in time for dinner. Four nights are spent in Bethlehem. Day 2: Herodion, Solomon’s Pools, Mar Saba. Herodion is an extraordinary fortified palace built by King Herod 24–15 bc on an artificial hill. There are extensive remains of defences, cisterns and baths and superb views. It was supplied with water from ‘Solomon’s Pools’, a series of reservoirs 9 km away, visited next. Return to Bethlehem for lunch and drive into the Judaean desert to visit the Orthodox monastery of Mar Saba, perched in a gorge and with a beautiful chapel (limited access for women). Day 3: Hebron (Al-Khalil), Judaean Desert. The Herodian phase of the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron is one of the most impressive buildings of the ancient world. The interior is Crusader and Mamluk, and is now divided between Muslims and Jews. We visit the Muslim mosque which contains the cenotaphs of the Patriarchs. We also see a 19th-century Russian church here. Hebron is volatile and this visit may be cancelled at short notice. The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, not significantly changed since ad 339, is one of the greatest of Early Christian buildings; five aisles and monumental Corinthian colonnades. (An extensive restoration programme, which has required parts of the building to be closed, is almost completed.)
MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA: Palestine
Day 4: Jerusalem. Spend the day in the Old City of Jerusalem (ruled de facto by Israel but claimed by Palestine). This is the most extraordinary city on Earth, a vibrant Middle-Eastern enclave split between rival communities and composed of mediaeval and ancient masonry. Walk along the city’s impressive ramparts, visit the Church of St Anne, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Constantinian and Crusader. Day 5: Bethlehem to Jericho. The palm-shaded oasis of Jericho is a place of superlatives, the world’s most low-lying town and arguably its oldest continuously inhabited one. The lowest strata of Tell as-Sultan, the site of ancient Jericho, are 10,000 years old and there is a unique tower of c. 7000 bc, as well as impressive Bronze Age remains from the third and second millenniums bc. Hisham’s Palace is a remarkably well-preserved 8th-century Umayyad palace. The Monastery of Temptation is inserted in the high cliff overlooking the site and can now be reached by cable car. First of two nights in Jericho. Day 6: Desert monasteries. The theme of the day is monasticism in the Judaean hills, beginning with the community of Jewish zealots at Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were 214
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Ancient & Islamic Tunisia Carthaginian, Roman and Arabian North Africa discovered. Nabi Musa, according to Muslim tradition, is the burial place of Moses and has Mamluk, Byzantine and Ottoman parts. Day 7: Sebastia, Nablus, Jerusalem. Amid lovely countryside north-west of Nablus, Sebastia (Samaria) is a fascinating archaeological site with extensive remains spreading over a hill, principally Roman and Hellenistic but reaching back much earlier to the time of the Israelite kings, Omri and Ahab. Overnight East Jerusalem. Day 8: Jerusalem. Haram ash-Sharif, alias the Temple Mount, Herod’s great retaining wall supporting a platform now adorned with some of the earliest and finest Islamic buildings. The Rockefeller Museum, formerly the Palestinian Archaeological Museum, has finds from some of the sites visited on this tour, including Hisham’s Palace, ancient Jericho, Samaria and Jerusalem. Day 9: Jerusalem. Free morning. Fly to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 8.00pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £4,130 or £3,620 without flights. Single occupancy: £4,650 or £4,140 without flights. Included meals: 7 lunches, 7 dinners, with wine. Visas: these are obtained on arrival and at no charge for most nationalities. Accommodation. Jacir Palace, Bethlehem (jacirpalace.ps): 4-star hotel in a flamboyant late 19th-century mansion with faded grandeur. Hotel Intercontinental, Jericho (intercontinental. com): 5-star hotel in a high-rise building outside the city centre. American Colony, Jerusalem (americancolony.com): prestigious 5-star hotel in East Jerusalem. How strenuous? This is an active, primarily outdoors tour involving a lot of walking and standing, and you are out in the heat for much of the day. Terrain can be rough and paving uneven. Sure-footedness is essential. Average distance by coach per day: c. 41 miles. Working in partnership with the Palestine Exploration Fund. By booking on this tour, clients will automatically become PEF members, have access to the extensive PEF library and resources as well as benefit from expert advice on the ancient Levant from members of staff.
Illustration: The Convent of Mar Saba, engraving c. 1880.
Israel & Palestine – see page 209.
Exceptionally preserved Punic and Roman remains; some of the best in North Africa.
What we see of Tunisia’s impressive Islamic heritage includes the important holy city of Kairouan, the wonderfully busy Medina of Tunis, and other less-visited towns, including Testour, a charming agricultural village with Andalusian roots and an exceptional mosque.
Varied and striking landscapes; less-visited sites.
Itinerary
Outstanding Roman mosaics throughout, both in museums and on archaeological sites.
Day 1. Fly from London Heathrow at c. 6.00pm to Tunis (Tunisair). First of three nights here.
Important Islamic sites of Kairouan, Tunis and Testour.
Day 2: Tunis, Carthage. A former palace, the Bardo Museum accommodates the finest repository of Roman mosaics in the world. The afternoon is spent visiting the principal sites of Carthage, the capital of the Punic (or Carthaginian) world and later the second city in the western Roman Empire after Rome. Overnight Tunis.
Some of the most spectacular of ancient Roman sites anywhere are to be found in the magnificent landscapes of Tunisia, where less than a fifth of estimated ancient remains have officially been unearthed. The Roman province of Africa, of which Tunisia was the heart, was one of the wealthiest regions of the Empire. Known as the bread basket of Rome, for its wheat production, its olive oil was also exported in vast quantities across the Empire. A condition for optimum preservation was the abandonment of the cities by non-urban successor civilisations. The consequences are impressive: among the Roman world’s bestpreserved monuments are the colosseum at El Djem, the theatre at Dougga and parts of the Zaghouan–Carthage aqueduct. Aside from Roman history, Tunisia’s Carthaginian ruins are exceptional. A highlight of the tour are the vigorous, colourful and naturalistic floor mosaics at the Sousse and Bardo museums and in situ on many of the sites. Both in composition and content they present a visual record of the sophistication of the North African empire from the early Christian era to the seventh century. The finest to have been excavated from Carthage, Utica, Dougga and Sousse, are displayed as works of art.
Day 3: Dougga, Testour. Drive west for a full-day excursion to the superb site of Dougga, unesco World-Heritage-listed, and one of the bestpreserved Roman cities in North Africa. It is also interesting for the way the grand Roman buildings have evidently been added to a pre-Roman city plan with no regular street layout. Remains include Roman temples, baths, a theatre and a circus, a spectacular 2nd-century bc tomb monument and a Byzantine (6th-century ad) fortification that surrounds the Roman forum. About 25 km from Dougga, Testour, founded in the 17th century by Andalusian immigrants, has a unique mosque. Final night in Tunis. Day 4: Oudna (Uthina), Thuburbo Majus, Zaghouan, Kairouan. Visit the Roman site of Uthina, a chance to see several good quality mosaics in situ. The amphitheatre has underground vaulted cells intact. Thuburbo Majus is a major Roman city, with a colonnaded forum, fine temples, houses and baths and, by contrast with Dougga, streets laid out on a rectilinear grid. Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
4–11 October 2019 (mf 777) 9 days • £2,570 Lecturer: Henry Hurst
Ancient & Islamic Tunisia continued
Henry Hurst Emeritus Reader in Classics at Cambridge University. His special interest is the archaeology of ancient cities and he has been an excavating archaeologist – working at Carthage for many years and more recently in Rome. He has travelled widely in Greece and Turkey. See page 260 for all lecturers' biographies.
The best available accommodation. In the areas away from the main tourist resorts, standards are not as high as in the more developed coastal towns and the capital. Dar Said, Sidi Bou Said (darsaid. com.tn): boutique hotel perched on the hills of the tranquil town of Sidi Bou Said. Excellent views and fine terrace and restaurant. How strenuous? This tour covers some long distances, involving a lot of travel by coach. There is quite a lot of walking or scrambling over the rough terrain of archaeological sites. Many of the sites are exposed with no protection from the sun or shelter from rain or wind. Average distance by coach per day: 85 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Romans in Western Iberia, 14–20 October 2019 (p.197); Bilbao to Bayonne, 14–21 October 2019 (p.189); Palestine, Past & Present, 14–22 October 2019 (p.214); Civilisations of Sicily, 14–26 October 2019 (p.161). We are happy to advise on linking accommodation and transport. At 51 km long, the Zaghouan-Carthage aqueduct was one of the longest in the Roman world and its remains are a breathtaking. Its source at Zaghouan was beautifully embellished with a water temple, set in a courtyard in a hillside terrace. First of two nights in Kairouan.
MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA: Tunisia
Day 5: Kairouan, El Djem. The morning is spent in Kairouan, with visits to the Medina and the Great Mosque (8th/9th century) and other examples of local traditional architecture. The immense colosseum at El Djem could hold 30,000 and is a remarkable sight, towering over its modern surroundings. The small museum nearby contains some exquisite mosaics. Final night in Kairouan. Day 6: Sousse, Sidi Bou Said. Founded in the 9th century bc, Sousse fell to Carthage three centuries later. Hannibal’s base during the Second Punic War, it subsequently took on a Roman allegiance. In the 7th century it fell to the Arabs. Visit the archaeological museum located within the Kasbah of the old city, which is renowned for its mosaic collection. Continue to Sidi Bou Said for some free time. First of two nights. Day 7: Tunis. The Medina, the vibrant old town, is a maze of alleys crammed with ancient buildings, covered markets and beautiful doorways. At its heart lies the Great Mosque of 9th-century origin, one of North Africa’s most significant Islamic buildings. The rest of the day is free for wandering 216
the Medina or relaxing at the hotel. In the evening a private visit to the Ennejma Ezzahra (Splendid Star), built by master craftsmen in the 1900s as a home for the Baron Rodolphe d’Erlanger, in homage to his passion for the Middle East. It is now a museum and the Centre for Arab and Mediterranean Music. Final night in Sidi Bou Said. Day 8. Fly from Tunis to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 2.30pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,570 or £2,250 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,810 or £2,490 without flights. Included meals: 6 lunches (including 1 picnic) and 6 dinners with wine. Visas: British, US and Australian citizens do not require a visa to visit Tunisia. New Zealand passport holders are required to apply in advance for a tourist visa. Accommodation. Sheraton, Tunis (sheratontunis.com): business hotel located between the city centre and airport. Rooms enjoy a view overlooking Tunis. Hotel la Kasbah, Kairouan (goldenyasmin.com): excellently located in the heart of the old town. Rooms are simple, but clean and comfortable.
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Illustration, previous page: El Djem, wood engraving c. 1880. Above left: Kairouan, watercolour by Donald Maxwell, publ. c. 1930.
What else is included in the price? See page 6 For lecturers' biographies See pages 260–267
Essential China A selection of the most celebrated sights in China 11–23 September 2019 (mf 702) 13 days • £6,160 International flights not included Lecturer: Dr Rose Kerr Planned as an introduction to China featuring many of China’s most fascinating places. Several unesco World Heritage Sites are visited. Beijing, Xi’an and Shanghai: more time in these three main centres than on most tours as well as a selection of small-town and rural sites including a lesser-visited section of The Great Wall. Special access is a feature including areas closed to the public at the Forbidden City in Beijing and a special viewing platform for the Terracotta Warriors in Xi’an. (Subject to confirmation).
roles give Shanghai a vibrancy and timbre like no other Chinese city.
Itinerary Day 1: Beijing. The tour begins with lunch at the hotel (flights from London are not included – see page 219). The Temple of Heaven (Tiantan) complex, effectively a sacred park set with platforms for Imperial rites, forms both a fitting antidote to jet lag and a memorable introduction to the unique qualities of Chinese sacred sites. First of four nights in Beijing. Day 2: Beijing. The Forbidden City is at once enthralling and imposing; past the formidable walls and moat are vast courtyards punctuated with terraced pavilions, palaces and gardens. Marble paving and bridges and finely-carved balustrades mark the imperial way along which lie three ceremonial halls; beyond these are the comparatively closeted living quarters. There is special access (subject to confirmation) to the Shufang Zhai, where banquets and operas were held. Afternoon visits include the 17th-century Lama Temple, formerly an imperial residence before its conversion to a Buddhist place of worship, and a Confucian temple founded during the Yuan dynasty. Day 3: Greater Beijing. The Ming Tombs in countryside outside the city are the final resting place of 13 of the 16 Ming emperors. The tomb of Emperor Yongle (1402–1424) consists of a 7-km Sacred Way flanked by stone animals and courtiers, a succession of courts with ceremonial gateways and a man-made hill concealing the tomb itself. Lunch by the Summer Palace, a peaceful setting popular with the emperors since the Jin, periodically enlarged and embellished; after its destruction in 1860 Empress Dowager Cixi expended vast sums in constructing her pleasure palace here. Illustration: the Great Wall, wood engraving c. 1880.
Day 4: Jinshanling, Beijing. Morning excursion to a particularly spectacular (though relatively little visited) stretch of the Great Wall at Jinshanling. Walk along a section where it climbs and plunges over hilly terrain. Return to Beijing in the afternoon for some free time. Day 5: Beijing, Xi’an. The massive National Museum in Tiananmen Square has superb collections of early Chinese artefacts, Zhou bronzes, painting and the whole range of porcelain from Tang (ad 618–907) to Qing (ended 1911). Fly in the afternoon (China Eastern) to Xi’an. First of four nights in Xi’an. Day 6: Xi’an. Full day excursion east and north of the city. The tomb of the first emperor, Qin Shi Huangdi, is yet to be excavated but his legacy was secured in 1974 when farmers digging a well discovered his terracotta army of infantry, cavalry and civil servants. There may be 20,000 of them, over 1.5 metres tall; only a relatively small part of the site has been uncovered, but it is nevertheless one of the most spectacular archaeological finds of all time. The pottery warriors at the later tomb of the fourth Han emperor, Liu Qi, display striking attention to detail; some eunuch figures have been found here, providing the earliest known evidence of this phenomenon in China. Day 7: Xi’an. The Shaanxi History Museum explains the history and culture of the province, the heartland of ancient Chinese civilisation. The Beilin Museum displays a collection of stone stelae, engraved with classic texts and masterpieces of calligraphy, and a fine collection of Buddhist statues. The day ends with a walk through the winding streets of the city’s Muslim Quarter. The Great Mosque, one of the largest in China, was originally built in ad 742 although the present fabric dates from the Qing Dynasty. Day 8: Luoyang. Day trip by high-speed train to Luoyang to see the Longmen Caves, an extraordinary collection of statuary carved into the hillside that runs along the western bank of Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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For the average westerner, learning about China’s past is a progressively more astonishing journey, and a humbling one. Much that we regard as constituting the fundamentals of civilisation were prevalent in China two or even three millennia ago: skills artistic and technological, laws and governance humane and commonsensical, mastery of the arts of war and the arts of peace, building and engineering projects of staggering magnitude, and the possibility, for some, of a life devoted to the pursuit of beauty and intellectual refinement. And then there is the fascination of present-day China, likely soon to be the world’s largest economy and destined to have an impact on all of our lives. The most important Chinese capitals have always been in the north. Xi’an is where the imperial story began, and for centuries it was the capital of the great empire in the east, hosting the grandiose designs of the first emperor with his terracotta warriors and later anchoring one end of the Silk Road. Beijing has been the grandest city on the planet for much of the past 800 years since Khubilai Khan made it the capital of his China-centric empire. When the Mongols were finally expelled by the Chinese Ming dynasty, Beijing soon became the most perfectly planned cosmological capital, one that would serve the Ming and Manchurian Qing dynasties for over 500 years. Hangzhou brings us to the lands of rice and fish, where the climate is gentle and the land generous. The Yangtse Valley breadbasket first supported numerous northern governments and later bestowed its cultural riches and leisure activities throughout the entire empire. Marco Polo was enchanted by the grace and charm of Hangzhou, and in the surrounding hills monks developed some of the finest tea plantations in China. Hangzhou lives on today as a locus of relaxation and culture with profound cultural resonances for the Chinese. Shanghai, by contrast, is a law unto itself: originally a small fishing village, it began its rise with the foreign settlements that followed the first opium war in the mid-nineteenth century. A capitalist machine, it has also been the home of much political radicalism and was where the Chinese Communist Party came into being. These sometime conflicting and irreconcilable
Essential China continued
Sacred China City palaces, mountain temples and desert grottoes
the Yi River. Begun by the Buddhist Northern Wei rulers (ad 386–534) and added to during the later Sui and Tang dynasties. There are over 100,000 statues clustered in 2,000 caves and crevices. Day 9: Xi’an, Hangzhou. Adjacent to the hotel stands the Great Goose Pagoda, first built in ad 652 for the monk Xuanzang to house the sutra he brought back from his pilgrimage to India. Fly to Hangzhou (Xiamen Air), capital of the Southern Song Dynasty 1138–1279. First of two nights in Hangzhou. Day 10: Hangzhou. Start the day at the Lingyin Temple, one of China’s largest though now much reduced. Just outside the complex are dozens of Buddhist sculptures carved into the rock face, many dating back to the 10th century. Drive out of the city to Longjing (Dragon Well) Village, source of one of China’s most famous varieties of green tea. The scenic tranquillity of the West Lake has been immortalised by countless poets and painters over the centuries. Day 11: Hangzhou to Shanghai. By train to Shanghai (luggage is sent separately by van). For its density, vibrancy and extent, both horizontal and vertical, Shanghai is the city of cities. Despite frenetic building activity, enclaves of low-rise structures remain in the centre, though there is little here that is more than a hundred years old. Walk along the Bund, Shanghai’s iconic riverside stretch of Art Deco and Neo-Classical buildings, symbolic of the city’s burgeoning wealth in the 1920s and 1930s. First of two nights in Shanghai. Day 12: Shanghai. Visit the Shanghai Museum, outstanding for porcelain, jade, furniture and, in particular, Shang and Zhou bronzes. See also the city’s finest traditional Yu Garden. Day 13: Shanghai. The tour ends after breakfast. There is a transfer to the airport in time for a direct flight at 11.00am from Shanghai to London, arriving at c. 4.30pm (c. 12 ½ hours).
8–21 October 2019 (mf 786) 14 days • £5,870 International flights not included Lecturer: Jon Cannon A unique itinerary that takes in many of China’s most remarkable religious sites, from ancient temples in Beijing to the sacred mountains of Wutaishan.
ASIA: China
Practicalities
Visit the Mogao Caves, the most fascinating repository of Buddhist art in China.
Price, per person. Two sharing: £6,160. Single occupancy: £7,140. International flights are not included – see page 219.
Several unesco World Heritage Sites including the temple and cemetery of Qufu, birthplace of Confucius, and the Yungang Grottoes in Datong.
Included meals: 10 lunches, 7 dinners, with wine.
Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism – the ‘three teachings’, are all represented.
Visas: see page 221. Accommodation. Waldorf Astoria, Beijing (waldorfastoria.hilton.com): recently-opened, 5-star luxury hotel in the city centre. Hyatt Regency Hotel, Xi’an (xian.regency.hyatt.com): recently-opened 5-star hotel within the city walls of Xi’an. Sofitel West Lake Hotel, Hangzhou (sofitel.com): 4-star hotel, located on the east side of the West Lake – rooms do not have lake views. Yangtze Boutique Hotel, Shanghai (theyangtzehotel.com): 4-star, Art Deco hotel ideally situated close to the Shanghai Museum. How strenuous? See page 219. Average distance by coach per day: 48 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
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From ancient temples to sacred mountain tops, China’s religious heritage is unique. Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Islam, Christianity and Judaism have all had a significant presence in the country for a millennium and more. The first three of these – two of which are indigenous to China – comprised the ‘three teachings’ supported by Imperial policy, and historically their influence reached into every aspect of Chinese daily life; the buildings, sculptures and artworks that resulted are astonishing. Indeed, spiritual, artistic and architectural traditions developed by Chinese religious cultures spread throughout east Asia, and in spite of the vicissitudes of recent history remain alive to this day.
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This tour starts in Beijing, which is still recognisably a sacred city laid out by the emperors on cosmological lines – arguably the most significant example of that phenomenon in the world. Such structures as the Temple of Heaven (Tiantan), the Lama Temple and the Confucius Temple, all cornerstones of Imperial religious life and ritual, form a fitting introduction to the richness and variety of Chinese religion. Highlights include the holy mountain of Wutaishan, where there is a significant Tibetan presence in the heart of traditional China, and a collection of ancient Buddhist temples packed with modern pilgrims. By contrast the exquisite Foguang Temple (ad 857) stands in a beguilingly peaceful rural setting. Here is one of the oldest wooden structures on the planet, its original sculpture and painted decoration astonishingly intact. At Datong’s Yungang caves and the ancient desert monastery of Dunhuang, by contrast, the cosmopolitan roots of Chinese Buddhism took hold. The spread of this Indian faith across the country in the first centuries of the Common Era transformed China’s religious life and brought to the country its first permanent stone religious building, the pagoda. There are fine examples of what is effectively an elongated and orientalised Buddhist stupa at Xi’an and Yingxian. The architecture of the pagoda, as well as the great painted and sculpted caves and cliffs of early Chinese Buddhist monasteries, are vivid reminders of this era of dramatic cultural change, their artistic styles still visibly infused with ideas from India, Central Asia and even the Classical West, all on the cusp of becoming something new and distinctively Chinese.
Chinese religious culture is at once precociously humanist and testimony to a society in which spirituality infused every aspect of daily life. In the course of this remarkable series of sites, we will come face to face with the exceptional achievements that resulted.
Itinerary Day 1: Beijing. The tour begins with lunch at the hotel (flights from London are not included – see right). The Temple of Heaven (Tiantan) complex, effectively a sacred park set with platforms for Imperial rites, forms both a fitting antidote to jet lag and a memorable introduction to the unique qualities of Chinese sacred sites. First of two nights in Beijing. Day 2: Beijing. The morning is dedicated to the Forbidden City, at once enthralling and imposing with its formidable walls, moat, vast courtyards and works of art. The delightful Jinshanling hill behind it provides a unique perspective on what is, with its imperial altars, temples and central palace for a divinely mandated emperor, arguably the world’s finest surviving example of a planned ‘sacred city’. Day 3: Beijing to Qufu. The massive National Museum in Tiananmen Square displays extraordinary ritual bronzes of ancient China. In the afternoon, visit Beijing’s most important lamaistic and Confucian places of worship, positioned close together near the edge of the old city. Travel south by high speed train to Qufu in the Shandong province. First of two nights here. Day 4: Qufu. Spend the day in the town where Confucius was born, a place that combines the atmosphere of a pleasant backwater with the alldominant presence of China’s one truly enormous religious complex: the temple, house and cemetery of the great philosopher and his descendants. The roots of this remarkable series of sites palpably stretch back to late prehistory.
Day 6: Taiyuan, Wutaishan. Drive to the foothills of Wutaishan to visit the eighth-century Foguangsi and Nanchansi Buddhist temples, that may between them be the best-preserved and oldest complex timber structures in the world, all the more memorable for their rural setting and for having much statuary and other features intact. First of two nights in Wutaishan. Day 7: Wutaishan. Conditions permitting, there is a morning excursion to one of China’s most important Buddhist holy mountains, the Wutai (five-terrace) peak, visiting the historic temples at its heart with their strong Tibetan influence and memorable historic fittings and artefacts.
Day 8: Yingxian, Mt Hengshan, Datong. Drive north to Datong, visiting a succession of remarkable sites: the Yingxian pagoda, one of the most artistically impressive examples of this Chinese take on the Buddhist stupa; the picturesque Hanging Temple, clinging vertiginously to its cliffside site. First of two nights in Datong, home to one of China’s greatest displays of monumental Buddhist cliff-sculpture. Day 9: Datong. The Yungang caves were begun in the sixth century by a dynasty with its cultural roots in Buddhist Central Asia. Nearby the Huayan temple is an extraordinary storehouse of Buddhist art, including the spectacular timber sutra library. Day 10: Datong to Xi’an. In the morning, fly (China Southern Airlines) to Xi’an. There visit one of China’s most atmospheric historic mosques, originally built in ad 742 and a memorable example of how oriental culture responded to the challenge of the western monotheisms. The Baxian An is a busy example of a modern urban Taoist temple. Overnight Xi’an. Day 11: Xi’an to Dunhuang. Adjacent to the hotel stands the Great Goose Pagoda, a living monument to the Indian and Central Asian roots of Chinese Buddhism, a theme which will start to dominate as we move west into the desert setting of Dunhuang. In the early afternoon, fly to Dunhuang (China Eastern Airlines). Dunhuang is a small oasis town with low-rise buildings along wide avenues, flanked to one side by colossal sand dunes. First of two nights in Dunhuang. Day 12: Dunhuang. The Mogao caves at Dunhuang, with their rich sculpture and extraordinary survivals of ancient painting, are one of the world’s most memorable sights, and a testament to the sophisticated and cosmopolitan cultures that thrived along the famed Silk Road. The museum contains important artefacts unearthed at the caves, including rare Tibetan sutras. The Western Caves, set by an attractive river valley, are fewer in number but also contain exquisite paintings. Day 13: Dunhuang to Beijing. Fly to Beijing (Air China) departing c. 12.00 noon and arriving mid-afternoon, leaving time for a concluding lecture and dinner before the homeward journey. Overnight Beijing. Day 14: Beijing. The tour ends after breakfast. There is a transfer to the airport in time for a direct flight at 11.00am from Beijing to London, arriving at c. 4.30pm (c. 12 ½ hours).
International flights Return flights from London are not included in the price of our tours in China. We will send recommended flight options (these will be accompanied by the lecturer and/or tour manager) when they are available to book and ask that you make your own flight reservation. British Airways World Traveller (economy) seats cost c. £700 at the time of printing and are generally available to book c. 11 months before departure.
How strenuous? On all our tours in China, there will be a lot of walking in town centres where coach access is restricted, and a lot of standing in museums and at sites. Uneven ground and irregular paving are standard. A good level of fitness is essential. Unless you enjoy entirely unimpaired mobility, cope with everyday walking and stair-climbing without difficulty and are reliably sure-footed, these tours are not for you. There are some long coach journeys during which facilities are limited and may be of poor quality.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £5,870. Single occupancy: £6,700. International flights are not included – see above. Included meals: 11 lunches, 10 dinners, with wine. Visas: see page 221. Accommodation. Waldorf Astoria, Beijing (waldorfastoria.hilton.com): recently-opened, 5-star luxury hotel in the city centre. Shangrila, Qufu (shangri-la.com): modern 4-star in the historical centre, with large rooms and a swimming pool. Kempinski, Taiyuan (kempinski. com): 5-star luxury hotel located in the commercial district. Marriott Wutain Mountain, Wutaishan (marriott.com): 5-star and located in the foothills of Wutaishan. Rooms have mountain views and there is a health club. Yungang Meigao, Datong (yungangmghotel.com): opened in 2011, a 4-star glass tower construction with good-sized rooms, close to the city centre. Hyatt Regency Hotel, Xi’an (xian.regency.hyatt.com): recentlyopened 5-star hotel within the city walls of Xi’an. Silk Road Hotel, Dunhuang (dunhuangresort. com): large hotel situated close to the Mingsha Sand Dunes, rated locally as 4-star. How strenuous? See above. Average distance by coach per day: 48 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
What else is included in the price? See page 6
Illustration: Beijing, Confucius Temple, wood engraving from 'Le Tour du Monde', 1864.
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Day 5: Taishan, Taiyuan. Leave early to drive to Taishan, the most significant in a network of Taoist sacred mountains, characteristic of this faith of oneness with nature. Climb (by coach and cable car) to the Jade Emperor peak, site of imperial sacrifices for a deeper encounter with Taoism. In the afternoon, travel north-west by high speed train to Shanxi province, an area that contains the greatest concentration of historic buildings in China. Overnight Taiyuan.
(If Wutaishan cannot be accessed, there will be an alternative visit to the remarkable Jin Ci ancestral hall and Taoist shrine complex.)
China’s Silk Road Cities The Northern Route through Shaanxi, Gansu and Xinjiang masterpieces of calligraphy, as well as a fine collection of early statuary. Day 4: Xi’an. Full-day excursion east and north of the city. The tomb of the first emperor, Qin Shihuangdi, is yet to be excavated but his legacy was secured in 1974 when farmers digging a well discovered his terracotta army of infantry, cavalry and civil servants. There may be 20,000 of them, over 1.5 metres tall; only a relatively small part of the site has been uncovered, but it is nevertheless one of the most spectacular archaeological finds of all time. The pottery warriors at the later tomb of the fourth Han emperor, Liu Qi, display striking attention to detail; some eunuch figures have been found here, providing the earliest known evidence of this phenomenon in China. Day 5: Xi’an to Kashgar. The Great Goose Pagoda was first built in ad 652 for the monk Xuanzang to house the sutra he brought back from his pilgrimage to India. Fly to Kashgar at c. 2.15pm, arriving at c. 6.30pm and transfer to the hotel. First of three nights in Kashgar.
17–29 October 2019 (mf 802) 13 days • £6,070 International flights not included Lecturer: Dr Jamie Greenbaum Retraces the ancient trading routes from the Chinese heartland to the vast desert region of Xinjiang province. Three days in the ancient imperial capital Xi’an, once the easternmost departure point for the Silk Road and home to the spectacular terracotta warriors. Wonderfully vivid Buddhist paintings at the Mogao Caves, a unesco World Heritage Site.
ASIA: China
Special access is a feature including a viewing platform for the Terracotta Warriors and caves not usually open to the public at Mogao. (Subject to confirmation). In the second century bc, imperial envoy Zhang Qian was sent on a mission to the West, beyond the outer limits of ancient China, to obtain some of the legendary Ferghana horses for Han emperor Wudi’s cavalry. On the equine front the mission was a failure, but Zhang Qian returned to Chang’an (today’s Xi’an) with stories of the riches he saw and this soon led to the development of trade between China and the alien world beyond its western frontier. Myriad commodities – as well as religious beliefs and cultural attitudes – traversed the land from China, through Central Asia and Persia to the Mediterranean. The formidable Taklamakan Desert, an arid wasteland of shifting sand dunes, posed one of the biggest threats to travellers, who skirted its northern and southern edges, finding respite in the many thriving oasis towns. 220
The instability brought about by the fall of empires and by the establishment of sea routes saw the decline of these trading corridors and the region disappeared into obscurity until the end of the nineteenth century, when tales of lost cities filled with treasure drew foreign explorers into an international race of rediscovery. Today, evocative ruins, chaotic markets and Buddhist cave paintings remain to be seen, while the museums are filled with the many artefacts and mummified remains unearthed along the route. Despite relentless modernisation, cities such as Kashgar retain their ancient charm, while the enormity of these perilous journeys is conveyed by sight of the vast expanses of landscape that make up China’s last great wilderness.
Itinerary Day 1: Beijing. The tour begins in Beijing with lunch in the hotel (flights from London are not included – see page 219). The Capital Museum is a striking modern building containing a selection of art and artefacts including wonderful ancient Buddhist statues. Overnight Beijing. Day 2: Beijing to Xi’an. Fly at c. 11.00am from Beijing to Xi’an, arriving at c. 1.00pm. After a late lunch there is a walk through the winding streets of the city’s Muslim Quarter. The Great Mosque, one of the largest in China, was originally built in ad 742 although the present fabric dates from the Qing Dynasty. First of three nights in Xi’an. Day 3: Xi’an. The Shaanxi History Museum explains the history and culture of the province, the heartland of ancient Chinese civilisation. There is a special visit to the museum’s collection of Tang-dynasty tomb murals. After lunch, visit the Beilin Museum, which houses a collection of stone stelae, engraved with classic texts and
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Day 6: Kashgar. The former British Consulate was the home for 26 years of the most famous of British India’s representatives in Kashgar; Sir George Macartney and his wife hosted some of the most prominent Silk Road travellers, including Sir Aurel Stein and Albert von Le Coq. Nikolai Petrovsky’s former Russian Consulate is nearby. The dilapidated buildings belie their historic significance as erstwhile outposts for two rival powers in the Great Game. After lunch, visit the Id-kah Mosque. This is the largest mosque in Xinjiang and was founded in c. 1738, though the current structure dates back only as far as 1838, and suffered much damage during the Cultural Revolution. Day 7: Kashgar. Goods and livestock have been traded at Kashgar’s Sunday market for more than 2,000 years. The scene today is still a riot of colour, sounds and smells as animals, carts and vehicles traverse this vast site. Though the old city is gradually being razed by local authorities to make way for modern development, it retains much of its ancient charm. Day 8: Kashgar to Turpan via Urumqi. Fly at c. 10.30am from Kashgar to Urumqi, arriving at c. 12.30pm. After lunch visit the Xinjiang Uygur Museum, which displays a fantastic collection of Tarim mummies, giving clues to the early Tarim Basin settlement. Continue by coach to Turpan. First of two nights in Turpan. Day 9: Turpan. At Gaochang see the extensive ruins of an ancient walled trading city. On the north-east rim of the Taklamakan Desert in a gorge in the Flaming Mountains, lies the Bezeklik Thousand Buddha Caves. The caves once formed part of a Buddhist monastery between the 6th and 14th centuries. After lunch drive out to Jiaohe. The most visually rewarding of all the sites around Turpan, this ancient city is located on a high platform above two rivers. Among the ruins, the layout of the city is still clear: the residential district, the palace, the monastery complex. Day 10: Turpan to Dunhuang. Travel by train to Dunhuang (luggage is sent separately).
Essential India Hindu temples, Rajput palaces and Mughal tombs Dunhuang is a small oasis town with low-rise buildings along wide avenues, flanked to one side by colossal sand dunes. The Dunhuang Museum houses important artefacts unearthed at the Mogao Caves, including rare Tibetan sutras. First of two nights in Dunhuang. Day 11: Dunhuang. The Mogao Caves are a highlight of the Silk Road in China and one of the most important sites of early Chinese Buddhist cave paintings. Once a strategic stop-off point for pilgrims travelling to India, it developed into a major Buddhist centre of art and learning. Despite the controversial carting off of paintings, sculptures and manuscripts by foreign archaeologists in the 19th century, there is still very fine artwork to be seen. The Western Caves, set by an attractive river valley, are fewer in number but also contain exquisite paintings. Day 12: Dunhuang to Beijing. Transfer to Jiayuguan (a journey of approx. 5 hours) for an afternoon flight to Beijing, arriving at c. 5.00pm. Overnight in Beijing. Day 13: Beijing to London. The tour ends after breakfast. There is a transfer to the airport in time for the recommended direct flight at c. 11.15am from Beijing to London, arriving at c. 3.30pm (c. 11 hours 15 minutes).
23 February–8 March 2019 (mf 429) 14 days • £5,780 International flights not included Lecturer: Asoka Pugal Includes some of India’s most celebrated sites and also lesser-known but quintessential places. Special access is a feature. Spends more time at the centres visited than most mainstream tours, and free time is allowed for rest or independent exploration. Varanasi, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, and the most sacred in India; the Hindu temples of Khajuraho; Rajput and Mughal forts, palaces and funerary monuments. No fewer than seven unesco World Heritage Sites are visited. The rich and fertile riverine plains of northern India have long formed a corridor allowing migrations and invasions to spread across the Subcontinent. The result is an area of fascinating cultural diversity.
Like the Ganges and the Yamuna, the sacred rivers of Hindu lore, this tour runs through the modern state of Uttar Pradesh and neighbouring Madhya Pradesh. But these geo-political boundaries do not restrict it thematically. Participants are treated to a comprehensive overview of the history of the Subcontinent, from the emergence of Hinduism and Buddhism to the decline of the Mughal Empire, the last Islamic power before the British Raj of the nineteenth century. Located on the banks of the Ganges, Varanasi is India’s most sacred place and claims to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. Founded by Lord Shiva, the city is mentioned in scriptures dating from the early Vedic period, in the second millennium bc. It was known as Kashi, the Luminous, during the life of the Buddha who visited on several occasions on his way to Sarnath nearby where he preached his first sermon. Pilgrims still flock here to wash away their sins in the holy Ganges. The modern Varanasi is also a place of learning and culture, with the first Hindu university in India. Illustration: Agra, the Taj Mahal, watercolour c. 1920.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £6,070. Single occupancy: £6,940. International flights are not included – see page 219. Included meals: 8 lunches, 9 dinners, with wine. Visas: see below.
ASIA: China, India
Accommodation. Waldorf Astoria, Beijing (waldorfastoria.hilton.com): 5-star luxury hotel in the city centre. Hyatt Regency Hotel, Xi’an (xian.regency.hyatt.com): recently-opened, 5-star hotel within the city walls of Xi’an. Radisson Blu Hotel, Kashgar (radissonblu.com): one of the most recently-renovated hotels in the city, rated locally as 5-star. Huozhou Hotel, Turpan: centrallylocated hotel rated locally as 4-star, though more akin to a 3-star. Silk Road Hotel, Dunhuang (dunhuangresort.com): large hotel situated close to the Mingsha Sand Dunes, rated locally as 4-star. How strenuous? See page 219. Average distance by coach per day: 50 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
Chinese visas Visas are required for most foreign nationals, and not included in the prices of our tours in China. We will advise all participants on the process.
Illustration: Chinese vase, wood engraving c. 1880.
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' A truly brilliant tour which helped to display the depth and complications of this fascinating country.' Participant on Essential India in 2016.
The Chandelas of Khajuraho and the Bundelas of Orchha are two Rajput clans tracing lineage to the Lunar Dynasty from Varanasi, a commonly used device to claim political authority. The eleventh-century Chandelas built intricately carved temples in Khajuraho, today celebrated (and often misunderstood) for their sensual carvings. They are superb examples of the Nagara or northern style of sacred architecture, with its linear succession of halls leading to the sanctum, topped by a Sikhara, or mountain-peak tower. Later Bundela Rajputs built impressive palaces and temple-like cenotaphs in the lush landscape of northern Madhya Pradesh. Their palaces bring together elements borrowed from both the Rajput and Mughal traditions, while their funerary architecture asserts their dynastic authority. The buildings and arts of the Mughals in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are often regarded as the apex of India’s artistic achievements, a prestige due no doubt in no small part to its best-known representative, the Taj Mahal, a creation which hovers somewhere between architecture, jewellery and myth. White marble is typical of the late period, while earlier buildings are of red sandstone – the deserted capital of Akbar at Fatehpur Sikri, and the Red Forts of Agra and Delhi. Delhi is among a rare elite of the world’s cities which have been capital of several successive regimes. With most new ruling powers establishing their headquarters on a site adjacent to its predecessors, the architectural legacy ranges from a monumental thirteenth-century minaret to the majestic expansiveness of Lutyens’ New Delhi. Empire succeeds empire; eighteen years after the Viceroy took up residence in Government House it was handed over to an independent India.
Itinerary
ASIA: India
Day 1: Delhi. Rooms are available from 2.00pm on 22nd February, allowing for early check-in today. (flights from London are not included – see page 227). Nothing is planned before a pre-lunch talk. The severely beautiful 15th-century tombs of the Sayyid and Lodi dynasties are located in the serene Lodi Gardens, close to the hotel. Humayun’s striking tomb, with its high-arched façades set in a walled garden, is an important example of early Mughal architecture. First of two nights in Delhi. Day 2: Delhi. Visit the imposing Red Fort, founded in 1639 under Shah Jahan. Exquisite pietra dura work remains intact in the throne pavilion. Together with the fort, the Jama Masjid, India’s largest mosque, dominates Old Delhi with its minarets and domes. Rickshaw through the labyrinthine streets near Chandni Chowk. After lunch, visit the Qutb Minar, site of the first Islamic city of Delhi, established in 1193 on the grounds of a defeated Rajput fort. The towering minaret and its mosque survive as testament to the might of the invaders. Day 3: Delhi to Varanasi. Fly mid-morning from Delhi to Varanasi (Jet Airways). After lunch in the hotel, walk in the old town, visiting hidden shrines and experiencing the busy life along the river. The Dasaswamedha Ghat is named after the 222
ancient ten horse sacrifice which took place here in mythical time; a boat ride along the Ganges ends here with the evening river blessing ceremony (Aarti), a ritual going back to the Vedic Age. First of two nights in Varanasi. Day 4: Sarnath, Varanasi. Begin the day with a boat ride at sunrise, followed by breakfast and a morning walk through the alleys of the old city. Buddha preached his first sermon at Sarnath and the site remains an active Buddhist centre. The Dhamek stupa in the Deer Park marks the spot where the Buddha sat to preach. The museum houses the 3rd-century bc lion capital which has become the symbol of modern India since independence. Day 5: Varanasi to Khajuraho. Fly to Khajuraho (Jet Airways) in the morning. After lunch, visit the Jain temples in the eastern group. The Parasnath Temple is conspicuous for its absence of erotic depictions. First of three nights in Khajuraho. Day 6: Khajuraho. In the morning, visit the spectacular western group of temples built during the Chandela Rajput dynasty, famous for the beautifully carved erotic scenes. The awe-inspiring 11th-cent. Kandariya Mahadev Temple is one of the finest examples of North Indian temple architecture, richly embellished with sensuous sculptures depicting the god’s heavenly abodes. Nearby, the Jagadambi Temple contains excellent carvings of Vishnu. In the afternoon, visit the southern groups of temples. Day 7: Khajuraho. Full day at leisure. Optional excursions can be arranged. Day 8: Khajuraho to Orchha. Drive to Orchha. Located close to the Betwa River on dramatic rocky terrain, Orchha’s former glory as capital of the Bundela kings is evident in the multichambered Jehangir Mahal with lapis lazuli tiles and ornate gateways. The Raj Mahal palace contains some beautiful murals with religious and secular themes. Elegant Royal Chhatris (cenotaphs) line the ghats of the Betwa. Day 9: Orchha. A walk in the old town includes a visit to the high-ceilinged Chaturbhuj Temple; the cross plan represents the four-armed Vishnu. The Lakshmi Temple incorporates fortress elements and its 19th-century frescoes depict scenes of the 1857 Mutiny. Afternoon journey from Jhansi to Gwalior by train. First of two nights in Gwalior. Day 10: Gwalior. Athwart a steep-sided hill, the formidable Gwalior Fort is lavishly embellished with cupolas and blue tiles; inside are superb 9th- and 11th-century temples. The afternoon is at leisure with the option of a visit to a nearby palace. Day 11: Gwalior, Agra. Drive to Agra and in the afternoon visit the Itimad ud Daula (c. 1628), an exquisite garden tomb and the first Mughal building clad in white marble inlaid with pietra dura. First of two nights in Agra. Day 12: Agra, Fatehpur Sikri. Rise early to visit the Taj Mahal in the first light of day. It was commissioned by Shah Jahan in memory of his third wife, Mumtaz Mahal, and completed in 1648. Breakfast at the hotel. The magnificent Red
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Fort was built by Akbar and is the best preserved of the palaces built during his reign. Drive out to Fatehpur Sikri, a new capital built by Akbar (1570) but abandoned after a mere 15 years. The palace complex consists of a series of courtyards and beautifully wrought red sandstone pavilions. Day 13: Sikandra, Delhi. Drive to Delhi via Akbar’s mausoleum at Sikandra, built on his death in 1605. Set in a traditional char-bagh, it has no central dome unlike other Mughal mausolea. Visit New Delhi where Lutyens, Baker and other British architects created a grand city with unique designs. Baker’s Secretariat buildings on the Raisina hill are Classical buildings at first glance but closer attention reveals Mughal motifs. Subject to special permission, it may be possible to visit the manicured gardens and interior of the vast Rashtrapati Bhavan, the former Viceroy’s residence. Overnight Delhi. Day 14: Delhi. Car transfers to Delhi airport can be arranged for your onward journey.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £5,780. Single occupancy: £6,940. International flights are not included – see page 227. Included meals: 11 lunches, 9 dinners, with wine. Visas: see page 227. Accommodation. Taj Mahal Hotel, New Delhi (tajhotels.com): modern and comfortable hotel with an attractive garden and swimming pool. The hotel is well-situated in the heart of Lutyens’s Delhi and caters for both the business and leisure traveller. Taj Gateway Ganges Hotel, Varanasi (tajhotels.com): comfortable 4-star hotel outside city centre. Lalit Temple View Hotel, Khajuraho (thelalit.com): modern hotel located within walking distance of the main sites. Hotel Amar Mahal, Orchha (amarmahal.com): the most basic of the hotels on the tour, this 3-star equivalent is conveniently located and adequately equipped. Usha Kiran Palace Hotel, Gwalior (tajhotels. com): former palace converted into a charming hotel. Trident Hotel, Agra (tridenthotels.com): comfortable, well-run, modern 4-star close to the main sites with a spacious garden. The Leela Ambience, Gurgaon (theleela.com): 5-star hotel conveniently close to the airport. How strenuous? See page 227. Average distance by coach per day: 45 miles (including three 3-hour coach journeys where facilities are limited). Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Textile Arts of India with HALI, 9–22 February 2019 (p.228).
