M A RT I N R A N D A L L T R AV E L
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Illustration: Nagano, Zenko-ji temple, Japanese woodblock. The vast majority of illustrations in this brochure are from the MRT collection.
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
2018: 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
North America Martin Randall Travel Ltd 1155 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 300 Washington, DC 20036, USA
Telephone 1300 55 95 95 New Zealand 0800 877 622 Fax +61 (0)7 3371 8288 anz@martinrandall.com.au
Telephone 1 800 988 6168 usa@martinrandall.com
2018 second edition
Britain’s leading provider of cultural tours • Martin Randall Travel is 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. • Meticulously planned itineraries with special arrangements and privileged access • Excellent hotels and restaurants and comfortable travelling arrangements • Faultless administration and personal service.
Leaders in the field
Original itineraries, meticulously planned
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. 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 civilizations around the world. For almost 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.
First-rate lecturers
Travelling in comfort
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).
Their brief is to enlighten and stimulate, not merely to inform – and they also have to be good travelling companions. We select our lecturers through reputation, interview and audition, and provide them with guidance and training. Nearly all of our tours are also accompanied by a trained tour manager who unobtrusively attends to administrative matters.
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In innumerable ways, large and small, we lift our clients’ experience far above standards which are regarded as normal for tourists.
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.
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.
Tel +44 (0)20 8742 3355 info@martinrandall.co.uk www.martinrandall.com
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.
Martin Randall Travel is one of the most respected travel companies in the world, among both travellers and within the tourism community.
Martin Randall Travel Ltd Voysey House Barley Mow Passage London W4 4GF United Kingdom
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 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.
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
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 ten and twenty 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 We aim for faultless administration from your first encounter with us to the end of the holiday, and beyond. Personal service is a feature. We won Best Holiday Company for Customer Service in three consecutive years (2014, 2015 and 2016) at the British Travel Awards. 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.
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 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.
Tours exclusively for solo travellers. In 2018 we have three tours dedicated to people travelling on their own: St Petersburg in late September, Samarkand & Silk Road Cities in October and Civilizations of Sicily in November. The basic price includes a contribution to what would usually be charged by way of a single supplement; the bulk 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. (Note that payments made by credit card up until 13 January 2018 will have 2% added to cover processing charges. It does not apply to other forms of payment.)
Contents Tours A–Z by country ........................................ 4–5 Tours by theme................................................... 6–8 More about our tours............................................. 9 Britain & Ireland ............................................ 10–46 Mainland Europe ......................................... 47–189 Middle East ................................................ 190–197 Asia ............................................................. 198–221 The Americas ............................................. 222–236 Our lecturers .............................................. 237–244 Booking details Making a booking Booking Conditions Booking form.............................................. 245–247 Tours by date .............................................. 248–251
Where we are able to, we assign those travelling on their own to rooms which are normally sold as doubles.
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. Registered Company no. 2314294 England. VAT no. 527758803. This brochure was produced in house. Much of the text was written originally by Martin Randall. Lecturers also contributed. All staff were invo ved in edi in and roofin . ecia han s o aro ine ss for addi iona roofin . The a o was desi ned o rra with assistance from Rosanna Reade, and it was sent to print on 27th October 2017.
Illustration: Rievaulx Abbey, aquatint 1820.