For lecturers' biographies See pages 260–267
Indian Summer Delhi, Amritsar, Chandigarh, Shimla 5–16 March 2019 (mf 444) 12 days • £5,360 International flights not included Lecturer: Raaja Bhasin A fascinating selection of places which have the common feature of relating to the last years of the Raj. Shimla, the grandest hill station, the buildings a hotch-potch of bastardised European styles. Reached by the famous mountain ‘toy train’. Visit Chandigarh, the modern ideal city built by Le Corbusier.
the sundown ceremony of lowering the flags and closing the gates is played out daily. Nearby is the former princely state of Kapurthala where the Francophile ruler, Jagatjit Singh, completed a palace in 1908, loosely modelled on Versailles. He tried to introduce French as his court language. When the Punjab was divided between India and Pakistan in 1947 the state capital Lahore was replaced in the Indian portion by a brand new city, Chandigarh. Its building in the 1950s was a deliberate break with the past. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru called it ‘a new city of free India, totally fresh and wholly responsive to the future generations of this great country.’ Led by Le Corbusier, the city design and urban elements were unabashedly modern and western. Still admired and criticized in equal measure by planners, architects and urban historians, it is yet rated as among the best cities in India in which to live.
Shoosmith (1930), has been called one of the great buildings of the 20th century. Day 3: Delhi to Amritsar. The Teen Murthi Bhavan was built in Classical style in the 1930s as Flagstaff House before becoming the home of the first Indian prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Today, it is a museum dedicated to one of the fathers of modern India. Afternoon flight, Delhi to Amritsar (Jet Airways). First of two nights here.
Itinerary
Day 4: Amritsar, Wagah. Amritsar was founded by the 4th Sikh guru in 1579 and is home to Sikhism’s holiest shrine, the Golden Temple. The sacred lake surrounding the temple dates from this period but the current form of the temple is 18th century, and the gilt early 19th century. Jallianwala Bagh was the scene of the massacre of demonstrators against British rule in 1919 and now is a moving memorial garden. In the afternoon, drive to Wagah for the theatrical sunset closing ceremony of the border with Pakistan.
Day 1: Delhi. Rooms are available from 2.00pm on the 4th March, allowing for early check-in (flights from London are not included – see page 227). Nothing is planned before a pre-lunch talk. In the afternoon, visit Old Delhi for a short walk on The Ridge, taking in Flagstaff Tower, a safe haven for the British during the Mutiny of 1857. The Mutiny Memorial commemorating those killed in action is a Neo-Gothic spire with elements of Indian design. First of two nights in Delhi.
Day 5: Kapurthala, Chandigarh. In the morning, drive to Kapurthala, where the local ruler, an ardent francophile, built his palace (1900–1908) loosely modelled on the palace of Versailles and the chateau of Fontainebleau. Now a boys’ school, the interior is lavish, while the gardens are embellished by fountains and statuary in the traditional French style. Continue to Chandigarh to arrive at the hotel in time for dinner. First of two nights in Chandigarh.
Day 2: Delhi. New Delhi was created 1912–31 by Lutyens, Baker and others as a uniquely grand and spacious city. The Secretariat buildings on Raisina Hill are Classical at first glance, but closer inspection reveals Buddhist and Mughal motifs. Subject to special permission, it may be possible to visit the interior of the vast Rashtrapati Bhavan, the former Viceroy’s residence. The fortress-like garrison church of St Martin, designed by Arthur
Day 6: Chandigarh. The joint capital of the states of Haryana and Punjab emerged from the partition of the Punjab in 1947. Conceived by Le Corbusier and Maxwell Fry following the principles of the International Modern movement, it is laid out on the grid principle. The Capital Complex is the home of the administrative buildings, the ‘head’ of the city and some of Le Corbusier’s most ambitious planning. Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Both the high noon of the British Empire in India and its closing years were played out in the city of Delhi and in the ‘summer capital’, Simla (now Shimla), dubbed by many the grandest outpost of the Pax Britannica. Tracing the ebb and flow of the Raj in two imperial capitals, this tour covers architecture, events, lifestyles, and landscapes of the Western Himalaya and numerous stories of places and people. Amritsar is part of this story, and Chandigarh provides a glimpse into Indian Utopia after Independence. Built, destroyed and rebuilt a dozen times, Delhi is one of the oldest cities in the world, and also one of the most multilayered. It is home to some fifteen million people and its heterogeneous population has genetic strands that span the Indian subcontinent, Central Asia and several other parts of the world. Today, towers of chrome and steel stand side by side with centuries-old monuments built by the Mughal rulers. Between the two, the immense architectural momentum of the Raj culminated in the creation of New Delhi, still the core of this fast-expanding city. Up in the hills of the Western Himalaya, Simla was the summer capital of British India, the grandest of the British hill stations. For around a century, a fifth of the human race was ruled from its heights for the better part of every year. The architecture is practically a gazetteer of western styles, but often with a twist, a nod to the heritage of the subcontinent. The town created an enigmatic way of life and the steamier side of its social world gave inspiration to Rudyard Kipling, who as a young correspondent spent some summers amidst the cedars. Many decisions that shaped India and the region were made within sight of the snowclad Himalayas. Today it is the capital of the state of Himachal Pradesh and many of the grander buildings, bungalows and streets still evoke the heyday of a past age. West of it lies the fertile ‘Land of Five Rivers’, the Punjab. Here is the sacred city of Amritsar, site of the Golden Temple, the most sacred shrine of the Sikh faith. This was also where the Jallianwala Bagh massacre took place in 1919, when a crowd of unarmed civilians was fired upon. The event totally altered the face of Indian nationalism. Even Winston Churchill was moved enough to remark, ‘It is an extraordinary event, an event which stands in singular and sinister isolation’. The border with Pakistan is close to Amritsar, and with belligerence which is almost histrionic,
Indian Summer continued
Mughals & Rajputs Delhi, Agra and Rajasthan
Day 7: Chandigarh, Shimla. Transfer to Kalka in the foothills of the Himalayas to board the ‘toy train’ to Shimla. The Kalka–Shimla Railway has been operating daily since 1903 and is a remarkable feat of engineering. After a 3½-hour ride through stunning scenery, transfer to the hotel. First of three nights in Shimla. Day 8: Shimla, Mashobra. The former summer capital of British India, Shimla is set in the lush pine and cedar forests of the Himalayan foothills. Its impressive colonial architecture is best admired through walks along the Mall. Viceregal Lodge, the summer residence of the British viceroy is probably Shimla’s best-known building. Built in 1888, the grey sandstone structure retains the British royal coat of arms on its façade. After lunch at Wildflower Hall, visit Bishop Cotton School, Shimla’s oldest educational institution, founded in 1859. Day 9: Shimla. Walk eastward along The Mall towards Christ Church. The Gaiety Theatre was built in 1887 as the original Town Hall. The Gothic building has been the centre of Shimla’s social life for over a century. The tower of Christ Church (1857) dominates Shimla’s skyline from the Ridge, above the town. Free time in the afternoon. Day 10: Kasauli, Chandigarh. Morning drive to Kasauli. The pretty hill station of Kasauli has some interesting 19th-century buildings such as Christ Church. Drive to Chandigarh. Overnight here. Day 11: Chandigarh to Delhi. Fly to Delhi (IndiGo Airlines). Coronation Park in north Delhi was the location of the 1911 Durbar, at which George V announced the shift of the British capital from Calcutta. Following Independence, it became the resting place of the statues of kings and officials of the British Raj. Overnight Delhi. Day 12: Delhi. Car transfers to Delhi airport can be arranged for your onward journey.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £5,360. Single occupancy: £6,370. International flights are not included – see page 227.
ASIA: India
Included meals: 9 lunches (including 1 packed lunch) and 8 dinners with wine. Visas: see page 227. Accommodation. Taj Mahal Hotel, New Delhi (tajhotels.com): modern and comfortable, with an attractive garden and swimming pool. Situated in the heart of Lutyens’s Delhi, it caters for both business and leisure travellers. Taj Swarna, Amritsar (tajhotels.com): contemporary 5-star hotel in the centre of Amritsar. Taj Chandigarh, Chandigarh (tajhotels.com): modern 5-star hotel; elegantly furnished, well-appointed rooms. The Oberoi Cecil, Shimla (oberoihotels.com): landmark 19th-century 5-star heritage hotel converted into a luxury hotel in the 1930s. How strenuous? See page 227. Average distance by coach per day: 33 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Illustration: Shimla, steel engraving, 1845.
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16–28 November 2019 (mf 900) 13 days • £5,920 International flights not included Lecturer: Dr Giles Tillotson One of the world’s greatest schools of architecture and decoration, rooted in several traditions but becoming an original, harmonious and beautiful synthesis. Architecture, art and history amid the enthralling landscapes and beautiful cities, forts and palaces of north-west India. The tour includes less visited places as well as major ones, spends more time at each place and includes a number of special arrangements. The Mughals, the last and most refined of India’s Muslim dynasties, originated in Central Asia and Afghanistan, being descendants of both Timur (Tamerlaine) and Genghis Khan. Babur conquered the Kingdom of Delhi in 1527, and his successors extended the empire to include at its peak all the Subcontinent except for its southernmost tip. They remained rulers until 1857, though after the death of the emperor Aurangzeb in 1707 their power and territories withered rapidly. During their period of glory, the dynasty ruled one of the great empires in history and the body of architecture bequeathed by emperors and empresses, warlords and administrators, nobles and governors, ranks among the world’s finest. The Rajputs, rulers of large tracts of northern India, trace their origins to the sixth century ad or earlier. They built some of India’s greatest temples, established a sophisticated court culture and, all too ready to put into practice a chivalric and militaristic ethos, became the main bulwark of resistance to Islamic invasion.
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It is ironic therefore that Rajputs and Mughals came to an accommodation. Rajput maharajas served as imperial commanders and as regional governors, while at home, in the fortified cities of Rajasthan, they developed a courtly culture in tandem with that of their imperial overlords but drawing too on older traditions. This composite courtly culture is among India’s best known and most admired phenomena, permeating a range of arts from painting and textiles to jewellery and precious artefacts. The proper setting for all these arts were the courtyards and pavilions of their palaces, which rank among the world’s most striking and beautiful works of secular architecture. Their appearance is further enhanced by their setting in the dramatic landscape of Rajasthan, which encompasses both desert plains (in the north-west), and rugged hills and ravines (in the south-east). This tour covers many of the finest forts, palaces, gardens and cities built by the Mughals in Delhi and Agra and the Rajputs in Rajasthan. Agra is of course much visited, but the tour allows time to explore the city’s other great monuments that place the Taj Mahal in context. Jaipur, the celebrated capital of Rajasthan, was built according to the Vastu Shastra, the architectural treatise from the Vedic age which enjoyed a revival under the Hindu rulers of Rajputana in the eighteenth century. Including the most famous sites and some less known ones, the tour also visits the best museums. A distinguishing feature is that longer is spent at the sites than is the norm for tours to Agra and Rajasthan, resulting in a much deeper understanding and appreciation of this extraordinarily rich episode of artistic and architectural creation. Illustration: Agra, the Red Fort, 19th-century watercolour. Opposite: Jodhpur, after a drawing by C. Waddington 1933.
Itinerary Day 1: Delhi. Rooms are available at the hotel from 2.00pm on the 15th November, allowing for an early check-in. (flights from London are not included – see page 227). Begin with a pre-lunch talk in the hotel. The first Islamic city of Delhi was established in 1193 by the conquering ruler Muhammed of Ghur; the afternoon outing is to the earliest Islamic buildings in India, the towering 12thcentury minaret of Qutb Minar and its mosque, built using masonry from plundered Hindu temples. A stroll in the serene Lodi Gardens takes in the 15th-century tombs of the Sayyid and Lodi dynasties, relatively simple but beguiling in design. First of two nights in Delhi. Day 2: Delhi. The Red Fort and the Friday Mosque, major monuments of Mughal rule, dominate Old Delhi. As we shall so often see, the formidable bulk of the fortress shelters exquisite delicacy (pietra dura work of Shah Jahan’s 1640 throne pavilion). The Jami Masjid is India’s largest mosque. Then by auto-rickshaw through the labyrinthine streets near Chandni Chowk. The Purana Qila, the Old Fort, marks the site of Emperor Humayun’s 16thcentury capital. His tomb is a pioneering example of Mughal architecture and garden design. Day 3: Delhi, Sikandra, Agra. In the morning, drive to Agra. Akbar’s mausoleum (1613) at Sikandra on the outskirts of the town, far surpasses that of his father, Humayun, in size and elaboration, being set in a traditional char-bagh nearly 1 km2 and encrusted with domed marble kiosks. It has no central dome unlike other Mughal mausolea. Set in a pleasure garden on the banks of the River Yamuna in Agra, the exquisite tomb of Itimad ud Daula (1628) is a pioneer of intricate marble inlay work. First of two nights in Agra.
Day 7: Jaipur. Founded in the 18th century by the prominent Rajput ruler Sawai Jai Singh, the grid design of Jaipur demonstrates its creator’s obsession with mathematics and science. The City Palace contains an unsurpassed collection of textiles and arms. The Jantar Mantar, the 1730s observatory, is equipped with massive astronomical instruments that are astonishingly accurate. A walk takes in the many-windowed façade of the pink sandstone Hawa Mahal (Palace of Winds) and attractive havelis. Day 8: Jaipur, Nagaur. Drive (4 hours) through the desert to Nagaur, one of the earliest Rajput settlements and an important Sufi centre. The vast Ahichhatragarh Fort was founded in the 4th century, built in the 11th and developed and embellished in the 18th. From its ramparts, the tapering minarets of the Akbari Mosque are visible in the distance. First of two nights in Nagaur. Day 9: Nagaur. Pre-Mughal and Mughal architecture is well preserved in the palace chambers (linked to the hotel by a corridor); the Akbari Mahal, built to commemorate the visit of the Emperor Akbar in 1570, has some original floral murals, while the Hadi Rani Mahal houses some 16th-century murals in shades of green depicting daily and courtly scenes. The rest of the day is at leisure. Overnight Nagaur. Day 10: Nagaur, Jodhpur. Drive through the desert to Jodhpur. The capital of one the largest Rajput states in western Rajasthan is presided over by the magnificent Mehrangarh Fort. Described by Kipling as the ‘work of angels, fairies and giants’, it was built in 1459 and has some of the most imposing fortifications in the world. The afternoon visit is followed by a private dinner in the fort’s garden. First of two nights in Jodhpur.
Day 11: Jodhpur. The visit to Mehrangarh Fort examines the painting tradition of the Marwari Rajputs, with special admission to the gallery led by the curator. The buildings of the lively Old City are painted in a variety of blues, originally the colour denoting the homes of Brahmins and a convenient insect repellent. Overnight Jodhpur. Day 12: Jodhpur, Delhi. Fly to Delhi (Jet Airways). Overnight Delhi (Gurgaon). Day 13: Delhi. Car transfers to Delhi airport can be arranged for your onward journey.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £5,920. Single occupancy: £7,240. International flights are not included – see page 227. Included meals: 8 lunches, 11 dinners, with wine. Visas: see page 227. Accommodation. The Taj Mahal Hotel, New Delhi (tajhotels.com): modern and comfortable with an attractive garden and swimming pool. The hotel is situated in the heart of Lutyen’s Delhi and caters for both business and leisure travellers. Trident Hotel, Agra (tridenthotels. com): comfortable, well-run, modern 4-star close to the main sites with a spacious garden. Trident Hotel, Jaipur (tridenthotels.com): modern 5-star hotel on the outskirts of the city. Ranvas, Nagaur (ranvasnagaur.com): 18th-century palace converted into a luxury hotel. There are no twinbedded rooms. Raas, Jodhpur (raasjodhpur.com): boutique hotel combining modern and traditional design. The Leela, Gurgaon (theleela.com): 5-star hotel conveniently close to the airport. How strenuous? See page 227. Average distance by coach per day: 44 miles (including four 4-hour journeys where facilities may be limited). Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
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Day 4: Agra. The Taj Mahal (1631–47) was famously built by Shah Jahan as the tomb of his favourite wife. Rise early to see it in the first light of day; despite inevitable scepticism, it is likely that you will indeed conclude that this is the most beautiful building in the world. Return to the hotel for breakfast before visiting Agra Fort, first constructed by Akbar (1565–73) and added to by Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb. Among the highlights are Akbar’s Jehangiri Mahal, with high-quality sandstone carvings of Hindu influence; the Sheesh Mahal, with its mirror-mosaic interiors; and the elaborately decorated Musamman Burj pavilion. The rest of the day is free.
lavish 19th-century Madhavendra palace built for the Maharaja’s nine wives.
Day 5: Fatehpur Sikri, Jaipur. Fourteen years after its inception in 1571 Akbar abandoned his new capital at Fatehpur Sikri, but the most important elements of the city had been constructed. The palace complex consists of beautifully carved red sandstone pavilions amid a series of courtyards. In the Diwan-i-Khas (private assembly hall) the central pillar fuses a spectrum of architectural styles and religious symbols. Continue to Jaipur for the first of three nights. Day 6: Jaipur. Athwart a natural ridge below, the magnificent yellow walls of the 17th-century Amber Palace conceal fine craftsmanship – mirrored chambers, latticed windows, carved alabaster. The Nahargarh (Tiger) Fort houses the Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Bengal by River Calcutta and a week’s cruise along the Hooghly
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10–22 November 2019 (mf 880) 13 days • £5,260 Very few spaces remaining Lecturer: Dr Anna-Maria Misra 16–27 November 2020 (mg 580) 11 nights • £5,410 Lecturer: Dr Anna-Maria Misra Four days in Calcutta, Bengal’s capital, and a week on an exclusively chartered cruiser visiting places along the Hooghly River, a distributary of the ‘Lower Ganges’. Bengal was an outpost of the Mughal Empire and the first region to come under the control of the East India Company. Islamic architecture in Murshidabad and Gaur, Hindu temples in Baranagar and Kalna, Georgian and Victorian buildings of the Raj. Sailing along the banks of the Hooghly gives a unique insight into unspoilt village life. 226
When George V announced in 1911 that the capital of British India was to be transferred from Calcutta to Delhi, there was disbelief and horror in Bengal. Founded by Job Charnock in 1690 on the banks of the mighty Hooghly River, Calcutta (now Kolkata) had been the headquarters of British rule in India ever since. Today the city is home to over fifteen million, but the central district remains largely as it was during the Raj. Buildings of all sorts – political, economic, educational, religious, residential – formed the British city. Their styles, Classical and Gothic, are bizarrely familiar and their size is startling, often exceeding their equivalents in Britain. A walk through the South Park Street Cemetery shows the high price that many Britons paid for coming to Calcutta in search of wealth. ‘Power on silt!’ wrote Kipling of the city. ‘Death in my hands, but Gold!’ West Bengal is the land of lost capitals and fading grandeur. Calcutta was only the latest city whose power was snatched away by changing political events. Hindus, Muslims, Portuguese, Dutch, Danish and French all founded settlements on the dreamy, fertile banks of the Hooghly.
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For a time Bengal was the richest province in India, not only because everything seemed to grow in its lush soil but from the industry of its people too. Indigo, opium and rice were cash crops, but textiles first attracted European traders in the seventeenth century. Beautiful silk and muslin fabrics were known as ‘woven wind’ because they were so fine. The river was a natural highway. Apart from the Grand Trunk Road of the Mughals, there was no other way to travel. Steeped in history but still very much off the conventional tourist route, this tour adds a new dimension to India for those who already know it, and for those who are yet to encounter it. Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, and Christianity are all practised in Bengal and each faith has built buildings to its gods and goddesses. The town of Kalna is named after a manifestation of the dreaded goddess Kali, the destroyer who lives in cremation grounds and wears a necklace of skulls. By contrast the Jain temples in the village of Baranagar are a peaceful anthem in carved brick to non-violence and harmony. Bengal contains the largest imambaras in India, buildings associated with the Shi’a strand of Islam, not quite mausolea, although burials are frequently found in them, more gathering places for the devout. Serampore, the Danish settlement, is known for its eighteenth-century church. Had the British under Clive not defeated the Nawab Siraj-ud-daula at the Battle of Plassey in 1757, the history of India would have been very different. The French, established at Chandernagore and allies of the Nawab, would have seized their opportunity, supported by Francophone rulers elsewhere in India who wanted to counterbalance the pervasive British presence. But it was from their base in Bengal that the British steadily extended their rule through the subcontinent. The cruiser chartered for this tour is fairly new (built in Calcutta in 2013). By the standards of vessels on European rivers it is not luxurious, but it is comfortable, has great charm and the crew are welcoming and efficient. Lounging on the top deck after a fulfilling day of sightseeing with a gin & tonic, watching rural life on the banks as dusk falls, comes pretty close to a perfect Indian experience.
Itinerary | 2020 departure The itinerary in 2019 differs from what is published here (the tour is also currently full). For full details, visit www.martinrandall.com or contact us. Day 1: Calcutta (Kolkata). The tour begins in Calcutta with a free morning (flights from London are not included – see opposite page). Rooms are available at the hotel from 2.00pm on the 15th November, allowing for an early check-in. In the afternoon visit the South Park Street Cemetery, where tombs of the early British settlers are of a monumental classicism without parallel in Britain. First of three nights in Calcutta.
Illustration: Calcutta, after a drawing by Desmond Doig.
Day 2: Calcutta. A morning walk provides a survey of civic buildings from the late 18th century. St John’s Church, dating back to 1784, is loosely modelled on St Martin-in-the-Fields in London (like hundreds throughout the globe). In the grounds, the mausoleum of Job Charnock, the founder of Calcutta, is the earliest British building in India. Optional visit in the afternoon to the Indian Museum, built by Granville to house the collection from the Asiatic Society, is India’s most important collection of sculpture. Day 3: Calcutta. The Anglican cathedral of St Paul, completed in 1847 in Gothic style, has many fine memorials and a window by Burne-Jones, one of his best. Completed in 1921, the Victoria Memorial is the most imposing building in Calcutta. It houses a collection of European paintings and a display on the history of the city. In the evening visit Srijit Tagore’s Residence for a private Bharatanatyam performance by world acclaimed dancer, Souraja Tagore. Day 4: Calcutta, Farakka. The Maghen David Synagogue (1884) and the Armenian Church (1707) are reminders of the variety of religions which thrived in Calcutta prior to Independence. Catch an afternoon train (c. 4 hours) to Farakka to board the RV Rajmahal in the early evening. First of seven nights on board the RV Rajmahal. Day 5: Gaur, Farakka. Drive from Farakka to the quiet city of Gaur, the ancient capital of Bengal. Situated within easy reach of the black basalt Rajmahal hills, Gaur is filled with elegant Muslim ruins. The many mosques, palaces and gateways stand as testament to a prosperous past and gifted stonemasons. Sail in the afternoon through a stretch of charming waterway that weaves past banks lush with mango groves and mustard crops to the village of Baranagar. Moor here overnight.
Day 7: Murshidabad, Plassey, Katwa. The Mughal Khushbagh is a peaceful walled pleasure-garden containing the Tomb of Siraj-ud-Daulah and family. After sailing further, there is an excursion to the site of the battle of Plassey, where Robert Clive’s 1757 victory over the Nawab of Bengal, Siraj-ud-Daulah was the prelude to consolidation and extension of the East India Company’s power in Bengal and beyond. Continue sailing to Katwa for the night. Day 8: Matiari, Nabadwip, Mayapur. Visit the village of Matiari where brass is worked using traditional methods. Sail to the pilgrimage centre of Nabadwip, where the river ghats are lined with active temples for a leisurely walk in the bazaar. The skyline of Mayapur on the opposite bank
Day 9: Kalna, Hooghly, Chinsura. At Kalna, visit the series of fine 18th-cent. terracotta temples and the unique Shiva temple with concentric rings comprising 108 double-vaulted shrines. Continue sailing to Hooghly where the 19th-century Shi’a Imambara of Hazi Mohammed Mohasin contains fine marble inlay. Continue by cyclerickshaw to Chinsura to visit the 17th-cent. Dutch cemetery. Sail to the former French colony of Chandernagore, established in 1673. Day 10: Chandernagore. Visit the remaining churches and cemeteries as well as Governor Joseph François Dupleix’s House. Sail to the former Danish colony of Serampore, which came under British rule in 1845. Continue sailing to Calcutta in the evening. Day 11: Disembark Calcutta. At Calcutta, disembark the RV Rajmahal in the morning and transfer to the hotel. The Home of Rabindranath Tagore, the Bengali poet and philosopher who received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913, provides an insight into the Bengali Intellectual Renaissance which in turn led to the Independentist movement. Overnight in Calcutta. Day 12: Calcutta. The tour ends after breakfast. Transfers are arranged for your onward travel.
Dr Anna-Maria Misra Associate Professor in Modern History at Oxford University and a specialist on Indian history and the British Empire. She has published widely, including Vishnu’s Crowded Temple: India Since the Great Rebellion and she wrote and presented the Channel 4 series An Indian Affair. See page 260 for all lecturers' biographies.
Practicalities | 2020 departure Price, per person. Two sharing: £5,410. Single occupancy: £6,250. International flights are not included – see page 227. Included meals: 8 lunches and 10 dinners with soft drinks, beer, water and coffee at lunch and wine at dinner, where available. Visas: see above.
International flights Return flights from London are not included in the price of our tours in India. We will send recommended flight options when they are available to book (usually c. 10–11 months before departure) and ask that you make your own flight reservation and inform us of the details. Please ensure you have travel insurance that protects you in the unlikely event that the tour is cancelled.
How strenuous? For all our tours in India, a good level of fitness is essential. Unless you enjoy entirely unimpaired mobility, cope with everyday walking and stair-climbing without difficulty and are reliably sure-footed, these tours are not for you. A rough indication of the minimum level of fitness required is that you ought to be able to walk briskly at about three miles per hour for at least half an hour, and undertake a walk at a more leisurely pace for an hour or two unaided. You may be on your feet for long stretches of time. Uneven ground and irregular paving are standard. Unruly traffic in city centres require vigilence. Steps to temples and palaces can be steep and slippery. There are often long coach journeys with limited facilities (further detail on individual tour descriptions). Even though there is some shade at most sites, the Indian sun can be strong, even in the cooler seasons.
Indian visas Visas are required for most foreign nationals, and not included in the prices of our tours in India. We will advise all participants on the process.
silt levels might necessitate omission of one or more ports of call. We would try and devise a satisfactory alternative. How strenuous? See above. Additionally, surefootedness is essential to get on and off the ship; the riverbanks may be slippery. There is a 4-hour train journey where facilities may be limited. Group size: between 15 and 24 participants.
Accommodation. Oberoi Grand, Calcutta (oberoihotels.com): long-established luxury hotel conveniently located in the city centre. RV Rajmahal, River Cruiser (assambengalnavigation. com): built in 2013, not luxurious but adequately comfortable boat, with great charm. Changes to the itinerary: circumstances might arise which prevent us operating the tour as advertised. On the river, circumstances such as the ebb and flow of the tide and shifting
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Day 6: Baranagar. Walk through fields to visit three miniature carved-brick Jain temples. Sail to Murshidabad, where a magnificent example of Greek Revival architecture, the Hazarduari Palace was built by Duncan McLeod in 1837 as a guest house for the Nawab. The museum holds a respectable collection of European paintings, sculpture and arms. The imposing Katra Mosque (1724) is modelled on the great mosque at Mecca. Visit the Katgola palace, 18th-century home of rich Jain merchants in classical Georgian style. Remain at Murshidabad overnight.
is dominated by a vast new temple. Sail in the evening from Mayapur to Kalna.
Textile Arts of India with HALI Courtly and private collections of north-west India Day 2: Delhi. Founded in 1978, the Sanskriti Kendra campus houses small individual museums of terracottas, everyday art and textiles. Based on the private collection of its founder O.P. Jain, the display provides an overview of India’s textile traditions. In the afternoon visit the Handicraft and Handlooms Museum displaying a range of Indian textiles (subject to the temporary exhibition schedule at the time of visit – to be confirmed). Day 3: Delhi, Jodhpur. Fly from Delhi to Jodhpur (Jet Airways). Presiding over the capital of one of the largest Rajput states in western Rajasthan is the magnificent Mehrangarh Fort. Described by Kipling as the ‘work of angels, fairies and giants’, it has some of the most imposing fortifications in the world. The buildings of the lively Old City are painted in a variety of blues, originally the colour denoting the homes of Brahmins. First of two nights in Jodhpur.
9–22 February 2019 (ef 419) 14 days • £6,980 International flights not included Lecturer: Rosemary Crill Designed in collaboration with HALI, the leading magazine for antique carpets and textiles. An opportunity to gain exclusive access to the iconic carpets and textiles of India. Includes places rarely visited by tourists. Private curator-led visits throughout including the textile stores of Mehrangarh Fort in Jodhpur and the TAPI collection in Surat.
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For millennia, northern India was the battleground for a succession of external powers vying with local rulers. The most renowned and longest-lasting of these invaders was the Mughal dynasty, whose founder Babur overthrew the Lodi Dynasty and entered India in 1526. His successors ruled much of India until they were deposed by the British in the mid-nineteenth century. The Hindu Rajputs (‘sons of kings’) were forced into uneasy alliances with the Muslim Mughals in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, by giving their daughters in marriage and by accepting high ranks in the Mughal armies, but they nevertheless maintained their Hindu traditions at their great forts and palaces in what is now Rajasthan. Some of the most spectacular textiles and carpets ever made were the product of the patronage of these Mughal and Rajput rulers. Many have since been dispersed into the world’s museums, but some royal palaces in India, notably those of Jaipur and Jodhpur, have retained many historic pieces, tents, carpets, furnishings and garments made for the courts. India is also home to two of the world’s greatest collections of historic Indian textiles built up in more recent times – the Calico Museum of Textiles in Ahmedabad and the TAPI collection in Surat – as well as the notable holdings of other museums such as the National Museum in New Delhi and the CSMVS (former Prince of Wales Museum) in Mumbai. 228
The tour focuses on Rajasthan and Gujarat in north-west India. Rajasthan is the heartland of Rajput culture, and the astonishing fortified palaces of Mehrangarh in Jodhpur and Amer outside Jaipur are the most spectacular manifestations of this rich hybrid tradition, blending Hindu and Islamic architectural and decorative styles. The City Palace in Jaipur, built when the new capital was founded in 1727, is now a museum displaying magnificent royal garments and furnishings, including a rare Mughal pashmina carpet of the seventeenth century. Gujarat also came under Mughal rule – many of the finest silks and embroideries for the Mughal court were made in royal workshops in Ahmedabad – but some of its finest monuments date from the pre-Mughal period of Islamic rule. The ornately decorated fifteenth- and sixteenth-century mosques of Ahmedabad with their sinuous tree patterns and geometric jali screens speak of a rich and complex tradition of architecture and design in the region. Both Rajasthan and Gujarat are known for their rich local textile arts, especially embroidery, block-printing and tie-dyeing, and these traditions are on view at the Shreyas Foundation in Ahmedabad and the Anokhi Museum of Hand Block-Printing at Amer. It is no exaggeration to say that the extraordinary richness and variety of textile collections in these two states make the region unique not only in India but in the world. Guest lecturer, Dr Steven J. Cohen, is an Indian carpet expert and May Beattie Fellow in Carpet Studies at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
Itinerary Day 1: Delhi. Rooms are available at the hotel from 2.00pm on 8th February, allowing for an early check-in (flights from London are not included – see page 227). The tour begins in the early afternoon with a talk in the hotel before a visit to the National Museum. We go behind the scenes with the Curator of Textile and Decorative Arts, who shows us rarely-seen pieces including Mughal lampas-weaves. First of two nights in Delhi.
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Day 4: Jodhpur. Excursion to a dhurrie-weaving (flat-weave) co-operative in the desert village of Salawas before returning to Jodhpur for the afternoon. Mehrangarh fort, founded in the mid15th century and lived in by the royal family of Jodhpur-Marwar until the 20th century. It houses an important collection of paintings and textiles, including royal tents and garments dating back to the 17th century. Our after-hours visit is by special admission to the gallery led by the curator. Private dinner in the fort’s garden. Overnight Jodhpur. Day 5: Jodhpur, Jaipur. Travel east by train from Jodhpur to Jaipur (c. 6 hours). There is some free time with some guided textile shopping opportunities. First of three nights in Jaipur. Day 6: Jaipur. The City Palace contains an unsurpassed collection of paintings and artefacts and the Jantar Mantar, a 1730s observatory with astonishingly accurate astronomical instruments. In the afternoon visit the Albert Hall Museum, purpose-built in flamboyant ‘Indo-Saracenic’ style, opened in 1887. Highlights are six 17th-cent. Mughal carpets and the renowned ‘Persian Garden Carpet’, formerly at Amer palace. Day 7: Jaipur, Amer. Brigitte Singh produces the highest-quality hand-block printing in India. We visit her workshop to see printing being done as well as blocks being carved. Athwart a natural ridge, with magnificent yellow walls, Amer (or Amber) Fort was the capital of the Kachhwaha Rajputs before the foundation of Jaipur in 1727. Day 8: Jaipur, Ahmedabad. Fly from Jaipur to Ahmedabad in the morning (IndiGo). Visit a local artist’s textile collection. Particularly strong are the pichhwais (textiles for Krishna shrines). First of two nights in Ahmedabad. Day 9: Ahmedabad. The morning is dedicated to the Calico Museum, the world’s greatest collection of Indian textiles. Highlights include a wealth of 17th-century Mughal textiles, a unique Mughal dhurrie, folk embroideries, trade cloths and courtly garments. There is an afternoon visit to the Shreyas Foundation and Lokaytan Folk Museum. Day 10: Ahmedabad, Vadodara (Baroda). A morning walk takes in the many teak havelis in the maze of lanes or pols. After lunch, drive to
Sacred India Ancient religious art and architecture Lukshmi Vilas Palace at Vadodara (Baroda), an extravagant 19th-cent. building of the IndoSaracenic school and still the private residence of the Baroda Royal family. The Maharaja Fateh Singh Museum houses Royal Maratha textiles. Overnight Baroda. Day 11: Baroda, Surat. A morning visit to the Baroda Museum & Art Gallery, built in 1894 to resemble the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, for its collection of Indian miniatures and bronzes. The afternoon is spent driving to Surat. First of two nights in Surat. Day 12: Surat. The day is dedicated to a curatorled visit of the private TAPI Collection, assembled by textile manufacturers Praful and Shilpa Shah, now one of the world’s most important holdings of Indian textiles. Highlights include unique 14thand 15th-century textiles traded to Indonesia and Mughal textiles including tent-hangings and early Kashmir shawls. Overnight Surat. Day 13: Surat, Mumbai. Train from Surat to Mumbai (c. 4 hours). After lunch, visit CSMVS (formerly Prince of Wales Museum). It houses important collections of sculpture, paintings and decorative arts, including a newly opened textile gallery. Overnight Mumbai. Day 14: Mumbai. Car transfers to Mumbai Airport can be arranged.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £6,980. Single occupancy: £8,390. International flights are not included – see page 227.
15–28 March 2020 (mg 130) 13 nights • £6,430 International flights not included Lecturer: Asoka Pugal A journey through the heartland of India to see many of India’s most remarkable religious sites. Varanasi, India’s most sacred city and Sarnath, where the Buddha preached his first sermon. The Hindu temples of Khajuraho and the caves of Ajanta and Ellora. ‘The sacredness of India haunts me like a passion.’ So declared that great proconsul Lord Curzon just over a century ago. To this day the notion of India as a specially sanctified space continues to shape but perhaps also to distort our image of the subcontinent, thanks in part to the Beatles, the Guru Maharishi and the Swinging Sixties. But what really sets India apart from other exotic corners of the globe is not so much its religiosity as the sheer abundance and variety of religious expression to be found there, together with the remarkable art and architecture it has generated. It is through the visual arts that the religious impulse finds its finest expression, and in India that expression extends over a period of some 3,500 years, moving from the snake- , treeand fertility-goddess-worship of the original forest dwellers right through to the present. This span of time encompasses the advent of the Aryan pastoralists with their Vedic gods;
the challenges to Brahmanical authority by the founders of Buddhism and Jainism; Emperor Ashoka’s unifying imperial dharma; the counterreformation of devotional Hinduism and the cults of Shiva, Vishnu and Krishna; and the advance of Islam in both Sufic and militant form – to say nothing of Zoroastrianism, Sikhism, Christianity and even Judaism. This ambitious and varied tour of India takes you on a journey through its very heartland which includes almost a dozen of India’s most remarkable religious sites, many of them on the World Heritage list. But it must be stressed that this is not a religious tour per se. Its object, quite simply, is to explore and, above all, enjoy India’s varied forms of religious experience in their proper context: not in museums and galleries but in those theatres where they have found their highest expression, both in terms of religious practice and artistic activity, whether beside the bathing ghats at Varanasi, the City of Light (otherwise known as Benares and Kashi), the finely carved temples at Khajuraho with their Tantric erotic carvings (yet to be fully understood), the ancient and austere rock-cut caves and temples at Ajanta, Ellora and Elephanta, or the sublime artistry of the great Buddhist stupa complex at Sanchi.
Itinerary Day 1: Delhi. The tour begins in Delhi with a lecture and lunch in the hotel restaurant at c. 12.00 noon. Your room is available from 2.00pm on 14th March (flights from London are not included – see page 227). In the afternoon, visit the towering
Included meals: 9 lunches, 10 dinners, with wine. Visas: see page 227.
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Accommodation. The Imperial, New Delhi (theimperialindia.com): 5-star luxury hotel, in an iconic 1930s building, centrally located. Hotel RAAS, Jodhpur (raasjodhpur.com): boutique hotel within the walled city. Jai Mahal, Jaipur (tajhotels.com): 5-star hotel in the Indo-Saracenic archiectural style. House of MG, Ahmedabad (houseofmg.com): boutique hotel in the centre of Ahmedabad. The Gateway Hotel Akota, Vadodara (gateway.tajhotels.com): business hotel, the most comfortable option in the city. Taj Gateway, Surat (gateway.tajhotels.com): comfortable 4-star hotel. Taj Mahal Palace, Mumbai (tajhotels.com): centrally-located, iconic landmark. Impeccible service. How strenuous? See page 227. There are two train journeys of 6 and 4 hours. Average distance by coach per day: 32 miles (including two 4-hour journeys). Facilities on trains and coaches are limited and may be of poor quality. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Essential India, 23 February–8 March 2019 (p.221).
Illustration: woven hanging, 18th-19th century ©Mehrangarh Museum Trust, Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India and His Highness Maharaja Gaj Singh of Jodhpur.
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' As usual, everything is handled for one. It would not be possible to have such a carefree holiday in India at less expense and such comfort.' Participant on Sacred India in 2015.
minaret and mosque at Qutb Minar, site of the first Islamic city of Delhi, established in 1193 on the grounds of a defeated Rajput fort. Overnight Delhi. Day 2: Delhi to Varanasi. Fly to Varanasi (Benares) in the morning. Afternoon walk through the old city and a boat ride on the holy Ganges at sunset to witness the Aarti ritual. This fire offering, which dates back to the time of the Buddha himself and was revived in the 19th century, is a daily blessing ceremony and a central element of the religious life of this sacred city. First of three nights in Varanasi. Day 3: Sarnath, Varanasi. Sarnath is where the Buddha preached his first sermon and remains an active Buddhist centre. The Dhamek stupa in the Deer Park marks the spot where the Buddha sat to preach. The Sarnath museum houses the Ashokan lion capital, the symbol of modern India since independence. Afternoon visit to the Bharat Kala Bhavan, the university museum.
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Day 4: Varanasi. Early-morning boat ride to witness the morning prayers and ablutions of the devout is followed by a walk among the sacred temples and holy ponds of the south part of the city, near Assi Ghat. Breakfast on the ghats (stepped embankments). Some free time in the afternoon. Day 5: Varanasi to Khajuraho. Fly to Khajuraho (Jet Airways) in the morning. After lunch, visit the Jain temples in the eastern group. The Parasnath Temple is conspicuous for its absence of erotic depictions. First of two nights in Khajuraho. Day 6: Khajuraho. In the morning, visit the spectacular western group of temples built during the Chandela Rajput dynasty, famous for the beautifully carved erotic scenes. The awe-inspiring 11th-cent. Kandariya Mahadev Temple is one of the finest examples of North Indian temple architecture, richly embellished with sensuous sculptures depicting the god’s heavenly abodes. Nearby, the Jagadambi Temple contains excellent carvings of Vishnu. In the afternoon, visit the eastern and southern groups of temples. 230
Day 7: Khajuraho to Orchha. Drive to Orchha (c. 5 hours). Located close to the Betwa River on dramatic rocky terrain, Orchha’s former glory as capital of the Bundela kings is evident in the multi-chambered Jehangir Mahal with lapis lazuli tiles and ornate gateways. The Raj Mahal palace contains some beautiful murals with religious and secular themes. Elegant Royal Chhatris (cenotaphs) line the ghats of the Betwa. Overnight Orchha.
Practicalities
Day 8: Orchha to Bhopal. Drive to Jhansi and take an express train (c. 4 hours) to Bhopal in the morning. Arrive at the hotel at c. 3.00pm. Some free time in the afternoon. First of two nights in Bhopal.
Accommodation. The Taj Mahal, Delhi (tajhotels.com): modern and comfortable, ideally situated in the heart of Lutyens’s Delhi. The Taj Gateway Ganges, Varanasi (tajhotels.com): large, functional yet comfortable 4-star hotel with contemporary touches to the rooms; located close to the centre but removed from the bustle. The Lalit Temple, Khajuraho (thelalit.com): modern hotel within walking distance of the main site, rooms are spacious with large windows overlooking the pool or garden. Hotel Amar Mahal, Orchha (amarmahal.com): the most basic of the hotels on the tour, this 3-star equivalent is conveniently located and adequately equipped. The Jehan Numa Palace, Bhopal (jehannuma.com): former royal residence on the edge of the city with gardens, verandas and a pool. Bedrooms vary but all are comfortable and well equipped. The Taj Residency, Aurangabad (tajhotels.com): pleasant hotel set amid well-tended gardens. The rooms are comfortable, with private balconies. The Taj Mahal Palace, Mumbai (tajhotels.com): an iconic landmark and a masterpiece of Indo-Saracenic architecture, comfortable, centrally located and with excellent service.
Day 9: Sanchi, Vidisha. Remotely located in open, hilly and sparsely populated countryside, Sanchi is one of the treasures of India and a unesco heritage site. On top of a hill with lovely views all around, the site was supposedly founded by the Great Ashoka. The 2nd-cent. ad stupa with stone railings and four magnificently elaborately carved gateways survives almost intact. Nearby Vidisha was an important Hindu centre under the Gupta dynasty as seen in the majestic carving of Varaha, the boar incarnation of Vishnu. Day 10: Bhopal, Mumbai, Aurangabad. Early morning flight to Mumbai. The Dr Bhau Daji Lad City Museum (built 1885) was formerly known as the Victoria & Albert and is the oldest museum in Mumbai. Its collection explores the city’s distinctive communities and their respective religious practices. Fly in the afternoon to Aurangabad for two nights. Day 11: Ajanta. Cut into the volcanic lava of the Deccan plateau, the Buddhist caves at Ajanta were first excavated around the 2nd cent. bc. A later group of caves was built during the Gupta era in the 5th–6th cent. ad before the site was abandoned in the 7th century in favour of Ellora. Celebrated for their fine statuary and the refined wall paintings, they are often considered one of the greatest achievements in Indian art. Day 12: Ellora, Mumbai. With their uninterrupted sequence spanning four centuries, the caves and rock-cut temples at Ellora are both artistic masterpieces and technological achievements. The various monasteries dedicated to Buddhism, Jainism and Brahmanism also attest to the religious tolerance which prevailed under the Rashtrakuta dynasty. The impressive rock-cut, monolithic Kailashanatha Temple marks the transition between rock-cut and structural architecture, which took place around the 8th century across the Deccan. Fly to Mumbai in the late afternoon for two nights. Day 13: Mumbai. In the morning, take a privately chartered boat to Elephanta Island. The largest of the two groups is dedicated to Lord Shiva. The relief panels depict the god in various forms. The central Trimurti image, or three-headed Shiva, is said to represent the three aspects of the deity and considered a masterpiece of Gupta art. Day 14: Mumbai. Transfers are arranged to Mumbai airport for your onward journey.
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Price, per person. Two sharing: £6,430. Single occupancy: £7,660. International flights are not included – see page 227. Included meals: 11 lunches (including 1 packed lunch) and 9 dinners; beer, water, soft drinks and coffee at lunch plus wine at dinner. Visas: see page 227.
How strenuous? See page 227. Additionally, there are numerous steps in Ajanta and Ellora. Sure-footedness is essential to board the river boats. Average distance by coach per day: 38 miles (including two long journeys during which facilities are limited and may be of poor quality). Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
Illustration, previous page: Varanasi, aquatint by William Daniell 1812. Above left: sculptural details at Ellora, mid19th-century engraving by H. Gugeler.
What else is included in the price? See page 6 For lecturers' biographies See pages 260–267
Gastronomic Kerala Traders, spices and churches of the Malabar Coast 16–25 February 2020 (mg 105) 9 nights • £5,030 International flights not included Lecturer: Dr Elizabeth Collingham Surveys the history and distinctive culture of the region through its cuisine: Jewish, Muslim, Christian. Three nights in Fort Cochin, the spice trade centre of the Arabian Sea. From tea and spice plantations to lush backwaters, a leisurely paced tour amid varied scenery. Three cooking demonstrations followed by lunch and two privately hosted lunches. Eco-friendly hotels set in natural surroundings.
pepper eventually came to dominate Indian cookery, ousting black pepper from its position as the hottest spice. The Portuguese also introduced cassava (tapioca), now widely eaten in Kerala. Tea cultivation was introduced to India by the British and one of the Raj’s most enduring legacies was to persuade Indians to drink tea after a concerted campaign in the late nineteenth century. The hallmark of Keralan, and Indian, cuisine is that it has absorbed influences from each wave of visitors, from early Christians and medieval Muslim Sultans to the English bureaucrats of the Raj. Food, then, is one of the best vehicles to explore India’s colourful history and Kerala’s cuisine is no exception. Cooking demonstrations and privately hosted lunches allow participants to revel in Kerala’s rich and delicious culinary history, while gentle walks in tea and spice plantations provide some insight in the production of these once luxurious goods.
Itinerary Day 1: Cochin. The tour begins with lunch in the hotel restaurant at c. 12.30pm. Your room is available from 2.00pm the previous day (flights from London are not included –see page 227). Later in the afternoon, visit the Mattancherry Palace. First built by the Portuguese in 1557, it was rebuilt by the Dutch in 1663. The murals in the king’s bedroom which depict mythical scenes from the Raas Leela and the Ramayana are a masterpiece of Keralan paintings. Dinner in the hotel restaurant explores the rich culinary heritage of this trading centre. First of three nights in Cochin. Day 2: Cochin. A morning walk around Fort Cochin includes the Chinese fishing nets, which have been in use since the 14th century and St Francis Church (c. 1510), one of the earliest Catholic churches in India and the temporary resting place of Vasco da Gama. A cooking demonstration focusing on the Mopilah (Muslim)
culinary tradition of northern Kerala precedes a private lunch. Muslim traders may have settled on the Malabar Coast as early as in the 7th century and have since developed a cuisine with distinctive flavours. Free afternoon. Day 3: Fort Cochin. Jewish merchants and Christian settlers arrived in Kerala with St Thomas the Apostle in ad 52. The Paradesi Synagogue, built in 1568 by European Jews, is tucked away in the heart of the Jewish Quarter. Its airy interior is enhanced by hand painted Chinese floor tiles and European glass chandeliers. A cooking demonstration is followed by a Christian lunch in a private home. Opened in 2009, the Folklore Museum houses a private collection of Keralan artefacts. Day 4: Cochin, Munnar. In the morning, drive through the coconut palms and spice plantations of the low- and midlands to Munnar, the centre of Kerala’s tea industry. Located at an altitude of 1,600 metres, this hill station was discovered by Scottish planters in the 19th century and was once the British Summer capital of south India. Tea tasting session in the afternoon. First of two nights in Munnar. Day 5: Munnar. Drive around the rolling hills to one of the 30 tea estates in the area. After a walk around the plantation witnessing pickers at work, visit the processing factory. A Tamil-style lunch reflects the tea workers’ origin from the neighbouring state. Day 6: Munnar to Kumily. Leaving the tea growing region of the high altitudes, drive through thick forests of teak and rosewood to reach Thekkady. Afternoon walk around a spice plantation to explore the growing process and the complex network of correlations between species. In the evening, dinner focuses on locally farmed produce. Overnight Kumily. Illustration: Kottayam, Kerala, wood engraving c. 1880.
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Kerala has supplied the world with spices since antiquity. Roman ships sailed to the Malabar Coast laden with sacks of gold to trade for their favourite spice, black pepper. Modern Kerala is still a major producer of black pepper and this tour follows in the footsteps of Chinese, Persian, Jewish, Arab and European merchants who have been coming here ever since in search of spices. The warm but cloudy climate of the Western Ghats provides the perfect conditions for cultivating pepper vines that wither in strong sunlight. On the distinctively-shaped knolls, pepper plants straggle among the fronds of cardamom trees while large tracts of the hills are covered by neat rows of bright green tea bushes. When the Portuguese discovered the sea route to India in the fifteenth century they stumbled into the most intense commercial zone in the world. Kerala’s spice markets attracted merchants trading African slaves, gold and ivory, precious stones, dyes and rugs from the Persian Gulf, Chinese silks and porcelain, nutmeg and cloves from the Indonesian archipelago. The Portuguese quickly established a trading base at Fort Cochin and within thirty years of their arrival on the scene dominated Indian Ocean trade until they were superseded by the Dutch in the seventeenth century; their churches are a testimony to their determination to demonstrate their religious hegemony as well as their military might. The Paradesi synagogue in the Jewish quarter is almost the last trace of Kerala’s Jewish community (most of Cochin Jews have now emigrated to Israel). However, the community have left behind a cookery tradition influenced by the Middle Eastern and Spanish origins of the Indian Jews. Kerala’s Syrian Christian community is also thought to have been founded as long ago as the first century ad. St Thomas the Apostle is said to have made a number of converts to Christianity while on a proselytising mission to South India. This Nesrani community is famous for its appam, soft rice breads, fluffy in the centre and crispy on the edge, perfect for dipping in the stews which characterise their cuisine. A fragrant biryani is the best-known contribution of the Arab spice traders to the Keralan culinary repertoire. The Portuguese introduced creamy custards and pastries as well as an array of foods which they had only just discovered themselves in the Americas: the chilli
Gastronomic Kerala continued
Architecture of the British Raj Evolution of styles in Mumbai, Kolkata and Delhi
Day 7: Kumily to Kumarakom. Drive to a planter’s home for a privately hosted Britishinfluenced lunch. Afternoon drive to the backwaters, a network of lakes, lagoons and canals with its unique ecosystem. First of three nights in Kumarakom. Day 8: Kumarakom. Morning walk around Alappuzha (Allepey), the first planned city in Kerala, dating from 1776. The dilapidated mansions of the Gujarati spice merchants are easily recognisable with their intricately carved wooden gates. After a final cooking demonstration, lunch is sadhya, the Keralan banquet consisting of a variety of vegetarian dishes and traditionally served on a banana leaf. Return to the hotel by boat. Day 9: Kumarakom. In Kottayam, the 450-year old Cheria Palli – ‘Small’ St Mary’s Church – displays unusual symbols on its façade. The original murals inside were painted using natural pigments. Nearby, the Valia Palli – ‘Big’ St Mary’s Church – houses 2 Nestorian crosses, one of which may be the oldest Christian artefact in India. The hosted lunch highlights the distinctive culture of the region and is followed by a walk around the farm. The rest of the afternoon is free. Day 10: Kumarakom. Transfers to Cochin Airport are arranged for your onward journey.
1–12 February 2020 (mg 988) 11 nights • £5,470 International flights not included Lecturer: Anthony Peers Visits the major centres of British power, still India’s leading cities – Mumbai, Kolkata and Delhi. Extraordinary wealth of European-style architecture from the eighteenth century to the middle of the twentieth. Little-visited treasures as well as the major ones included, with private visits and special access a feature of the tour. The British Raj in India was an extraordinary and unique phenomenon, both historically and in terms of its physical legacy. It might be said that the Subcontinent became British almost by accident. There was never an official expansionist strategy, and indeed time and again governments in London urged restraint or proscribed further territorial enlargement. When on occasion enthusiasts conceived grand designs they were usually stymied by the doctrine of ‘masterly inactivity’. Extraordinarily, for the first two-anda-half centuries of British presence, India was not ruled directly by the Crown but indirectly by
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £5,030. Single occupancy: £5,940. International flights are not included – see page 227. Included meals: 8 lunches and 7 dinners with beer, water, coffee at lunch and wine at dinner (if available – not all restaurants serve alcohol). Visas: see page 227.
ASIA: India
Accommodation. Brunton Boatyard Hotel, Cochin (cghearth.com): located on the sea-front within the heritage area of Fort Cochin. Windermere Estate, Munnar (windermeremunnar.com): family-run, with stunning views of the surrounding plantations. Spice Village Hotel, Kumily (cghearth.com): eco-friendly hotel set in the lush landscape of the Western Ghats. Hotel Coconut Lagoon, Kumarakom (cghearth.com): comfortable bungalows in natural lake-side settings. How strenuous? See page 227. Average distance by coach per day: 35 miles (including two journeys of four hours plus, where facilities may be limited). Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
For lecturers' biographies See pages 260–267 232
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a commercial firm. The Honourable East India Company was founded in 1599, one of several such European enterprises initiated at the time to trade with the East via the recently discovered sea routes. Only in the aftermath of India’s First War of Independence in 1857–8 did India come to be ruled from Westminster. British India was initially a trading enterprise, with treaties willingly entered into by local rulers. The cities of Kolkata (Calcutta), Chennai (Madras) and Mumbai (Bombay) were originally established by the Company as trading posts. Military means were used intermittently to defend the status quo or for piecemeal consolidation of interests. Most Britons who went to India expected to end their days in Britain. India was a place to seek adventure and to pursue a career, rarely a place to which to emigrate. If the imperial venture had its roots in trade, its fulfilment manifested itself in bureaucracy. At the height of the British Raj, about a thousand Anglo-Indians administered a population of 300 million. The Indian Civil Service was perhaps the most efficient and least corrupt in history. There was no shortage of arrogance and prejudice; but there was also devotion to duty, sense of service, religious tolerance and idealism concerning the benefits of their work. Independence came over seventy years ago in 1947, but the physical evidence of the British presence survives. The centres of the major cities established by the East India Company are still Illustration: Calcutta, Government House, after a drawing by Desmond Doig c. 1960.
astonishingly, perhaps bizarrely British. Kolkata, 'city of palaces' with its surviving wealth of stuccoed Classical buildings can be compared with St Petersburg rather than Cheltenham. Mumbai, which Robert Byron once described as 'that architectural Sodom' can now be seen as the finest Gothic Revival city in the world. And New Delhi, added to the ancient city of Delhi to which the seat of government was moved from Kolkata in 1911, is surely the most successful planned city of the twentieth century and Viceroy’s House one of the finest buildings anywhere. It may be startling to see so many buildings which seem to have been transported bodily from Manchester, Glasgow, Bristol or London – except that, on closer inspection, adaptations to the climate are evident. Some are designed by major British architects – George Gilbert Scott, Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker among them – but most are by less familiar names: some who sent out drawings from Britain but others – like F.W. Stevens, William Emerson, Arthur Shoosmith - who settled in India for years or decades, while, towards the end, there was native Indian architectural talent. Then there is IndoSaracenic architecture, a Victorian Orientalist hybrid, promoted by the British. A Battle of the Styles raged in Victorian India in parallel with the Gothic-Classical debates back home: whether to impose our own styles as would any conqueror, proclaiming the superiority of British civilisation, or legitimise our role as rulers by appropriating Indian styles? There will be much to debate on this tour.
Itinerary
Day 2: Mumbai. The Gothic Victoria Terminus railway station was clearly inspired by St Pancras in London and has a good, new museum. The Gothic Revival Afghan Memorial Church is also a melancholy reminder of the first of Britain’s several disastrous interventions in Afghanistan. St Thomas’s Cathedral, typical of so many Anglican churches in India: a Classical building adapted to the climate and filled with poignant monuments to British merchants, soldiers and administrators who never returned home. The Sassoon Library and the University Library, erected from designs sent out by Sir Gilbert Scott, are two of the more remarkable Gothic Revival buildings.
Day 4: Mumbai, Kolkata. Visit Mani Bhavan, the house which was used as Gandhi’s political headquarters in Mumbai from 1917 until 1934 and from which he launched his campaign of civil disobedience against British rule. Then drive to the airport and fly to Kolkata, where we stay at the Oberoi Grand, a late 19th-cent. building. First of four nights in Kolkata. Day 5: Kolkata. Established in 1690, Kolkata flourished as an East India Company trading post and later as the capital of British India, especially after Clive’s victory over the Nawab of Murshidabad in 1757. Located in the vicinity of Dalhousie Square at the heart of the city are St John’s Church, with the tomb of Job Charnock the city’s founder, Town Hall, Writers’ Building, General Post Office and High Court (Gothic, unlike most of Kolkata). Government House, begun in 1799 by Governor-General Marquess Wellesley, was the grandest of the palaces. The Rabindra Bharati Museum is an 18th-cent. house which was the home of the poet and writer Rabindranath Tagore. Cross the Howrah Bridge, the huge cantilever steel structure over the Hooghly river opened in 1943, to see the Howrah Station, an Edwardian building which is still a vital testament to the importance of the railway in unifying British India. Day 6: Kolkata. St Paul’s Cathedral, 1839–47, is one of the few Gothic buildings in Kolkata, and contains many good memorials and a superb Burne-Jones window. The huge domed Edwardian Baroque Victoria Memorial, by far the grandest building in Kolkata, was founded by Lord Curzon as a museum of British India and contains a magnificent collection of paintings and sculpture. The Belvedere was the residence of the Lieutenant Governors of Bengal and now houses the National Library. Day 7: Kolkata. South Park Street Cemetery is a beautiful as well as poignant burial ground in which so many of Kolkata’s early residents lie in or under remarkably magnificent and sophisticated monuments. The Indian Museum was established in 1814 by the Asiatic Society; its present home opened in 1878 and was the work of Walter Granville, architect of the Post Office and the High Court. It contains India’s most important collection of sculpture. Free afternoon. Day 8: Kolkata. The Maghen David Synagogue of 1884 and the Armenian Church of 1707 survive as reminders of the cosmopolitan nature of the city before Independence. Fly to Delhi at c. 5.00pm (IndiGo). First of four nights in Delhi. Day 9: Delhi. Some of the fiercest fighting during the First War of Independence in 1857 took place in the area north of Old Delhi; we see the Flagstaff Tower and the Mutiny Memorial. Here also the
move of the capital from Kolkata to Delhi was announced at the 1911 Coronation Durbar; visit the temporary Viceregal Lodge, now part of Delhi University, occupied by the Viceroys until the new palace Lutyens designed for them was ready. Located inside the Kashmir Gate of Old Delhi, scene of desperate fighting in 1857, is St James’s or Skinner’s Church, with its unusual centralized plan built by a cavalry officer, Colonel James Skinner, in the 1830s. Day 10: Delhi. A day devoted to the magnificent Islamic architecture of Delhi. Delhi is a very ancient city but its principal architectural glories date from the 17th century when it was the capital of the Mughal emperors. Shah Jahan began the Red Fort and its palace in 1639 (the British nearly demolished them after 1857) with its open diwans (audience chambers) and the Moti Masjid (Pearl Mosque) of white marble. The huge Jami Masjid (Friday Mosque) with its two noble minarets is one of the very finest Islamic buildings, and the 16thcent. garden mausoleum of the Emperor Humayun is an outstanding example of earlier Islamic design. Some free time in the afternoon. Day 11: New Delhi. The day is devoted to New Delhi, established in 1911 and inaugurated 20 years later. The magnificent group of government buildings at the heart of the low-density plan include the Secretariat and Parliament, both by Sir Herbert Baker, and the Viceroy’s House (now residence of the President) in which Sir Edwin Lutyens integrated Mughal, Hindu and Buddhist elements into his monumental Classical concept. Also by Lutyens, Hyderabad House is one of the palaces built for native princes. Another such palace, Jaipur House, close to the All India Arch at the end of the long vista from Viceroy’s House, is now the National Gallery of Modern Art. Among the buildings designed by Lutyens’s disciples are the Anglican cathedral by Henry Medd and the Garrison Church by Arthur Shoosmith, a 20thcent. monument of rare distinction. Day 12: Delhi. Transfers are arranged to Delhi airport for your onward journey.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £5,470. Single occupancy: £6,560. International flights are not included – see page 227. Included meals: 9 lunches and 7 dinners with beer, water, soft drinks and coffee at lunch plus wine at dinner. Visas: see page 227. Accommodation. Taj Mahal Palace, Mumbai (tajhotels.com): centrally-located iconic landmark. Oberoi Grand Hotel, Kolkata (oberoihotels.com): luxury hotel located in the city centre, impeccable service. The Imperial Hotel, New Delhi (theimperialindia.com): 5-star hotel designed by F.B. Blomfield, a member of Lutyen’s team. How strenuous? See page 227. Average distance by coach per day: 17 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
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Day 1: Mumbai. The tour begins in Mumbai with a lecture and lunch in the hotel restaurant at c. 12.00 noon. Your room is available from 2.00pm on 31st January (flights from London are not included – see page 227). Our hotel, a domed Edwardian pile which is one of the most famous in India, faces the Gateway of India, an Orientalised triumphal arch marking the spot where King George V and Queen Mary landed in 1911. Walk around the Victorian heart of Mumbai, seeing the major public, Gothic Revival buildings: the Secretariat, the High Court and, above all, the University. Other buildings include Watson’s Hotel, a mid-Victorian structure of prefabricated cast-iron, and the Prince of Wales Museum, an Edwardian building in the IndoSaracenic style which houses, among much else, a collection of both European and Indian paintings. First of three nights in Mumbai.
Day 3: Mumbai. In the morning we experience a rather older India with a visit by boat to the famous caves on Elephanta Island, with their rock-cut architectural forms and sculptures dating from the 5th to the 8th centuries. In the afternoon we visit by special arrangement the Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum, the oldest in the city, founded as the V&A Museum in 1855. Free afternoon.
Art in Japan Art, craft, architecture and design and decorative objects of courtly patronage. Nezu Kaichiro’s extraordinary and diverse collection of Japanese and other Asian arts is perfectly presented in the eponymous museum, a purposebuilt space with a delightful garden. Highlights include world-renowned Chinese bronzes and intricate utensils related to the tea aesthetic. Day 3: Nikko. Full-day excursion to Nikko, an historically important Shinto and Buddhist pilgrimage site in a national park with breathtaking mountain vistas. The 17th-century Tosho-gu Shrine complex was established here by the powerful Tokugawa Shoguns (the first shogun of the Edo period, Tokugawa Ieyasu, is enshrined here); set amid towering Japanese cedars and pines, the architecturally extravagant buildings are decorated with elaborate wood-carvings and beautiful paintwork. Day 4: Tokyo to Kyoto. The morning is dedicated to the Ota Memorial Art Museum and its collection of ukiyo-e woodblock prints. In the afternoon travel by high-speed train to Kyoto (luggage is delivered on day 5). Kyoto is considered the centre of Japanese culture and today’s city and the surrounding hills are dense with examples of art and architecture of the highest importance. First of five nights in Kyoto.
20–31 May 2019 (mf 545) 12 days • £6,780 International flights not included Lecturer: Professor Timon Screech 18–29 November 2019 (mf 902) 12 days • £6,780 International flights not included Lecturer: Dr Monika Hinkel Many of the finest collections of Japanese art in museums and in situ in temples and shrines. World Heritage sites at Nikko, Kyoto, Nara and Horyu-ji, and the art island of Naoshima.
ASIA: Japan
Outstanding museum buildings by Tadao Ando, I.M. Pei and other leading architects. Other aspects of Japanese culture, past and present, including gastronomy and gardens. Japan has one of the richest and most continuously active art traditions in Asia, perhaps anywhere. Some of the earliest known ceramics are found here, as is the world’s oldest standing wooden building. But Japanese contemporary art also ranks with the best in the world and is eagerly imitated and avidly collected. Between those chronological poles is a wealth of Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines from all periods, and some impressive military architecture. National, regional and private collections are to be found in great profusion throughout the country; Japan has a long and impressive lineage of art-historical scholarship and connoisseurship. Added to this in recent times have been a network of conservation and restoration labs and the latest technology for archaeological investigation. In short, despite 234
the large number of wars and natural disasters that have periodically overwhelmed the country, Japanese arts are to be enjoyed in extraordinary abundance. The great majority of important pieces remain in the country. Throughout history, Japan has tended to make a less emphatic division between art and craft than is the case in Western countries. Of equal rank alongside the ‘fine arts’ of painting and sculpture there are outstanding examples of ceramic, textile and metalwork, as well as uniquely beautiful gardens and a special aesthetic of food and eating. This tour exposes participants to Japan across the ages, sampling excellent works from many periods, genres and styles. As a deeply hierarchical society until modern times, there is ‘high’ art and ‘low’ art, from royal and shogunal works to that of the urban populace (the fabled ‘art of the floating world’). Modern Tokyo is part of the experience as well as the ancient capital of Kyoto, as are the yet more ancient city of Nara and the celebrated art colony of Naoshima in the Inland Sea. World Heritage sites figure on the tour, but we also visit less well-known sites such as ceramic studios and mausolea.
Itinerary Day 1: Tokyo. The tour begins in Tokyo with lunch in the hotel (flights from London are not included – see opposite page). In the afternoon, visit the Edo-period Korakuen Garden, one of the oldest and best preserved in the city. First of three nights in Tokyo. Day 2: Tokyo. The morning is dedicated to the Tokyo National Museum, which occupies several buildings in Ueno Park and houses some of the finest Japanese art in the world. The main gallery (Honkan) traces the development from prehistoric, sculptural earthenware to exquisite paintings
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Day 5: Kyoto. Kyoto’s National Museum opened its Heisei Chishinkan wing in 2014, an impressive construction displaying ceramics, painting, sculpture, sumptuous textiles and much else. At the foot of the forested Higashiyama mountains the zen temple complex Nanzen-ji is distinguished by its massive gate (Sanmon) and the quarters of the abbacy (Hojo) which contain very fine 17thcentury painted screens (fusuma) by Kano Tan’yu. The Kodai-ji Temple is richly decorated with early 17th-century maki-e, gold and silver set in lacquer. Day 6: Nara and its environs. A full-day excursion to Nara, first capital of Japan (ad 710–794). Modelled on the Tang capital of Chang’an (Xi’an) in China, Nara was the birthplace of major cultural and religious development. Here Buddhism firmly established itself and prolific production of splendid temples and devotional art ensued, much of which is in situ. Here are some of the oldest wooden structures in the world. The temple of Todai-ji contains an arresting monumental bronze Buddha; the dry-lacquer and bronze statues of the Hokke-do and Kofuku Temple are sublime in their detail. Nearby Horyu-ji is Japan’s earliest Buddhist temple, founded ad 607. Day 7: Kyoto environs. A morning excursion to the Miho Museum, designed by I.M. Pei and harmoniously integrated into a forested nature reserve. The approach on foot via a tunnel and bridge leads to a glass structure on the crest of a hill and a sequence of luminous interiors incorporating traditional Japanese motifs. Collections include Greco-Roman and Islamic antiquities and important Japanese artworks. The Sanjusangen-do is an unusually long hall containing 1001 subtly differentiated 12th/13thcentury gilded statues of Kannon, divinity of Mercy, cumulatively a potent visual effect. The home of potter Kawai Kanjiro (d. 1966), a key figure in the folk art revival of the 1930s, is an
' Timon Screech has an awe-inspiring knowledge of Japanese art and traditions yet was accessible to all participants, regardless of level of prior knowledge.' K.M. & J.M., participants on Art in Japan in 2018.
intimate space furnished with his work and an intact ‘climbing’ kiln. Day 8: Kyoto. The large walled temple compound of Daitoku-ji, established in the 14th century, is an important foundation of Japanese Zen. Its many sub-temples contain dry landscape gardens; one of the finest (and smallest) is in the Daisen-in, a Chinese ink-painting rendered in stone. The Raku Museum holds exhibitions of its eponymous ware, most often in the form of understated tea bowls. Nijo Castle, shogunal residence, has a lavish interior containing brilliantly painted fusuma (screens) by the Kano school. Day 9: Kyoto to Naoshima. Travel by coach from Kyoto to Uno and from there take the ferry across to Naoshima Island, located in the Inland Sea. Together with the islands of Teshima and Inujima, Naoshima forms part of the ‘Benesse Art Site’. A number of striking galleries by architect Tadao Ando and outdoor installations dot the landscape. First of two nights in Naoshima. Day 10: Naoshima. The Benesse House Museum is a vast structure of concrete, glass and natural light. In addition to works by contemporary Japanese artists, the collection includes works by Andy Warhol, David Hockney and Bruce Nauman. The Chichu Art Museum houses several Monet paintings as well as sculptures by Walter de Maria in underground spaces lit only by natural light. Day 11: Naoshima, Tokyo. The eponymous Lee Ufan Museum houses works by this Korean-born artist and is the latest addition to the collection of Benesse museums. The Art House Project is a collection of traditional buildings in the old fishing village of Honmura that have been restored and transformed by artists to house creative contemporary installations. Ferry to Uno and transfer to Okayama for the train to Tokyo (luggage transferred separately). Overnight Tokyo. Day 12: Tokyo. Tour ends. There is an airport transfer in time for a direct flight at 12.55pm from Tokyo Narita to London, arriving at c. 5.30pm.
Practicalities
Included meals: 8 lunches, 7 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Keio Plaza, Tokyo (keioplaza. com/tokyo): 4-star modern high-rise hotel in the lively commercial district of Shinjuku. Hyatt Regency Hotel, Kyoto: (kyoto.regency.hyatt. com): elegant hotel within walking distance of the National Museum. Rooms are comfortable with unique design touches. Benesse House Hotel, Naoshima (benesse-artsite.jp): comfortable, modern hotel designed by Tadao Ando. The Benesse House Hotel is subject to confirmation. We will know a year in advance if we have secured a reservation. If we are unsuccessful, we have booked the JR Hotel Clement Takamatsu on the mainland, a short ferry ride to Naoshima, as a back-up. How strenuous? See above right. Average distance by coach per day: c. 59 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
9–20 May 2019 (ef 510) 12 days • £6,800 International flights not included Lecturer: Pauline Chakmakjian Please contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com An exploration of the Japanese character in history and today, with specialist lectures by Pauline Chakmakjian.
How strenuous? For all our tours in Japan, a good level of fitness is essential. Unless you enjoy entirely unimpaired mobility, cope with everyday walking and stair-climbing without difficulty and are reliably sure-footed, these tours are not for you. You may be on your feet for long stretches of time, standing in museums or walking across large sites. There may be uneven ground and irregular paving. A rough indication of the minimum level of fitness required is that you ought to be able to walk briskly at about three miles per hour for at least half an hour, and undertake a walk at a more leisurely pace for an hour or two unaided.
Modern architecture in Tokyo and the contrasting traditional buildings in Shirakawa and Takayama. Stunning Buddhist temples and gardens in Kyoto, and the legendary, ancient shrine at Izumo. Traditional arts and crafts in Kanazawa. Overnights in a traditional ryokan (Japanese inn) and an onsen hotel (with natural hot spring bathing options). A portion of the proceeds from every trip will support the College Art Association (CAA) and its mission to advance art and design.
International flights Return flights from London are not included in the price of our tours in Japan. We will send recommended flight options when they are available to book (usually c. 11 months before departure). We will ask that you then make your own flight reservation and inform us of the details.
Illustration, opposite: 'Sudden Shower over Shin-Ōhashi bridge and Atake’ (detail), from 'One Hundred Famous Views of Edo' by Hiroshige (1797–1858).
Textile Arts of Japan 31 October–12 November 2020 Full details available in December 2018 Please call us to register your interest or e-mail alerts@martinrandall.co.uk Designed in collaboration with HALI, the leading magazine for antique carpets and textiles.
ASIA: Japan
Price per person. Two sharing: £6,780. Single occupancy: £7,980. International flights are not included – see above right.
Understanding Japan
Visit public and private textile collections in the company of curators, artists and specialists, including those of an imperial convent and the Miho Museum, one of the world’s most exclusive private art collections. View exhibitions of unpublished ancient artefacts from monastic and imperial treasuries. Gain insight into Japanese society through its textile culture from the silk and gold of high-art splendour to the cotton and hemp of country utility. Led by Alan Kennedy, Art Dealer and independent researcher specialising in Japanese and Chinese textiles and costume, and Ben Evans, Editor of HALI. Illustration: Karaori, Hayashibara Museum of Art (photograph courtesy of HALI).
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Japanese Gardens Tokyo, Kyoto, Hikone, Nara and Kanazawa Itinerary Day 1: Tokyo. Begin in Tokyo with lunch in the hotel. Your room is available from 2.00pm on Wednesday, 8th May (flights from London are not included – see page 235). Visit the Imperial Palace (formerly Edo Castle), and the reconstructed East Palace Garden. First of two nights in Tokyo. Day 2: Tokyo. At Edo, the daimyo (feudal lords) built grand residences with vast gardens. The 17thcentury landscape garden, Koishikawa Korakuen, reflects their sumptuous, eclectic tastes. Nezu Kaichiro’s collection of Far Eastern arts is well presented in the eponymous museum, which has a delightful wooded garden dotted with teahouses. In the afternoon, visit Kiyosumi, a superb, late19th-century landscape garden built for Iwasaki Yataro, founder of the Mitsubishi conglomerate. Day 3: Kyoto. Bullet train to Kyoto (luggage by road). In the afternoon, visit the 14th-century Tenryu-ji, a Zen Buddhist temple and its panoramic pond garden with a ‘dragon-gate’ waterfall. First of five nights in Kyoto.
9–20 May 2019 (mf 520) 12 days • £6,220 International flights not included Lecturer: Kristina Taylor A study of the evolution of Japanese gardens through the centuries. From Kyoto’s wealth of exquisite temple gardens to Tokyo’s hill-and-pond gardens with time in each city to explore other aspects of Japanese culture. Fine examples of ‘borrowed scenery’ at Nara, with its Buddhist temples and deer park, and Hikone Castle on the eastern shore of Lake Biwa.
ASIA: Japan
Japanese gardens possess an aura of timelessness, against which background the cycle of the seasons unfolds its pageantry. Throughout the 1,600-yearold Japanese tradition of creating gardens, the chief consideration has consistently been the depiction of a landscape. This approach to design was firmly established with the earliest gardens built in Japan during the fifth and sixth centuries under the expertise of architects and artisans from Korea and China, who introduced their scholarly taste for the elegant pond garden. From the continent, a variety of sacred landscapes deriving from Buddhist as well as Chinese religious cosmographies entered Japanese culture; Mt. Sumeru, the centre of the universe according to Buddhist legend, has frequently been represented through the centuries, as have been the Taoist Islands of the Blessed Immortals. Above all, the Japanese took the Chinese tradition of landscape gardens and transformed it into an expression of their love for their own native 236
natural landscapes. Verdant mountains sloping down to the sea; waterfalls and streamlets; rugged shores and shingle beaches; an ever-varying coastline of inlets, coves and jutting promontories – these have always provided a beloved subject matter. Trees and shrubs are carefully selected and arranged to create a seasonal palette, while ponds symbolise the sea, and the rocky outcrops set in them reflect the self-image of the Japanese as an island people. The idea of landscape links together the two major types of Japanese gardens: the pond garden, on the one hand, and the rock garden on the other, a style that emerged during the fifteenth century, in which serene and contemplative spaces are enhanced by the symbolic representation of water through the use of gravel. In the latter half of the following century, the great tea master Sen-no-Rikyu sought to reproduce the ambience of forest glades for his tea rooms. Lack of space has never been considered as an inhibiting factor, and through the judicious choice and symbolic placing of stones and plants, beautiful panoramic vistas have been created in the tiniest of gardens. This tour presents a variety of superb gardens from all periods of Japanese history, from the aristocratic ‘paradise’-style temple gardens and the enigmatic Zen Buddhist rock gardens of Kyoto, to the borrowed castle scenery at Hikone and the tea gardens of Kanazawa, to the amalgamation of all these various styles in the imposing gardens of the samurai elite in Tokyo. It offers an insight into the symbolism incorporated into the various styles and the opportunity to appreciate the relationship of gardens to the Japanese way of life. Illustration: Tea garden at Nagasaki, wood engraving c. 1880.
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Day 4: Kyoto. Morning visit to Ginkaku-ji (Temple of the Silver Pavilion), where its pavilion overlooks an elaborate dry-landscape garden with raked gravel featuring an enigmatic flattopped conical mound. The superb garden at Chishaku-in resembles an unfolding landscape scroll painting. An optional afternoon visit to the Miho Museum, designed by I.M. Pei and harmoniously integrated into a forested nature reserve. The approach on foot via a tunnel and bridge leads to a glass structure on the crest of a hill and a sequence of luminous interiors incorporating traditional Japanese motifs. Day 5: Kyoto. Ryoan-ji’s walled stone garden, with its fifteen boulders, is one of Japan’s most abstract gardens. Nearby, the garden of Kinkaku-ji (Temple of the Golden Pavilion), a shogun’s villa later turned temple, retains aspects of the ‘paradise’ style. In the afternoon, visit the large walled temple compound of Daitoku-ji, many of whose subtemples possess notable examples of dry-landscape gardens. One of the finest is at Daisen-in, a miniature landscape heavily influenced by Chinese ink-brush paintings. Day 6: Nara. Excursion to Nara, first capital of Japan (ad 710–794) and modelled on the Tang capital of Chang’an (Xi’an) in China. The 12thcentury Joruri-ji has a rare surviving example of a paradise-style pond garden with a pagoda and hall with nine golden Buddhas. Much of Nara is parkland dotted with ancient temples including Todai-ji which contains an arresting monumental bronze Buddha. Day 7: Kyoto. Nanzen-ji is distinguished by its massive gate and quarters of the abbacy (Hojo) which contain very fine 17th-century painted screens (fusuma) by Kano Tan’yu. Together with its sub-temples, it contains important drylandscapes created by the eminent 17th-century tea master and garden designer Kobori Enshu. Nearby Murin-an, boasts a landscaped pond garden, a masterpiece of the late 19th-century garden designer Ogawa Jihei VII.
Myanmar: Ancient to Modern History and landscape at Yangon, Bagan, Mandalay, Inle Lake Day 8: Hikone, Kanazawa. Drive to Hikone on the shores of Lake Biwa, and its two adjoining parks Genkyu-en and Rakuraku-en. Genkyu-en is a famous feudal landscaped garden incorporating the view of the early-17th-century keep at Hikone Castle. Continue to Kanazawa, an attractive city which retains much of its old character. First of two nights.
24 October–4 November 2019 (mf 859) 12 days • £4,820 International flights not included Lecturer: Dr John Clarke
Day 9: Kanazawa. Kenroku-en, one of Japan’s finest strolling landscape gardens, was created for the powerful local feudal lord of Kagawa. It has a superb view of its pine trees trained with rope in readiness for winter. The elegant villa Seisonkaku, which sits in the grounds, was built for the widow of the 12th-century lord and has wonderful courtyard gardens.
More time than most tours in Mandalay, Myanmar’s cultural capital, and Yangon.
Day 10: Kanazawa, Tokyo. A morning bullet train to Tokyo (luggage by road). The afternoon is dedicated to the Tokyo National Museum, which occupies several buildings in Ueno Park and houses some of the finest Japanese art in the world. The main gallery (Honkan) traces the development from prehistoric, sculptural earthenware to exquisite paintings and decorative objects of courtly patronage. First of two nights in Tokyo. Day 11: Tokyo. The 18th-century Rikugi-en offers superb views over its lake. There is free time to explore the colourful, traditional Japanese area surrounding the Asakusa Kannon Temple. Take a local boat down the Sumida River to Hamarikyu, originally a tidal garden and hunting lodge belonging to the Tokugawa Shogunate and now a peaceful retreat in the heart of the metropolis.
Includes Myanmar’s most celebrated places as well as many less-visited sites.
Stay in luxurious hotels that complement their surroundings. Myanmar – or Burma, as it was called when ruled by the British – is a land of living history. Teak monasteries have withstood weathering and terracotta stupas have endured earthquakes while ancient customs have become woven into the fabric of contemporary daily life. The Myanmar we see today is a complex tapestry of the tangible and intangible, evocative vestiges of fallen kingdoms and empires and simple spirituality infusing quotidian concerns. From the eleventh-century Kingdom of Pagan to Mandalay, the last of Burma’s royal capitals, and colonial Yangon (Rangoon), the tour shows the whole gamut of material culture of the country, and reveals the influences that have shaped modern Myanmar.
Theravada Buddhism has had an enormous influence on the country. The richest concentration of its art and architecture is to be found at Bagan. The building frenzy that occurred on these plains in the eleventh century coincided with King Anawratha’s unification of Burma and the region’s transition to Theravada Buddhist practice. Completed in 1057, Shwesandaw is square and squat, more temple than pagoda, far removed from the Indian models that inspired it. By the end of Anawratha’s reign a prototype for Burmese pagoda design had evolved. Over 3,000 monasteries and stupas survive from three centuries of construction, creating an unforgettable panorama. North-east from Bagan along the Ayeyarwady (Irrawaddy) River is Mandalay. This is the land of capitals; hilltop Sagaing, Amarapura, Ava and finally Mandalay itself have all been seats of power. Their legacy is clear to see. The Shwenandaw Kyaung is an exquisitely carved pavilion, formerly part of the royal palace, and close by is the unique mile-long bridge built across Taungthaman Lake by U Bein in 1850; the longest teak bridge in the world. Myanmar is renowned for its ethnic diversity and has 135 distinct groups within its borders. Inle Lake is home to the Intha people who carry on a way of life barely changed for centuries – houses are raised over the water on stilts, crops are grown on floating beds of water-weed and monks are
Day 12: Tokyo. Private airport transfers can be arranged to the airport.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £6,220. Single occupancy: £7,460. International flights are not included – see page 235. Included meals: 8 lunches, 6 dinners, with wine.
ASIA: Japan, Myanmar
Accommodation. New Otani, Tokyo (newotani. co.jp): 5-star hotel located in the centre of Tokyo. It has a historical garden dating from the 17th century. Hyatt Regency Hotel, Kyoto (kyoto. regency.hyatt.com): elegant hotel within walking distance of the National Museum. Rooms are comfortable with unique design touches. Tokyu Hotel, Kanazawa (tokyuhotelsjapan.com): excellently located 4-star, walking distance of the city’s former samurai district. How strenuous? See page 235. Additionally, the tour involves a lot of walking in gardens. Average distance by coach per day: c. 44 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
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Myanmar: Ancient to Modern continued
' A well thought-out, organised and excellent tour allowing visits to places of interest.' V.M., participant on Myanmar: Ancient to Modern in 2017.
paddled in wooden canoes from home to home to collect their daily alms. In the surrounding villages young boys conduct their Shin Byu, or novitiation ceremony, regaled in golden robes and drawn on brightly decorated bullock carts on their way to the monastery. This tour tries to present the essence of Myanmar, offering an insight into this mysterious ancient land that only recently has opened to the modern world. The faded grandeur of colonial Yangon is juxtaposed with the natural serenity of Inle Lake, imposing gilt Buddhist pagodas with nat spirit shrines.
c. 100 mi
INDIA
CHINA
MYANMAR Mandalay Bagan
Itinerary Ba
Day 7: Inle Lake. The day is spent on the lake travelling by motorised canoe. Phaung Daw U 238
Price, per person. Two sharing: £4,820. Single occupancy: £5,660.