Tours A–Z by country
ALBANIA Albania: Crossroads of Antiquity ....................... 47
ARGENTINA The Making of Argentina .................................. 222
AUSTRIA Beauty & the Abyss: Viennese Modernism ........ 49 Mozart in Salzburg .............................................. 48 Opera in Vienna................................................... 48 The Schubertiade ................................................. 50 The Schubertiade – with mountain walks .......... 51
BELGIUM Flemish Painting .................................................. 52 Rubens & Baroque ............................................... 53
BELIZE Guatemala, Honduras, Belize ........................... 223
BOLIVIA Baroque Music in Bolivia .................................. 224
BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA The Western Balkans ........................................... 54
CHANNEL ISLANDS Occupation in the Channel Islands .................... 46
CHINA Ceramics in China ............................................. 202 Essential China .................................................. 198 Ming & Qing Civilisation .................................. 200 Sacred China ...................................................... 203
Chippendale in Yorkshire.................................... 21 Country House Opera ......................................... 20 Crown & Cromwell .............................................. 33 THE DIVINE OFFICE ........................................ 20 Early Railways: The North ................................... 28 Gardens of Cheshire & Shropshire ..................... 19 Gastronomic West Country ................................ 17 Great Houses of the South West.......................... 10 Great Houses of the East ..................................... 11 The Industrial Revolution ................................... 30 London Choral Day ............................................. 39 LONDON DAYS .................................................. 38 Mediaeval Middle England ................................. 27 Modern Art in Sussex .......................................... 29 MUSIC IN THE COTSWOLDS .......................... 20 MUSIC RETREATS ............................................. 34 Northumbria ........................................................ 23 Royal Churches .................................................... 26 Royal Residences .................................................. 14 Shakespeare & His World .................................... 33 Tudor Power in South & West ............................. 32 The Victorian Achievement................................. 31 Walking to Derbyshire Houses ........................... 15 Walking to Cornish Houses ................................ 16 Walking in the Cotswolds ................................... 17 Walking Hadrian’s Wall ....................................... 22 Walking a Royal River ......................................... 13
ESTONIA Estonia .................................................................. 62 Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania................................. 63
FINLAND Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival ........................ 64
GERMANY Barenboim in Berlin ............................................ 83 Baroque & Rococo ............................................... 92 Berlin, Potsdam, Dresden ................................... 81 A FESTIVAL OF MUSIC IN FRANCONIA ....... 88 Franconia.............................................................. 87 Frederick the Great ............................................. 82 Gardens & Palaces of Berlin & Potsdam ............ 80 The House of Hanover ......................................... 79 The Hanseatic League .......................................... 84 King Ludwig II ..................................................... 89 The Leipzig Bach Festival .................................... 86 Mediaeval Saxony ................................................ 85 Munich’s Masterpieces ......................................... 90 Oberammergau .................................................... 90 THE RHINE VALLEY MUSIC FESTIVAL......... 88 The Ring in Leipzig .............................................. 86 The Ring in Munich ............................................. 91 Walking the Rhine Valley .................................... 88 Walking in Franconia .......................................... 88
GREECE Classical Greece ................................................... 94 Gastronomic Crete............................................... 95 Minoan Crete ....................................................... 93
GUATEMALA Guatemala, Honduras, Belize ........................... 223 Lands of the Maya .............................................. 225
HONDURAS Guatemala, Honduras, Belize ........................... 223
HUNGARY Hungary................................................................ 96
TOURS A–Z BY COUNTRY
CROATIA
FRANCE
The Western Balkans ........................................... 54
The Beaune Music Festival .................................. 70 Berry & Touraine. ................................................ 69 Bilbao to Bayonne .............................................. 169 Châteaux of the Loire .......................................... 67 French Gothic ...................................................... 65 Gardens of the Riviera ......................................... 75 Mediaeval Burgundy ........................................... 70 Mediaeval Alsace ................................................. 71 Modern Art on the Côte d’Azur .......................... 76 Monet & Impressionism ...................................... 66 Music & Ballet in Paris ........................................ 67 Paintings in Paris ................................................. 67 Poets & The Somme ............................................. 68 Provence & Languedoc ........................................ 72 Romans in the Rhône Valley ............................... 73 The Wines of Bordeaux ....................................... 74
INDIA
GEORGIA
Israel & Palestine ............................................... 192
CZECH REPUBLIC Treasures of Moravia ........................................... 55 A FESTIVAL OF MUSIC IN PRAGUE .............. 56 Walking in Southern Bohemia............................ 57
DENMARK Ballet in Copenhagen .......................................... 61 Copenhagen Modern ........................................... 61 Danish Castles & Gardens ................................... 58 Opera in Copenhagen ......................................... 60 Vikings & Bog Bodies .......................................... 59
ENGLAND Archaeology at The Castle ................................... 36 Arts & Crafts in the Cotswolds ........................... 18 The Cathedrals of England .................................. 24 Charles I: King & Collector ................................. 38
Essential India .................................................... 210 Gastronomic Kerala ........................................... 207 The Indian Mutiny ............................................. 212 Indian Summer .................................................. 205 Kingdoms of the Deccan ................................... 214 Sacred India........................................................ 204 Textile Arts of India ........................................... 208
IRELAND & NORTHERN IRELAND ‘A Terrible Beauty’................................................ 40 Western Ireland.................................................... 41
IRAN Persia’s Great Empires ....................................... 190
ISRAEL
Georgia Uncovered .............................................. 77 Illustration: map of Europe and Mediterranean (detail).