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Day 6: Pindaya, Inle Lake. Morning flight from Bagan to Heho (Air KBZ). Drive the beautiful route to Pindaya cave where some 6,000 Buddha images are arranged among stalagmites. After lunch, continue to Inle Lake, where the hotel is reached by motorised canoe. First of three nights on Inle Lake.
Day 12: Mandalay. This morning focuses on Mandalay’s royal centre. Shwenandaw Kyaung, or the Golden Palace Monastery, orginally part of King Mindon’s palace, was moved to its current location by his son, Thibaw Min, in 1880. The image of the Buddha at Mahamuni temple was brought from Arakan in modern Rakhine State and was reportedly embraced by Gautama Siddartha himself. The tour ends after lunch. Transfer to the airport in time for the recommended flight to London.
Practicalities
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Day 5: Mount Popa. South-east of Bagan rises lush Mount Popa, home of the nats: spirit gods, part of an intricate web of animism that exists alongside Buddhism. A walk through Popa village visits the shrines and reveals how nat culture is deeply ingrained. In the afternoon there is free time to revisit the pagodas and temples of Bagan.
LAOS
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ASIA: Myanmar
Day 4: Bagan. Early morning flight from Yangon to Bagan (Air KBZ). Visit Ananda Temple; on a Greek cross plan, it is one of the four great Buddhist monuments of Myanmar. After lunch by the banks of the Ayeyarwady River, explore Bagan’s smaller, less-visited pagodas and stupas. Some of these display fine murals and stucco work. First of two nights in Bagan.
Inle Lake
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Yangon
Day 2: Yangon. A morning’s walk provides a survey of the colonial core of Yangon’s administrative buildings, including the Secretariat, site of General Aung San’s assassination in July 1947, and the Inland Waterways Department, former home of the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company. In the afternoon visit the National Museum housing the Lion Throne, and Bogyoke Aung San Museum, the family home of Aung San Suu Kyi. Day 3: Yangon. The Chaukhtatgyi Paya shelters a beautiful 70 metre-long reclining Buddha. The Ngahtatgyi Buddha Temple, a five-tiered pagoda, houses the original Buddha image, donated by Prince Minyedeippa in 1558. After lunch, the option to return to the Shwedagon Pagoda or visit the lively Bogyoke Market (formerly Scott’s Market). Dinner and a private viewing at a former colonial building turned gallery that supports multimedia projects related to Myanmar and its people.
Pindaya
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Day 1: Yangon. Meet in Yangon (flights from London are not included – see Practicalities). After lunch, visit Shwedagon Pagoda, a dreamlike structure in existence by the 11th century and covered with over 50 tonnes of gold leaf. First of three nights in Yangon.
the Ayeyarwady River to Mingun where King Bodawpaya began constructing his mammoth pagoda; had it been finished it would have stood 150 metres high. The pagoda’s bell has been, at times, the heaviest working bell in the world. Dinner is a barbeque on the river’s sandbank.
Included meals: 10 lunches, 7 dinners, with wine. THAILAND
Flights: return international flights from London are not included in the price of the tour. We will send the recommended flight options when they come into range and ask that you make your own flight reservation. Please ensure you have travel insurance that protects you in the unlikely event that the tour is cancelled. Visas: required for most foreign nationals, and not included in the tour price. We will advise all participants on the process.
pagoda is one of Myanmar’s principle shrines, with five golden Buddha images. Nga Phe Monastery contains fine carved Buddhas representing the diverse regional styles of Myanmar art. Day 8: Inle Lake. The morning is spent on the lake, again by motorised canoe. Visit a typical silversmith workshop followed by the Shwe Indein Pagoda, a group of Buddhist pagodas commissioned during the reign of King Narapatisithu. The afternoon is free. Day 9: Mandalay. Morning visit to the five-day market that circulates around the lake selling the produce of farmers from the surrounding Shan mountains and fishermen. After lunch fly to Mandalay (Air KBZ). Walk across U Bein’s teak bridge, built in 1850 from teak reclaimed from Inwa palace. First of three nights in Mandalay. Day 10: Amarapura, Sagaing. Amarapura Mahagandayon Kyaung is an important teaching monastery home to some 1300 monks and novices. In contrast, Waso Monastery, home to circa 350 monks, is an intimate monastery. In the afternoon continue to Sagaing Hill. Son Oo Pon Nya Shin Pagoda is one of the oldest pagodas in Sagaing, built in 1312, and offers views over Mandalay city. Day 11: Mandalay. Morning visit to Mandalay Palace, the last royal palace of the Burmese monarchy, constructed between 1857 and 1859. After lunch, take a leisurely boat ride along
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Accommodation. Belmond Governor’s Residence, Yangon (belmond.com): 5-star coverted colonial-style 1920s mansion in the embassy quarter. Bagan Thiripyitsaya Sanctuary Resort, Bagan (thiripyitsaya-resort.com): luxury resort located on the Ayeyarwady River, walking distance from the pagodas. Sanctum Inle Resort, Inle Lake (sanctum-inle-resort.com): luxury resort in the backwaters of Inle lake. Mandalay Hill Resort (accorhotels.com): 4-star hotel at the foot of Mandalay Hill. How strenuous? A good level of fitness is essential. Unless you enjoy entirely unimpaired mobility, cope with everyday walking and stair-climbing without difficulty and are reliably sure-footed, this tour is not for you. A rough indication of the minimum level of fitness required is that you ought to be able to walk briskly at about three miles per hour for at least half an hour, and undertake a walk at a more leisurely pace for an hour or two unaided. The tour involves a lot of walking. There are four internal flights and embarking and disembarking boats requires stability. Average distance by coach per day: c. 22 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
Illustration, previous page: Myanmar, an example of typical temple architecture, lithograph c. 1850.
Samarkand & Silk Road Cities with Tashkent, Shakhrisabz, Bukhara and Khiva 5–16 April 2019 (mf 472) Exclusively for solo travellers 12 days/11 nights • £3,750 Lecturer: Dr Peter Webb
drive with long views down the sun-baked valley the other side. Shakhrisabz was transformed by Timur (1336–1405) whose home town it was. An astounding survival is the most imposing palace portal in the history of architecture, an arch 22 metres wide with a wondrous range of tiled decoration. Further Timurid remnants include a mosque complex with three turquoise domes.
10–21 May 2019 (mf 525) 12 days/11 nights • £3,640 Lecturer: Dr Peter Webb
Day 6: Samarkand. Visit Shah-i-Zinda, an ensemble of mausolea gorgeously apparelled in many types of dazzling glazed tiles, the Afrosiab History Museum, which documents pre-Islamic Samarkand, and the remains of the extraordinary observatory built by Ulug Bek in the 15th century.
6–17 September 2019 (mf 676) Very few spaces available 12 days/11 nights • £3,640 Lecturer: Professor James Allan 4–15 October 2019 (mf 797) 12 days/11 nights • £3,640 Lecturer: to be confirmed The best of Uzbekistan and some of the most glorious sights in the Islamic world. See memorable landscapes, magnificent mosques and madrassas, wonderful wall tiles, intact streetscapes. Visit places that are remote, difficult to access and remarkably unspoilt.
Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 9.30pm (Uzbekistan Airways) from London Heathrow for the 7-hour flight to Tashkent (currently the only direct flight from London). Day 2: Tashkent. Touch-down at c. 8.30am. Hotel rooms in the centre of Tashkent are at your disposal for the morning. Afternoon drive around the city centre. See the Hazret Imam complex, a group of mosques and madrassas (seminaries) dating from the 16th to the 20th centuries and Independence Square, home to government buildings and the Monument of Independence. First of two nights in Tashkent. Day 3: Tashkent. The morning is spent at the Fine Arts Museum with collections from pre-Islamic sculpture to 20th-century painting. Afternoon visits include Chorsu Bazaar and Kukeldash Madrassa, introducing the theme of Soviet reconstruction of Islamic heritage. Day 4: Tashkent to Samarkand. High-speed train from Tashkent to Samarkand at 8.00am (2 hours; luggage transferred separately). Begin with the Registan, ‘the noblest public square in the world’ (Lord Curzon, 1889), bounded on three sides by magnificent madrassas of the 15th and 17th centuries. Also seen are the Gur Emir Mausoleum, burial place of Timur, and the Bibi Khanum Mosque, commissioned by Timur in honour of his wife, an impressive exercise in gigantism despite partial destruction and over-zealous restoration. First of three nights in Samarkand. Day 5: Shakhrisabz. Cross the Hisor Mountains (by car; coaches are not permitted), a dramatic
Day 8: Bukhara. Genghis Khan ensured in 1220 that – with notable exceptions, including the Kalon Minaret at 48 metres then the tallest in the world – little of Bukhara’s first golden age remains, but of the second, the 15th and 16th centuries, there survives much magnificent architecture, lavishly embellished. Today’s walks take in the vast Kalon Mosque (finished 1514) with a capacity of 10,000, several grand madrassas, the formidable citadel of the khans and the Zindan, their infamous prison. Day 9: Bukhara. The perfectly preserved 10thcentury Samani Mausoleum displays exquisite brickwork. From here walk through the park to the Bolo Hauz Mosque with its elegant patio of timber columns. The Emir’s summer palace, 1911, is a riotous mix of Russian and traditional Bukharan decoration with rose garden, aviary and swimming pool. Free afternoon; optional visit of Chor Bakr, a memorial complex built over the burial place of Abu-Bakr, a descendant of the prophet Mohammed. Day 10: from Bukhara to Khiva. The 280mile journey starts and finishes in an unspoilt landscape of green fields, plentiful trees and adobe farmsteads, while the central section is undulating desert, specked with tufty shrubs that are briefly green in the spring. There are periodic sightings of the meandering Oxus, the mighty river crossed by Alexander the Great in 329 bc. Reach Khiva in time for a walk before dinner. First of one or two nights in Khiva. Day 11: Khiva. No modern intrusions spoil the timeless fabric within a rectangle of crenellated and turreted ramparts. Most of the buildings are 19th-century, but such was Khiva’s isolation and conservatism that to the inexpert eye they could date to any time from the 16th century. The Friday Mosque, a forest of carved wooden columns some dating to the 10th century, the Tash Hauli Palace, whose harem quarters constitute the loveliest secular spaces in Central Asia, and the Paklavan Mahmoud Mausoleum where tiled interiors reach a peak of opulence. Depending on domestic Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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ASIA: Uzbekistan
Oxiana, Tartary, Turkestan, Khiva, Bukhara, Samarkand: names to produce a frisson. They evoke alluring images of shimmering turquoise domes and exquisite glazed wall tiles, of lost libraries and renowned scholars, of the delicious decadence of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, of gardens, poetry and wine, of the fabulous riches of the Silk Road between China and Christendom. Less agreeable images are also evoked: of Ghengis Khan and Timur (Tamerlane), the most far-reaching conquerors in history; of the tyranny and cruelty of the khans, perpetuating the last redoubts of mediaeval misrule; of the Great Game, the 19th-century Cold War between Britain and Russia; of terrain as hostile as the tribesmen and of a post-Soviet penumbra of Stans of suspect politics and allegiances. The cities of the subtitle lie now in Uzbekistan, independent since 1991 but an entity that has its origins in late 19th-century Russian imperialism, which agglomerated a number of independent khanates, and whose borders were settled in the 1920s. The country lies at the very centre of Central Asia. One of only two double land-locked nations in the world, its capital lies a thousand miles north of the Indian Ocean (Afghanistan and Pakistan intervene), 1,400 miles east of the Black Sea and 400 miles from Xinjiang, China’s largely Islamic western province. Space is not at a premium in this part of the world. Broad tree-lined boulevards encircle the historic town centres and no expanding girdle of high-rise apartments disfigures the approach. The spacious modern capital Tashkent has good museums and galleries; Shakhrisabz is famed for the breathtaking remains of Timur’s palace. A slave-trading oasis khanate, Khiva, the smallest of these cities, is perhaps the most intact and homogenous urban ensemble in the Islamic world, with biscuit-coloured brick and blue and turquoise maiolica. In Bukhara, gorgeously adorned
architecture spanning a thousand years still rises above a streetscape of indeterminate age, while Samarkand has the largest, most resplendently caparisoned historic buildings of all. Modernity has made relatively unobtrusive inroads throughout and the whitewashed villages and farmsteads with their awnings of vines would hold few surprises for Tolstoy. Since independence, in the wake of economic liberalisation, streets and courtyards are draped with dazzling hued carpets and textiles; the glories of the Silk Road in its heyday are not hard to imagine.
Day 7: from Samarkand to Bukhara. 5-hour drive, reaching Bukhara in time for lunch. The afternoon walk begins in the social heart of the city, the Lyab-i Hauz square built around a 15thcentury pool and flanked by the Nadir Divanbegi Madrassa and Khanaga. Time for tea under the mulberry trees. Continue to Central Asia’s oldest surviving mosque, Magok-i-Attari. First of three nights in Bukhara.
Samarkand & Silk Road Cities continued
Vietnam: History, People, Food From Ha Noi to Ho Chi Minh
flight schedules, second of two nights in Khiva or internal flight and overnight in Tashkent. Day 12: from Khiva (or Tashkent) to London. Either drive a short distance from Khiva to Urgench for a morning internal flight to Tashkent, or free time in Tashkent. The 4.00pm flight from Tashkent arrives at Heathrow c. 8.00pm.
Practicalities Price in April (exclusively for solo travellers): £3,750 or £3,200 without international flights. Price, per person, in May, September and October. Two sharing: £3,640 or £3,090 without international flights. Single occupancy: £3,910 or £3,360 without international flights. Included meals: 11 lunches, 10 dinners, with wine. Internal flight: the flight schedule between Urgench and Tashkent can vary and is not confirmed until c. 5 months before the tour departs. On day 11, the night will be spent either in Khiva or Tashkent depending on this schedule. Visas: British citizens and most other foreign nationals require a tourist visa. This is not included in the price of the tour. Visa applications can only begin three months before the tour departs. UK residents will need to submit passports to the Consular section of the Uzbekistan Embassy in London prior to departure. Processing times are approx. 10 working days. Citizens of Australia and New Zealand have their visas issued at Tashkent airport but will need to apply for a letter of invitation within three months of the departure date via Martin Randall Travel. Other nationalities should check their entry requirements with the relevant authorities.
ASIA: Uzbekistan, Vietnam
Accommodation. Hotels on this tour can be subject to change. We use what we consider the best available but once out of Tashkent, choice is limited: Lotte City Hotel Tashkent Palace (lottehotel. com): spacious, opulent and comfortable. City Hotel, Samarkand: small (27 rooms), friendly, refurbished in 2016 or Hotel Sultan, Samarkand: small, recently-refurbished, with rooftop terrace. Omar Khayyam Hotel, Bukhara: excellent location in the centre of the old city, adequately comfortable or Hotel Asia, Bukhara: located in the old part of the city with attractive gardens. Madrassa Mukhammad Hotel, Khiva: converted madrassa, impressively restored, each room a former student’s cell opening onto a courtyard. How strenuous? This is a long and demanding tour which begins with an overnight flight. You will be on your feet a lot, walking and standing around – sometimes on exposed sites in warm temperatures. The tour would not be suitable for anyone with difficulties with everyday walking and stair climbing. There are very long journeys on two of the days but many days with minimal driving. The average distance by coach per day is 51 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
Photograph, previous page: Samarkand, one of many ornate ceilings in the Registan. ©Bill Knight.
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13–26 February 2019 (mf 422) 14 days • £5,530 • Very few spaces available International flights not included Lecturer: Dr Dana Healy 20 November–3 December 2019 (mf 906) 14 days • £5,830 International flights not included Lecturer: Dr Dana Healy The entire length of the country in fourteen days, featuring several unesco World Heritage Sites. Several arrangements specially made to avoid the crowds, and more time spent in each city than most mainstream tours. Talks with local experts are a feature. Covers diverse aspects of Vietnamese culture and history: dynastic kingdoms, colonialism, socialism, ethnology, gastronomy, society. ‘A thousand years enslaved by China/A hundred years trampled by France/Twenty years of civil war day by day’. The words of the revered 20th-century poet and songwriter Trịnh Công Sơn encapsulate the tribulations of the Vietnamese nation; it is impossible to understand Vietnam without first reflecting on its turbulent past. The country’s strategic location has made it vulnerable to millennia of invasions. In 111 bc, Vietnam fell to the Han dynasty and became a colonial vassal of China until 938; it was colonised by the French in the mid-1800s. Following the declaration of independence in 1945, the Vietnamese fought the First Indochina War until 1954, eventually defeating the French in the battle of Điện Biên Phủ. Divided in 1954 into a communist state in the North and the Republic of South Vietnam, it fell victim to the polarized ideological struggle of the Cold War and was not reunified until 1975, after another protracted war – referred to in the West as the Vietnam War.
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Yet today’s visitors find a dynamic country, respectful of its traditions but eager to move forward. Its economic growth rate is currently among the highest in the world, while its society remains firmly anchored by its customs and beliefs. Vietnamese culture is further enriched by the indigenous traditions of the fifty-three ethnic minorities that share the territory with the main Việt (Kinh) people. The intertwining of various creeds – Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism – has resulted in Tam giáo đồng nguyễn (The Three Teachings from one source), a doctrine of tolerance and peaceful coexistence. The tour starts in North Vietnam, the cradle of Vietnamese civilisation with its fertile Red River delta. The capital, Ha Noi, was established in 1010 and has remained a political and administrative centre ever since. The aesthetic charm of the city derives from its blend of ancient monuments, pagodas and temples, alongside the 19th-century colonial buildings. The city of Hue, in central Vietnam, is often regarded as the intellectual and spiritual centre of Buddhism. The Nguyễn lords, the last feudal dynasty of Vietnam, made Hue their capital in 1802, leaving a complex of impressive monuments. To the south, along the majestic Hải Vân pass, lies the ancient port of Hoi An, one of the most delightful and vibrant towns in southeast Asia. Once an important trading post, it reflects a blend of indigenous and foreign cultural influences, with its well preserved communal houses, ancient wells and a unique Japanese roof-covered bridge. In South Vietnam lies the country’s largest metropolis, Ho Chi Minh City. Under its old name, Sai Gon, it was the capital of the French Cochinchina and later of the Republic of South Vietnam. As the country’s main commercial hub, it is dizzying and captivating – but it is also the gateway to the lush, tranquil, coconut-clad Mekong Delta. North of Ho Chi Minh City, to the casual eye, the landscape barely seems scarred by the Resistance War against the USA that shattered
the region over half a century ago, but beneath this serene landscape the immense network of tunnels dug by the Việt Cộng at Cu Chi remains astonishingly intact.
Itinerary Day 1: Ha Noi. Rooms are available from 2.00pm on 12th February or 19th November, allowing for early check-in (flights from London are not included – see Practicalities). The tour begins with lunch followed by a lecture at the hotel, and an afternoon cyclo-tour offers a gentle introduction to the city. Ha Noi’s Old Quarter and the 36 guild streets represent the traditional commercial heart of the city: most street names start with the word hàng (goods, merchandise), for example Hàng Bạc (silver); Hàng Mắm (fish sauce); Hàng Bông (cotton). First of three nights in Ha Noi.
Day 7: Hue, Hoi An. Rise before dawn for an out-of-hours visit to the Imperial Citadel, built in accordance with the principles of ancient oriental philosophy when Hue became the capital of unified Vietnam in 1802 ce. Return to the hotel for breakfast, then depart for Dieu Thanh Pagoda in the late morning. The nuns prepare a Buddhist (vegetarian) lunch. Continue to Hoi An by coach, arriving late afternoon. First of three nights here. Day 8: Hoi An. Explore Hoi An on foot. The atmospheric old town has been more or less safeguarded from the modern curse of motorised vehicles, and its riverside charm adds to the appeal. The colourful architecture has been exceptionally well preserved and reflects influences from China and Japan as well as its indigenous heritage. Free afternoon to relax or take part in an optional cooking class (details available at a later stage).
Day 2: Ha Noi. Explore the Old Quarter in more depth. On the Hoàn Kiếm Lake (Lake of the Returned Sword) is the Turtle Tower Pagoda and the Temple of the Jade Mountain, connected to the city by the iconic red Húc Bridge. Ha Noi also has a number of French colonial buildings, such as the Opera House, the Post Office, the Cathedral and the Metropole hotel (our base). The Temple of Literature was built in 1070 and dedicated to Confucius. It is the site of Vietnam’s first university (1076).
Day 9: My Son, Hoi An. The Cham civilisation ruled Central Vietnam between the 4th and 13th centuries, and the Hindu sanctuary at My Son (c. 40 km inland from Hoi An) contains the most extensive temple remains to survive – and was once the capital of the Champa Kingdom. The temples are partially ruined, and only 20 remain where c. 70 once stood, but the site’s setting in a tropical valley surrounded by mountains and streams is nonetheless beguiling. In the evening we explore the street food scene of Hoi An.
Day 3: Ha Noi. Eating on the street is a typical activity for Hanoians and makes up an important part of the city’s unique culture. This morning we explore the Old Quarter from this gastronomic perspective. In the afternoon there is a visit to the Museum of Ethnology, which houses an extensive collection of traditional costumes and artefacts from Vietnam’s 54 ethnic minority groups.
Day 10: Hoi An, Ho Chi Minh City. Fly to Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam Airlines), arriving at lunchtime. Late-afternoon visit to Salon Saigon, a contemporary art space in a restored French colonial building. There is a tour with the curator, a Vietnamese-French artist and scholar. Continue to dinner at Henry Cabot Lodge, home to the US Ambassador to South Vietnam in the 1960s. The villa is now a private residence that has been fully restored to its former glory. First of four nights in Ho Chi Minh City.
Day 5: Ha Long Bay, Hue. Visit the largest fishing village in the bay, where the c. 700 residents live in remarkably spacious floating houses. The monolithic islands also hide numerous caves, adorned with stalactites and stalagmites. Disembark the boat mid morning and drive back to Ha Noi. Fly to Hue (Vietnam Airlines), arriving late evening. First of two nights in Hue. Day 6: Hue. Take a Dragon Boat down the Perfume river to the 17th-century Thien Mu Pagoda (Pagoda of the Celestial Lady), which is Hue’s best-preserved religious monument and still functions as a monastery. Visit a private garden house, the former home of Princess Ngoc Son, and see the collection of artefacts from the days of the former Royal Empire with one of her direct descendants. In the afternoon, see the Royal Tomb of Minh Mang, the second Nguyen Emperor, which is renowned for its symmetry and grandeur.
Day 11: Ho Chi Minh City. Explore Ho Chi Minh City’s architectural cocktail of colonialera buildings, pagodas, merchants’ residences, modern buildings and vernacular houses. See the Opera House, Notre Dame Cathedral – a red brick edifice with twin spires constructed from materials imported from France – the Central Post Office (1891) and the Reunification Palace, headquarters of the Sai Gon Government during the American War. Also visit the War Remnants Museum. Day 12: Cu Chi, Tay Ninh. Travel to Ben Duoc by speed boat to visit the Cu Chi tunnels, a vast and elaborate underground network used by the Viêt Công during the Second Indochina War. We visit the more extensive but less-busy site, which is slightly further from the city. Drive to the Cao Dai Holy See in Tay Ninh and observe the colourful midday service. Founded in the early 20th century and indigenous to Vietnam, Cao Dai is a fusion of elements from Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism, with some aspects of Christianity and Islam. Day 13: Mekong Delta. A far cry from the hubbub of Ho Chi Minh City, the Ben Tre Province is known for a slower pace of life, revolving around tropical fruit gardens, rice cultivation
Day 14: Ho Chi Minh City. The tour ends after breakfast.
Practicalities Price, per person in February. Two sharing: £5,530. Single occupancy: £6,690. Price, per person in November. Two sharing: £5,830. Single occupancy: £7,140. Included meals: 9 lunches, 9 dinners, with wine. Flights: return flights from London are not included in the prices above. Please contact us for recommended flights. The cost of a World Traveller (economy) seat at the time of publication is c. £850. Additional nights and airport transfers. We can arrange extra hotel nights before or after the tour. Airport transfers are included for all participants – we will ask for your flight details at a later date. Visas: not required for UK citizens for stays of fifteen days or less. Most other foreign nationals require a visa (not included in the tour price). We will advise on the process. Accommodation. Sofitel Legend Metropole, Ha Noi (sofitel-legend-metropole-hanoi.com): one of the finest hotels in Asia: 5-star luxury blending French and Vietnamese influences. Bhaya Classic Cruise, Ha Long Bay (bhayacruises. com): traditional wooden junk, not luxurious yet authentic and adequately comfortable. La Residence, Hue (la-residence-hue.com): 5-star riverside hotel in the former residence of the French Governor, exceptionally restored in an Art Deco style. Anantara Hoi An Resort, Hoi An (hoi-an.anantara.com): peaceful 5-star resort on the banks of the Thu Bon river, a stone’s throw from the historic centre. Park Hyatt Saigon, Ho Chi Minh City (hyatt.com): plush yet congenial 5-star hotel; the best hotel in the city centre. How strenuous? The tour involves a lot of walking in town centres, where coach access is restricted, and a lot of standing during visits. Uneven ground and irregular paving are standard. Unless you enjoy entirely unimpaired mobility, cope with everyday walking and stair-climbing without difficulty and are reliably sure-footed, this tour is not for you. There are long coach journeys during which facilities are limited and may be of poor quality. The tour spans over 1,500 km from north to south, and the weather varies: it can be chilly in the north and very hot in the south. Average distance by coach per day: 42 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
Illustration: Hue, Royal Tomb of Emperor Minh Mang. Photograph ©Hannah King 2018.
Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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ASIA: Vietnam
Day 4: Ha Long Bay, Lan Ha Bay. Drive to Ha Long Bay (Bay of the Descending Dragon) (c. 4 hours), a vast area characterised by thousands of towering limestone islands rising dramatically from the sea. It was designated a unesco World Heritage site in 1994 – a justified accolade for a place of sublime natural beauty. We board our ship at the busy Tuan Chau port, but then divert to the less-visited (but no less spectacular) Lan Ha Bay. Overnight in Lan Ha Bay.
and coconuts. Spend the day on board a wooden river cruiser, exploring the network of tranquil waterways fed by the Mekong River. Despite the seemingly unhurried existence of the local people, the area is a hive of activity: these swamplands produce more than a third of Vietnam’s annual food crop, as well as bricks, incense and the many miraculous incarnations of the coconut.
The Making of Argentina A creative history from the Atlantic to the Andes Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 10.00pm (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Buenos Aires. Those not taking our flights from London may check in to the hotel from 3.00pm today. Day 2: Buenos Aires. Arrive at Buenos Aires Ezeiza airport at 9.00am. Rooms will be ready to allow for some time to rest before lunch and a lecture. Walk to the nearby Recoleta cemetery, with its architecturally diverse and ornate tombs, burial place of many of the country’s leaders and cultural figures, including Eva Perón. Day 3: Buenos Aires. Walk down the grand Avenida de Mayo, with fine belle-époque architecture, to the Casa Rosada, seat of the government of Argentina. Tour its beautiful interiors and gain further insight into the country’s history and politics. In the afternoon see the neoclassical cathedral and the Manzana de las Luces, an 18th-cent. Jesuit centre of culture and learning. There is the possibility of an evening performance at the Teatro Colón, with one of the world’s best acoustics (programmes announced in February 2019).
24 October–6 November 2019 (mf 860) 14 days • £7,280 Lecturer: Chris Moss A comprehensive overview of history, politics, art, architecture, gastronomy and music. Spectacular scenery and geology in the Calchaquí Valleys. Delicious high-altitude wines of Bodega Colomé and Cafayate. A private tango show in Café Tortoni.
AMERICAS: Argentina
Tango, Evita, Las Malvinas, Maradona, meat and Malbec… much about Argentina is familiar to many of us, and yet it remains something of an enigma. It’s about as far from Europe as a South American country can be, and yet is famously – or perhaps infamously – European in so many regards. Argentina is South America’s second-biggest country and the eighth-largest in the world, ranking between India and Kazakhstan. Yet it has a population smaller than that of Spain and its economic power has more often than not brought it woe instead of wealth. After giving the continent one of its great liberators, José de San Martín, the country was plunged into decades of civil war. For much of the twentieth century, military dictators and populists squandered the nation’s huge potential and repressed its citizens. How has this decline been managed, and how did Argentines manage to retain their creative vigour and distinctive glamour? What about Argentina’s relationship with the UK, an important trading partner, builder of South America’s most ambitious railway network and colonialist villain in the Falkland Islands? When 242
and how did the remote backwater of Buenos Aires emerge to become a world-class city? Is ‘Paris of South America’ anything other than a nostalgialaden nickname? This tour aims to forge an understanding of Argentina through its multi-layered history and multi-faceted culture. Starting in Buenos Aires, we visit aspiring cities and civic palaces, museums and art galleries, cafés and steakhouses, and the necropolis where Evita is entombed alongside the society figures she spurned. It’s a short hop from the capital to the pampas, one of the world’s great breadbaskets and stockyards, and the backdrop against which the figure of the gaucho emerged. Follow the old Camino Real or Royal Highway, that once connected Buenos Aires with the silver mines of Alto Peru and the seats of Spanish power. In the northwest visit the Jesuit ranches and religious sites of Córdoba, Argentina’s second city. From here, continue towards the Andes to survey a pre-Columbian site at Quilmes, see the cactusstrewn landscapes of the Calchaquí Valleys and visit the colonial treasures of Salta. Along the way, we taste the criollo cuisines of the pampas as well as the foods of the Andean Valleys, many of which have their origins in pre-Hispanic societies. As with so many aspects of Argentine reality, from music to literature to religion, there has been a complex interplay between native identity and nationhood, indigenous traditions and imported values. We also sample the country’s famous wines in Cafayate, south of Salta, where vines grow at altitude. Huge alternations in temperature favour small-grained grapes with a high concentration of aromas and flavours.
Illustration: Argentina, cowboys on the Pampas, copper engraving c. 1840 by P. Wurster.
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Day 4: Buenos Aires. Explore Latin American art at the Museo de Bellas Artes and modern art gallery, MALBA. Trace the life and work of Eva Perón at the Museo Evita, housed in a 1923 mansion that belonged to her social foundation. Private tango show in the early evening at Café Tortoni, dating to 1858, frequented by Carlos Gardel as well as other painters, writers, artists and musicians. Day 5: San Antonio de Areco, Pampas. Journey outside the city to the Pampas grasslands to discover gaucho history and culture in the delightful town of San Antonio de Areco, home to renowned silversmiths. Enjoy an Argentine beef lunch, grilled in front of you at a majestic estancia in the countryside, surrounded by horses and cattle. Day 6: Córdoba. Fly in the morning from Buenos Aires to Córdoba (1 hour 30 minutes, Aérolineas Argentinas). Visit on arrival the country’s first university, founded by the Jesuits in 1610, and their most historic church, Templo de la Compañía de Jesús, dating to 1675. Overnight in Córdoba. Day 7: Córdoba. Drive into the countryside to see the Jesuit estancias of Jesús María, famous for its wine production, and Santa Catalina with its splendid church. Fly in the late afternoon to Salta (1 hour 30 minutes). First of two nights in Salta. Day 8: Salta. A day to explore the charming town of Salta with its fine colonial and Neo-Classical architecture. The rose-coloured cathedral houses the tomb of another Argentine liberator, General Güemes, while the italianate church of San Francisco was designed by Luigi Giorgi. Salta’s excellent archaeological museum presents the incredible Inca ritual of child sacrifice. Free afternoon and evening lecture by a local expert on the geology of the Calchaquí Valleys, in preparation for the onward journey.
Guatemala, Honduras, Belize Lands of the Maya Day 9: Calchaquí Valleys, Cachi, Molinos. In two minibuses drive through the dramatic and constantly changing scenery of the Calchaquí Valleys (c. 4 hours 30 minutes). From lush green countryside and deep red mountains, through fields covered in thousands of giant cacti we reach the tiny and pretty town of Cachi with a small archaeological museum. Continue to our hotel in Molinos, opposite the 18th-century church. Overnight in Molinos. Day 10: Bodega Colomé, Cafayate. Nestled deep in vine-clad hills, drive to Bodega Colomé for a tasting and lunch with their aromatic and flavourful wines. Owner Donald Hess has combined his love of wine and art by building a James Turrell museum on-site, a fascinating playground of light and space. The drive to Cafayate (c. 3 hours) reveals yet more astonishing geological features. First of two nights in Cafayate. Day 11: Quilmes, Cafayate. Morning excursion to the pre-Inca remains at Quilmes. Inhabited from the 9th century ad, its 3000 inhabitants resisted evangelisation and enslavement resulting in bitter punishment. Taste some of Cafayate’s best wines, including lunch in the vineyards of El Porvenir, spectacular views at Yacochuya and dinner at our hotel, owned by El Esteco. Day 12: Cafayate to Buenos Aires. Another breathtaking drive through the reds, ochres and pinks of the Cafayate gorge (c. 4 hours 30 minutes). Return to Salta for a flight to Buenos Aires (2 hours) and a final dinner in the capital.
3–16 February 2019 (mf 420) 14 days • £5,930 Lecturer: David Drew Magnificent Maya cities including Tikal, Copán and Lamanai with time also for the little visited. Spectacular scenery: jungle, lakeside, volcanic. Led by David Drew, author of The Lost Chronicles of the Maya Kings. Ever since explorers revealed the existence of their jungle-clad ruins in the 1840s, the ‘lost’ civilisation of the Maya has been a cause of astonishment and speculation. For while Europe was struggling through the ‘Dark Ages’, Maya peoples were enjoying the apogée of their civilisation in seemingly the most unlikely of places – the rainforests of Central America. With organisational skills that can only be the product of a highly sophisticated society, the Maya created magnificent cities replete with elegant palaces, mighty temples and broad plazas studded with carved stelae and altars. They were great mathematicians and astronomers who conceived one of the most complex and accurate calendars the world has known. They also devised an elaborate and beautiful system of hieroglyphic writing, the only fully-developed written language in the pre-Columbian Americas. Maya art was
complex and loaded with arcane symbolism, yet to our sensibilities it appears remarkably naturalistic and accessible. All this was achieved by a people still technically in the Stone Age and who, despite many colourful theories to the contrary, developed in complete isolation from the civilisations of the ‘Old World’, of Europe and Asia. Until some forty years ago a powerful mystique had grown up about the Maya. They were thought to have been a peaceable society of independent cities governed by priest-kings who devoted their days to astronomy and divination on behalf of their people. Today, however, this image has been dramatically changed by the continuing discoveries of archaeologists and by one of the great investigative triumphs of the end of the 20th century, the decipherment of Maya writing. Visitors to the great Maya cities can learn of their changing fortunes over almost a thousand years in extraordinary detail. We now know the history of the royal families and can also understand the essentials of Maya religious beliefs and how Maya rulers saw themselves, like Egyptian pharaohs, as god-kings on earth whose elaborate rituals of blood-letting and sacrifice sustained the Maya world. In the tenth century ad the heartland of Maya civilisation in the tropical forests collapsed. Construction in the great cities ceased, temples and palaces were invaded by the jungle. It now
Day 13: Buenos Aires. Afternoon flight from Buenos Aires Ezeiza airport, departing c. 2.15pm. Day 14. Land at London Heathrow at c. 6.30am.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £7,280 or £6,320 without international flights. Single occupancy: £8,030 or £7,070 without international flights. Included meals: 8 lunches, 9 dinners, with wine.
AMERICAS: Argentina, Belize
Music: we hope to be able to secure tickets to a performance at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. Tickets to be released in February 2019. Accommodation. The Brick Hotel, Buenos Aires (accorhotels.com): modern 5-star hotel in the elegant La Recoleta district. Hotel Windsor, Córdoba (windsortower.com): functional 4-star with a good restaurant, centrally located. Solar de la Plaza, Salta (solardelaplaza.com.ar): 4-star hotel in a converted Neo-Classical mansion with spacious rooms. Hacienda de Molinos (haciendademolinos.com.ar): simple 3-star hotel with rooms around pretty, shaded courtyards. Patios de Cafayate (patiosdecafayate.com): 4-star hotel with the feel of a colonial estate. How strenuous? This is a long tour that involves a lot of walking and standing. Drives in the northwest are long, roads are not paved and the terrain dictates travel by minibus. Cachi sits at an altitude of 2,531 metres above sea level. Average distance by coach per day: 63 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Guatemala, Honduras, Belize continued
seems that environmental disaster – land clearance under population pressure exacerbated by severe droughts – was a major factor. But this was not quite the end, as new cities emerged in the north of the Yucatán peninsula, which continued in much reduced form until extirpation by Conquistadores and missionaries in the sixteenth century. Today there are some six million speakers of Maya languages, the largest group of native Americans north of Panama. They reveal a distinctive living culture, an intriguing mixture of both ancient beliefs and practices adopted since the Spanish conquest.
Itinerary Day 1: Guatemala City, Antigua Guatemala. Fly at c. 11.00am from London Heathrow to Atlanta (Virgin Atlantic) and onwards to Guatemala City (Delta) arriving at c.8.30pm local time. Drive to the splendid, colonial capital of Guatemala. First of two nights in Antigua. Those not taking our flights can check in from 2.00pm today. Day 2: Antigua Guatemala. Though shattered by earthquakes in 1773, much of Antigua’s old fabric survives. See colonial architecture of great charm and impressive Baroque churches, some of which still remain in picturesque ruin, with intriguing Maya influences. Day 3: Guatemala City, Copán (Honduras). Drive to Guatemala City to visit the Archaeological Museum, a major collection of Maya art and artefacts. Continue to Copán (c. 5 hours) in Honduras for the first of two nights. Day 4: Copán. Despite its location on the periphery of their world, Copán was one of the most important Maya cities, near to the source of jade in the Motagua valley and communicating closely with Tikal in present day Guatemala and Palenque in Mexico. Highlights include the formidable Acropolis and the impressive Hieroglyphic Stairway, completed c. 760 ad.
AMERICAS: Belize
Day 5: Quirigua, Mariscos. Cross the border back into Guatemala and the site of Quirigua, with magnificent stelae covered in remarkably well preserved glyphs and images of the city’s rulers. Continue to Mariscos on the shores of Lake Izabal for one night. Day 6: Rio Dulce, Dolores, Petén. Morning boat trip across Lake Izabal towards the picturesque Rio Dulce, including a visit to the strategically placed Castillo San Felipe, originally built by the Spaniards in the 1680s to defend themselves against British pirates. Also a chance to see birds and other wildlife. Drive north to the region of Petén via Dolores, whose small archaeological museum contains an impressive collection of ceramics. First of two nights in Petén. Day 7: Tikal. Tikal was a thriving metropolis of maybe 100,000 at its height. Its massive pyramidtemples still pierce the forest canopy making it architecturally the grandest of all Maya cities. One of the great powers of the Maya world, its changing fortunes over almost a thousand years can be followed in the hieroglyphs. Progressive clearance 244
and excavation have revealed an intricate pattern of urban planning. Day 8: Yaxhá, Topoxte. In the Petén jungle of the Guatemalan lowlands the huge city of Yaxhá is surrounded by lakes and teeming with wildlife. Its impressive pyramids and surviving stelae date from the Preclassic and Classic era. Close by, on an island in a lake, is the small, largely Postclassic site of Topoxte, occupied as late as 1450. Cross the border into Belize to the hotel near San Ignacio for the first of three nights. Day 9: Xunantunich, Cahal Pech. The Classic period site of Xunantunich was an important ceremonial centre. At its heart stands El Castillo, 36 metres high and surrounded by an elaborate stucco frieze bearing images of the Maya cosmos and the city’s rulers. The small royal residential site of Cahal Pech flourished from 600-800 ad and is remarkable for its well preserved palace structures with intact corbel vaults and sleeping platforms. Day 10: Caracol. A bumpy ride by minivan into the jungle (c. 2 hours 30 mins) leads to the remote site of Caracol, believed to be bigger than Tikal in its entirety. Some splendid buildings have been excavated, including the Ca’ana or ‘Sky Place’, the tallest structure in Belize at 43 metres. Day 11: Belize City, Altun Ha, Lamanai. Drive in the morning to the National Museum in Belize City, formerly the city’s prison. Collections include fine Maya jades and ceramics as well as colonial artefacts. In the afternoon continue to Altun Ha, a small Classic Maya centre. Numerous jades have been found in its tombs, including the largestknown Maya jade, the Sun God head, weighing almost 4 kg and dating to about 600 ad. Continue by road and boat on the glorious New River to a remote jungle lodge at the Maya city of Lamanai, where two nights are spent. Day 12: Lamanai. Highlights include the 4-metrehigh masks of the Mask Temple, jaguar faces on the Jaguar Temple and a stunning view of the jungle and lagoon from the summit of the High Temple. Free afternoon to enjoy this remote jungle location, to spot birds and possibly crocodiles. Day 13. Drive to Belize City. Fly at c. 1.00pm (Delta), via Atlanta, travelling overnight. Day 14. Arrive London Heathrow at c.8.30am.
Martin Randall Travel is a member of LATA – the Latin American Travel Association, the authoritative voice in the UK for Latin American travel and tourism.
Illustration, previous page: Mayan heiroglyphs, wood engraving c. 1840.
What else is included in the price? See page 6
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c. 50 miles
Lamanai
Altun Ha Belize City
San Ignacio
Tikal Petén
Topoxte Yaxhá
Xunantunich Cahal Pech Caracol
Dolores
BELIZE
MEXICO Caribbean Sea
Rio Dulce
GUATEMALA
Mariscos Quirigua Copán
Guatemala City
HONDURAS
Antigua Guatemala
E L S A LVA D O R
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £5,930 or £5,050 without flights. Single occupancy: £6,600 or £5,720 without flights. Included meals: 10 lunches, 11 dinners, with wine. Visas: British citizens should apply for a visa waiver (ESTA) for travel via the USA. We will advise on this. Accommodation. Hotel Casa Santo Domingo, Antigua Guatemala (casasantodomingo. com.gt): beautiful 5-star hotel in a former Dominican monastery. Hotel Marina, Copán (hotelmarinacopan.com): comfortable, attractive 4-star hotel near the ruins. G Boutique Hotel, Mariscos (gguatemala.com): modern hotel on the shores of Lake Izabal with spacious rooms. Hotel Villa Maya (villasdeguatemala.com): 4-star lake-side hotel surrounded by jungle. San Ignacio Resort Hotel, San Ignacio (sanignaciobelize. com): 4-star hotel with comfortable rooms a good restaurant. Lamanai Outpost Lodge (lamanai.com): a jungle lodge with very simple accommodation in wooden cabanas. How strenuous? Though the itinerary has been planned to be less strenuous than most tours to the region, it must be stressed that the tour is nevertheless quite taxing, with some long drives, some early starts and frequent changes of hotel. Many of the archaeological sites are vast, on rough ground in the middle of the humid jungle. The tour should not be undertaken by anyone who has the slightest problem with everyday walking and stair-climbing, or who is not sure-footed. Average distance by coach per day: 78 miles. Group size: between 14 and 22 participants.
e
Sea
Baroque Music in the Bolivian Missions Santa Cruz, La Paz and a jungle journey 24 April–3 May 2020 (mg 185) Lecturer: Jeffrey Skidmore Full details available in January 2019 Please call us to register your interest or e-mail alerts@martinrandall.co.uk Attend the International Festival of American Renaissance and Baroque Music held in the Jesuit Mission churches of north-east Bolivia. World-renowned musicians perform alongside local school and university groups; repertoire is from Bolivia and beyond. Exquisite colonial architecture in remote locations. Further exploration of native instruments and Bolivian dance in La Paz. Led by Jeffrey Skidmore, director of Ex Cathedra and a pioneer in the research and performance of Latin American Baroque music.