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Tours A–Z by country
ITALY
JORDAN
SCOTLAND
Art in the Po Valley............................................ 113 Civilisations of Sicily ......................................... 141 Connoisseur’s Rome .......................................... 132 Courts of Northern Italy ................................... 107 Dark Age Brilliance ........................................... 115 The Duchy of Urbino ......................................... 127 Essential Rome ................................................... 131 The Etruscans ..................................................... 133 Florence .............................................................. 120 Florence & Venice .............................................. 121 Florentine Palaces .............................................. 122 Footpaths of Umbria.......................................... 117 Gardens of the Bay of Naples ............................ 137 Gardens & Villas of Campagna Romana .......... 130 Gardens & Villas of the Italian Lakes ................. 97 Gastronomic Emilia-Romagna ......................... 108 Gastronomic Sicily............................................. 144 Gastronomic Veneto .......................................... 103 Genoa & Turin ..................................................... 98 The Grand Duchy of Tuscany ............................ 119 Historic Musical Instruments ........................... 111 History of Medicine ........................................... 112 The Imperial Riviera .......................................... 106 Incontri in Terra di Siena .................................. 121 Jonathan Keates’s Venice ................................... 100 Lucca ................................................................... 124 Memories of Monte Cassino ............................. 134 MUSIC IN BOLOGNA ...................................... 112 Naples: Art, Antiquities & Opera ..................... 139 Normans in the South........................................ 140 Opera in Macerata & Pesaro ............................. 128 Palermo Revealed .............................................. 143 Palladian Villas .................................................. 105 Parma & Bologna ............................................... 110 Piero della Francesca ......................................... 116 Pompeii & Herculaneum ................................... 138 The Printing Revolution .................................... 132 Ravenna & Urbino ............................................. 114 Roman Italy ........................................................ 135 Sardinia .............................................................. 147 Savouring Lombardy ......................................... 109 Siena & San Gimignano..................................... 123 Torre del Lago .................................................... 125 Tastes of Le Marche............................................ 126 Roman Palazzi.................................................... 128 Walking in Eastern Sicily .................................. 145 Venice Revisited ................................................... 99 Venetian Palaces................................................. 101 The Venetian Terra Ferma ................................. 102 Verona Opera .................................................... 104
Essential Jordan ................................................. 193
The Georgians in Scotland .................................. 42 Orkney: 5000 years of culture ............................. 43
Art in Japan ........................................................ 215 Japanese Gardens ............................................... 216
Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania................................. 63
MALTA Valletta Baroque Festival .................................. 149 World Heritage Malta ........................................ 148
MONTENEGRO The Western Balkans ........................................... 54
SLOVAKIA
Journey through Slovakia .................................. 162
SLOVENIA The Imperial Riviera .......................................... 106 Walking in Slovenia ........................................... 163
SPAIN
Lofoten Piano Festival ....................................... 154 Norway: Art, Architecture, Landscape ............. 153 Rock Art in Scandinavia.................................... 186
Art in Madrid ..................................................... 176 Barcelona ............................................................ 170 Bilbao to Bayonne .............................................. 169 Cave Art in Spain ............................................... 167 Castile & León .................................................... 168 Classic Catalan Wines ....................................... 172 Eastern Andalucía: Caliphs to Kings ................ 182 Essential Andalucía ........................................... 180 Gastronomic Galicia .......................................... 166 Gastronomic Spain ............................................ 173 Gastronomic Valencia ....................................... 177 Granada & Córdoba .......................................... 181 Picasso in Spain ................................................. 171 The Romans in Mediterranean Spain ............... 175 Walking to Santiago ........................................... 164 Western Andalucía............................................. 183 Western Spain: Extremadura & Toledo ............ 178 Wellington in the Peninsula .............................. 184
OMAN
SWEDEN
MEXICO Lands of the Maya .............................................. 225
MYANMAR Myanmar: Ancient to Modern .......................... 218