Further evidence of the inherent rich musicality of Bolivians throughout the ages, as well as their great dance traditions that dominate regular festivals, can be witnessed in the museums of La Paz. Pre-hispanic instruments such as giant pan-pipes and bamboo violins sit alongside colourful masks and vivid textiles, brought to life with dramatic displays.
Itinerary Day 1 (24th April). Fly at c. 5.30pm from London Gatwick to Santa Cruz, travelling overnight via Madrid (Air Europa; Madrid–Santa Cruz c. 12 hours in the air). If you are not travelling with the group from London your room is available from 2.00pm today. Day 2 (25th April): Santa Cruz. Land in Santa Cruz at c. 5.30am and transfer to the hotel for a free day to recover. There is an introductory lecture to prepare for the journey ahead. First of two nights in Santa Cruz. Day 3: Santa Cruz. A morning excursion to Biocentro Güembé provides an insight into Bolivia’s flora and fauna with 24 hectares of exotic plants and animals, a butterfly dome and an aviary. Afternoon visits in the centre of the city include the folklore museum and cathedral. Evening concert in either the chapel of the former school of arts or the 19th-century church of San Roque. Day 4: San José. Drive from Santa Cruz to San José (c. 4½ hours), founded in 1696. Dominating one side of the huge and dusty main square is the mission complex, a defensive compound that housed the Jesuit college behind the elegant Baroque stone façades of the church, chapel and bell tower. Evening concert in the church. Overnight San José.
Day 5: San Rafael, Santa Ana, San Ignacio. Drive to San Rafael (c. 3 hours) where the wooden church was completed in 1749 by Swiss missionary Fr. Martin Schmid, whose music usually features on festival programmes. The church at Santa Ana was probably constructed entirely by the indigenous population after the expulsion of the Jesuits between 1770 and 1780 and overlooks a grassy square where donkeys and chickens roam. Evening concert in the cathedral of San Ignacio, a reconstruction of the original mission church but still home to the original Baroque altarpieces. Overnight San Ignacio. Day 6: San Miguel, Concepción. A morning excursion to San Miguel where, once more, the 1721 mission church shines in its humble surroundings. Visit a workshop producing elaborate cedar carvings in the Baroque style. Continue to Concepción (3½ hours) whose church is the most lavishly decorated with much gold leaf. A substantial musical archive was uncovered here and a museum documents its discovery, along with the restoration of the mission churches. Evening concert and overnight in Concepción. Day 7: San Javier, Santa Cruz, La Paz. Drive back to Santa Cruz via San Javier, the first mission town to be established in the region. The carved retable of the church depicts the Jesuit missionaries at work. Fly from Santa Cruz to La Paz in the late afternoon (Boliviana de Aviación, BOA), arriving in time for dinner. First of three nights in La Paz. Day 8: La Paz. The sprawling city of La Paz overflows from its mountainous basin 3,500m above sea level and is best traversed and viewed from an excellent network of cable cars. Morning visit to the National Museum of Ethnography and Folklore with its fascinating collection of carnival masks as well as ceramics and textiles. An Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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The six unesco World Heritage-Site Chiquitos Indian mission stations are one of Bolivia’s great cultural riches. Located north-east of Santa Cruz in Bolivia’s lowlands, part of the Amazon basin, these remote colonial churches are simple, barnlike constructions of wood and adobe, gloriously painted inside and out with swirling floral patterns, angels and saints in modest shades of ochre and tan. Spiralling columns are crafted from entire tree trunks, and exquisitely carved retables and confessionals abound. Every two years they provide an extraordinary backdrop and context for the performance of Baroque music. The biennial festival of American Renaissance and Baroque Music is based in Santa Cruz but spreads through this precious chain of enchanting jungle churches and attracts performers and scholars from the Americas, Europe and the Far-East. All are eager to join the proud and friendly local musicians and communities who are passionate about their musical heritage, a legacy from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries which saw the fusion of European and Indian cultures. The inspiration flows in both directions, with concerts in these vast cathedrals full to capacity (the locals leave just a few rows at the front free for visitors such as ourselves) creating a magical and unique atmosphere, seemingly frozen in time and yet flourishing and alive. Musical traditions in these settlements go back over four hundred years but much of the distinctive local Baroque sacred music was found in the 1990s during a restoration process which uncovered over twelve thousand manuscripts. The music, mostly anonymous, but written by European - notably Dominico Zipoli - and indigenous composers, is lively, energetic and colourful with the joy and freshness of a young Vivaldi. Instrumental accompaniments appear simple on the page but inventories show a lavish musical resource was available including many harps, woodwind of various kinds, harpsichord, organ and strings including tromba marinas. Texts are mostly liturgical and in Latin but also feature native languages.
Baroque Music in the Bolivian Missions continued
Drive in the afternoon to the miners’ market where the tragic consequences of the city’s prosperity live on. Continue to Sucre (4 hours) at 2,810m above sea level. First of two nights in Sucre.
afternoon walk through the historic centre takes in the Witches’ Market, a hub of herbal medicine and magical cures, and the main square with cathedral and presidential palace. A demonstration at the Museum of Musical Instruments is followed by a private show of Bolivian dance.
Day 14: Sucre. The cathedral displays a range of architectural styles from Baroque to Neoclassical; see also the adjoining art museum. The Bolivian Act of Independence was signed in the Casa de la Libertad, which now houses a history museum. Continue to the treasury museum with an overview of the different metals, minerals and semi-precious stones and the mining process. The convent of La Recoleta documents the work of Franciscan missionaries with a substantial collection of art and artefacts, while the museum of indigenous art displays beautiful weavings.
Day 9: La Paz. San Francisco is the city’s finest colonial church and houses an interesting exhibition of religious art and furniture. The National Museum of Art, housed in an elegant baroque palace, contains an extensive collection of sacred, colonial works. Free afternoon. Dinner is at Gustu, ranked number 28 on San Pellegrino’s list of 50 best restaurants in Latin America – and the only entry for Bolivia. Day 10: Tiwanaku, Santa Cruz. Morning visit to the archaeological site of Tiwanaku, once home to an impressive civilisation, established around 1200 bc, that by 400 ad controlled the entire Titicaca basin. Excellent museums display ceramics and monoliths excavated from the site. Continue to La Paz airport for a late afternoon flight back to Santa Cruz. Overnight Santa Cruz. Day 11. Fly at c. 11.45am from Santa Cruz to Madrid, arriving at c. 5.00am the following day. Day 12. Fly from Madrid to London Gatwick arriving c. 8.45am.
Practicalities Price: to be confirmed in January 2019. Please call us to register your interest, or send an e-mail to alerts@martinrandall.co.uk. Music: the full programme is announced in early 2020. We will endeavour to include as many concerts as possible by both international professionals and local amateurs.
AMERICAS: Bolivia
Accommodation. We book the best available hotels in the mission towns, which are 2–3 star by European standards. Hotel los Tajibos, Santa Cruz (lostajiboshotel.com): 5-star resort hotel with comfortable rooms, good restaurants and a pool. Hotel Villa Chiquitana, San José (hotellavillachiquitana.com): friendly, family-run with simple rooms. Hotel la Misión, San Ignacio (hotel-lamision.com): an attractive hotel on the town’s main square. Gran Hotel Concepción (granhotelconcepcion.com.bo): converted colonial house, with well kept gardens and simple rooms. Suites Camino Real, La Paz (caminoreal.com.bo): modern and reliable 5-star chain hotel with large rooms, located in an upscale area of La Paz. How strenuous? This is a strenuous tour and a good level of fitness and stamina are essential. It begins with an overnight flight and has a number of hotel changes. There are some long drives, often on unpaved, bumpy roads with little opportunity for comfort stops. While there is not a huge amount of walking, uneven ground is standard. La Paz is 3,500m above sea level. It can take time to aclimatise and anyone with heart or respiratory problems should seek advice from their doctor before booking. Additional travel insurance cover may be required. Average distance by coach per day: 75 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. 246
Day 15: Sucre, Santa Cruz. Fly from Sucre back to Santa Cruz for your final night in Bolivia. Day 16. Fly at c. 11.45am from Santa Cruz to Madrid, arriving at c. 5.00am the following day. Day 17. Fly from Madrid to London Gatwick arriving c. 8.45am.
Optional tour extension: 2–9 May 2020 (mg 185) Led by a Bolivian national guide An extension to Baroque Music in the Bolivian Missions, remain in the country and explore further the cultural and natural heritage. Ethereal landscapes of Uyuni’s salt flats. The fascinating history of silver mining in Potosí, epitomised at the former royal mint. The whitewashed city of Sucre has some of South America’s finest colonial architecture.
Itinerary Day 10 of Baroque Music in the Bolivian Missions (Saturday 2nd May): La Paz, Uyuni. Fly, early evening, to Uyuni (3,656m above sea level). First of two nights at a salt hotel on the edge of the flats. Day 11: Salar de Uyuni. All day excursion by jeep on Bolivia’s dramatic salt flats. See abandoned steam trains that once carried ore from the mines here, and visit one of the few families permitted to extract and process the salt. Lunch is on the flats, while a short uphill walk (and then downhill: c. 1 hour total) on the cactus-studded Incahuasi island provides more panoramic views. Day 12: Potosí. Drive through highlands (4 hours) to Potosí at 4,100m above sea level. The beautiful, 17th-cent. Carmelite convent of Santa María was occupied by the daughters of wealthy Spaniards and mine owners who paid handsomely for the privilege, donating an extraordinary collection of art and other treasures. Overnight Potosí. Day 13: Potosí, Sucre. Visit to the Casa Real de la Moneda, the former royal mint, providing insight into coin production using the silver of the nearby Cerro Rico mines. Displays include machinery and a fine collection of art and archaeological finds.
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Practicalities Price: to be confirmed in January 2019. Tour leader. This extension is led by a Bolivian national guide. Should numbers permit, the tour manager of Baroque Music in the Bolivian Missions will also accompany the group. Accommodation. Hotel Luna Salada, Uyuni (lunasaladahotel.com.bo): a hotel constructed entirely from salt. Comfortable rooms and a good restaurant. Hotel Coloso, Potosí (potosihotel. com): a traditional hotel with oxygen available in case of altitude sickness. Hotel Parador Santa María la Real, Sucre (parador.com.bo): an attractive hotel in a converted 18th cent. mansion with traditional and antique décor. How strenuous? This extension involves a lot of walking in town centres, where coach access is restricted, and a lot of standing in museums and churches. Walking shoes would be appropriate for the visit to the salt flats and Incahuasi island. Altitude remains an issue, particularly in Potosí at 4,100m above sea level. Average distance by coach per day: 80 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
Photograph, previous page: San Javier, façade of the Jesuit Mission, photograph ©Jess Kraft/shutterstock. Above centre: cathedral of San Lorenzo ©Sophie Wright.
For lecturers' biographies See pages 260–267
Lands of the Maya Maya civilisation ancient and modern in Mexico and Guatemala 8–24 February 2020 (mg 100) 16 nights • £6,810 Lecturer: David Drew Magnificent Maya cities including Chichén Itzá, Palenque and Tikal, with time also for the little visited. An insight into modern Maya life: customs, religion and colourful handicrafts. Splendid colonial architecture. Spectacular scenery: jungle, lakeside, coastal and volcanic.
But this was not quite the end, as new cities emerged in other areas, such as Uxmal and Chichén Itzá in the north of the Yucatán peninsula, which continued in much reduced form until extirpation by Conquistadores and missionaries in the sixteenth century. Today there are some six million speakers of Maya languages, the largest group of native Americans north of Panama. They reveal a distinctive living culture, an intriguing mixture of both ancient beliefs and practices adopted since the Spanish conquest.
Itinerary Day 1: Cancún. Fly at c. 1.00pm from London Gatwick direct to Cancún with British Airways, arriving in time for a light dinner. Those not taking our flights can check in to the hotel from 3.00pm today. Overnight in Cancún. Day 2: Ek’ Balam, Chichén Itzá. The little-visited site of Ek’ Balam is known for its defensive walls and well-preserved stucco sculpture. Situated in the Northern Lowlands, Chichén Itzá was the New Rome of the Maya world, where Maya culture was reborn in a different guise that was to last until the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadors in the 16th cent. Prominent among the constructions here is El Castillo pyramid, simple in appearance but functioning as a complex Maya calendar. See also the great ball court, El Caracól observatory and the sacred well. Drive to Uxmal; first of three nights. Day 3: Mérida. An excursion to Mérida begins with a walk through the colonial centre including the cathedral and main square. The 19th cent. Palacio del Gobierno houses impressive murals by local artist Fernando Castro Pacheco depicting the violent struggle of the Maya against the Spanish. The Museum of the Maya World contains c. 500 artefacts including sculpture, jewellery and ceramics. Day 4: Uxmal. Uxmal arose towards the end of lowland Maya civilisation but was abandoned around ad 900. Some of the most beautiful of Maya buildings are here, distinguished by their long and low proportions and characterised by elaborate stone mosaics on the façades. Continue to Kabah, with its eccentric Palace of the Masks. Day 5: Palenque. Drive south to Palenque (c. 9½ hours including stops) for the first of two nights.
Day 6: Palenque. Enjoying a magnificent location in the jungle of the foothills of Chiapas, Palenque rose to a dominant position through war and marriage alliances in the Late Classic period, ad 600 to 800. The sculpture found here is particularly outstanding. The largest structure, the Temple of the Inscriptions, housed the spectacular tomb of the great ruler Pacal. Day 7: Bonampak, Yaxchilán. The small site of Bonampak has remarkably well-preserved murals with graphic scenes of royal rituals, a savage battle and sacrifice of the captives. Travel by boat on the Usumacinta river to the secluded site of Yaxchilán, where buildings are decorated with ornamental lintels depicting conquest and ritual. Overnight Frontera Corozal, on the Guatemalan border. Day 8. Most of the day is occupied with driving from Mexico into Guatemala (c. 5 hours). Stop for refreshments at the small town of Flores on the shores of Lake Petén Itzá before continuing to the hotel in El Remate for the first of three nights. Day 9: Yaxhá. In the Petén jungle of the Guatemalan lowlands the huge city of Yaxhá is surrounded by lakes and teeming with wildlife. Its forty stelae and nine pyramids date from the Preclassic and Classic era. Day 10: Tikal. Even bigger than Yaxhá, Tikal was a thriving metropolis of maybe 100,000 at its height. Its massive pyramid-temples still pierce the forest canopy making it architecturally the grandest of all Maya cities. One of the great powers of the Maya world, its changing fortunes over almost a thousand years can be followed in the hieroglyphs. Progressive clearance and excavation have revealed an intricate pattern of urban planning. Day 11: Guatemala City, Panajachel. Early morning flight to Guatemala City to visit the Archaeological Museum, a major collection of Maya art and artefacts. From here drive west to Panajachel, splendidly situated on the shores of Lake Atitlán. First of three nights in Panajachel. Day 12: Santiago de Atitlán. Early morning boat trip across this spectacular lake (which is surrounded by volcanoes) to the traditional Maya town of Santiago de Atitlán. Here the curious wooden effigy of Maximón is still worshipped and can be visited in his ‘house’. Day 13: Chichicastenango. Optional morning excursion to Chichicastenango, with its centuriesTe l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Ever since explorers revealed the existence of their jungle-clad ruins in the 1840s, the ‘lost’ civilisation of the Maya has been a cause of astonishment and speculation. For while Europe was struggling through the ‘Dark Ages’, Maya peoples were enjoying the apogée of their civilisation in seemingly the most unlikely of places – the rainforests of Central America. With organisational skills that can only be the product of a highly sophisticated society, the Maya created magnificent cities replete with elegant palaces, mighty temples and broad plazas studded with carved stelae and altars. They were great mathematicians and astronomers who conceived one of the most complex and accurate calendars the world has known. They also devised an elaborate and beautiful system of hieroglyphic writing, the only fully-developed written language in the pre-Columbian Americas. Maya art was complex and loaded with arcane symbolism, yet to our sensibilities it appears remarkably naturalistic and accessible. All this was achieved by a people still technically in the Stone Age and who, despite many colourful theories to the contrary, developed in complete isolation from the civilisations of the ‘Old World’, of Europe and Asia. Until some forty years ago a powerful mystique had grown up about the Maya. They were thought to have been a peaceable society of independent cities governed by priest-kings who devoted their days to astronomy and divination on behalf of their people. Today, however, this image has been dramatically changed by the continuing discoveries of archaeologists and by one of the great investigative triumphs of the century, the decipherment of Maya writing. Visitors to the great Maya cities can learn of their changing fortunes over almost a thousand years in extraordinary detail. We now know the history of the royal families and can also understand the essentials of Maya religious beliefs and how Maya rulers saw themselves, like Egyptian pharaohs, as god-kings on earth whose elaborate rituals of blood-letting and sacrifice sustained the Maya world. In the tenth century ad the heartland of Maya civilisation in the tropical forests collapsed. Construction in the great cities ceased, temples and palaces were invaded by the jungle. It now seems that environmental disaster – land clearance under population pressure exacerbated by severe droughts – was a major factor.
Lands of the Maya continued
Peru: the Andean Heartland Pre-Columbian to present day
old, colourful market. The wide range of wares reflect the local traditions of weaving and woodcarving. An interesting mix of Maya and Catholic worship takes place in the church of Santo Tomás. Day 14: Iximché, Antigua Guatemala. Iximché is an excellent example of a Late Postclassic site, established c. 1470 with three plazas, temples, palaces and ball courts, and with defences which were stormed by the Spanish under Pedro de Alvarado in 1524. Continue to Antigua, the splendid, colonial capital of Guatemala for the first of two nights. Day 15: Antigua Guatemala. Though shattered by earthquakes in 1773, much of Antigua’s old fabric survives. See colonial architecture of great charm and impressive Baroque churches, some of which still remain in picturesque ruin. Day 16: Antigua Guatemala. Drive to Guatemala City for an early afternoon flight to Miami. Change planes here for an overnight flight to London. Day 17. arrive at London Heathrow at c. 11.00am. Please note that this tour departs from London Gatwick and returns to London Heathrow.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £6,810 or £6,130 without flights on days 1 and 16. Single occupancy: £7,570 or £6,890 without flights on days 1 and 16. Included meals: all 14 dinners and 11 lunches (including 1 box lunch); beer, water, soft drinks and coffee at lunch plus wine at dinner.
AMERICAS: MEXICO, PERU
Accommodation. Secrets The Vine, Cancún (secretsresorts.com): modern, comfortable, resort hotel. Hacienda Uxmal (mayaland.com): resort located opposite the archaeological site. Hotel Villa Mercedes, Palenque (hotelesvillamercedes. com): well-maintained hotel near the site. Escudo Jaguar, Frontera Corozal (no website): basic 2-star-level accommodation. Camino Real, El Remate (caminorealtikal.com.gt): situated on Lake Petén Itzá and surrounded by jungle; modern and comfortable. Hotel Atitlán, Panajachel (hotelatitlan.com): located on the shores of the lake with beautiful gardens and views. Hotel Casa Santo Domingo Antigua (casasantodomingo. com.gt): beautifully-restored, colonial hotel. How strenuous? Though the tour has been planned to be less strenuous than most tours to the region, it must be stressed that it is nevertheless quite taxing with some long drives, often on unpaved roads, early starts and frequent changes of hotel. We spend a night in very basic accommodation (Frontera Corozal) to reduce the amount of driving. Many of the sites are vast, located in humid jungle and on rough ground. The tour should not be undertaken by anyone who has the slightest problem with everyday walking and stair-climbing, or who is not sure-footed. Average distance by coach per day: 89 miles. Group size: between 14 and 22 participants. Illustration: watercolour by Mortimer Menpes publ. 1903.
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5–20 September 2019 (mf 675) 16 days • £7,010 International flights not included Lecturer: Dr David Beresford-Jones A thorough exploration of pre-Columbian civilisations in Peru: Moche, Chimú, Inca. Stay on site at Machu Picchu and visit without the crowds. Sites almost devoid of tourists around Trujillo are also included. See spectacular Andean scenery and sample world famous cuisine. Of all the world’s vanished civilisations, few evoke as much mystique as the Incas of Peru. Stumbled upon and shattered by a handful of Spanish adventurers in 1538, the Inca Empire was the last great pristine civilisation on earth – a current aside from the mainstream of human history. Tawantinsuyu (the ‘Four Realms Together’), as the Incas called their empire, had been conquered with neither pen nor sword. In many senses ‘Neolithic’, it was administered through the khipu, a recordkeeping system of intricate knotted cords, born of the marvellous textile traditions intrinsic to Andean civilisation. And yet its dominion was vast, stretching over a distance greater than from London to Moscow, along the spines of the world’s highest cordilleras outside the Himalayas and home to scores of different ethnic groups.
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This tour seeks to understand and re-imagine the Inca Empire on a journey through its Andean heartland of Cuzco, following the sacred Vilcanota river. We take in classic Inca sites where their cyclopean stonework melds into the grandeurs of the Andean landscape to attain a Zen-like architectural aesthetic. The culmination is the most spectacular site of all, Machu Picchu, perched on the very fringes of Amazonia. Yet the Incas were but the final flourish of an Andean cultural trajectory with roots many millennia deeper, a roll-call of cultures perhaps more magnificent still. So our exploration begins by the Pacific, from the excellent public and private museum collections in Lima to the vestiges of Moche and Chimor on Peru’s northern coast. And we end at Lake Titicaca, high on the vast Altiplano tablelands, and whence the Incas themselves claimed their mythical origins. En route we have ample chance to indulge in Peru’s extraordinary cuisine, acclaimed by chefs such as Ferran Adrià as ‘key to the future of gastronomy’. As with the ancient Andean civilisations, that cuisine is founded upon native food crops originating in one of humanity’s precious few ancient hearths of agriculture. It is set amid the world’s richest and densest concentration of ecotones, from desert coast to eternal snows to tropical rainforest, and adjoining one of its richest marine resources. Indeed, it is this that connotes the real importance of the Andes to our wider human story.
Illustration: Ollantaytambo, wood engraving c. 1880.
' Probably the best experience we have had with MRT – and we have travelled with you 20+ times!' G.F., participant on Peru: the Andean Heartland in 2017.
Itinerary Day 1. The tour begins with a light dinner at the hotel at c. 8.30pm. You may check in to the hotel from 2.00pm. (flights from London are not included – see Practicalities). First of two nights in Lima. Day 2: Lima. After an introductory lecture in the hotel, visit the Larco Herrera Museum with its famous collection of Moche and other preInca ceramics. Continue in the afternoon to the National Museum of Archaeology, Anthropology and History with its collections of artefacts from Chavín, Nasca, Moche and Chimú cultures. Dinner overlooks the Huaca Pucllana, a vast adobe administrative and ceremonial centre of the Lima culture which flourished here at around 400 ad. Day 3: Lima, Trujillo. Visit the heart of Colonial Lima (once the ‘City of the Kings’) to see the cathedral and the San Francisco Monastery with its Mudéjar church and important Spanish and Colonial art. In the afternoon fly north to Trujillo (LAN Airlines). First of three nights in Trujillo. Day 4: Trujillo. The Huaca de la Luna and Huaca del Sol the core of the ancient capital of the Moche empire. The former is adorned with superb polychrome reliefs indicative of its importance as a ritual and sacrificial centre. After lunch by the Pacific visit Chan Chan, the world’s largest adobe city and citadel of the Kingdom of Chimor for 500 years before its was destroyed by the Incas in 1470 ad. Its rich marine iconography reflects the importance of the sea to this civilisation. Day 5: Trujillo. Drive north to El Brujo, a ceremonial centre of the Moche culture (1–700 ad) and the mausoleum of the Lady of Cao, an important priestess of that period. Her tomb is surrounded by painted relief murals, while her mummy still records the vestiges of the tattoos on her hands and legs. Return to Trujillo, a handsome colonial city with a colourful main square. Visit the Casa Urquiaga, a colonial mansion in which the ‘Liberator’ Simón Bolívar stayed after proclaiming Peru’s independence in 1824.
Day 7: Chinchero, Maras, Moray. At Chinchero a 17th-cent. church was built on top of an Inca temple. In the afternoon drive to the impressive Maras salt mines, exploited since before Inca times, and on to the marvellous concentric circular agricultural terraces of Moray. Day 8: Pisac, Ollantaytambo. Drive to the Inca citadel of Ollantaytambo, one of the last lines of resistance to the Spanish conquest, and site of elaborate water gardens amidst extraordinary cyclopean Inca stonework. Lunch is at an hacienda of one of the valley’s oldest families, with its interesting private collection of art and antiques. In the afternoon, visit the terraces and buildings of an Inca royal estate at Pisac.
Day 10: Machu Picchu, Cuzco. Free morning to return to Machu Picchu, perhaps at first light, before catching an afternoon train and coach to Cuzco (c. 4 hours). First of three nights in Cuzco. Day 11: Cuzco. The Korikancha, the most sacred precinct and centre of the Inca Empire today beneath the Dominican Monastery, still preserves the finest examples of mortar-less Inca stonework with its trapezoidal doors and windows. Visit the massive Inca fortress of Sacsayhuaman with its monumental walls built using stones up to 400 tons in weight and the Inca ceremonial site of Qenko. The Inca Museum contains some 10,000 artefacts while Cuzco Cathedral has wonderful ‘Cusqueña School’ paintings of the Colonial Period. Day 12: Cuzco. The day is free for independent exploration. Suggestions include the preColumbian art museum, or an optional walk through the city with the lecturer to view the many vestiges of its Inca palaces, fine Colonial churches and bustling markets. Day 13: Cuzco, Puno. Take the late morning train from Cuzco to Puno, travelling through spectacular Andean landscapes. Arrive in Puno in the evening and sleep on board. Carriages and cabins are comfortable and lunch, afternoon tea, dinner and breakfast are served. Puno stands at an altitude of 3,830m above sea level. Day 14: Lake Titicaca. The 88,000 acres of reeds growing along the lake’s margins have been used by the Uros people for centuries to build floating islands on which they make their homes, originally to escape conquest from more powerful forces. Visit these as well as the island of Taquile, whose inhabitants still wear colourful traditional costume. Overnight in Puno, on Lake Titicaca. Day 15: Silustani, Lima. The spectacular chullpas, towering stone mausoleums in their beautiful location on the shores of Lake Umayo at Silustani were likely built by the Colla people, contemporaries and erstwhile opponents of the Inca. Fly in the early afternoon from Juliaca to Lima for the final night of the tour. Day 16: Lima. Free day, with the option to visit the Amano Museum’s collection of pre-Columbian textiles. There is a transfer to the airport in time for the direct flight at c. 8.00pm from Lima to London Heathrow with British Airways.
Dr David Beresford-Jones Fellow of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge University. His research interests include the ancient south coast of Peru, the origins of agriculture, PreColombian textiles and the synthesis of archaeology and historical linguistics, particularly in the Andes. See page 260 for all lecturers' biographies.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £7,010. Single occupancy: £8,280. Supplement for deluxe mountain-view room at Machu Picchu: £170 (double) or £145 (single occupancy). Included meals: 9 lunches, 12 dinners, with wine. Flights: international flights between London and Lima are not included in the price of the tour. We will send the recommended flight options (that will be accompanied by our lecturer and/or tour manager) when they are available to book and ask that you make your own flight reservation. The cost of an economy seat at the time of going to press is c. £700. Transfers will only be provided around the flights that we recommend. Accommodation. Hilton Miraflores, Lima (hilton.com): comfortable 5-star hotel in the Miraflores district. Hotel Libertador Trujillo (libertador.com.pe): 4-star colonial-style hotel in the main square. Hotel Tambo del Inka, Urubamba (starwoodhotels.com): 5-star hotel with an excellent restaurant. Sanctuary Lodge, Machu Picchu (belmond.com): 4-star, the only hotel at the entrance to the site. Deluxe rooms are larger and have views of the surrounding mountains, not the site itself. Palacio del Inka, Cuzco (starwoodhotels.com): 5-star hotel in a converted palace with attentive service. Belmond Andean Explorer Train (belmond.com): small but comfortable twin or double bedded cabins with ensuite facilities. Public areas include dining, lounge and observation cars. Hotel Libertador, Puno (libertador.com.pe): 5-star hotel with superb views of Lake Titicaca. How strenuous? A good level of fitness is essential. Unless you enjoy entirely unimpaired mobility, cope with everyday walking and stair-climbing without difficulty and are reliably sure-footed, this tour is not for you. On archaeological sites uneven ground, irregular paving, steps and hills are standard. Much of the tour is spent at high altitude (max. 3,830m above sea level) which can exacerbate fatigue. Additional insurance is required and anyone with heart or respiratory problems should seek advice from their doctor. Average distance by coach per day: 30 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
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Day 6: the Sacred Valley. Fly to Cuzco, via Lima and on to the Sacred Valley. Here, en route to the Amazon, the Urubamba (or Vilcanota) river twists through stunning mountain scenery and terraced farmland cultivated by the Incas. Urubamba sits at 2,870m above sea level and so the afternoon is free to rest and adjust to the altitude. First of three nights in Urubamba.
Day 9: Machu Picchu. Take the morning train to Machu Picchu, a scenic journey down the valley enjoyed through panoramic windows. Have lunch and settle in to the hotel before entering the site as the crowds disperse and the light fades. Forgotten during the Spanish conquest, the temples and buildings of Machu Picchu are consequently uniquely well-preserved, which, together with its setting high above the river amidst spectacular mountain landscapes, makes the site the most extraordinary archaeological site in South America. Overnight Machu Picchu.
The Boston Early Music Festival Opera, chamber, orchestral, choral with world-class artists 9–16 June 2019 (mf 569) 7 nights • £5,410 (including tickets to 7 performances) Lecturer: Professor John Bryan
concert at Jordan Hall: Kristian Bezuidenhout (fortepiano), Nicola Boud (clarinet), Emmanuel Laporte (oboe), Peter Whelan (bassoon) and Bart Aerbeydt (natural horn): ‘Piano and Wind Quintets of Mozart and Beethoven’. Canapé supper followed by the 8.00pm concert with the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra & Soloists, Robert Mealy (concertmaster), Emőke Baráth (soprano), Teresa Wakim (soprano) and Christian Immler (baritone): ‘Dreams and Monsters: The Theatrical Orchestra of Jean-Philippe Rameau’.
Seven wide-ranging performances by some of the world’s leading early music ensembles. Steffani’s rarely-performed opera Orlando generoso is fully staged with the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra & Soloists. Renaissance and Baroque choral music by specialists Vox Luminis and Stile Antico. Bach’s St Matthew Passion with the Dunedin Consort directed by Kristian Bezuidenhout. Colourful orchestral music from the stage works of Rameau for the Versailles court – accompanied by dance of the time. A programme of walks, gallery visits and excursions in and around Boston, while also allowing for free time.
AMERICAS: U.S.A.
Boston’s biennial Early Music Festival has a global reputation for programming music from the middle ages to the classical period with leading artists in the field of historical performance. Directed by Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs, two of the world’s foremost lute-players and music directors, each festival is designed around a theme. For 2019, this is ‘Dreams and Madness’, offering opportunities for performers to devise programmes around the wilder aspects of the human imagination. The centrepiece is a fully-staged production of Agostino Steffani’s 1691 opera Orlando generoso, performed in the Cutler Majestic Theatre, a spectacular Beaux-Arts auditorium. Based on Ariosto’s sixteenth-century epic poem, Orlando furioso, Steffani’s opera is a masterpiece that explores themes of romance, jealousy and madness against a fantastical backdrop of myth. Five of the six concerts we include on the tour are performed in Jordan Hall, the acoustically superb auditorium of the New England Conservatory. The programmes include chamber music for fortepiano and wind by Mozart and Beethoven, Bach’s St Matthew Passion, a programme of cantatas by other Bach family members and a spectacular concert of music from Rameau’s tragédies en musique Castor et Pollux and Dardanus – accompanied in part by dance of the period. We move to the Gothic Revival Emmanuel Church for the final concert, an exquisite programme of Tallis, Byrd and Dowland. Founded in 1630, Boston is an historic city with a long-standing reputation for culture and learning making it the ideal base for a tour of this kind. Now a centre of the high-tech revolution, sleek glass towers co-habit with districts of narrow cobbled streets, the red brickwork of Federal Boston, and an important set of monuments from the colonial and revolutionary era. Some of America’s most magnificent public buildings and art collections are to be seen here and in neighbouring Cambridge. 250
Itinerary Day 1: London to Boston. Fly at c. 11.15am (British Airways), London Heathrow to Boston (c. 7½ hours). Settle into the hotel in the Back Bay district of Boston. An early dinner is followed by a reception to mark the opening night of the festival. Day 2. Morning lecture on today’s performance. A guided walk through central Boston includes Downtown, Beacon Hill and Boston Public Garden. End with visits to two of the city’s greatest buildings: Trinity Church (1877) and Boston Public Library (1895). Dinner before the 8.00pm concert at Jordan Hall: Dunedin Consort, Kristian Bezuidenhout (director): Bach, St Matthew Passion. Day 3. The morning is spent at The Museum of Fine Arts, a fabulous collection with highlights including the Barbizon School, American art, Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. Free time back at the hotel followed by a lecture on the evening performances. 5.00pm concert at Jordan Hall: ‘Out of Italy’ music by Boccherini, Geminiani, Vivaldi, with Phoebe Carrai (cello), Beiliang Zhu (cello), Jeffrey Grossman (harpsichord), Charlie Weaver (lute). A canapé supper before the 8.00pm concert: Vox Luminis, directed by Lionel Meunier: ‘Bach: The Arnstadt Connection’. Day 4: Cambridge and Harvard. Morning lecture. Cross the Charles River to Cambridge, home of Harvard University and the world-class University Art Museums. Free time here. We recommend the Fogg, renowned for its early Italian paintings and Impressionists, and the Busch-Reisinger Museum of German and Nordic painting. Return to the hotel mid-afternoon. 7.00pm opera at the Cutler Majestic Theatre: Orlando Generoso (Agostino Steffani), Paul O’Dette & Stephen Stubbs (musical directors), Aaron Sheehan, Amanda Forsythe, Emőke Baráth, Christopher Lowry, Kacper Szelążek, Jesse Blumberg, Flavio Ferri-Benedetti, Zachary Wilder, Teresa Wakim. Day 5. The day is free until the mid-afternoon lecture on this evening’s performances. 5.00pm
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Day 6: Concord, Walden Pond. Morning lecture. Drive into rural New England to Concord, a picturesque town with strong philosophical and literary connections – and scene of the first military engagements of the American War of Independence. Visit the town museum followed by free time for Louisa M. Alcott’s home or the Ralph Waldo Emerson House. Continue to Walden Pond, where Henry Thoreau lived and mused in a cabin on the water’s edge. Return to the hotel for some free time. Dinner before the 8.00pm concert at Emmanuel Church: Stile Antico, ‘Queen of Muses': Music by Tallis, Byrd and Dowland. Day 7. Free morning. In the early afternoon, visit the Isabella Stewart Gardner Collection, a sumptuous Renaissance-style mansion crammed with magnificent works of art and furnishings. From here, drive to Boston Logan Airport for the flight to London departing at c. 7.15pm. Day 8. Arrive at Heathrow at c. 6.45am.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £5,410 or £4,690 without flights. Single occupancy: £6,150 or £5,430 without flights. Included meals: 5 dinners (including 2 canapé suppers) with wine. Music: tickets (top category) for 7 performances are included, costing c. £515. Visas: see page 252. Accommodation. Fairmont Copley Plaza, Boston (fairmont.com: elegant, opulent 4-star opposite Trinity Church and the Boston Public Library. How strenuous? The concerts are all in the late afternoon and evening which combined with jet lag could be tiring. To participate fully in the visits and excursions a good level of fitness is necessary. Average distance by coach per day: 11 miles. Group size: between 12 and 22 participants.
Illustration: engraving by J. Amman 1878.
What else is included in the price? See page 6
Californian Galleries Exceptional collections from San Diego to San Francisco 6–16 November 2019 (mf 881) 10 nights • £5,870 Lecturer: Gijs van Hensbergen World-class art in some outstanding buildings on America’s West Coast. Strong on 20th-century painting and sculpture and American and Asian art. Big names include The Getty Center, LA County Museum, The Huntington, Norton Simon, Legion of Honor. Further highlights are the recently expanded San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and The Broad, one of the latest additions to Downtown Los Angeles. Gallery visits are interspersed with city walks and independent time in the many museum gardens and parks.
Itinerary Day 1: London to San Diego. Fly at c. 1.45pm from London Heathrow to San Diego (British Airways) arriving at c. 5.00pm (c. 11 hours 15 minutes). Drive to La Jolla, a smart town on the Pacific just outside San Diego. First of two nights in La Jolla. Day 2: San Diego, La Jolla. Drive to Balboa Park to visit the San Diego Museum of Art, a wideranging collection particularly strong on Spanish art. Visit the Timken Museum, one of the finest small museums displaying European masters in natural light. Free time to visit the gardens, the Art Institute or Museum of Photographic Arts.
Day 3: La Jolla, Los Angeles. Drive north to Los Angeles. Afternoon walk Downtown to see two architectural masterpieces: Rafael Moneo’s cathedral and Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall. The Broad is home to one of the most prominent collections of contemporary and postwar art worldwide; opened in 2015, and designed by architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, it is another leap forward in the rejuvenation of Downtown. First of four nights in Los Angeles. Day 4: Los Angeles. The LA County Museum of Art has a staggeringly rich collection with a large European section as well as magnificent examples of ancient Asian, Egyptian and pre-Columbian art. The museum campus was extended by Renzo Piano in 2010 and now includes The Museum of Contemporary Art with displays of American art from the post-World War II period in all its forms. Day 5: Malibu, Los Angeles. In Malibu visit the Getty Villa, now dedicated to Greek, Roman and Etruscan antiquities. Continue to The Getty Center: Richard Meier’s series of gleaming pavilions strung along the crest of a hill is famously the best-endowed art museum in the world. Collections range from Old Master drawings to French decorative arts, from mediaeval illuminated manuscripts to classical antiquities, with masterpieces of Renaissance
and later-European painting. There is time to explore the gardens and terraces, a haven from the sprawling LA far below. Day 6: San Marino, Pasadena. The palatial Neoclassical residence of railway baron Henry E. Huntington contains a fine collection of British art, including Gainsborough’s Blue Boy. The marvellous gardens present many different styles and forms. The Norton Simon Museum in nearby Pasadena has a wonderful collection of European painting and sculpture, in particular 71 Degas bronzes, beautifully displayed. Day 7: San Francisco. Morning flight to San Francisco. Visit Mission San Francisco de Asís en route to the hotel. Founded in 1776, it is the oldest surviving structure in the city. Introductory walk First of three nights in San Francisco. Day 8: San Francisco. On the other side of the peninsula amid Monterey pines and cypresses sits the pristine colonnaded Palace of the Legion of Honor. Here French art, particularly Rodin sculpture, is prominent. The Golden Gate Park is a centre of cultural and botanical beauty and is home to the de Young Museum with its collection of American Art from the pre-Columbian era to the present day.
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Culture and California used to be thought of as contradictory concepts, with much of the West Coast being characterised by an image of vulgarity and superficiality. Hollywood and hippies did little to ameliorate this, but no longer. JP Getty, Norton Simon, Armand Hammer, Henry Huntington, Los Angeles County, and, most recently, Eli and Edythe Broad: these are among the names which signify to the well-informed that America’s West Coast is one of the greatest treasuries of art in the world. Though modern art is a major theme of the tour, there is a sufficiency of Old Masters and historic decorative arts to satisfy those who find twentieth-century art less accessible. Asian art is also well represented – only the Pacific lying between it and its place of origin. But even without the contents, the museum buildings themselves – some of them among the most significant architectural creations of recent times – would provide ample beauty to justify the tour. It is a tour to, rather than of, the West Coast. There will be no Disneyland, no Universal Studios. But outside the galleries there is the fascination of life in the cities, very different from twenty years ago, and amazing contemporary architecture. Between the cities there is the landscape: vast, empty, glistening green, sometimes Mediterranean in feel, sometimes reminiscent of farmland in temperate northern Europe.
Californian Galleries continued
Art in Texas Outstanding collections in city and desert
USA visas British citizens can apply for a visa waiver. We will advise on this. If you have travelled to Iran, Iraq, Sudan or Syria since March 2011 you are not eligible for the waiver and will need to apply for a visa.
Day 9: San Francisco. The morning is spent in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, an internationally recognised 20th-century collection. The building is a further highlight, designed by Mario Botta in 1995 with recent additions by Snøhetta. The afternoon is free for independent exploration; suggestions include a cruise around the Bay and to the Golden Gate Bridge, or a train ride to Berkeley, a leafy university campus with a contemporary art museum. Day 10. San Francisco. The Asian Art Museum holds the finest collection in the US. At Stanford University campus visit the Cantor Art Center and Anderson Collection. Continue to San Francisco Airport for the overnight flight to London Heathrow at c. 8.30pm.
20 February–3 March 2019 (mf 424) 10 nights • £6,090 Lecturer: Gijs van Hensbergen November 2020 Lecturer: Gijs van Hensbergen Full details available in Spring 2019 Please call us to register your interest or e-mail alerts@martinrandall.co.uk World class collections of art and sculpture, housed in exceptional buildings. Big names include the Kimbell in Fort Worth, Menil in Houston, Blanton in Austin, McNay in San Antonio, Fine Arts in Dallas and Houston, and Donald Judd’s Chinati Foundation. The range is considerable from Renaissance to contemporary, European and American, with emphasis on the modern. The variety continues in city and landscape: big brother Houston, leafy and lush; to tiny Marfa, way out west in the desert; alongside the Rio Grande to historic San Antonio; to end in Dallas, the home of hospitality and a terrific arts scene.
Day 11. Arrive at London Heathrow at c. 3.00pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £5,870 or £5,190 without flights. Single occupancy: £6,910 or £6,230 without flights. Included meals: 6 dinners with wine. Visas: see above. Accommodation. La Valencia, La Jolla (lavalencia.com): colourful hotel with eclectically furnished rooms, gardens and pool overlooking the Pacific. Omni Los Angeles, Downtown (omnihotels.com): well-equipped, functional, with spacious bedrooms. Palace Hotel, San Francisco (sfpalace.com): elegant 5-star hotel within walking distance of Union Square. Rooms are classically furnished, of a good size and excellent standard.