THE NETHERLANDS Art in the Netherlands ....................................... 152 Dutch Painting ................................................... 151 Gardens & Landscapes of the Dutch Wave....... 150 THE RHINE VALLEY MUSIC FESTIVAL......... 88
NORWAY
Oman, Landscapes & Peoples ........................... 195
PALESTINE Israel & Palestine ............................................... 192 Palestine, Past & Present ................................... 196
PERU Peru: the Andean Heartland ............................. 226
POLAND Kraków & Silesia ................................................ 155
PORTUGAL Gardens of Central Portugal ............................. 157 Walking & Gardens in Madeira ........................ 156 Wellington in the Peninsula .............................. 184
RUSSIA Moscow & the Golden Ring .............................. 160 Moscow & St Petersburg .................................... 159 St Petersburg ...................................................... 158
SERBIA The Western Balkans ........................................... 54
Drottningholm & Confidencen ........................ 188 Opera in Stockholm........................................... 187 Rock Art in Scandinavia.................................... 186
SWITZERLAND Art in Switzerland.............................................. 188 Gstaad Menuhin Festival ................................... 189
USA Art in Texas ........................................................ 235 East Coast Galleries ........................................... 230 Frank Lloyd Wright ........................................... 233 Galleries of the American Midwest .................. 231 New Orleans to Natchitoches ............................ 229 The Ring in San Francisco ................................. 228 West Coast Architecture .................................... 231
UZBEKISTAN Samarkand & Silk Road Cities .......................... 220
WALES Castles, Campaigns, Conquest ............................ 44 Opera in Cardiff ................................................... 45
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TOURS A–Z BY COUNTRY
JAPAN
LATVIA, LITHUANIA
Tours by theme
ART & ARCHITECTURE
TOURS BY THEME
Arts & Crafts in the Cotswolds ........................... 18 Art in Japan ........................................................ 215 Art in Madrid ..................................................... 176 Art in the Netherlands ....................................... 152 Art in the Po Valley............................................ 113 Art in Switzerland.............................................. 188 Art in Texas ........................................................ 235 Barcelona ............................................................ 170 Baroque & Rococo ............................................... 92 Beauty & the Abyss: Viennese Modernism ........ 49 Berlin, Potsdam, Dresden ................................... 81 Berry & Touraine. ................................................ 69 Bilbao to Bayonne .............................................. 169 Castile & León .................................................... 168 Castles, Campaigns, Conquest ............................ 44 The Cathedrals of England .................................. 24 Ceramics in China ............................................. 202 Charles I: King & Collector ................................. 38 Châteaux of the Loire .......................................... 67 Chippendale in Yorkshire.................................... 21 Civilisations of Sicily ......................................... 141 Connoisseur’s Rome .......................................... 132 Copenhagen Modern ........................................... 61 Courts of Northern Italy ................................... 107 Danish Castles & Gardens ................................... 58 Dark Age Brilliance ........................................... 115 The Duchy of Urbino ......................................... 127 Dutch Painting ................................................... 151 East Coast Galleries ........................................... 230 Eastern Andalucía: Caliphs to Kings ................ 182 Essential Andalucía ........................................... 180 Essential China .................................................. 198 Essential India .................................................... 210 Essential Jordan ................................................. 193 Essential Rome ................................................... 131 Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania................................. 63 The Etruscans ..................................................... 133 Flemish Painting .................................................. 52 Florence .............................................................. 120 Florence & Venice .............................................. 121 Florentine Palaces .............................................. 122 Footpaths of Umbria.......................................... 117 Franconia.............................................................. 87 Frank Lloyd Wright ........................................... 233 French Gothic ...................................................... 65 Galleries of the American Midwest .................. 231 Gardens & Palaces of Berlin & Potsdam ............ 80 Gardens & Villas of Campagna Romana .......... 130 Gardens & Villas of the Italian Lakes ................. 97 Genoa & Turin ..................................................... 98 Georgia Uncovered .............................................. 77 The Georgians in Scotland .................................. 42 Granada & Córdoba .......................................... 181 The Grand Duchy of Tuscany ............................ 119 6