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How strenuous? There will be a lot of standing in museums, a fair amount of walking and getting on and off coaches. The tour is relatively strenuous and there is an 8-hour time difference from the UK. Average distance by coach per day: 66 miles. Group size: between 12 and 22 participants.
The American Revolution October 2020 Full details available in Spring 2019 Please call us to register your interest or e-mail alerts@martinrandall.co.uk
Illustration: Getty Center ©Getty Center L.A.
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The cultural resonance of ‘Texas’ may not be overwhelming, yet the oil and livestock barons of this southern state were philanthropists to rival any on the eastern or western seaboards. The result: art collections of staggering richness in buildings developed by the leading architects of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Among the highlights are some of the very personal collections these patrons of the arts acquired. The Meadows Museum in Dallas, for example, the gift of oilman Algur Meadows, houses the finest display of Spanish art outside the Prado. While John and Dominique de Menil’s dazzling Menil Collection in Houston – built up with money from the Schlumberger oil-drilling fortune – contains over 15,000 works by the greatest names of twentieth-century European and American art. Painter and heiress Marion Koogler McNay, too, used an oil fortune to establish The McNay – the first modern art museum in the Lone Star State – in her colonial revival mansion in San Antonio. But private wealth in Texas has always been matched by public investment and the entire history of art is abundantly represented in the major city galleries. The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, one of the largest in the US, has an extraordinary 62,000 works spanning six thousand years, while the Dallas Museum of Art is as renowned for its Impressionists and Post Impressionists as Austin’s The Blanton is for its Renaissance masterpieces. The searing Texan landscape, with its expanses of sand and scrub and distant sierras, is a work of art in its own right, and a visit to Marfa provides the moment where art, architecture and nature meet. The Chinati Foundation was established by minimalist sculptor Donald Judd to display large installations of his own work and other leading contemporary sculptors and, in its wake, this tiny desert town has become one of the liveliest
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contemporary art scenes in the US. As rich as the art is the architecture. The Dallas Arts District includes buildings by four Pritzker Prize winners (Norman Foster, Rem Koolhaas, I.M. Pei and Renzo Piano); while in Houston, admirers of Mies van der Rohe can view one of his very rare museum buildings at the Fine Arts Museum, followed by Piano’s simple and striking cypress-clad Menil. However, it is without doubt Louis Kahn’s Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth that shows off these big hitters at their memorable best.
Itinerary | 2019 Day 1: London to Houston. Fly at c. 9.45am (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Houston, arriving c. 2.30pm local time (flying time c. 10 hours 45 minutes). Drive to the hotel in Houston’s ‘Museum District’ with time to settle in before dinner. First of three nights in Houston. Day 2: Houston. A morning in the Museum of Fine Arts, an outstanding collection built up over the last century. Highlights include the Impressionists and American art of the 19th and 20th centuries, but there is much variety from the Renaissance to contemporary works by minimalist Dan Flavin. It is architecturally varied too with extensions by Mies van der Rohe and Rafael Moneo. Bayou Bend houses a good collection of American decorative and fine art, with beautiful gardens around. Day 3: Houston. The Menil is one of the world’s greatest private collections of modern art. Across the road is another Piano museum dedicated to Cy Twombly’s abstract works. Also visited are the Rothko Chapel, built as a sanctuary for fourteen of the artist’s canvases, and Richmond Hall, a grocery store converted into a Dan Flavin light installation. Some free time to return to the Fine Arts Museum or walk in the neighbouring Rice University campus. Day 4: Houston to Marfa. Early flight to Midland, in westernmost Texas (United Airlines), and drive south across the Chihuahuan Desert (c. 190 miles) through a landscape of scrub and shrub, fringed by distant sierras. Marfa is little more than a handful of dusty intersections and yet is laden with western charm. Thanks to Donald Judd, it also has a thriving contemporary arts scene and a sophistication out of all proportion to its size. First of two nights in Marfa. Day 5: Marfa, the Chinati Foundation. We have private access both to Judd’s home and to the Chinati Foundation (most of the day is spent here). Judd’s decision to convert 340 acres of former US military land into an art installation stemmed from a need to escape the East Coast and a desire to display large-scale installations in a setting which linked art with landscape. Works by Judd, John Chamberlain and Dan Flavin have been joined over the years by Carl Andre, Ingólfur Arnarson, Roni Horn, Ilya Kabakov, Richard Long, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. Some free time to visit Marfa’s excellent bookstore and main street.
'Erudite, ebullient, enthusiastic and fun lecturer who really made our visits memorable.' C.F. & J.F., participants on Art in Texas in 2017.
Day 6: Marfa to San Antonio. Drive through deepest desert and countryside to bordertown Del Rio and then to San Antonio (journey time: c. 10 hours with several refreshment breaks, including the Judge Roy Bean Visitor Center in Langtry). Arrive San Antonio c. 6.00pm. First of two nights in San Antonio.
Day 8: Austin, Dallas. Drive north via Austin, a major university city and the state capital. Visit the Blanton Museum of Art, with fine collections of Renaissance as well as 20th-century American art. Brief stop at the Harry Ransom Center, an incredible resource of rare books and manuscripts. Continue to Dallas (c. 195 miles), arriving early evening. First of three nights in Dallas. Day 9: Dallas. Begin with Philip Johnson’s Thanksgiving Chapel and JFK Memorial before continuing to the Arts District. The Dallas Museum of Art is one of the finest in the US. Next
Day 10: Fort Worth, Dallas. The day is spent in Fort Worth and its astonishingly rich ‘Cultural District’. The Kimbell Art Museum is a magnificent collection, particularly the European paintings with Titian and Tiepolo to Matisse and Mondrian. Kahn’s building is sublime: a series of barrel vaults providing lighting and acoustic perfection for the masterworks. Across the road is The Modern (designed by Tadao Ando), another collection of 20th-century greats: Pollock, Hockney, Picasso, Bacon and a room of Sean Scully canvasses. See also the Amon Carter Museum of American art including works by Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell, the two greatest artists of the American West. Day 11: Dallas. Leave the hotel late morning for the Meadows Museum, a world-renowned collection of Spanish art, particularly strong on the Golden Age. Continue to Dallas Fort Worth airport in time for the overnight flight to London, departing c. 10.00pm.
Practicalities | 2019 Price, per person. Two sharing: £6,090 or £5,510 without flights on days 1 and 11. Single occupancy: £7,010 or £6,430 without flights on days 1 and 11. Included meals: 2 lunches, 7 dinners, with wine. Visas: see page 252. Accommodation. Hotel Zaza, Houston (hotelzaza.com): contemporary hotel next door to the Fine Arts Museum. Hotel Saint George, Marfa (marfasaintgeorge.com): modern hotel in the centre of town. Omni Mokara Hotel & Spa, San Antonio (omnihotels.com): comfortable hotel well-located on the River Walk. The Joule Hotel, Dallas (thejouledallas.com): 1920s Neo-Gothic building in downtown Dallas. How strenuous? This is a long tour with a lot of travelling and a significant time difference to contend with. There is a fair amount of walking and standing around in museums. Fitness and stamina are essential. Average distance by coach per day: 62 miles.
Day 12. Arrive at London Heathrow at c. 1.00pm.
Music: there may be an opportunity to attend an opera, concert or play in Dallas. Programmes will be sent nearer the time.
Illustration: Houston, mid-20th-century.
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Day 7: San Antonio. The McNay was the first modern art museum in Texas and alongside the excellent 19th- and 20th-century works is a substantial sculpture collection in the landscaped park plus a new wing for temporary exhibitions. Afternoon boat trip from the hotel to the San Antonio Museum of Art with excellent American and Latin American collections. Free time to visit The Alamo, of Davy Crockett fame.
door is the Nasher Sculpture Center, a superb collection including works by Calder, Chillida, Serra and Hepworth. Some free time – the Asian Art Museum is a possibility.
New England Modern Building new worlds, 1750–2019 17–26 October 2019 (mf 820) 9 nights • £5,360 Lecturer: Professor Harry Charrington Pioneering architecture from the early settlers to the present, with a focus on the extraordinary achievements of the mid-20th century and the architects responsible. Some of the country’s finest art collections and public buildings, private houses and neighbourhoods, with a number of visits by special arrangement. A variety of landscapes from the Atlantic coast to the rolling Berkshire Hills, set against the colour of the New England Fall. New England has seen the making of Modern America not once, twice but three times. Firstly, there were the early pioneers and their chaste farmsteads, churches and small towns. Then in post-revolutionary times came the confident urbanity of the new Republic, and contrastingly, the rural asceticism of the Transcendentalists and other idealists. Finally, before, during and after World War II, a new wave of ambition established the expression of mid-twentieth-century America. What unifies all three architectural waves is an overriding restraint and a setting within the extraordinary light and colour of the New England landscape. The earliest buildings possess a spare timber elegance that reaches down through the Shaker villages to Walter Gropius’s invention of a local Bauhaus. This austere simplicity is matched by the refined brickwork of Federal Boston, the arcadia of American academia and the sophisticated use of concrete as a ‘cast stone’. Threaded through New England’s river valleys, hills and along its coast are some of the finest twentieth-century private houses by architects including Frank Lloyd Wright, Josep Lluís Sert, Philip Johnson and ‘the Harvard Five’.
Itinerary
Day 5: Boston, Stockbridge (MA). A morning at Boston’s Fine Arts Museum, a collection of staggering wealth, with its new extension by Foster. An increasingly beautiful drive west into the Berkshires leads to Stockbridge, a small town of verandah-clad villas with our historic hotel at the centre. First of two nights in Stockbridge.
Day 1: London to Boston (MA). Fly at c. 11.15am (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Boston (c. 7½ hours). Drive to the hotel. The first visits are to two of America’s defining public buildings: H.H. Richardson’s Trinity Church (1877) and McKim Mead & White’s Boston Public Library (1895). First of four nights in Boston.
Day 6: The Berkshires (MA). The Hancock Shaker Village provides exquisite examples of Shaker architecture and design. In the woods outside Lenox, a private visit to the former home and studio of abstract artists George Morris and Suzy Frelinghuysen. The house is pure modernism and the art amassed by the couple, superb.
Day 2: Concord, Lincoln, Boston (MA). Drive to Walden Pond, heart of the Transcendentalist movement, where Henry Thoreau lived in a cabin on the water’s edge in simple seclusion. Nearby, the pretty town of Concord saw the start of the American War of Independence. Visit the museum, with Thoreau memorabilia. Walter Gropius built his family home (1938) in a meadow outside Lincoln; modest, light, with the original furniture and artwork.
Day 7: Litchfield, New Haven (CT). Drive south stopping at the classic New England town of Litchfield. The afternoon walk in New Haven begins at Kahn’s Center for British Art (1977), the white oak and concrete an apposite backdrop to the magnificent collection. Cross the Yale campus to see Michael Hopkins’ Kroon Hall (2009) and the luminous Beinecke Rare Book Library by SOM (1963). First of two nights in New Haven.
Their seclusion is balanced by some of America’s most magnificent public buildings and art collections in Boston, Harvard and Yale – as well as the delightful Frelinghuysen studio in the russet hills of Lenox.
Day 3: Manchester, Exeter (NH). In the leafy suburbs of Manchester the Zimmermans commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to build their Usonian home (1950). See the Currier Museum of Art, a small collection including some American Modern. On the campus of Phillips Exeter Academy is Louis Kahn’s monumental library (1971). The detailing is superb inside and out. Day 4: Cambridge (MA). Cross the Charles River to the MIT campus, a powerhouse of science and research, at its heart the sinuous brick form of Aalto’s Baker House dormitory (1947). A walk through Harvard includes Le Corbusier’s Carpenter Center (1963) and the University Art Museums, extensively re-worked by Piano. Private visit to Josep Lluís Sert’s home (1958); perfectly proportioned, arranged around three courtyards.
Day 8: New Canaan (CT). The day is spent in the woodland town of New Canaan where some of the great US architects, ‘the Harvard Five’, experimented in the mid-20th century. Private tour of Philip Johnson’s pristene Glass House (1949), as well as his painting and sculpture galleries. Among the other visits, the home of Eliot Noyes (1954; subject to confirmation) and Landis Gores’ pool pavilion (1960). Day 9: New Haven. A morning dedicated to the Yale University Art Gallery (1953), one of the best in the US, the art enhanced in its setting by Kahn’s use of concrete. Afternoon drive to New York's JFK Airport for the flight departing at c. 7.30pm. Day 10. Arrive at London Heathrow at c. 7.30am. A number of these buildings are not usually open to the public and it is possible we will not be able to include everything listed.
Practicalities AMERICAS: U.S.A.
Price, per person. Two sharing: £5,360 or £4,770 without flights. Single occupancy: £6,210 or £5,620 without flights. Included meals: 1 light lunch and 5 dinners with wine. Visas: see page 252. Accommodation. Fairmont Copley Plaza, Boston (fairmont.com): elegant, opulent, opposite Trinity Church. The Red Lion Inn, Stockbridge (redlioninn.com): charming, historic hotel. The Study at Yale, New Haven (studyatyale.com): modern, minimalist bedrooms; excellent location. How strenuous? There is a lot of walking and standing, and getting on and off coaches. With transatlantic flights and three hotels, the tour is tiring. Average distance by coach per day: 68 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Illustration: Boston, Trinity Church, wood engraving c. 1880.
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New Orleans to Natchitoches History and architecture, food and jazz 17–27 April 2019 (mf 490) 10 nights • £5,310 Lecturer: Professor Catherine Clinton April 2020 Lecturer: Professor Catherine Clinton Full details available in Spring 2019 Please call us to register your interest or e-mail alerts@martinrandall.co.uk A journey through Louisiana, experiencing its extraordinary history, architecture, food and music. Stay in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Lafayette, and historic Natchitoches on the Cane River. Colonial architecture of the French, Spanish, Art Deco and 20th century eras are all represented, as well as a variety of plantation houses. Jazz is an ever-present backdrop and the tour overlaps with the start of Jazz Fest.
The unconventional politics of 1930s Louisiana are epitomised in the career of Governor Huey P. Long, whose grandiose constructions in Baton Rouge reflect the future he imagined for Louisiana and himself, before being assassinated in the marble corridors of his Art Deco State Capitol. Long’s story was the basis for Robert Penn Warren’s novel, All the King’s Men, earning America’s most coveted literary prize, the Pulitzer, in 1947. The last day of the tour coincides with the opening of the renowned Jazz Fest in New Orleans. We will send details to anyone interested when the programme is announced.
collection of works in the New Orleans Museum of Art concentrates on American and French artists, including Degas. In the afternoon visit Nottoway Plantation, one of the largest houses in the South, designed by Louisiana architect Henry Howard. First of two nights in Baton Rouge.
Itinerary | 2019 Day 1: London to New Orleans. Fly at c. 15.40pm (British Airways) from London Heathrow to New Orleans, arriving c. 7.30pm (total flying time c. 10 hours). Transfer to the hotel in the French Quarter. First of three nights in New Orleans.
Day 6: Lafayette. Boat trip (private charter) through bayous overhung with Spanish moss and home to birds and swamp life from alligators to catfish. Drive north to Oakland Plantation with original outbuildings, including the general store and post office, doctor’s house and slave quarters. First of two nights in Natchitoches.
Day 2: New Orleans. A day on foot in the French Quarter, with its ornate cast-iron balconies, lush courtyards and garden squares. Visit the Historic New Orleans Collection which gives an overview of the city. The 18th-cent. Spanish buildings surrounding Jackson Square include St Louis Cathedral, the oldest Catholic cathedral in the US, and the Cabildo, now the state museum.
Day 7: Natchitoches. The American Cemetery contains the graves of the first French settlers and the influential Metoyer family. Visits to some of the historic houses (by special arrangement) and the Church of the Immaculate Conception. In the afternoon visit Creole Melrose Plantation, former residence of the artist Clementine Hunter, to see her murals in situ.
Day 3: New Orleans, Edgard. A working sugar cane plantation, Evergreen’s 37 outbuildings spread across the estate make it one of the most intact plantation complexes along the Mississippi. The Whitney Plantation museum focuses on the lives of Louisiana’s enslaved people.
Day 8: Vermilionville. In an idyllic setting beside the Bayou Vermilion, the open air museum recreates life in the area from 1765 to 1890 through original and reconstructed buildings. First of two nights in New Orleans.
Day 4: New Orleans, Nottoway. Botanical Gardens thrive in an area destroyed by Hurricane Katrina and the Sculpture Park displays works by Renoir, Magritte, Hepworth and Moore. The extensive
Day 5: Baton Rouge. An early plantation home (dating from 1791), Magnolia Mound shows French and West Indian influences. In downtown Baton Rouge, the Art Deco State Capitol rises to 450 feet and the 27th-floor observation deck affords views across the city. In contrast, the Old State Capitol is an extravagant, castellated Gothic structure with a stained-glass dome.
Day 9: New Orleans. Wide, tree-lined avenues form the gracious Garden District, whose mansions are still home to the rich and famous. Gothic novelist, Anne Rice, lived in a Greek Revival-style house and was inspired by the Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Dominated by New Orleans and the Mississippi River, an exploration of Louisiana reveals a rich history and culture. Named by French settlers after Louis XIV, the state has also been home to Native Americans, Spanish, Germans and Africans, each bringing their own cuisine, traditions and music to the region. Some groups, such as the FrenchCanadian Cajuns, remained distinct and preserved their customs and language, while others melded into a unique Louisiana culture, which translates into laissez les bons temps rouler, a local credo. New Orleans captures the energy of this vibrant mix, with jazz heard from every street, day and night, but especially during the festivities of Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest. Culture drips from everywhere, like Spanish moss on the region’s languid trees. Even the devastation of Hurricane Katrina (2005) has inspired a creative response to re-building, and a new City Park filled with art and sculpture remains a vibrant memorial to survival. The city owed its riches to the trade that flowed down the Mississippi and through its port. Those enslaved worked the cotton fields in the upper South and the sugar plantations in the Gulf South; they might be bought and sold in New Orleans, the largest slave market operated in North America. Here, wealthy sugar barons built lavish town houses from where they might entertain and conduct business. Slowly, their abodes along the river grew from modest plantation houses to vast mansions, a sharp contrast to the slave cabins scattered far from sight. In Natchitoches, the first French settlement in the state, members of the Creole Metoyer family rose from slavery to become some of the wealthiest plantation owners in the area. The cotton plantation houses of the Cane River remain almost intact in this northern rural region. A former plantation worker, Clementine Hunter, captured her life on Melrose Plantation in a series of paintings that remains on the site. Surrounded by pecan orchards and with a river running beside its historic main street, Natchitoches retains the southern slow-paced way of life, captured in Robert Harling’s 1987 play, Steel Magnolias.
New Orleans to Natchitoches continued
Frank Lloyd Wright and the Chicago School
neighbourhood’s Lafayette Cemetery. Free afternoon. Suggestions include returning to the French Quarter for tours of Hermann-Grima House, with original outbuildings and slave quarters and the 1860s Gallier House Museum. Day 10: New Orleans, Garyville. Free morning. In the afternoon drive to Garyville and visit San Francisco Plantation House, a distinctive and opulent plantation house on the Mississipi river. Continue to New Orleans Airport in time for the flight to London, departing at c. 9.30pm. Day 11. Arrive London Heathrow c. 12.30am.
Practicalities | 2019 Price, per person. Two sharing: £5,310 or £4,530 without all flights. Single occupancy: £5,890 or £5,110 without all flights. Included meals: 2 lunches, 5 dinners, with wine. Visas: see page 252. Accommodation. The Monteleone, New Orleans (hotelmonteleone.com): family-owned French Quarter institution known for excellent service. Hilton Baton Rouge Capitol Center (hilton.com): chain hotel in a grand, historic building, with rooftop pool. Historic B&Bs, Natchitoches: we are divided between 3–4 houses in the centre; all have comfortable ensuite rooms with lots of character. How strenuous? This tour would not be suitable for anyone with difficulties with everyday walking and stair-climbing. Coaches can rarely park near the houses and the plantation houses visited do not have lifts (nor do all the hotels). Average distance by coach per day: c. 70 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
AMERICAS: U.S.A. Illustration, previous page: Houmas House, Louisiana, photograph 1938, US Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington-DC.
For lecturers' biographies See pages 260–267 256
8–19 June 2019 (mf 571) 11 nights • £5,920 Lecturer: Tom Abbott 7–18 September 2019 (mf 681) 11 nights • £5,920 Lecturer: Professor Neil Jackson June & September 2020 Lecturer (June): Professor Neil Jackson Lecturer (September): Tom Abbott Full details available in Spring 2019 Please call us to register your interest or e-mail alerts@martinrandall.co.uk Includes Fallingwater, Jacobs, Robie and Taliesin houses, Johnson Wax Building and numerous other works by Frank Lloyd Wright – many of them visited by special arrangement. Four nights in Chicago, with visits to the masterworks of the Chicago School and Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House. Magnificent art collections: Chicago Institute of Art, Carnegie Collection in Pittsburgh and Milwaukee Art Museum. Drive through the countryside of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Illinois. Frank Lloyd Wright (1869–1959), his own greatest admirer, said he had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. Frustratingly, visiting his work makes this seem fair: in an extraordinarily long career Wright created a modern organic architecture infused with the artistic freedom and reverence for nature of his nineteenth-century American inheritance. Wright embraced the Arts and Crafts, Japanese art and architecture, as well as the material advances of steel and concrete cantilevers to ‘break the box’. Interiors merge inside and out, with their fluid plans reverently anchored by their great hearths. Exteriors stress continuity with nature, and brilliantly amplify their location; be it the Wisconsin hills of Taliesin, or the Pennsylvanian gorge of Fallingwater. That Chicago was the centre of Wright’s sphere is no coincidence. Carl Sandburg’s ‘City of Big Shoulders’ is still the continent’s most enjoyably assertive and distinctly ‘American’ city. Following the fire of 1871, it reinvented itself as the first modern metropolis, with the ‘Chicago School’ developing the technical means for, and artistic expression of, a new kind of city, and of course, the skyscraper. Little wonder that it became so natural a home to the New Bauhaus and Mies van der Rohe, through whose elegantly sparse work Chicago’s influence extends to this day. As well as building, Chicago’s citizens collected; and the Chicago Art Institute quickly established itself as one of the great galleries of America; a status shared by the Carnegie collection in Pittsburgh where the tour begins. Beautifully sited on the confluence of two rivers, Pittsburgh epitomises American selfbelief and its capacity for self-regeneration, and is unrecognisable from its former ‘rust-belt’ image.
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Santiago Calatrava’s Milwaukee art museum, spreading out over Lake Michigan, bears equal testament to that city’s revival. In contrast to these urban scenes, the tour meanders through the gently prosperous midwestern countryside of three states, staying in the leafy university town of Madison sited on the isthmus between two lakes, and finishing at Mies’s sublime Farnsworth House on the banks of the Fox river.
Itinerary | 2019 Day 1: Pittsburgh. Fly at c. 9.45am (British Airways) from London Heathrow, via New York J.F.K., to Pittsburgh, arriving c. 5.30pm (total flying time c. 9½ hours). For those not taking the group flights, the tour starts in Pittsburgh. Set between the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio rivers, Pittsburgh is modern, dynamic, sleek, the smoke and steel of the past having been replaced by glass and aluminium. Carnegie, Frick and Mellon, great patrons of the arts, all made their money here before moving to the East Coast. First of three nights in Pittsburgh. Day 2: Fallingwater, Kentuck Knob. Drive out to Fallingwater, quintessential Frank Lloyd Wright (1936). In a spectacular setting amongst the woodland of Bear Run nature reserve, the house seems to grow from, and float above, the water and rocks. You will see not only the waterfall but experience it from inside the house; ‘the most sublime integration of man and nature’ (New York Times). Kentuck Knob (Wright 1953), a hexagonal building with panoramic views of the Pennsylvanian countryside, now owned by Lord Palumbo. Day 3: Pittsburgh. Begin with a walk around Pittsburgh passing H.H. Richardson’s Allegheny Courthouse, the Mellon bank building and Philip Johnson’s PPG Place. The Carnegie Museum of Art has an extensive and varied collection including the Heinz Architectural department, European and contemporary art. End with a cable car ride up the Duquesne Incline. Day 4: Pittsburgh to Madison. Morning flight to Chicago and from there continue by coach to Madison. Stop en route in Rockford to visit the Laurent House, commissioned in 1951 by Kenneth and Phyllis Laurent and their home until 2012. First of two nights in Madison. Day 5: Spring Green, Madison. Set in the beautiful Wisconsin countryside just outside Spring Green lies Wright’s former home and studio, Taliesin. Here he established the Taliesin Foundation to train architects; Hillside School (1932) exemplifies Wright’s break away from the ‘Victorian box’. The Romeo and Juliet Windmill and several homes and farms designed for members of Wright’s family are also seen from the exterior. In the suburbs visit the recently restored Jacobs House (1936), the purest and most famous example of Wright’s Usonian concept. Day 6: Madison, Milwaukee. Walk to the Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center, a monumental civic building set on the shores of Lake Monona (based on Wright’s 1938 design, it
' Beyond my expectations. Fulfilment of a dream come true. Could never have done all by myself – especially the private house visits.' Participant on Frank Lloyd Wright in 2018.
was completed in 1997). The Unitarian Meeting House (1946), distinguished by its soaring copper roof and glass-prowed sanctuary, is currently under restoration. Drive to the excellent Milwaukee Art Museum to see the Prairie School Archives, with free time for the collection of European and 20th-cent. American art. End the day with a visit to one of Wright’s American System-Built homes (1916). Overnight Milwaukee.
Day 8: Chicago. The morning walk looks at the outstanding monuments of ‘The Loop’ to which Wright, Mies van der Rohe, Louis Sullivan and Frank Gehry have all contributed. Afternoon at the Chicago Art Institute, extended by Renzo Piano; the architectural courtyard contains several interesting pieces of sculpture and art glass from former Wright and Sullivan buildings. See also a reconstruction of Sullivan’s stock exchange trading room. Free time to enjoy one of the world’s great art galleries.
Day 10: Oak Park. In Oak Park visit Wright’s Chicago home and studio (1889) for 20 years and the birthplace of the Prairie School of architecture: ‘I loved the prairie by instinct as a great simplicity… I had an idea that the horizontal planes in buildings, those planes parallel to earth, identify themselves with the ground, make the building belong to the ground’. The surrounding residential streets are home to a number of Wright designs and his Unity Temple. Day 11: Chicago, Plano. Drive at midday into the Illinois countryside to Plano. Here, built beside the Fox River, is one of Mies van der Rohe’s most significant works, the Farnsworth House (1951). Drive to Chicago O’Hare airport, arriving by 5.30pm (in time for the direct flight to London, departing c. 8.30pm). Day 12. Arrive at London Heathrow at c. 10.15am. A number of these buildings are not usually open to the public and it is possible we will not be able to include everything listed.
Practicalities | 2019 Price, per person. Two sharing: £5,920 or £5,210 without flights on days 1 (London–New York– Pittsburgh) and 11 (Chicago–London). Single occupancy: £6,840 or £6,130 without flights on days 1 and 11. Note that if you take the tour without flights, the internal flight from Pittsburgh to Chicago is included. Included meals: 1 lunch and 7 dinners with wine. Visas: see page 252. Accommodation. The Renaissance Pittsburgh (renaissancepittsburghpa.com): centrally located, comfortable, spacious rooms and good amenities. Madison Edgewater Hotel (theedgewater.com): on the shores of Lake Mendota with fine views from rooms and public areas. The Pfister, Milwaukee (thepfisterhotel.com): historic hotel with grand public areas. The Alise, Chicago (thealisechicago. com): boutique hotel in the landmark Reliance Building; good location in ‘The Loop’ within walking distance of the Chicago Institute of Art. How strenuous? Quite tiring with a lot of walking and standing around, and a fair amount of coach travel. Average distance by coach per day: 50 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
Illustration: Fallingwater, photograph courtesy of Western Pensylvania Conservancy.
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Day 7: Wind Point, Racine, Chicago. At Wind Point visit Wingspread: the expansive low-lying building designed for the head of the Johnson Wax Corporation. Continue south to Racine on the shores of Lake Michigan and the Johnson Wax Building built in 1936 with its half acre Great Workroom, unique mushroom columns and innovative use of glass. Drive further south still to Chicago; our hotel is in Burnham & Root’s restored Reliance Building, the first ‘skyscraper’ built in the 1890s. First of four nights in Chicago.
Day 9: Chicago. Drive to the South Side to the Mies van der Rohe-designed Illinois Institute of Technology (1940–56), with additions by Rem Koolhaas. Continue to the Robie House (FLW 1910); epitome of the Prairie Style. The afternoon is free; we suggest an architectural cruise along the Chicago River, or a walk along the Magnificent Mile.
The Ring in Chicago World-class opera, art and architecture in the Midwest 19–26 April 2020 (mg 169) 7 nights • £5,810 (Including tickets to 4 performances) International flights not included Lecturers: Barry Millington & Tom Abbott Wagner’s monumental Ring cycle in a powerful new production by David Pountney. First-rate cast including Eric Owens, Christine Goerke, Brandon Jovanovich and Elisabet Strid. Talks on the operas by Barry Millington, editor of The Wagner Journal and chief music critic for London’s Evening Standard. Walks and visits led by architectural historian Tom Abbott.
AMERICAS: U.S.A.
Richard Wagner believed in the power of myth and Der Ring des Nibelungen, which some would claim to be the mightiest single achievement in the history of Western art, is timeless. It is of course about more than the giants, gods, dwarfs and humans it portrays, and has been interpreted in many different ways. On one level, it clearly represents the conflict between love and the abuse and retention of power. But it has also been viewed as a critique of the industrialisation taking place during Wagner’s time, as a presage of ecological disaster, as a socialist allegory, even in terms of Jungian psychology – all of which testify to the fascination it holds over people. However it is interpreted, David Pountney’s first complete production of the Ring cycle is first and foremost an act of narration, seeking to harness the power of the Icelandic myths. Fundamentally one of simplicity, the approach taken by the English director and librettist allows for the illusion to be recreated through the magical pact between storyteller and audience. In pursuit of what he bills “theatrical naïveté”, there is minimal recourse to elaborate staging or parallel commentary. The designs create a theatrical framework which continually reverts to the pristine, virginal condition of the empty stage. In this way the intimate scenes exploring human, psychological dilemmas are given greater focus, while imaginative direction transforms the acting arena for the public and political scenes. Within this overriding theatrical framework each instalment of the cycle has its own distinct identity: Das Rheingold is styled as a political cartoon; Die Walküre is an Ibsenesque drama; Siegfried – an ebullient and magical child’s view of the world, and Götterdämmerung a grand opera of love, betrayal and revenge. This tailoring of the Ring stems from Pountney’s belief in a fundamentally AngloSaxon penchant for storytelling, and it promises to be an unmissable event. Indeed, his Das Rheingold was previously described by the Chicago Tribune as ‘Nothing short of a triumph on all fronts, intelligently conceived by the creative team, brilliantly executed by a top-flight international cast’. Carl Sandburg’s ‘City of Big Shoulders’, meanwhile, also tells an interwoven series of stories, and is still the continent’s most enjoyably 258
assertive and distinctly ‘American’ city. Following the fire of 1871, it reinvented itself as the first modern metropolis, with the ‘Chicago School’ developing the technical means and artistic expression for a new kind of city, and, of course, the skyscraper. In addition to the medium of buildings, Chicagoans told their story through collecting; and the Chicago Art Institute quickly established itself as one of the great galleries of America. Spread over a week, there is a balanced programme of guided tours and independent exploration of Chicago’s cultural riches.
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Itinerary Day 1: joining the tour. Flights from London are not included – see Practicalities. Gather in the hotel at 5.30pm to meet the lecturer and fellow participants for a drinks reception before dinner. Day 2. Morning lecture on tonight’s performance. Walk through ‘The Loop’ to see outstanding skyscrapers and monuments of the Chicago School, as well as some of the public art more recently installed, with notable works by Chagall,
Calder and Picasso. Some free time followed by an early dinner. Civic Opera House, 7.30pm: Das Rheingold, Sir Andrew Davis (conductor), Eric Owens (Wotan), Zachary Nelson (Donner), Jesse Donner (Froh), Stefan Margita (Loge), Tanja Ariane Baumgartner (Fricka), Ronnita Miller (Erda), Diana Newman (Woglinde), Annie Rosen (Wellgunde), Lindsay Ammann (Flosshilde), Samuel Youn (Alberich), Rodell Rosel (Mime), Wilhelm Schwinghammer (Fasolt). Day 3. Morning lecture followed by a walk to Millennium Park, with Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate and Frank Gehry’s Jay Pritzker Pavilion. The adjacent Chicago Art Institute is one of the world’s greatest galleries, and within the US matched only by the Met. The superb and encyclopaedic collection is best known for its Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces, as well as a wonderful display of American paintings. A guided tour of selected galleries is followed by time for independent exploration. Civic Opera House, 6.00pm: Die Walküre, Sir Andrew Davis (conductor), Eric Owens (Wotan), Tanja Ariane Baumgartner (Fricka), Brandon Javanovich (Siegmund), Elisabet Strid (Sieglinde), Christine Goerke (Brünnhilde). Day 4. This day is dedicated to Frank Lloyd Wright: in Oak Park visit his Chicago home and studio for 20 years, built in 1889, and the birthplace of the Prairie School of architecture. The surrounding residential streets are home to a number of Wright designs and his Unity Temple. The evening is free.
Day 5. Morning lecture followed by a backstage tour of the Civic Opera House (subject to confirmation). Guided walk to the Gilded Age Driehaus Museum via Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, including landmarks such as the Wrigley Building. Some free time until early dinner and the evening opera. Civic Opera House, 6.00pm: Siegfried, Sir Andrew Davis (conductor), Burkhard Fritz (Siegfried), Christine Goerke (Brünnhilde), Ronnita Miller (Erda), Rodell Rosel (Mime), Eric Owens (Wotan), Samuel Youn (Alberich), Tobias Kehrer (Fafner), Diana Newman (Forest bird). Day 6. Return to the Art Institute for a further tour in the morning. The rest of the day is free allowing for independent time in the museum. We also suggest an architectural cruise along the Chicago River. Day 7. Morning lecture on the final opera. Guided visit of Glessner House, a fine design of 1887 by H.H. Richardson which redefined domestic architecture. Some free time. Dinner will be served during this evening’s performance. Civic Opera House, 5.30pm: Götterdämmerung, Sir Andrew Davis (conductor), Burkhard Fritz (Siegfried), Samuel Youn (Alberich), Christine Goerke (Brünnhilde), Diana Newman (Woglinde), Annie Rosen (Wellgunde), Lindsay Ammann (Flosshilde). Day 8. Free morning. Check out by midday.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £5,810. Single occupancy: £6,520. International flights are not included – see below. Included meals: 3 dinners with wine, and finger food served during 2 performances. Music: top-category tickets (‘Main Floor Prime’) for 4 performances are included, costing c. £1,950. Flights: return flights from London are not included in the price of the tour. If you would like to discuss your travel arrangements, we are happy to advise. The cost of a World Traveller (economy) seat at the time of going to press is c. £700 and will be available to book in early May 2019. Visas: see page 252. Accommodation. Kimpton Gray Hotel (grayhotelchicago.com): set in an historic insurance tower built in 1894 within ‘The Loop’, this new 4-star retains a classic feel. It is within walking distance of the Civic Opera House (taxis will be organised for those who wish) and The Art Institute. Rooms are of a fair size and excellent standard, with subtle décor. Room upgrades are available on request. How strenuous? Stamina is required for the long performances – and to cope with jet lag if flying from the UK. There is unavoidably a lot of walking in the city centre. Fitness is essential. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
West Coast Architecture
May 2020 Lecturer: Mary Lynn Riley
September 2020 Lecturer: Professor Neil Jackson
Full details available in Spring 2019 Please call us to register your interest or e-mail alerts@martinrandall.co.uk
Full details available in Spring 2019 Please call us to register your interest or e-mail alerts@martinrandall.co.uk
Every major art gallery from New England to Washington DC, providing an astonishingly rich artistic experience.
The whole gamut of architecture, 1908 onwards, some of it usually closed to the public.
The whole range of western art is covered, with Impressionism and Post-Impressionism particularly well represented. Includes the Barnes Foundation in its new home in central Philadelphia and the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven. Centrally located hotels in Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington.
Illustration, left: Rhine Maidens, lithograph by Henri FantinLatour, 1886. Right: New York, Manhattan, etching with drypoint by William Walcott 1923.
Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Kahn, Rudolf Schindler, Richard Neutra, Bernard Maybeck, Greene & Greene are well represented. Contemporary architects include Rafael Moneo, Frank Gehry, Mario Botta, Herzog & de Meuron, Richard Meier, Arata Isozaki, Daniel Libeskind and practices Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Snøhetta. Great landscapes, from desert to coast, plus a journey by rail from L.A. to San Francisco through countryside not seen by road. Time to visit the excellent art collections including the Getty Center, Norton Simon, de Young, Legion of Honor and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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East Coast Galleries
Our lecturers
Photographs. Top row, left–right: Tom Abbott; Robert Adelson; Louisa Allen, John Allison; Paul Atterbury; Patrick Bade; Paul Bahn; Rosemary Barron; Richard Bassett. Second row, left–right: Lydia Bauman; Gail Bent; David Beresford-Jones; Raaja Bhasin; Tim Blanning; Zahira Bomford; Xavier Bray; Steven Brindle;James Brown. Illustration, below left: wood engraving 1886.
Tom Abbott. Specialist in architectural history from the Baroque to the 20th century with a particular interest in German and American modern. Studied Art History in the USA and Paris and has a wide knowledge of the performing arts. Since 1987 he has lived in Berlin.
Paul Atterbury. Lecturer, writer and broadcaster specialising in the art, architecture and design of the 19th and 20th centuries. He has published widely on pottery, porcelain, canals, railways and the Thames. He curated the V&A exhibitions Pugin and Victorian Vision and is an expert on BBC’s Antiques Roadshow.
Professor Robert Adelson. Professor of Music History and Organology at the Conservatoire de Nice. From 2005–16 he curated the collection of historical musical instruments in the Musée du Palais Lascaris. He has published widely; his latest book is The History of the Erard Piano & Harp in Letters & Documents, 1785–1959.
Patrick Bade. Historian, writer and broadcaster. He studied at UCL and the Courtauld and was senior lecturer at Christie’s Education for many years. He has worked for the Art Fund, Royal Opera House, National Gallery and V&A. He has published on 19th- and early 20th-century painting and on historical vocal recordings.
Professor James Allan. Expert in Islamic art and architecture. He read Arabic at Oxford, worked as a field archaeologist in Jerusalem and at Siraf, and spent most of his career in Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum, where he also lectured for the Faculty of Oriental Studies.
Dr Paul Bahn. Archaeologist and Britain’s foremost specialist in prehistoric art. He led the team that discovered Britain’s only known Ice Age cave art at Creswell in 2003. His books include Prehistoric Rock Art, Journey Through the Ice Age and Images of the Ice Age.
Louisa Allen. Horticulturist and garden designer. She has worked for the City of London Corporation, managing 200 modern and historic green spaces in the Square Mile. She has an MA in Horticulture from the RHS. Her particular interest is urban environments and their impact on well-being and communities.
Rosemary Barron. Food, wine and travel writer specialising in Greece. In the 1980s, she ran a pioneering cookery school on Crete and Santorini. She has had papers published by the Oxford Symposium on food and cookery, and features in the UK and international media. Her books include Flavours of Greece and Meze: Small Bites, Big Flavors from the Greek Table.
Dr John Allison. Editor of Opera magazine, he is music critic for the Daily Telegraph and former critic for the Sunday Telegraph and The Times. He has written two books and has served on the juries of various international music competitions.
Richard Bassett. Journalist and historian. He was a foreign correspondent for The Times in the 1980s– early 90s, covering central and eastern Europe. His books include Austrians: Tales from the Vienna
Woods, Hitler’s Spy Chief: The Wilhelm Canaris Mystery and A History of the Habsburg Army. Lydia Bauman. Art historian, artist, and lecturer at the National Gallery. She studied at Newcastle University and the Courtauld Institute, specialising in Matisse and 19th–20th century European and American art. She has lectured at the Tate, National Portrait Gallery, Museum of Fine Arts Boston and Arts Club of Chicago. Gail Bent. Expert on British architectural history and historic interiors. She studied at Toronto and Leeds universities, where she has also taught, and Edinburgh College of Art. She lectures for The Art Fund, The National Trust, The Arts Society and at Christ Church, University of Oxford Summer Programme. She has acted as an expert on country houses for the BBC. Dr David Beresford-Jones. Fellow of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge University. His research interests include the ancient south coast of Peru, the origins of agriculture, PreColombian textiles and the synthesis of archaeology and historical linguistics, particularly in the Andes. Raaja Bhasin. Author, historian and journalist. He has published a dozen books on the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh and its capital Shimla and is a recognised authority on both. He is the state Coconvenor of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage.
LECTURERS
Professor Tim Blanning. Emeritus Professor of Modern European History at the University of Cambridge, Fellow of Sidney Sussex College and Fellow of the British Academy. Among his many books are The Culture of Power & the Power of Culture, and The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648–1815. His most recent is Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, awarded the British Academy Medal 2016. Monica Bohm-Duchen. Writer, curator and lecturer specialising in 20th-century art. She studied at UCL and the Courtauld, and has lectured for the National Gallery, Tate, Royal Academy, Courtauld, Sotheby’s and Birkbeck College. Her latest book is Art & the Second World War and her essay, The Two World Wars, appeared in the anthology War & Art. Dr Zahira Bomford. Senior Conservator of Paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She completed her PhD at the Courtauld, where she has also lectured, in addition to Rice University, Houston, UCL and the V&A. She has worked in conservation at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Prado and National Trust and has published extensively on Spanish art.
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Top row, left–right: John Bryan; James Cameron; Katie Campbell; Sophie Campbell; Jon Cannon; Pauline Chakmakjian; Harry Charrington Dawn Chatty; Michelle Cherutti-Kowal. Second row, left–right: Kevin Childs; Felicity Cobbing; Ian Colvin; Elizabeth Collingham; Gordon Corrigan; Imogen Corrigan; Carlo Corsato; Rosemary Crill; Misha Donat.
Dr Xavier Bray. Art historian and Director of the Wallace Collection. Former Chief Curator of Dulwich Picture Gallery and an Assistant Curator at the National Gallery. He curated The Sacred Made Real: Spanish Painting & Sculpture 1600–1700 (National Gallery) and Murillo & Justino de Neve: The Art of Friendship (Dulwich). He was also a co-curator of the National Gallery’s Caravaggio exhibition in 2005. Dr Steven Brindle. Read History at Oxford and worked for English Heritage for 27 years. He was involved in the post-fire restoration of Windsor Castle, 1993–7. His books include Brunel, the Man who built the World and Windsor Castle: a Thousand Years of a Royal Palace (published May 2018). James Brown. Historian specialising in Morocco with a wider interest in the history of the Muslim world. He studied at Oxford, Cambridge and SOAS and has worked as a journalist and teacher. His research has focused on Morocco’s relations with Europe and the history of the country’s culture of political legitimacy. Professor John Bryan. Professor of Music at the University of Huddersfield. A member of the Rose Consort of Viols, he is founder of the North East Early Music Forum, artistic adviser to York Early Music Festival and a contributor on BBC Radio 3. His book Early English Viols: Instruments, Makers & Music was published by Routledge in 2016.