Great Houses of the East ..................................... 11 Great Houses of the South West.......................... 10 The Hanseatic League .......................................... 84 The House of Hanover ......................................... 79 Hungary................................................................ 96 Indian Summer .................................................. 205 The Industrial Revolution ................................... 30 Israel & Palestine ............................................... 192 Jonathan Keates’s Venice ................................... 100 Journey through Slovakia .................................. 162 King Ludwig II ..................................................... 89 Kingdoms of the Deccan ................................... 214 Kraków & Silesia ................................................ 155 Lucca ................................................................... 124 The Making of Argentina .................................. 222 Mediaeval Alsace ................................................. 71 Mediaeval Burgundy ........................................... 70 Mediaeval Middle England ................................. 27 Mediaeval Saxony ................................................ 85 Ming & Qing Civilisation .................................. 200 Modern Art on the Côte d’Azur .......................... 76 Modern Art in Sussex .......................................... 29 Monet & Impressionism ...................................... 66 Moscow & the Golden Ring .............................. 160 Moscow & St Petersburg .................................... 159 Munich’s Masterpieces ......................................... 90 Myanmar: Ancient to Modern .......................... 218
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Naples: Art, Antiquities & Opera ..................... 139 New Orleans to Natchitoches ............................ 229 Normans in the South........................................ 140 Northumbria ........................................................ 23 Norway: Art, Architecture, Landscape ............. 153 Oman, Landscapes & Peoples ........................... 195 Paintings in Paris ................................................. 67 Palermo Revealed .............................................. 143 Palladian Villas .................................................. 105 Parma & Bologna ............................................... 110 Persia’s Great Empires ....................................... 190 Picasso in Spain ................................................. 171 Piero della Francesca ......................................... 116 The Printing Revolution .................................... 132 Provence & Languedoc ........................................ 72 Ravenna & Urbino ............................................. 114 Roman Italy ........................................................ 135 Roman Palazzi.................................................... 128 Royal Churches .................................................... 26 Royal Residences .................................................. 14 Rubens & Baroque ............................................... 53 Sacred China ...................................................... 203 Sacred India........................................................ 204 Samarkand & Silk Road Cities .......................... 220 Sardinia .............................................................. 147 Siena & San Gimignano..................................... 123 St Petersburg ...................................................... 158 Textile Arts of India ........................................... 208 Treasures of Moravia ........................................... 55 Tudor Power in South & West ............................. 32 The Western Balkans ........................................... 54 Venetian Palaces................................................. 101 Venice Revisited ................................................... 99 The Venetian Terra Ferma ................................. 102 The Victorian Achievement................................. 31 Walking in Southern Bohemia............................ 57 Walking to Derbyshire Houses ........................... 15 Walking to Cornish Houses ................................ 16 Walking in the Cotswolds ................................... 17 West Coast Architecture .................................... 231 Western Andalucía............................................. 183 Western Spain: Extremadura & Toledo ............ 178 World Heritage Malta ........................................ 148
ARCHAEOLOGY Albania: Crossroads of Antiquity ....................... 47 Archaeology at The Castle ................................... 36 Cave Art in Spain ............................................... 167 Civilisations of Sicily ......................................... 141 Classical Greece ................................................... 94 Essential China .................................................. 198 Essential Jordan ................................................. 193 The Etruscans ..................................................... 133 Guatemala, Honduras, Belize ........................... 223 Israel & Palestine ............................................... 192
Tours by theme