Dr Katie Campbell. Writer, garden historian and lecturer. She has taught at Birkbeck, Buckingham and Bristol universities. Her books include British Gardens in Time (to accompany a BBC TV series), Icons of 20th-century Landscape Design and Paradise of Exiles: The Anglo-American Gardens of Florence. Sophie Campbell. A travel writer since 1991, who has written for the Telegraph, Times, Guardian and Condé Nast Traveller among others. She lectures on travel writing and is a London Blue Badge Tourist Guide. Her book on the traditional events of the summer, The Season: A Summer Whirl Through the English Social Season was published in 2013. Jon Cannon. Writer, lecturer and broadcaster, and specialist in historic religious architecture. He has written widely on English medieval church
the faculties at Harvard, Queen’s University Belfast and Texas. Her publications include The Plantation Mistress, Fanny Kemble’s Civil Wars and Mrs Lincoln: A Life. She has consulted on documentaries and on Steven Spielberg’s 2012 film, Lincoln.
Pauline Chakmakjian. Specialist in the history, fine arts and culture of Japan. She lectures widely for several organisations. She was elected onto the Board of the Japan Society of the UK from 2008–14 and the Japan Society of Hawaii from 2015–17. In 2014, she was appointed a Visit Kyoto Ambassador by the Mayor of the City of Kyoto.
Felicity Cobbing. Executive and Curator of the Palestine Exploration Fund in London. She has excavated in Jordan with the British Museum and travelled throughout the Middle East. Widely published, she is co-author of Beyond the River – Ottoman Transjordan in Original Photographs and Distant Views of the Holy Land.
Professor Harry Charrington. Architect and Professor of Architecture at the University of Westminster. He studied at Cambridge and obtained his PhD from the LSE. His research focuses on modernism, and his books include the awardwinning Alvar Aalto: the Mark of the Hand and contributions to Artek & the Aaltos: Creating a Modern World.
Dr R. T. Cobianchi. Art historian and researcher specialising in Italian art and architecture of the Renaissance and Baroque. His interests also span from the iconography of the late Middle Ages to the sculpture of Neoclassicism.
Professor Dawn Chatty. Emeritus Professor of Anthropology and Forced Migration at the University of Oxford, former Director of the Refugee Studies Centre and Emeritus Fellow of St Cross College. She has long been involved with the Middle East as a lecturer, development practitioner and advocate for indigenous rights. She was made a Fellow of the British Academy in 2015. Michelle Cherutti-Kowal mw. Wine expert, specialising in Italy, France and the New World. Since 2004, a consultant tutor at the Wine and Spirits Education Trust. She has written for trade publications and journals. A frequent guest expert at major wine shows, she is Chair Judge and member of the Technical Committee for the International Wine and Spirits Competition. Dr Kevin Childs. Writer and lecturer on culture and the arts with a focus on the Italian Renaissance. He obtained his doctorate from the Courtauld and has been a Fellow of the Dutch Institute in Florence and the British School at Rome. He blogs for the Huffington Post and has published in the New Statesman. Dr John Clarke. Curator of Himalayan and South East Asian Art at the V&A. He specialises in the arts of Tibet and of South East Asia, in particular of Burma and Thailand. He is Lead Curator for the Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation Buddhist Art Galleries which opened at the V&A in 2017. Professor Catherine Clinton. Denman Professor of American History at the University of Texas. She studied at Harvard and Princeton before joining
Steven Cohen. Indian carpet expert and the May Beattie Visiting Fellow in Carpet Studies at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Dr Elizabeth Collingham. Food historian and writer. She obtained her PhD at Cambridge and is now an independent writer and Associate Fellow at Warwick University. Books include Imperial Bodies: the Physical Experience of the Raj. c. 1800–1947, Curry: A Tale of Cooks & Conquerors and The Hungry Empire: How Britain’s Quest for Food Shaped the Modern World. Ian Colvin. Historian and Byzantinist specialising in Late Antiquity and the South Caucasus. Trained at Oxford, he is now a researcher at Cambridge. He has directed an ongoing archaeological expedition to ancient Archaeopolis in the South Caucasus since 2001. Major Gordon Corrigan mbe. Military historian and former officer of the Royal Gurkha Rifles. The most recent of his numerous books is Waterloo – A New History of the Battle & its Armies. He is a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society and a Member of the British Commission for Military History. Imogen Corrigan. Specialist in Anglo-Saxon and medieval history, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She spent 20 years in the army, retiring in the rank of Major, then obtained a first-class degree in Medieval History from the University of Kent, and has been studying and lecturing ever since. Dr Carlo Corsato. Expert in early modern art and architecture and lecturer at Morley College, London. In the past 15 years he has contributed to many journals and exhibition catalogues, as well as lecturing extensively in higher and adult Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Dr James Cameron. Art historian specialising in English parish church architecture. He studied at the University of Manchester, and later at The Courtauld, and his PhD focused on sedilia in English churches. In 2017 he co-organised the conference Towards an Art History of the Parish Church at The Courtauld.
architecture, and co-wrote and presented the BBC’s How to Build a Cathedral. He has also travelled extensively in China and has published on the country in the London Review of Books and in his The Secret Language of Sacred Spaces.
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education. His research reconstructs how 14th to 17th-century art documented religion, economy and society in Italy. Rosemary Crill. Former Senior Curator for South Asia at the V&A, where she is now an Honorary Senior Research Fellow. Over 30 years she has published widely on Indian textiles and paintings. Books include Indian Embroidery, Indian Ikat Textiles and The Fabric of India, which accompanied the V&A’s major exhibition of the same name. Dr Stephen Darlington. One of the country’s leading choral conductors. Since 1985 he has been Director of Music at Christ Church, Oxford, establishing it as as an acknowledged centre of academic musical excellence, and maintained the highest choral traditions of the Church of England in the Cathedral. An extensive discography of over 50 CDs, includes several award-winning recordings. Steven Desmond. Chartered Horticulturist specialising in the conservation of historic gardens. He writes for Country Life and lectures for The Arts Society. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Horticulture and a Professional Associate of the Royal Horticultural Society. His book Gardens of the Italian Lakes was published in 2016. Misha Donat. Writer, lecturer and senior music producer for BBC Radio 3 for more than 25 years. He writes programme notes for Wigmore Hall and other venues. He has worked on a new edition of the Beethoven piano sonatas published by Bärenreiter.
LECTURERS
Dr Michael Douglas-Scott. Associate Lecturer in History of Art at Birkbeck College, specialising in 16th-century Italian art and architecture. He studied at the Courtauld and lived in Rome for several years. He has written articles for Arte Veneta, Burlington Magazine and the Journal of the Warburg & Courtauld Institutes. Dr Michael Downes. Director of Music at the University of St Andrews, musical director of St Andrews Chorus and founding artistic director of Byre Opera. He writes programme notes for Wigmore Hall and Aldeburgh Music and reviews music for the Times Literary Supplement. He is author of a highly praised study of British composer Jonathan Harvey. David Drew. Archaeologist, writer and broadcaster who studied at Oxford and UCL. He has excavated in Peru and worked with the Cusichaca Trust. He has made TV documentaries for the BBC and the Arts and Entertainment Channel in the USA. He is author of The Lost Chronicles of the Maya Kings and is currently writing a book about Machu Picchu. 262
Top row, left–right: Michael Douglas-Scott; Michael Downes; David Drew; Simon Esmonde Cleary; Richard Evans; Andrew Farrington; Margrethe Floryan; Frances Fowle; Lucia Gahlin. Second row, left–right: Jana Gajdošová; Garth Gilmour; Agata Gomólka; Mark Grahame; Jamie Greenbaum; Linda Hanks; Gijs van Hensbergen; Monika Hinkel; Amanda Holden.
Professor Simon Esmonde Cleary. Archaeologist specialising in the western Roman Empire and Emeritus Professor of Roman Archaeology at the University of Birmingham. He remains an active researcher and has conducted fieldwork in the UK and France and written books on Gaul and Spain in late antiquity and on Roman Britain. Ben Evans. Editor of HALI magazine – the leading specialist publication in antique carpets and textiles. In 2005 he also launched COVER magazine to represent the contemporary textile market. With extensive travel experience and strong relations with scholars and curators, Ben has a comprehensive knowledge of world weavings. Professor Sir Richard J. Evans. Regius Professor of History and President of Wolfson College at the University of Cambridge. He is author of numerous books on Central European history, including The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815–1914 a volume in the Penguin History of Europe. Dr Andrew Farrington. Assistant Professor in Ancient History at the Democritus University of Thrace, Komotini, in northern Greece. He also teaches for the Greek Open University and previously held academic posts in Australia and New Zealand. His specialism is the sporting life of the ancient Greeks, especially under the Roman empire. Dr Margrethe Floryan. Art historian and curator with a PhD in garden history. Studied at the University of Aarhus and the École du Louvre. Author of Great European Gardens: An Atlas of Historic Plans. She has published extensively on art, architecture and landscape design and is Honorary member of the Danish Horticultural Society. Professor Frances Fowle. Senior Curator of French Art at the Scottish National Gallery, Professor of History of Art at the University of Edinburgh and Senior Trustee of the Burrell Collection. She has curated exhibitions including Inspiring Impressionism: Daubigny, Monet, Van Gogh. Publications include Soil & Stone: Impressionism, Urbanism, Environment. Lucia Gahlin. Research Associate at UCL’s Institute of Archaeology and freelance lecturer. She has lectured for the Universities of London, Reading, Surrey, Sussex, Exeter, Bristol and Warwick. She works closely with the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, and has been Small Finds Registrar on excavations at Amarna in Egypt. Her publications include Egypt: Gods, Myths & Religion. Dr Jana Gajdošová. Art historian and lecturer at the University of Cambridge and at Christie’s
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Education. She obtained her MA at the Courtauld Institute and her PhD at Birkbeck College. Her research interests include late medieval art and architecture, especially in Central Europe, England, Germany and Italy. Dr Alexandra Gajewski. Architectural historian and lecturer specialising in the medieval. She obtained her PhD from the Courtauld and has lectured there and at Birkbeck College. She recently completed a research project at the Centro de Ciencias Humanas in Madrid, investigating ‘The Roles of Women as Makers of Medieval Art and Architecture’. Dr Ffiona Gilmore Eaves. Lecturer specialising in the Adriatic. She read Archaeology at Cambridge and obtained her PhD from Nottingham. She is the co-author of Retrieving the Record: A Century of Archaeology at Porec. She has worked extensively in adult education, especially for the WEA, and for various extra-mural departments. Dr Garth Gilmour. Jerusalem and Oxford trained biblical archaeologist. He is Director of the Church’s Ministry among Jewish People (CMJ), Israel, in Jerusalem. His interests include eastern Mediterranean trade in the Late Bronze Age and the archaeology of religion in Israel. He has excavated at the Philistine sites of Ekron and Ashkelon and is currently researching the Palestine Exploration Fund’s excavation in Jerusalem in the 1920s. Dr Agata Gomólka. Art historian, lecturer and researcher specialising in Romanesque architectural sculpture. She obtained her MA at the University of Warwick and her PhD at the University of East Anglia. Her research interests include medieval art and architecture, pre-modern building methods, sculptural techniques, and representation of the human body in art. Dr Mark Grahame. Archaeologist, lecturer and Member of the Chartered Institute of Archaeologists (MCIfA), whose research interests focus on Roman Pompeii. He has taught courses on the archaeology and history of the Roman Empire including for Cambridge University’s Institute of Continuing Education. Dr Jamie Greenbaum. Historian specialising in Ming dynasty cultural history. He is a Visiting Fellow in the School of Culture, History & Language at the Australian National University and lectures at the Renmin University, Beijing. He has published books on the late-Ming literary world and the early 20thcentury political figure Qu Qiubai. Dr Siân Grønlie. Associate Professor at St Anne’s College, Oxford specialising in Norse-Icelandic
Top row, left–right: John Holloway; Owen Hopkins; Maurice Howard; Neil Jackson; Stephen Johnson; James Johnston; Philippa Joseph; Yoko Kawaguchi; Jonathan Keates. Second row, left–right: Lindsay Kemp; Nicholas Kenyon; Rose Kerr; Anthony Lambert; Helen Langdon; Urban Laurin; Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones; Rowena Loverance; Gerald Luckhurst. Illustration, below: frieze at the base of the Albert Memorial, London, engraving c. 1850.
literature. Her most recent book is The Saint and the Saga Hero: Hagiography & Early Icelandic Literature. She has also published a translation of Islendingabok, Kristnisaga: The Book of the Icelanders, the Story of the Conversion.
Programme Curator at the Royal Academy of Arts where his exhibitions included Nicholas Hawksmoor: Architect of the Imagination. He is author of From the Shadows: The Architecture & Afterlife of Nicholas Hawksmoor.
Linda Hanks. After working in the wine trade in London and gaining her WSET diploma, Linda ran a wine business for nearly 15 years in Girona. She talked and tasted her way across the province to compile the company’s portfolio of almost exclusively Catalan wines, often discovering extraordinary producers in lesser-known places. She also works for MRT as an Operations Manager.
Professor Maurice Howard obe. Professor Emeritus of Art History at the University of Sussex. His books include The Building of Elizabethan & Jacobean England. He has worked for the V&A and the National Portrait Gallery, is a former President of both the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain and the Society of Antiquaries of London.
Dr Dana Healy. Senior lecturer in Vietnamese studies at SOAS, University of London, specialising in modern Vietnamese cultural studies. She studied at Charles University in Prague, where she also obtained her PhD. Her academic work covers a broad spectrum of topics relating to Vietnamese language and culture. Gijs van Hensbergen. Art historian and author specialising in Spain and the USA. His books include Gaudí, In the Kitchens of Castile, Guernica and La Sagrada Familia. He studied Art History at the Courtauld and is a Fellow of the Cañada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies at the LSE.
Professor Neil Jackson. Architect and architectural historian. He is Charles Reilly Professor of Architecture at the University of Liverpool, and former resident scholar at the Getty Conservation Institute. He has published widely, including The Modern Steel House, and California Modern: The Architecture of Craig Ellwood. Forthcoming books include Pierre Koenig: A View from the Archive. Stephen Johnson. Writer, broadcaster and composer. For 15 years he presented BBC Radio 3’s Discovering Music. His books include Bruckner Remembered, studies of Wagner and Mahler, and How Shostakovich Changed My Mind, which examines the effect of music on mental health. His orchestral piece
James Johnstone. Professor of early keyboards at Guildhall School of Music & Drama and Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance. An organist specialising in the Baroque, he has performed and recorded as a soloist and with the Gabrieli Consort & Players and Monteverdi Choir. In 2016 he embarked on a major recording project of Bach’s organ works on historical instruments. Dr Philippa Joseph. Independent lecturer and researcher with a background in academic publishing and former reviews editor of History Today. She is a tutor in architectural and art history at the Oxford University Department for Continuing Education. Her teaching and research focuses on the artistic and cultural legacies of Andalucía and Sicily. Yoko Kawaguchi. Writer and cultural historian specialising in the relationship between Japan and the West. She holds an MA from Kyoto University and has undertaken postgraduate research at Newnham College, Cambridge. Her books include Butterfly’s Sisters: The Geisha in Western Culture, Japanese Zen Gardens and Authentic Japanese Gardens. Jonathan Keates. Author, journalist and teacher. His books include Purcell: A Biography and The Siege Of Venice, and fiction includes short story collections Allegro Postillions and Soon to be a Major Motion Picture. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Trustee of the London Library and Chairman of Venice In Peril.
Amanda Holden. Musician and writer. She has written over 60 translations for the musical stage. Those recently heard at ENO include Partenope, Don Giovanni and La Bohème; her Castor & Pollux by Rameau received an Oliver nomination. Amanda is founding editor of the Penguin Opera Guides. Professor John Holloway. Eminent violinist and lecturer. Former leader of the Kent Opera Orchestra, Norrington’s London Classical Players, and the Taverner Players. He has won numerous awards for his recordings of solo and chamber music. In 2004 he was Regents’ Lecturer at UC Berkeley, USA. He was Professor for Violin and Chamber Music at the University of Music in Dresden from 1999–2014. Owen Hopkins. Writer, historian and curator. Senior Curator of Exhibitions and Education at Sir John Soane’s Museum and former Architecture Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Dr Monika Hinkel. Lecturer and curator specialising in Japanese woodblock prints and Research Associate of the Japan Research Centre at SOAS. She studied at Bonn University, was curator for Japanese art at the Museum of East Asian Art in Cologne, and a researcher at Gakushuin University, Tokyo. She has lectured at Birkbeck, the V&A and Morley College.
Henry Hurst. Emeritus Reader in Classics at Cambridge University. His special interest is the archaeology of ancient cities and he has been an excavating archaeologist – working at Carthage for many years and more recently in Rome. He has travelled widely in Greece and Turkey.
Behemoth Dances had its première by the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra in 2016.
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Lindsay Kemp. Producer and writer specialising in Baroque music. He created the BBC Radio 3 series Bach Walks, and is former Artistic Director of the Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music, and founder of the London Festival of Baroque Music, and Baroque at the Edge. He writes for Gramophone and contributed to the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Historical Performance in Music. Alan Kennedy. Independent researcher, author and Asian art dealer, specialising in costumes and textiles. He lived in Paris for over twenty years and has been a regular visitor to Japan since the 1970s. Now based in California, he stages annual exhibitions during New York City’s Asia Week. Sir Nicholas Kenyon. Managing Director of the Barbican Centre since 2007; former Controller of BBC Radio 3 and Director of the BBC Proms. He has been music critic for The New Yorker and Observer, music editor of The Listener and editor of Early Music. He is author of the Faber Pocket Guides to Bach and Mozart, and edited Authenticity & Early Music and The City of London: a Companion Guide. Dr Rose Kerr. Honorary Associate of the Needham Research Institute in Cambridge and former Keeper of the Far Eastern Department at the V&A. She graduated in Chinese studies and spent a year as a student in China during the last year of the Cultural Revolution, 1975–6. In 2014 she became an Honorary Citizen of Jingdezhen.
LECTURERS
Dr Jarl Kremeier. Art historian specialising in 17thto 19th-century architecture and decorative arts. He teaches Art History at the Berlin College of Acting and Berlin’s Freie Universität. He is a contributor to the Macmillan Dictionary of Art and author of Die Hofkirche der Würzburger Residenz. Anthony Lambert. Historian, journalist and travel writer, he has worked for the National Trust for many years. His books include Victorian & Edwardian Country House Life, he writes regularly for the Historic Houses Association’s magazine, and he has written several travel and guide books, including over 20 on railway history and travel. Dr Helen Langdon. Art historian and author. She studied at Cambridge and the Courtauld and was a Research Fellow at the Getty Institute, LA, and Visiting Fellow at Yale. Her books include Claude Lorrain, Caravaggio: A Life and Vision & Ecstasy: Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione’s St Francis. Urban Laurin. Author, lecturer, consultant and former professor specialising in wine and beverages. A Swedish native, he is involved in the rural and sustainable development of food culture and 264
Top row, left–right: Giles MacDonagh; Alexey Makhrov; Thomas Marks; Andrew Martin; John McNeill; Patrick Mercer; Barry Millington; Marc Millon; Anna-Maria Misra; Second row, left–right: Andrew Moore; Chris Moss; Fabrizio Nevola; Christopher Newall; Charles Nicholl; Geoffrey Norris; Alan Ogden; Sophie Oosterwijk; Muiris O’Sullivan.
tourism, and has a PhD in political science from Uppsala University. He is a co-author of Have Fork Will Travel: A Practical Handbook for Food & Drink Tourism Professionals. Dr Luca Leoncini. Art historian with a speciality in 15th-century painting and a wide knowledge of Italian art and architecture. He obtained his degree and PhD at Rome University and studied at the Warburg Institute in London. He has also written on Mantegna and on Renaissance drawings. He is one of MRT’s longest serving lecturers. Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones. Chair of Ancient History at Cardiff University and specialist in the history and culture of ancient Iran, the Near East and Ancient Greece. Books include Ctesias’ History of Persia and Creating a Hellenistic World. He has contributed to TV documentaries and BBC radio programmes and is a regular reviewer for The Times. Rowena Loverance. Byzantine art historian specialising in sculpture, mosaics and icons. She studied history and archaeology at Oxford and was Head of e-learning at the British Museum and a Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College, London. Her publications include the illustrated history Byzantium and Christian Art. Dr Gerald Luckhurst. Landscape architect and garden historian based in Lisbon. He works on the restoration of historic palaces and botanical gardens, including contemporary garden design, and is currently undertaking projects in Portugal, the Atlantic Islands, Africa and the Middle East. His books include: The Gardens of Madeira, The Gardens of the National Palace of Queluz and Sintra: a Landscape with Villas. Giles MacDonogh. Historian, food and wine expert, translator, teacher and journalist. He is author of fourteen books including monographs on Berlin and Prussia, biographies of Frederick the Great and the last Kaiser and a bestseller on postwar Germany, After the Reich. A study of Angela Merkel’s Germany is in preparation. Dr Alexey Makhrov. Russian art historian and lecturer. He graduated from the St Petersburg Academy of Arts and obtained his PhD from the University of St Andrews followed by post-doctoral work as a Research Fellow at Exeter. He now lives in Switzerland where he teaches courses on Russian art. Dr Thomas Marks. Editor of Apollo, the leading international art magazine. He studied first at Cambridge University, followed by Oxford, and holds a DPhil on 19th-century poetry and architecture. He has written for many publications
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about art, museums and literature; his interest in the English Romantic poets in Italy was stimulated by a period working at the Keats-Shelley House in Rome. Dr Eireann Marshall. Archaeological historian, lecturer and writer specialising in ancient North African and Roman civilisations. She is an honorary research fellow for the OU, and is currently working on a project at the University of Roehampton focusing on the reception of Roman culture in the frontiers of the Roman Empire. Andrew Martin. Journalist, novelist, historian and author of Underground Overground: a Passenger’s History of the Tube (2012). During the 1990s he was ‘Tube Talk’ columnist for the Evening Standard. His latest novel is Soot. John McNeill. Architectural historian of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. He lectures for Oxford University’s Department of Continuing Education and is Honorary Secretary of the British Archaeological Association. Publications include articles in learned journals and guidebooks to Normandy and the Loire Valley. Patrick Mercer obe. Military historian. He read History at Oxford and then spent 25 years in the army, achieving the rank of colonel, and subsequently worked for BBC Radio 4 as Defence Correspondent and as a journalist. He was MP for Newark from 2001 to 2014 and is the author of two books on the Battle of Inkerman. Barry Millington. Chief Music Critic for London’s Evening Standard and founder/editor of The Wagner Journal. He is the author/editor of eight books on Wagner including The Sorcerer of Bayreuth. He also contributed the articles on Wagner and his operas to The New Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians and The New Grove Dictionary of Opera. Marc Millon. Wine, food and travel writer. Born in Mexico, he was raised in the USA and then studied at the University of Exeter. He lives in Devon where he is closely involved with the West Country food scene. He is author of The Wine Roads of France, The Wine Roads of Italy, The Food Lover’s Companion to France, The Food Lover’s Companion to Italy and The Taste of Britain. Dr Anna-Maria Misra. Associate Professor in Modern History at Oxford University and a specialist on Indian history and the British Empire. She has published widely, including Vishnu’s Crowded Temple: India Since the Great Rebellion and she wrote and presented the Channel 4 series An Indian Affair.
Top row, left–right: Josephine Oxley; Ian Page; Stephen Parkin; Amanda Patton; Sarah Pearson; Anthony Peers; Carolyn Perry; Richard Plant; Fred Plotkin. Second row, left–right: Jane Pritchard; Asoka Pugal; Andreas Puth; Peter Wynne Rees; Simon Rees; Mary Lynn Riley; Juliet Rix; Elizabeth Roberts; Barnaby Rogerson.
Dr Andrew Moore. Curator, lecturer and author. He has written and co-authored publications including A Capital Collection and Houghton Hall: Portrait of an English Country House. He is former Keeper of Art at Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery and curator of the recent exhibition The Paston Treasure and co-editor of the accompanying publication. Chris Moss. Journalist and writer specialising in Argentina, where he lived for a number of years. He studied theology, English literature and education. He has written for BBC History and the Daily Telegraph and has edited several guidebooks, as well as a cultural history of Patagonia. He also writes on South American music for the publication Songlines. Professor Fabrizio Nevola. Chair and Professor of Art History and Visual Culture at the University of Exeter. His research focuses on the urban and architectural history of early modern Italy and he has published widely including Siena: Constructing the Renaissance City. He obtained his PhD at the Courtauld. Christopher Newall. Art historian, lecturer and writer. A specialist in 19th-century British art he also has a deep interest in southern Italy, its architecture, politics and social history. He studied at the Courtauld and has curated various exhibitions including John Ruskin: Artist & Observer at the National Gallery of Canada and Scottish National Portrait Gallery.
Professor Geoffrey Norris. Writer, lecturer and former music critic. For many years, he was Chief Music Critic of the Daily Telegraph. At different times he has been lecturer at the Royal Northern College of Music and at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is Professor at the Rachmaninoff Music Academy in Russia and also teaches at the Gnesin Music Academy in Moscow. Alan Ogden. Travel writer and historian. His books include Moons & Aurochs: Romanian Journeys and Revelations of Byzantium: The Monasteries & Painted Churches of N.E. Moldavia. He has written four histories of the Special Operations Executive covering Eastern Europe, Italy, Greece and the Far East.
Professor Muiris O’Sullivan. Emeritus Professor of Archaeology and former Head of School at the UCD School of Archaeology, Dublin. He has conducted research at some of the more famous sites in Ireland, at Tara, Knowth and Newgrange. His publications include The Mound of the Hostages, Tara: From the Past to the Future and Archaeology 2020. Josephine Oxley. Keeper of the Wellington Collection at Apsley House. She previously worked for the National Trust and Historic Scotland on a variety of collections, from costume to furniture and paintings, with a specialism in tapestry. Her main interest is the Napoleonic period both history and art, and of course the Duke of Wellington.
obtained his PhD from University College London. From 1984–90 he was Knossos Curator for the British School at Athens and he has lectured at University College Dublin since 1991. He has excavated on Crete and writes on Minoan religion and ancient Greek combat. Anthony Peers. Architectural historian, and consultant in the conservation of historic buildings. He has worked with English Heritage and the DTI in Mumbai, where he set up and ran a unesco awardwinning project to repair George Gilbert Scott’s University buildings while training local architects and craftsmen in traditional repair techniques. Carolyn Perry. Lecturer and museum consultant. She taught Ancient History and Mythology in the Department of Mediterranean Studies at Queen Mary College, University of London and has excavated in Italy. She established the Arab World Education Programme at the British Museum and is Chair of The British Foundation for the Study of Arabia.
Ian Page. Conductor and Artistic Director of Classical Opera, appearing regularly at Wigmore Hall, Cadogan Hall, the Barbican and Sadler’s Wells. He has been a professor at the Royal College of Music in London since 1993. In 2012 he embarked on a project to record all the Mozart operas.
Dr Richard Plant. Architectural historian and lecturer specialising in the Middle Ages with a strong interest in the modern. He studied at Cambridge, followed by the Courtauld, where he obtained his PhD. He was Deputy Academic Director at Christie’s Education and has published on English and German architecture.
Stephen Parkin. Curator at the British Library and specialist in early printing in Italy. He studied at Cambridge and UCL and has a qualification in librarianship from the Vatican Library School in Rome. He has a particular interest in the history of bibliography and collecting and has published in these fields; he also works as a literary translator.
Fred Plotkin. Writer specialising in Italian food, wine, culture and opera. Author of six books including Italy for the Gourmet Traveller, he has worked at La Scala and the Metropolitan Opera. He appears regularly on the BBC, and is a speaker at the Oxford Literary Festival. In 2015, he was awarded the Cavaliere della Stella d’Italia.
Amanda Patton. Landscape and garden designer, writer, broadcaster and artist. A Registered Member of the Society of Garden Designers, British Association of Landscape Industries and member of the Garden Media Guild, she has created show gardens at the RHS Chelsea and Hampton Court flower shows. Her specialism is the development of the 20th-century garden.
Jane Pritchard mbe. Curator of Dance for the V&A and co-curator of the exhibition Diaghilev & the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes 1909–1929. She was Archivist for Rambert Dance Company and English National Ballet. Books include Anna Pavlova: Twentieth-Century Ballerina. She has curated and written for BFI Southbank and the British Council.
Dr Sarah Pearson. Architectural historian, writer and lecturer specialising in Italy. Her MA focused on Andrea Palladio and her PhD investigated convent building in Northern Italy with particular reference to the Duchy of Urbino and the architect Francesco di Giorgio Martini. She currently lectures at Madingley Hall at the University of Cambridge.
Asoka Pugal. Historian and lecturer. Born in Tamil Nadu, he graduated from the University of Madras followed by postgraduate studies at Madras Law College. He has worked in the tourist industry for many years and has produced TV documentaries. In 2001, he joined the Board of Studies in Ancient History and Archaeology at the University of Madras.
Dr Alan Peatfield. Archaeologist specialising in the Minoan Bronze Age Civilisation of Crete. He
Andreas Puth. Art and architectural historian. He studied at the University of Freiburg and the Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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Dr Charles Nicholl. Honorary Professor of English at Sussex University and the author of several books of biography, history and travel. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and recipient of the Hawthornden prize, the James Tait Black prize for biography and the Crime Writers’ Association ‘Gold Dagger’ award for non-fiction.
Dr Sophie Oosterwijk. Researcher and lecturer with degrees in Art History, Medieval Studies and English Literature. Her specialisms are the Middle Ages, and the art and culture of the Netherlands. She has taught at the universities of Leicester, Manchester and St Andrews, and lectures at Cambridge. She is co-editor of the journal Church Monuments.
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Courtauld. He has lectured at UCL, Birkbeck College and the Courtauld on medieval and early modern architecture as well as imagery. For three years, he was a fellow at the Research Centre on the History and Culture of East Central Europe affiliated to Leipzig University. Professor Peter Wynne Rees cbe. City Planning Officer for the City of London 1985–2014 and a founder member and director of the British Council for Offices. He is Professor of Places and City Planning at UCL. He has an Honorary Fellowship from RIBA and Honorary doctorate from London SBU, and was awarded the CBE in 2015 for services to architecture and town planning. Simon Rees. A freelance dramaturg, Simon translates opera librettos for singing and surtitles and lectures and writes on opera, theatre, art and architecture. He is an Associate Lecturer at the Wales International Academy of Voice, and also teaches at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama. A novelist, poet and librettist, he was dramaturg at Welsh National Opera from 1989 to 2012. Mary Lynn Riley. Specialist in 19th- and 20thcentury modern and contemporary art. She lives on the Côte d’Azur where she teaches art courses at the Musée Bonnard in Le Cannet and the Espace de l’Art Concret at Mouans-Sartoux. Previously she worked at the Smithsonian in Washington DC.
LECTURERS
Juliet Rix. Award-winning journalist, writer and broadcaster specialising in the history of Malta. She studied History of Art at Cambridge and is the author of the Bradt Guide: Malta & Gozo. Her career in journalism has involved working for the BBC and writing for British national newspapers, magazines and online media. Elizabeth Roberts. Historian, writer and lecturer, specialising in the Balkans. She is Academic Advisor for the Weidenfeld-Hoffmann Scholarships Programme, University of Oxford, and former expert witness for the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee on Kosovo and Montenegro. Her books include Realm of the Black Mountain: A History of Montenegro and The Sandžak: A History. Barnaby Rogerson. Writer, publisher and owner of Eland Books, London’s leading independent travel publisher. He is descended from four generations of London brewers and has edited the London collection in the Poetry of Place series. Sue Rollin. Archaeologist, interpreter and lecturer, widely travelled in the Middle East. Her linguistic repertoire includes ancient Near-Eastern and several modern European languages. She lectures for the Art 266
Top row, left–right: Sue Rollin; David Rosenthal; Timon Screech; Jeremy Seal; Janet Sinclair; Guus Sluiter; Jan Smaczny; Christine Smallwood; Antony Spawforth. Second row, left–right: Andrew Spooner; Susan Steer; Graeme Stobbs; Jane Streetly; Martin Symington; Neil Taylor; Lars Tharp; Giles Tillotson; Thomas-Leo True.
Fund, Arts Society and V&A. She has taught at UCL, SOAS and Cambridge, interprets for the EU and UN and is co-author of Blue Guide: Jordan. Dr David Rosenthal. Historian of Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Italy. A teacher at the University of Edinburgh and a former fellow at Harvard’s Villa I Tatti in Florence, he has written widely on Florentine social, religious and cultural life, including Kings of the Street: Power, Community & Ritual in Renaissance Florence. Professor Andrew Sanders. Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Durham and Past President of the Dickens Fellowship. A specialist in 19th-century literature and culture. His books include: The Short Oxford History of English Literature and English Cathedrals. He has written five books on Dickens, including Charles Dickens’s London. Professor Timon Screech. Professor of History of Art at SOAS, University of London. He is an expert on the art and culture of the Japanese Edo period, including its international dimension, and has published widely on the subject. His books include Sex & the Floating World and Obtaining Images. Jeremy Seal. Travel writer specialising in Turkey. Books include A Fez of the Heart and Meander, an account of his solo canoe journey down the Buyuk Menderes River. He has written for the Sunday Times, Telegraph and others. He teaches for the Royal Literary Fund and has also worked in broadcasting and publishing. Janet Sinclair. Art historian, curator and lecturer. She studied at the Courtauld and the Barber Institute, Birmingham. She has held senior management posts at significant heritage sites including Petworth House, Sussex. She she is a tutor on the MA Collections Care & Conservation Management course at West Dean (University of Sussex). Jeffrey Skidmore. Leading choral conductor, and director of the ensemble Ex Cathedra. He read music at Magdalen College, Oxford and has become a pioneer in the field of research and performance of choral works of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, both in the old and new worlds, winning wide acclaim for his recordings of French and Latin American Baroque music with Ex Cathedra. Dr Guus Sluiter. Art historian and Director of the Dutch Funeral Museum in Amsterdam. Prior to this he worked for the Mauritshuis in The Hague and the Royal Palace in Amsterdam. He has published widely in the Netherlands and Italy and
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is a Research Fellow of the Dutch Institute for Art History in Florence. Professor Jan Smaczny. Emeritus Professor of Music at Queen’s University, Belfast and an authority on Czech music. An author, broadcaster and journalist, he has published books on the Prague Provisional Theatre, Dvořák’s Cello Concerto, music in 19thcentury Ireland and Bach’s B-minor Mass. He studied at the University of Oxford and the Charles University, Prague. Christine Smallwood. Food and travel writer specialising in Italy, she is the author of a series of books, including An Appetite for Puglia: the people, the places, the food. A French graduate and Committee Member of the Guild of Food Writers, Christine was awarded the Crest of Puglia by the President of the region in March 2008 in recognition of her knowledge and communication of its gastronomic culture. Professor Antony Spawforth. Emeritus Professor of Ancient History at Newcastle University. A historian and broadcaster specialising in Greek and Roman antiquity and in rulers’ courts. Books include The Complete Greek Temples, Greece: An Oxford Archaeological Guide (with C. Mee), and Versailles: A Biography of a Palace. Andrew Spira. Formerly a specialist in Russian and Byzantine icons at the Temple Gallery in London, curator at the V&A and Programme Director at Christie’s Education. He studied at the Courtauld Institute, and is author of The AvantGarde Icon: Russian Avant-Garde Art & the Icon Painting Tradition. He has led many cultural tours to Armenia, Georgia, Romania, Crete and Russia. Dr Nigel Spivey. Senior Lecturer in Classical Art and Archaeology at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Emmanuel College. Among his publications are Understanding Greek Sculpture, Greek Art, Enduring Creation, The Ancient Olympics and Classical Civilization: A History in Ten Chapters. He presented the BBC2/PBS series How Art Made the World. Andrew Spooner. Military historian specialising in the Great War. He runs his own battlefield tours and organises specialist study days for colleges and museums throughout the country. He is a regular visiting lecturer at the Imperial War Museum Duxford and has appeared in documentaries for the BBC and Channel 4. Dr Susan Steer. Art historian and lecturer specialising in Venice. Her PhD focused on Venetian Renaissance altarpieces, she subsequently worked as
Top row, left–right: Gail Turner; David Vickers; Rose Walker; Andrew Wallace-Hadrill; Peter Webb. Second row, left–right: Lucy Whitaker; Antonia Whitley; Caroline Wickham-Jones; Richard Wigmore; Neil Younger; Ulrike Ziegler. From ‘The Foreign Tour of Messrs Brown, Jones & Robinson’ by Richard Doyle, Publ. 1854.
researcher and editor on the National Inventory of European Painting, the UK’s online catalogue. She has taught History of Art for university programmes in the UK and Italy. Graeme Stobbs. Archaeologist with over twenty years experience in field archaeology and an expert on Hadrian’s Wall. He is Assistant Curator of Roman Collections of English Heritage’s Hadrian’s Wall Museums and worked as Archaeological Project Officer for Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums. Jane Streetly. Co-author of Blue Guide: Jordan and Istanbul: a Traveller’s Guide. A conference interpreter and travel writer, she is a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society and has travelled throughout Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. Martin Symington. Travel journalist and author, who grew up in Portugal. His work appears in national newspapers and magazines, and his books include Dorling Kindersley’s Eyewitness Guide: Portugal. He has taught travel writing at the University of Bath, and has been Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at the University of Reading. Kristina Taylor. Writer and researcher of historic gardens with an expertise in Japanese gardens. She studied at the Architectural Association, London and co-wrote Passion Plants & Patronage – 300 years of the Bute Family Landscapes. More recently she wrote Women Garden Designers – 1900 to the Present. She is restoring a villa garden overlooking Lake Como, Italy.
Dr Lars Tharp. Ceramics historian and frequent broadcaster, including BBC’s Antiques Roadshow and two notable films on Chinese ceramics. He is also an authority on the life and works of William Hogarth; he is Hogarth Curator of the Foundling Museum and Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. Dr Giles Tillotson. Dean of Ansal University, Gurgaon and writer and lecturer on Indian architecture, art and history. His books include Taj Mahal, Jaipur Nama: Tales from the Pink City, and the novel, Return to Bhanupur. He is a Fellow, and the former Director, of the Royal Asiatic Society and was Chair of Art & Archaeology at SOAS.
Gail Turner. Art historian, lecturer and artist with a particular interest in Spanish history and art. She read Modern History at Oxford and completed her MA at the Courtauld. She lectures for the National Trust and Art Fund, and teaches on courses at the V&A. She has also lectured on the Courtauld Institute Summer School. Dr Geoffrey Tyack. Architectural historian specialising in the 18th–20th centuries in Britain and Europe. He is a Fellow of Kellogg College, University of Oxford, and is the author of John Nash: Architect of the Picturesque. He is also Editor of the Georgian Group Journal. Dr David Vickers. Author, journalist, broadcaster and lecturer. He is co-editor of The Cambridge Handel Encyclopedia and is preparing new editions of several of Handel’s music dramas. He is a critic for Gramophone and BBC Radio 3 and an essayist for many record labels. He teaches at the Royal Northern College of Music. Dr Rose Walker. Specialist in the art and architecture of medieval Spain. Author of two books: Views of Transition. Liturgy & Illumination in Medieval Spain and Art in Spain & Portugal from the Romans to the Early Middle Ages: Routes & Myths, as well as a range of articles. She has taught courses and lectured on the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. Professor Andrew Wallace-Hadrill. Professor of Roman Studies in the Faculty of Classics at the University of Cambridge, formerly director of the British School at Rome of the Herculaneum Conservation Project. He has published widely on Roman Social and Cultural History and has presented TV programmes for BBC2 on Herculaneum, Athens and Rome. Dr Peter Webb. Arabist and historian, specialising in early and medieval Islam. He has travelled extensively in the Middle East and Central Asia and has taught at SOAS and the American University of Paris. He is now a Lecturer in Arabic at Leiden University.
Lucy Whitaker. Senior Curator of Paintings in the Royal Collection, she curated an exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery in Buckingham Palace in 2017. She has co-authored several books including Canaletto & the Art of Venice and The Northern Renaissance. Dr Antonia Whitley. Art historian and lecturer specialising in the Italian Renaissance. She obtained her PhD from the Warburg Institute, University of London. She has lectured for the National Gallery and has taught in the War Studies department of King’s College, London. She organises adult education study sessions and has led many tours in Italy. Caroline Wickham-Jones. Archaeologist who lives and works in Orkney. After an active fieldwork career she lectured for the University of Aberdeen as a consultant. Her research focuses on early huntergatherers. She is the author of many publications, academic and popular, including three guidebooks on the archaeology and history of Orkney. Richard Wigmore. Music writer, lecturer and broadcaster for BBC Radio 3. He writes for BBC Music and Gramophone and has taught classes in Lieder history and interpretation at Guildhall, Trinity Laban and Birkbeck College. His publications include Schubert: The Complete Song Texts and Pocket Guide to Haydn. Dr Matthew Woodworth. Art historian with a focus on medieval architectural history. He obtained his MA from the Courtauld and completed his PhD on Beverley Minster at Duke University, North Carolina. He has published articles on English Gothic architecture, French Gothic sculpture, and the re-use of Gothic in the post-medieval period. Dr Neil Younger. Lecturer in History at the Open University, he has taught at the Universities of Birmingham, Durham and Vanderbilt in the US. He specialises in Tudor politics, government and court culture and is author of War & Politics in the Elizabethan Counties. He is currently writing a biography of the Elizabethan courtier Sir Christopher Hatton. Dr Ulrike Ziegler. Specialist in medieval art and architecture. She studied art history and archaeology at the University of Regensburg and King’s College Aberdeen. Her PhD focused on art exhibitions and the cultural politics of postwar Germany. She lectures for various cultural institutions and organises her own study days and trips in Germany and Austria.
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LECTURERS
Neil Taylor. Leading expert on the former Communist world. He read Chinese at Cambridge and has worked in tourism in China, the USSR and many developing countries. His latest publication is Estonia: A Modern History. Others include The Bradt Guide: Estonia,The Bradt Guide: Baltic Cities and A Footprints Guide to Berlin.
Dr Thomas-Leo True. Specialist in Renaissance and Baroque Italian art and architecture. He received his doctorate from Cambridge University and worked at Sir John Soane’s Museum, London. Since 2015 he has been Assistant Director of the British School at Rome, the UK’s leading humanities research centre abroad for the study of art, architecture and archaeology across the Mediterranean.
Booking details MAKING A BOOKING 1. Optional booking. We recommend that you contact us first to make an optional booking which we will hold for seven days. To confirm it please send the booking form and deposit within this period – the deposit is 10% of your total booking price. Alternatively, make a definite booking straight away through our website.
2. Definite booking. Fill in the booking form and send it to us with the deposit. It is important that you read the Booking Conditions at this stage, and that you sign the booking form. Full payment is required if you are booking within ten weeks of departure.
3. Our confirmation. Upon receipt of the booking form and deposit we shall send you confirmation of your booking. After this your deposit is nonreturnable except in the special circumstances mentioned in the Booking Conditions. Further details about the tour may also be sent at this stage, or will follow shortly afterwards.
If you cancel. If you have to withdraw from a tour on which you had booked, there would be a charge which varies according to the period of notice you give. Up to 57 days before the tour the deposit would be forfeited. Thereafter a percentage of the total cost of the tour will be due:
Financial protection. Any money you have paid to us for a tour which includes an international flight is protected by our Air Travel Organiser’s Licence (ATOL, number 3622). Payments for tours which do not include a flight from/to the UK are protected by ABTA –The Travel Association. So, in the (highly unlikely) event of our insolvency in advance of the tour, you would get your money back, or if we failed after the tour had begun, the tour would be able to continue and you would be returned to the UK at its conclusion. Clients living elsewhere who have arranged their own flights should ensure their personal travel insurance covers repatriation in the event of holiday supplier failure.
BOOKING CONDITIONS Please read these You need to sign your assent to these booking conditions on the booking form. Our promises to you • We aim to be fair, reasonable and sympathetic in all our dealings with clients, and to act always with integrity. • We will meet all our legal and regulatory responsibilities, usually going far beyond the minimum obligations. • We aim to provide full and accurate information about our holidays. If there are changes, we will tell you promptly. • If something does go wrong, we will try to put it right. Our overriding aim is to ensure that every client is satisfied with our services. What we ask of you That you read the information we send to you. Specific terms
BOOKING DETAILS
Our contract with you. From the time we receive your signed booking form and initial payment, a contract exists between you and Martin Randall Travel Ltd. Eligibility. You must be in good health and have a level of fitness that would not impair other participants’ enjoyment by slowing them down or by absorbing disproportionate attention from the tour leaders. Please read ‘Fitness’ on page 9 and take the self-assessment tests described there; by signing the booking form you are stating that you have passed these tests. If during the tour it transpires, in the judgement of the tour leaders, that you are not able to cope, you may be asked to opt out of certain visits or to leave the tour altogether. This would be at your own expense. We reserve the right to refuse to accept a booking without necessarily giving a reason. Foreign Office advice. Before booking, please refer to the FCO website – www.fco.gov.uk – to ensure you understand the travel advice for the places to which the tour goes. Non-UK citizens should look at the advice issued by their governments, which may differ significantly. Insurance. It is a requirement of booking that you have adequate holiday insurance cover. The insurance must cover, at minimum, medical treatment, repatriation, loss of property and loss of payments to us in the event that you cancel the tour. If you are making your own arrangements for international travel, please ensure you have insurance that protects you in the rare event of Martin Randall Travel cancelling the tour. Experience indicates that free travel insurance offered by some credit card companies is not to be relied upon. Passports and visas. British citizens must have valid passports for all tours outside the United Kingdom. For many countries the passport needs to be valid for six months beyond the date of the tour. If visas are required we will advise UK citizens about obtaining them; nationals of other countries should ascertain whether visas are required in their case.
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up to 57 days: between 56 and 29 days: between 28 and 15 days: between 14 days and 3 days: within 48 hours:
deposit only 40% 60% 80% 100%
If you cancel your booking in a double or twin room but are travelling with a companion who chooses to continue to participate in the tour, the companion would have to pay the single-occupancy price. If you cancel a non-residential event (normally a London Day) we will return the full amount if you notify us 22 or more days before the event. We will retain 50% if cancellation is made within three weeks and 100% if within three days. We take as the day of cancellation that on which we receive written confirmation of cancellation. If we cancel the tour. We may decide to cancel a tour if there were insufficient bookings for it to be viable (though this would always be more than eight weeks before departure). We would refund you with everything you had paid us. Safety and security. Cancellation may also occur if civil unrest, war, natural disaster or other circumstances amounting to force majeure arise in the region to which the tour was due to go. If the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office advises against travel, we would either cancel or adjust the itinerary to avoid risky areas. We would also treat sympathetically a wish to withdraw from a tour to a troubled region even if the FCO does not advise against travel there. In the event of cancellation before the tour began we would give you a full refund; costs incurred due to curtailment after the tour had started should be covered by your individual insurance policy. Health and safety. We subscribe to the health and safety legislation of the countries in which the tours operate. The generally high standards of the UK are not found everywhere; regulations may diverge in particular in the areas of accessibility, handrails and seatbelts. However, with rare exceptions, all the hotels we use have undergone a safety audit, by our staff or by independent consultants on our behalf. The limits of our liabilities. As principal, we accept responsibility for all ingredients of a tour, except those in which the principle of force majeure prevails. Our obligations and responsibilities are also limited where international conventions apply in respect of air, sea or rail carriers, including the Warsaw Convention and its various updates. If we make changes. Circumstances might arise which prevent us from operating a tour or event exactly as advertised. We would try to devise a satisfactory alternative, but if the change represents a significant loss to the tour we would offer compensation. If you decide to cancel because the alternative we offer is not in your view an adequate substitute, we would give a full refund.
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Financial protection: the official text. We are required to publish the following. We provide full financial protection for our package holidays which include international flights, by way of our Air Travel Organiser’s Licence number 3622. When you buy an ATOL protected flight inclusive holiday from us you receive an ATOL Certificate. This lists what is financially protected, where you can get information on what this means for you and who to contact if things go wrong. Most of our flights and flight-inclusive holidays on our website and in our brochure are financially protected by the ATOL scheme. But ATOL protection does not apply to all holiday and travel services listed. Please ask us to confirm what protection may apply to your booking. If you do not receive an ATOL Certificate then the booking will not be ATOL protected. If you do receive an ATOL Certificate but all the parts of your trip are not listed on it, those parts will not be ATOL protected. In order to be protected under the ATOL scheme you need to be in the UK when you make your booking and/or one of the flights you take must originate or terminate in the UK with the group. We provide full financial protection for our package holidays that do not include a flight, by way of a bond held by ABTA The Travel Association. We will provide you with the services listed on the ATOL Certificate (or a suitable alternative). In some cases, where we aren’t able do so for reasons of insolvency, an alternative ATOL holder may provide you with the services you have bought or a suitable alternative (at no extra cost to you). You agree to accept that in those circumstances the alternative ATOL holder will perform those obligations and you agree to pay any money outstanding to be paid by you under your contract to that alternative ATOL holder. However, you also agree that in some cases it will not be possible to appoint an alternative ATOL holder, in which case you will be entitled to make a claim under the ATOL scheme (or your credit card issuer where applicable). If we, or the suppliers identified on your ATOL certificate, are unable to provide the services listed (or a suitable alternative, through an alternative ATOL holder or otherwise) for reasons of insolvency, the Trustees of the Air Travel Trust may make a payment to (or confer a benefit on) you under the ATOL scheme. You agree that in return for such a payment or benefit you assign absolutely to those Trustees any claims which you have or may have arising out of or relating to the non-provision of the services, including any claim against us (or your credit card issuer where applicable). You also agree that any such claims maybe re-assigned to another body, if that other body has paid sums you have claimed under the ATOL scheme.
English Law. These conditions form part of your contract with Martin Randall Travel Ltd and are governed by English law. All proceedings shall be within the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales. Privacy. By signing the booking form you are stating that you have read and agree to our Privacy Policy, which can be found online at www.martinrandall.com/privacy.
Booking form TOUR NAME(S)
DATES
TOUR CODE(S)
NAME(S) – We do not use titles on documents issued to tour participants unless you want us to by including them here. Participant 1 Participant 2
ROOM TYPE
FURTHER INFORMATION or special requests. Please mention dietary requirements, even if you have told us before.
☐ Single occupancy room(s) ☐ Double room (two sharing) ☐ Twin room (two sharing)
TRAVEL ARRANGEMENTS ☐ Group travel from London (air or rail), if applicable to this tour. ☐ No travel – making your own arrangements for travel to and from the destination.
CONTACT DETAILS – for all correspondence
FELLOW TRAVELLER – if applicable If you have made a booking for someone who does not share your address, please give their details here. We will then send them copies of all tour documents. We will NOT send them a copy of the invoice or anything else relating to financial matters.
Address
Postcode/Zip
Country
Their name
Mobile
Address
Telephone (work) For speed and efficiency, we provide your tour and booking documents online where possible. Please confirm whether you are happy to receive documents online: ☐ Yes
☐ No
E-mail address Postcode/Zip MARKETING PREFERENCES I would like to receive regular updates on MRT tours and events: By post (usually once a month at most) ☐ Yes By e-mail (weekly) ☐ Yes
☐ No
☐ No
What prompted your booking? For example, an advertisement in a specific publication, a marketing e-mail from us, browsing on our website, or receiving one of our brochures by post:
Country E-mail Telephone
BOOKING DETAILS
Telephone (home)
Booking form PASSPORT DETAILS. Essential for airlines and in case of emergency on tour (not applicable for tours in the UK if you are a UK resident). Title
Surname
Forenames
Nationality
Place of birth
1. 2. Date of birth (dd/mm/yy)
Passport number
Place of issue
Date of issue (dd/mm/yy)
Date of expiry (dd/mm/yy)
1. 2.
NEXT OF KIN or contact in case of emergency. Participant 1:
Participant 2 (if next of kin is not the same as for participant 1):
Name
Name
Telephone
Telephone
Relation to you
Relation to you
PAYMENT We prefer payment by bank transfer, cheque or debit card. We also accept payment by credit card. All money paid to us is fully protected regardless of payment method. Please tick an option:
Please tick payment amount:
☐ BANK TRANSFER. Please give your surname and tour code (eg. MF123) only as a reference and ask your bank to allow for all charges.
☐ OR Full Payment. Required if you are booking within 10 weeks of departure.
Account name: Martin Randall Travel Ltd Bank: Handelsbanken, 2 Chiswick High Road, London W4 1TH
For transfers from UK (Sterling) bank accounts: Account number 8663 3438 • Sort code 40-51-62
Carbon offset. If you are taking a tour with flights and wish to make a donation (£5 for short-haul, £10 for mid/long-haul) to the India Solar Water Heating project, please tick below. Read more about the project at www. martinrandall.com/sustainable-tourism.
For transfers from non-UK bank accounts: Please instruct your bank to send payment in pound sterling (GBP) IBAN: GB98 HAND 4051 6286 6334 38 Swift/BIC code: HAND GB22
☐ EITHER Deposit(s) amounting to 10% of your total booking cost.
☐ Please add a carbon offset donation to my booking.
TOTAL: £
BOOKING DETAILS
☐ CHEQUE. I enclose a cheque payable to Martin Randall Travel Ltd – please write the tour code on the back (e.g. MF123). ☐ DEBIT OR CREDIT CARD. I authorise Martin Randall Travel to contact me by telephone to take payment from my Visa credit/Visa debit/ Mastercard/AMEX.
I have read and agree to the Booking Conditions and Privacy Policy (www.martinrandall.com/privacy) on behalf of all listed on this form.
Signature Date
Martin Randall Travel Ltd Voysey House Barley Mow Passage London W4 4GF, United Kingdom
www.martinrandall.com ATOL 3622 | ABTA Y6050 | AITO 5085
Tel +44 (0)20 8742 3355 Fax +44 (0)20 8742 7766 info@martinrandall.co.uk
Martin Randall Australasia PO Box 1024, Indooroopilly QLD 4068, Australia Tel 1300 55 95 95 New Zealand 0800 877 622 Fax +61 (0)7 3371 8288 anz@martinrandall.com.au
North America 1155 Connecticut Avenue NW Suite 300 Washington, DC 20036, USA Tel 1 800 988 6168 usa@martinrandall.com
Tours by date JANUARY 2019 5–15 Oman, Landscapes & Peoples (mf 402) Prof. Dawn Chatty......................................... 212 Venetian Art in London (lf 404) 10 Lucy Whitaker.................................................. 36 20–27 Valletta Baroque Festival (mf 401) Juliet Rix......................................................... 166 Ancient Greece (lf 354) 23 Prof. Antony Spawforth................................... 36 25–27 Chamber Music: Rising Stars (mf 413)...... 35 27– 3 The Printing Revolution (mf 414) Stephen Parkin & Dr Michael Douglas-Scott............ 151 28– 3 Mozart in Salzburg (mf 415) Richard Wigmore............................................. 53 The Genius of Titian (lf 411) 30 Lucy Whitaker.................................................. 36 31 Islamic Art in London (le 324) Prof. James Allan.............................................. 36
FEBRUARY 2019
MARCH 2019 1– 3 Chamber Music: The Nash Ensemble (mf 431)....................... 35 4–16 Civilisations of Sicily (mf 435) Dr Philippa Joseph......................................... 161 5–14 Israel & Palestine (mf 440) Dr Garth Gilmour.......................................... 209 5–16 Indian Summer (mf 444) Raaja Bhasin.... 223 6 Japanese Art in London (lf 438) Dr Monika Hinkel............................................ 36 8–15 Gastronomic Andalucía (mf 442) Gijs van Hensbergen...................................... 200 9–20 Morocco (mf 441) James Brown................. 211 11 The Arts of India (lf 445) Rosemary Crill.. 36 12 Spanish Art in London (lf 447) Gail Turner....................................................... 36
APRIL 2019 1– 6 Pompeii & Herculaneum (mf 471) Dr Mark Grahame......................................... 153 1–10 Classical Turkey (mf 479) Henry Hurst..... 207 1–13 Civilisations of Sicily (mf 469) Christopher Newall........................................ 161 2 The Ever Changing City Skyline (lf 483) Prof. Peter Wynne Rees cbe............................ 36 2–10 Normans in the South (mf 475) John McNeill................................................... 156 5– 7 Chamber Music: The Heath Quartet (mf 467)......................... 35 5–16 Samarkand & Silk Road Cities (mf 472) Dr Peter Webb................................................ 239 6–14 Essential Jordan (mf 474) Felicity Cobbing.............................................. 209 8 Interwar Interiors (lf 484) Paul Atterbury.36 8–13 Gardens & Villas of Campagna Romana (mf 477) Dr Katie Campbell......................... 146 8–13 Gardens of Sintra (mf 478) Dr Gerald Luckhurst...................................... 175 8–14 The Via Emilia (mf 481) Dr R. T. Cobianchi......................................... 134 9 London’s Underground Railway (lf 486) Andrew Martin................................................ 36 9–15 Romans in the Rhône Valley (mf 476) Prof. Simon Esmonde Cleary.......................... 86 9–16 Gastronomic Provence (mf 482) Marc Millon...................................................... 84 17–22 Music in Berlin (mf 487) Dr John Allison... 93 17–27 New Orleans to Natchitoches (mf 490) Prof. Catherine Clinton................................. 255 20–30 Sailing the Dalmatian Coast (mf 494) Dr Ffiona Gilmore Eaves................................. 58
23–27 Champagne: Vines, Cellars & Cuvées (mf 496) Giles MacDonogh............................ 72 23–28 Opera in Vienna (mf 495) Barry Millington & Tom Abbott..................... 51 24–28 Ravenna & Urbino (mf 498) Dr Luca Leoncini........................................... 131 25– 1 Gardens & Villas of the Italian Lakes (mf 499) Steven Desmond............................ 117 28– 3 Monet & Impressionism (mf 502) Dr Frances Fowle............................................. 73 28– 5 Gastronomic Puglia (mf 503) Christine Smallwood & Dr R. T. Cobianchi................. 158 29– 3 Medieval Sussex & Hampshire (mf 501) Dr James Cameron.......................................... 12 29– 7 Mediaeval Saxony (mf 500) Dr Ulrike Ziegler.............................................. 95 30– 6 The Ring in Leipzig (mf 504) Barry Millington ............................................. 96 30–10 Sailing the Dalmatian Coast (mf 509) Richard Bassett................................................. 58
MAY 2019 2– 5 Châteaux of the Loire (mf 514) Dr Sarah Pearson............................................. 80 3–15 The Road to Santiago (mf 508) Dr Richard Plant............................................ 185 4–13 Classical Greece (mf 550) Prof. Antony Spawforth................................. 109 6–11 Tuscan Gardens (mf 516) Dr Katie Campbell......................................... 139 6–13 Footpaths of Umbria (mf 512) Dr Antonia Whitley....................................... 145 6–13 Toledo & La Mancha (mf 511) Gijs van Hensbergen...................................... 196 The Tudors (lf 513) Dr Neil Younger........... 36 7 7–12 Rhineland Masterpieces (mf 506) Patrick Bade................................................... 105 7–13 When Bach went AWOL (mf 528) Lindsay Kemp................................................. 100 8–13 Tudor England (mf 515) Prof. Maurice Howard obe............................. 26 8–13 Organs of Bach’s Time (mf 518) James Johnstone & Dr Matthew Woodworth............................... 102 8–16 The Cathedrals of England (mf 505) Jon Cannon....................................................... 10 9–20 Understanding Japan (ef 510) Pauline Chakmakjian.................................... 235 9–20 Japanese Gardens (mf 520) Kristina Taylor............................................... 236 10 The London Backstreet Walk (lf 521) Sophie Campbell.............................................. 36 10–17 St Petersburg (mf 544) Dr Alexey Makhrov....................................... 179 10–21 Samarkand & Silk Road Cities (mf 525) Dr Peter Webb................................................ 239 12–18 Prague Spring (mf 523) Prof. Jan Smaczny. 61 12–19 Courts of Northern Italy (mf 529) Dr Michael Douglas-Scott............................. 132 13–19 THE J.S. BACH JOURNEY (mf 530)........ 101 13–26 The Western Balkans (mf 535) Elizabeth Roberts............................................. 56 14 The South Bank Walk (lf 531) Sophie Campbell.............................................. 36 14–16 Chamber Music: The Fitzwilliam String Quartet (mf 519)... 35 14–18 Barcelona (mf 533) Gijs van Hensbergen...................................... 194 Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
271
TOURS BY DATE
3–16 Guatemala, Honduras, Belize (mf 420) David Drew.................................................... 243 4–10 Florence (mf 416) Dr Antonia Whitley...... 136 6 Ashurbanipal, King of the World (lf 409) Prof. Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones............................. 36 6–10 Music & Ballet in Paris (mf 418) Dr Michael Downes......................................... 75 7 The Golden Age of British Painting (lf 426) Patrick Bade...................................... 36 8 Ancient Egypt at the British Museum (lf 421) Lucia Gahlin..................................... 36 8–10 SYMPOSIUM: Age of Victoria (mf 417).... 34 9–22 Textile Arts of India with HALI (ef 419) Rosemary Crill............................................... 228 13–26 Vietnam: History, People, Food (mf 422) Dr Dana Healy............................................... 240 15 London’s Underground Railway (lf 407) Andrew Martin................................................ 36 20– 3 Art in Texas (mf 424) Gijs van Hensbergen...................................... 252 22 The Italian Renaissance (lf 408) Dr Antionia Whitley........................................ 36 23– 8 Essential India (mf 429) Asoka Pugal........ 221 26– 3 Connoisseur’s Rome (mf 427) Dr Michael Douglas-Scott............................. 150 26– 4 Essential Rome (mf 428) Dr Thomas-Leo True..................................... 149 27– 1 Welsh National Opera (mf 423) Simon Rees........................................................ 40 27– 2 Opera & Ballet in Helsinki (mf 461) Dr Michael Downes......................................... 68
12–16 Venetian Palaces (mf 446) Dr Michael Douglas-Scott............................. 127 Ancient Greece (lf 437) 13 Prof. Antony Spawforth................................... 36 16–21 Basilicata (mf 448) John McNeill................ 159 18–24 Jonathan Keates’s Venice (mf 449) Jonathan Keates............................................. 128 18–27 Minoan Crete (mf 450) Dr Alan Peatfield.112 18–30 Civilisations of Sicily (mf 460) Dr Luca Leoncini........................................... 161 The Italian Renaissance (lf 452) 19 Dr Michael Douglas-Scott............................... 36 20 The Golden Age of British Painting (lf 451) Patrick Bade...................................... 36 20–24 The Birth of Mannerism (mf 455) Dr Antonia Whitley....................................... 137 21 Roses & Nightingales (lf 453) Prof. Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones............................. 36 21–27 Modern Art on the Côte d’Azur (mf 462) Mary Lynn Riley.............................................. 83 22–28 Gardens of the Riviera (mf 456) Steven Desmond............................................... 85 25–30 Wines of Tuscany (mf 463) Michelle Cherutti-Kowal mw....................... 141 25– 1 Caravaggio (mf 465) Dr Xavier Bray......... 115 25– 1 Granada & Córdoba (mf 464) Gail Turner..................................................... 201 26–31 Palladian Villas (mf 459) Dr Michael Douglas-Scott............................. 124 29 Ancient Egypt at the British Museum (lf 458) Lucia Gahlin..................................... 36 31– 7 Gardens of the Bay of Naples (mf 466) Steven Desmond............................................. 152
Tours by date 14–20 Walking Hadrian’s Wall (mf 538) Graeme Stobbs.................................................. 18 14–20 In Search of Alexander (mf 534) Prof. Antony Spawforth................................. 113 14–21 Roman Southern Britain (mf 522) Prof. Simon Esmonde Cleary.......................... 16 15–22 Iceland’s Story (mf 536) Dr Siân Grønlie... 114 16–21 The South Downs (mf 542) Janet Sinclair... 32 16–22 Dresden Music Festival (mf 532) Prof. John Holloway......................................... 97 18–22 Hamburg: Opera & ‘Elphi’ (mf 539) Dr John Allison................................................. 91 18–23 Ballet in St Petersburg (mf 537) Jane Pritchard mbe........................................ 180 20–27 Mediaeval Upper Normandy (mf 540) John McNeill..................................................... 71 20–27 Gastronomic Le Marche (mf 543) Marc Millon & Dr Thomas-Leo True.......... 142 20–31 Art in Japan (mf 545) Prof. Timon Screech....................................... 234 25– 3 Moscow & the Golden Ring (mf 552) Andrew Spira.................................................. 181 27– 4 Great Irish Houses (mf 553) Anthony Lambert............................................. 41 30– 2 Puccini in Copenhagen (mf 555) Dr John Allison................................................. 66 31– 7 Gastronomic Sweden (mf 554) Urban Laurin................................................. 203
JUNE 2019
TOURS BY DATE
3–10 Gastronomic Galicia (mf 559) Gijs van Hensbergen...................................... 188 4– 9 Palaces of Piedmont (mf 560) Dr Luca Leoncini........................................... 118 7 LONDON CHORAL DAY (lf 566)............ 37 7–15 Journey through Slovakia (mf 507) Dr Jana Gajdošová........................................ 184 8–15 Mediaeval Burgundy (mf 570) John McNeill..................................................... 81 8–19 Frank Lloyd Wright (mf 571) Tom Abbott..................................................... 256 9–16 The Boston Early Music Festival (mf 569) Prof. John Bryan............................ 250 10–14 Yorkshire Churches & Cathedrals (mf 572) Jon Cannon...................................... 14 10–16 Rhineland Romanesque (mf 575) Dr Richard Plant............................................ 104 10–16 The Imperial Riviera (mf 573) Richard Bassett............................................... 121 11–22 Walking to Santiago (mf 576) Dr Rose Walker.............................................. 187 12–17 Handel in Halle (mf 579) Dr David Vickers............................................. 98 14–21 Kraków & Silesia (mf 577) Dr Agata Gomółka........................................ 172 14–21 Gastronomic Sweden (mf 580) Urban Laurin................................................. 203 17–23 Connoisseur’s Vienna (mf 590) Dr Jarl Kremeier............................................... 49 17–24 Cave Art of France (mf 599) Dr Paul Bahn................................................... 82 20–24 Dutch Modern (mf 595) Prof. Harry Charrington............................... 168 21–30 Great Houses of the North (mf 588) Gail Bent........................................................... 20 23–29 The Schubertiade (mf 581) Richard Wigmore............................................. 53 24–28 The Welsh Marches (mf 600) John McNeill.39 272
25–29 Berlin: New Architecture (mf 578) Tom Abbott....................................................... 94 25–30 At home at Weston Park (mf 602) Anthony Lambert............................................. 23 26–29 Dutch Painting (mf 601) Dr Sophie Oosterwijk.................................... 168 27–30 Glyndebourne & Garsington (mf 604) Amanda Holden............................................... 28 28– 1 Versailles: Seat of the Sun King (mf 591) Prof. Antony Spawforth................................... 74 28– 6 Trasimeno Music Festival........................... 144
JULY 2019 1 – 7 Western Ireland (mf 610) Prof. Muiris O’Sullivan.................................... 43 1– 7 Danish Castles & Gardens (mf 607) Dr Margrethe Floryan..................................... 65 1– 7 French Gothic (mf 608) Dr Matthew Woodworth................................. 77 The Ever Changing City Skyline (lf 611) 2 Prof. Peter Wynne Rees cbe............................ 36 4– 7 Country Houses of the South West (mf 613) Anthony Lambert............................................. 22 6– 7 Architecture of Bath (mf 614) Dr Geoffrey Tyack............................................ 33 7–11 WEST COUNTRY CHORAL FESTIVAL (mf 615).................... 29 8 Interwar Interiors (lf 617) Paul Atterbury.................................................. 36 8–14 Gastronomic West Country (mf 616) Marc Millon...................................................... 30 9–14 ‘A terrible beauty’ (mf 620) Patrick Mercer obe.......................................... 42 21–29 Mitteldeutschland (mf 627) Dr Jarl Kremeier............................................... 99 21– 3 Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania (mf 628) Neil Taylor........................................................ 67 22–25 Savonlinna Opera (mf 629) Dr John Allison................................................. 69 22–26 Verona Opera (mf 630) Dr Michael Douglas-Scott............................. 125 27– 2 Orkney: 5000 years of culture (mf 636) Caroline Wickham-Jones................................. 38 28– 3 Opera in Munich & Bregenz (mf 637) Patrick Bade................................................... 108 29– 3 Country Houses of the North West (mf 635) Gail Bent........................................................... 21 Shakespeare & his World.............................. 12 West Cork Chamber Music Festival............ 45 Lofoten Chamber Music Festival............... 170
AUGUST 2019 15–19 Verona Opera (mf 647) Dr Roberto Cobianchi................................... 125 18–23 Walking in Southern Bohemia (mf 654) Dr Jana Gajdošová.......................................... 63 19–26 Eastern Pomerania (mf 655) Dr Agata Gomólka......................................... 171 21–26 A Schubertiade in Catalonia (mf 658) Richard Wigmore........................................... 193 23–31 Great Houses of the Czech Lands (mf 660) Dr Jarl Kremeier............................................... 62 26–31 King Ludwig II (mf 663) Tom Abbott........ 107 26–31 The Lucerne Festival (mf 661) Dr Michael Downes....................................... 205 26– 1 The Schubertiade (mf 662) Misha Donat.... 52 27–31 Vienna’s Masterpieces (mf 664) Patrick Bade..................................................... 50
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31– 7 31–7
MUSIC ALONG THE DANUBE (mf 665).50 Walking the Danube (mf 666) Richard Wigmore............................................. 50 The Sibelius Festival....................................... 69 Drottningholm & Confidencen................. 204
SEPTEMBER 2019 1– 7 Enescu Festival Bucharest (mf 686) Dr John Allison............................................... 178 2– 9 Footpaths of Umbria (mf 670) Dr Antonia Whitley....................................... 145 2– 9 The Douro (mf 674) Martin Symington..... 174 2–10 Moscow & St Petersburg (mf 669) Dr Alexey Makhrov....................................... 183 3 London’s Underground Railway (lf 692) Andrew Martin................................................ 36 4– 8 Flemish Painting (mf 678) Dr Sophie Oosterwijk...................................... 55 4–11 The Hanseatic League (mf 671) Andreas Puth.................................................... 90 5–11 Lombardy: Gastronomy & Opera (mf 685) Fred Plotkin.................................................... 116 5–13 Sacred Armenia (mf 729) Andrew Spira..... 47 5–20 Peru: the Andean Heartland (mf 675) Dr David Beresford-Jones.............................. 248 6– 9 Poets & The Somme (mf 673) Andrew Spooner............................................... 70 6–12 Wine, Walks & Art in Alsace (mf 690) Marc Millon...................................................... 79 6–17 Samarkand & Silk Road Cities (mf 676) Prof. James Allan............................................ 239 7–12 Gardens & Landscapes of the Dutch Wave (mf 679) Amanda Patton...... 169 7–14 Franconia (mf 677) Dr Jarl Kremeier......... 106 7–18 Frank Lloyd Wright (mf 681) Prof. Neil Jackson........................................... 256 8–15 Courts of Northern Italy (mf 682) Prof. Fabrizio Nevola..................................... 132 8–16 Literary England (mf 684) Prof. Andrew Sanders...................................... 27 9–16 The Heart of Italy (mf 687) Dr Michael Douglas-Scott............................. 143 9–18 Roman Italy (mf 689) Dr Mark Grahame......................................... 147 10–16 Connoisseur’s Prague (mf 691) Richard Bassett................................................. 60 11–23 Essential China (mf 702) Dr Rose Kerr..... 217 13–20 St Petersburg (mf 705) Dr Alexey Makhrov....................................... 179 14–17 The Age of Bede (mf 712) Imogen Corrigan.............................................. 15 14–23 Georgia Uncovered (mf 707) Ian Colvin..... 88 15–22 Dark Age Brilliance (mf 714) Rowena Loverance......................................... 133 16–22 Walking Hadrian’s Wall (mf 683) Graeme Stobbs.................................................. 18 16–23 Essential Puglia (mf 717) Dr Richard Plant............................................ 155 16–25 Ancient Kingdoms of Castile & León (mf 706) Gijs van Hensbergen..................... 190 16–28 Civilisations of Sicily (mf 750) Eireann Marshall........................................... 161 17–28 Walking to Santiago (mf 672) Dr Rose Walker.............................................. 187 18–26 The Cathedrals of England (mf 727) Jon Cannon....................................................... 10 19–25 Gardens & Villas of the Italian Lakes (mf 732) Steven Desmond............................ 117
Britain’s leading provider of cultural tours
Leaders in the field At Martin Randall Travel we are committed to providing the best planned, the best led and altogether the most fulfilling and enjoyable cultural tours available.
artin Randall Travel is M Britain’s leading specialist in cultural travel. The focus is on art, architecture, music, archaeology, history, gardens or gastronomy. We operate in around fifty countries in Europe, Asia, the Americas and the Middle East. All tours are accompanied by expert speakers.
Excellent hotels and restaurants and comfortable travelling arrangements. We provide personal service and aim for faultless administration.
For thirty years we have been the most influential organisation in the field of cultural travel. Pioneering and innovative, we have led the way with ideas and itineraries and by setting the benchmarks for customer service and administration. Martin Randall Travel is one of the most trusted and respected travel companies in the world, among both travellers and within the tourism community.
Opposite, from top: Freiburg, 16th-century engraving; Beneath: engraving 1851 by Henry Winkles.
They are original and imaginative, well-paced and carefully balanced. Meticulous attention to practical matters ensures a smooth-running as well as an enriching experience. Special arrangements feature on nearly all our tours – for admission to places not generally open to travellers, for access outside public hours, for private concerts and extraordinary events. In innumerable ways, large and small, we lift our clients’ experience far above standards which are regarded as normal for tourists.
First-rate lecturers
Travelling in comfort
Expert speakers are a key ingredient in our tours and events. Academics, curators, writers, broadcasters and researchers, they are selected not only for their knowledge but also for their ability to communicate clearly and engagingly to a lay audience.
We select our hotels with great care. Not only have nearly all been inspected by members of our staff, but we have stayed in most of them. Hundreds of others have been seen and rejected.
Their brief is to enlighten and stimulate, not merely to inform – and they also have to be good travelling companions.
Illustration, above: engraving 1874, from a set of ethnographic studies of Peru.
Rooted in knowledge of the destination and of the subject matter of the tour, the outcome of assiduous research and reconnaissance, and underpinned by many years of thought and experience, our itineraries are second to none.
We select our lecturers through reputation, interview and audition, and provide them with guidance and training. Most of our tours are also accompanied by a trained tour manager who unobtrusively attends to administrative matters.
Obviously, comfort ranks high among our criteria, together with good service and warmth of welcome. We also set high priority on charm and style, and location is an important consideration. Most of the hotels we use are rated as 4-star, with some 5-star and a few 3-star (one is 2-star, but pleases every time).
19–27 Berlin, Potsdam, Dresden (mf 730) Dr Jarl Kremeier............................................... 92 Ancient Egypt at the British Museum 20 (lf 737) Lucia Gahlin..................................... 36 21–26 The Renaissance in Castile & León (mf 731) Dr Xavier Bray............................... 191 21–30 Classical Greece (mf 734) Dr Andrew Farrington.................................. 109 23–27 Dorset Churches (mf 736) Imogen Corrigan.............................................. 13 23–27 Country Houses of Kent (mf 746) Anthony Lambert............................................. 25 24–27 Food & Wine Archaeology (mf 735) Prof. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill...................... 154 25–29 Crécy, Agincourt & Waterloo (mf 733) Major Gordon Corrigan.................................. 54 26– 2 SACRED MUSIC IN SANTIAGO (mf 760)............................. 186 27– 2 Bauhaus Centenary (mf 762) Tom Abbott.. 95 29– 7 Gastronomic Crete (mf 767) Rosemary Barron .......................................... 110 30– 4 Arts & Crafts in the Lake District (mf 765) Janet Sinclair.................................................... 31 30– 5 Pompeii & Herculaneum (mf 768) Dr Nigel Spivey............................................... 153 30– 6 World Heritage Malta (mf 800) Juliet Rix.165 30– 6 Istanbul Revealed (mf 757) Jeremy Seal.... 206 30– 8 Aragón: Hidden Spain (mf 769) Dr Zahira Bomford........................................ 192
OCTOBER 2019 1– 6 Palladian Villas (mf 771) Dr Sarah Pearson........................................... 124 2– 6 Art in Madrid (mf 772) Gail Turner.......... 195 2–11 Albania: Crossroads of Antiquity (mf 770) Carolyn Perry................................................... 46 3– 7 The Venetian Hills (mf 774) Dr Carlo Corsato........................................... 122 4–11 Ancient & Islamic Tunisia (mf 777) Henry Hurst.................................................... 215 4–15 Samarkand & Silk Road Cities (mf 797).. 239 7–12 Friuli-Venezia Giulia (mf 775) Dr Carlo Corsato........................................... 123 7–14 Walking in Southern Tuscany (mf 776) Dr Antonia Whitley....................................... 140 8 Interwar Interiors (lf 784) Paul Atterbury.36 8–13 Bauhaus Centenary (mf 785) Tom Abbott . 95 8–21 Sacred China (mf 786) Jon Cannon........... 218 12–19 Romantic Agony: English Poets in Italy (mf 793) Dr Thomas Marks......................... 130 12–20 Moldavia & Transylvania (mf 787) Alan Ogden..................................................... 176 13–20 Courts of Northern Italy (mf 791) Dr Michael Douglas-Scott............................. 132 14–20 Romans in Western Iberia (mf 788) Prof. Simon Esmonde Cleary........................ 197 14–21 Bilbao to Bayonne (mf 792) Gijs van Hensbergen...................................... 189 14–22 Palestine, Past & Present (mf 789) Felicity Cobbing.............................................. 214 14–26 Civilisations of Sicily (mf 799) John McNeill................................................... 161 14–27 The Western Balkans (mf 790) Elizabeth Roberts............................................. 56 15–18 Houghton & Holkham (mf 805) Dr Andrew Moore............................................ 24 15–22 Mediaeval Alsace (mf 794) Dr Matthew Woodworth................................. 78
16–18 SYMPOSIUM: Medieval History, Art & Architecture........ 35 17–23 Modern Art on the Côte d’Azur (mf 816) Lydia Bauman.................................................. 83 17–26 New England Modern (mf 820) Prof. Harry Charrington............................... 254 17–29 China’s Silk Road Cities (mf 802) Dr Jamie Greenbaum..................................... 220 19–27 Le Corbusier (mf 806) Dr Richard Plant..... 75 20–26 Art in the Netherlands (mf 840) Dr Guus Sluiter.............................................. 167 21–26 Classic Catalan Wines (mf 807) Linda Hanks................................................... 193 21–31 Essential Andalucía (mf 848) Dr Philippa Joseph......................................... 198 23–27 Ravenna & Urbino (mf 809) Dr Luca Leoncini........................................... 131 24– 4 Myanmar: Ancient to Modern (mf 859) Dr John Clarke............................................... 237 24– 6 The Making of Argentina (mf 860) Chris Moss...................................................... 242 26– 1 Gastronomic Piedmont (mf 864) Marc Millon.................................................... 119 26– 3 Essential Jordan (mf 868) Sue Rollin & Jane Streetly............................. 209 26– 5 Oman, Landscapes & Peoples (mf 865) Dr Peter Webb................................................ 212 29– 4 Leonardo 500 (mf 766) Dr Michael Douglas-Scott............................. 138 30 Ancient Greece (lf 866) Prof. Antony Spawforth................................... 36 Art in Paris...................................................... 73 Verdi in Parma & Busseto........................... 135
NOVEMBER 2019 1– 3 THE THOMAS TALLIS TRAIL (mf 875).. 29 1– 4 Historic Musical Instruments (mf 873) Prof. Robert Adelson...................................... 120 4 Japanese Art in London (lf 874) Dr Monika Hinkel............................................ 36 5– 9 Venetian Palaces (mf 878) Dr Michael Douglas-Scott............................. 127 5–11 OPERA IN SOUTHERN SICILY (mf 876)................... 162 6–16 Californian Galleries (mf 881) Gijs van Hensbergen...................................... 251 8 Caravaggio & Rembrandt (lf 884) Dr Helen Langdon........................................... 36 10–22 Bengal by River (mf 880) Dr Anna-Maria Misra................................... 226 11–17 Art History of Venice (mf 882) Dr Susan Steer................................................ 126 11–17 Florence Revisited (mf 883) Dr David Rosenthal....................................... 138 11–18 Gastronomic Sicily (mf 885) Marc Millon.................................................... 163 12 The Italian Renaissance (lf 886) Dr Michael Douglas-Scott............................... 36 12–17 Palermo Revealed (mf 888) Christopher Newall........................................ 164 15 Islamic Art in London (lf 899) Prof. James Allen.............................................. 36 16–28 Mughals & Rajputs (mf 900) Dr Giles Tillotson........................................... 224 18–23 Palaces & Villas of Rome (mf 901) Dr Michael Douglas-Scott............................. 148 18–29 Art in Japan (mf 902) Dr Monika Hinkel.......................................... 234
19 The Golden Age of British Painting (lf 903) Patrick Bade...................................... 36 20–24 Ruskin’s Venice (mf 904) Christopher Newall........................................ 129 20– 3 Vietnam: History, People, Food (mf 906) Dr Dana Healy............................................... 240 21 The Genius of Titian (lf 907) Lucy Whitaker.................................................. 36 22 Ancient Egypt at the British Museum (lf 905) Lucia Gahlin..................................... 36 27 London’s Underground Railway (lf 910) Andrew Martin................................................ 36
DECEMBER 2019 The Golden Age of British Painting (lf 924) Patrick Bade...................................... 36 4 Caravaggio & Rembrandt (lf 925) Dr Helen Langdon........................................... 36 5 The Italian Renaissance (lf 355) Dr Antonia Whitley......................................... 36 5 Ancient Greece (lf 926) Prof. Antony Spawforth................................... 36 We usually offer eight or nine tours over Christmas and New Year. Please call us to register your interest, or e-mail alerts@martinrandall.co.uk
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JANUARY 2020 4–14 Oman, Landscapes & Peoples.................... 212
FEBRUARY 2020 1–12 Architecture of the British Raj (mg 988) Anthony Peers................................................ 232 8–24 Lands of the Maya (mg 100) David Drew. 247 16–25 Gastronomic Kerala (mg 105) Dr Elizabeth Collingham.............................. 231
MARCH 2020 15–28 Sacred India (mg 130) Asoka Pugal........... 229
APRIL 2020 19–26 The Ring in Chicago (mg 169) Barry Millington & Tom Abbott................... 258 24– 4 Baroque Music in the Bolivian Missions (mg 185) Jeffrey Skidmore............................ 245 New Orleans to Natchitoches .................... 255
MAY 2020
East Coast Galleries..................................... 259
JUNE 2020
Frank Lloyd Wright..................................... 256
JULY 2020 21–27 Oberammergau (mg 315) Tom Abbott...... 103
AUGUST 2020 18–24 Oberammergau (mg 340) Tom Abbott...... 103
SEPTEMBER 2020
Frank Lloyd Wright..................................... 256 West Coast Architecture ............................ 259
OCTOBER 2020 31–12 Textile Arts of Japan with HALI Alan Kennedy & Ben Evans.......................... 235 The American Revolution........................... 252
NOVEMBER 2020 16–27 Bengal by River (mg 580) Dr Anna-Maria Misra................................... 226 Art in Texas................................................... 252 Te l e p h o n e + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5
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TOURS BY DATE
Meticulously-planned itineraries with special arrangements and privileged access.
We offer an unequalled range of tours and events focusing on art, architecture, music, archaeology, history, gardens and gastronomy. Our mission is to deepen your understanding and enhance your appreciation of the achievements of civilisations around the world.
Original itineraries, meticulously planned
Tours by date
M A RT I N R A N D A L L T R AV E L
M A RT I N R A N D A L L T R AV E L A RT • A R C H I T E C T U R E • G A S T R O N O M Y • A R C H A E O L O G Y • H I S T O R Y • M U S I C
2019: 2nd edition
Martin Randall Travel Ltd Voysey House Barley Mow Passage London W4 4GF United Kingdom Tel +44 (0)20 8742 3355 info@martinrandall.co.uk www.martinrandall.com
Martin Randall Australasia PO Box 1024 Indooroopilly QLD 4068, Australia Telephone 1300 55 95 95 New Zealand 0800 877 622 Fax +61 (0)7 3371 8288 anz@martinrandall.com.au
North America Martin Randall Travel Ltd 1155 Connecticut Avenue NW Suite 300 Washington DC 20036, USA Telephone 1 800 988 6168 usa@martinrandall.com
Directors: Martin Randall (CEO), Fiona Charrington (COO), Alexa Berger (CFO), Sir Vernon Ellis (Chairman), Ian Hutchinson, Neil Taylor, William Burton. Registered office: Voysey House, Barley Mow Passage, London W4 4GF, United Kingdom. Registered Company no. 2314294. VAT no. 527758803. All staff were involved in writing and editing this brochure, and it was designed in-house by Jo Murray and Rosanna Reade. It went to print on 7 November 2018. Illustration: London, Paddington Station, hand-coloured copper engraving by Francis Hall after a painting by William Powell Frith RA, publ. 1866.
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Second edition