Kingdoms of the Deccan ................................... 214 Lands of the Maya .............................................. 225 Minoan Crete ....................................................... 93 Orkney: 5000 years of culture ............................. 43 Peru: the Andean Heartland ............................. 226 Sacred India........................................................ 204 Western Ireland.................................................... 41 Persia’s Great Empires ....................................... 190 Palermo Revealed .............................................. 143 Palestine, Past & Present ................................... 196 Pompeii & Herculaneum ................................... 138 Rock Art in Scandinavia.................................... 186 Roman Italy ........................................................ 135 The Romans in Mediterranean Spain ............... 175 Romans in the Rhône Valley ............................... 73 Samarkand & Silk Road Cities .......................... 220 Sardinia .............................................................. 147 Vikings & Bog Bodies .......................................... 59 Walking in Eastern Sicily .................................. 145 Walking Hadrian’s Wall ....................................... 22 Western Andalucía............................................. 183 World Heritage Malta ........................................ 148
GARDENS Danish Castles & Gardens ................................... 58 Gardens of the Bay of Naples ............................ 137 Gardens of Central Portugal ............................. 157 Gardens of Cheshire & Shropshire ..................... 19 Gardens & Landscapes of the Dutch Wave....... 150 Gardens & Palaces of Berlin & Potsdam ............ 80 Gardens of the Riviera ......................................... 75 Gardens & Villas of Campagna Romana .......... 130 Gardens & Villas of the Italian Lakes ................. 97 Japanese Gardens ............................................... 216 Walking & Gardens in Madeira ........................ 156
Bilbao to Bayonne .............................................. 169 Classic Catalan Wines ....................................... 172 Gastronomic Crete............................................... 95 Gastronomic Emilia-Romagna ......................... 108 Gastronomic Galicia .......................................... 166 Gastronomic Kerala ........................................... 207 Gastronomic Sicily............................................. 144 Gastronomic Valencia ....................................... 177 Gastronomic Veneto .......................................... 103 Gastronomic West Country ................................ 17 The Making of Argentina .................................. 222 Savouring Lombardy ......................................... 109 Tastes of Le Marche............................................ 126 The Wines of Bordeaux ....................................... 74 Illustrations. Above left: Vienna, Palais Ferstel, wood engraving 1890. Below left: ‘Bronze statue of David’ wood en ravin c. . ove on ain s ri wa erco o r Fenella Girdlestone.
Albania: Crossroads of Antiquity ....................... 47 ‘A Terrible Beauty’................................................ 40 Castles, Campaigns, Conquest ............................ 44 Charles I: King & Collector ................................. 38 Crown & Cromwell .............................................. 33 Early Railways: The North ................................... 28 Eastern Andalucía: Caliphs to Kings ................ 182 Essential Andalucía ........................................... 180 Estonia .................................................................. 62 Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania................................. 63 Frederick the Great ............................................. 82 Georgia Uncovered .............................................. 77 The House of Hanover ......................................... 79 The Hanseatic League .......................................... 84 Historic Musical Instruments ........................... 111 History of Medicine ........................................... 112 The Imperial Riviera .......................................... 106 The Indian Mutiny ............................................. 212 Indian Summer .................................................. 205 The Industrial Revolution ................................... 30 King Ludwig II ..................................................... 89 Kraków & Silesia ................................................ 155 Mediaeval Alsace ................................................. 71 Mediaeval Burgundy ........................................... 70 Memories of Monte Cassino ............................. 134 Ming & Qing Civilisation .................................. 200 Moscow & the Golden Ring .............................. 160 Myanmar: Ancient to Modern .......................... 218 New Orleans to Natchitoches ............................ 229 Normans in the South........................................ 140 Oman, Landscapes & Peoples ........................... 195 Occupation in the Channel Islands .................... 46 Palestine, Past & Present ................................... 196 Poets & The Somme ............................................. 68 The Printing Revolution .................................... 132 Sacred China ...................................................... 203
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.
Tudor Power in South & West ............................. 32 The Victorian Achievement................................. 31 Wellington in the Peninsula .............................. 184 The Western Balkans ........................................... 54
LITERATURE Jonathan Keates’s Venice ................................... 100 Poets & The Somme ............................................. 68 Shakespeare & His World .................................... 33
MUSIC & BALLET Barenboim in Berlin ............................................ 83 Ballet in Copenhagen .......................................... 61 Baroque Music in Bolivia .................................. 224 The Beaune Music Festival .................................. 70 Country House Opera ......................................... 20 THE DIVINE OFFICE ........................................ 20 Drottningholm & Confidencen ........................ 188 A FESTIVAL OF MUSIC IN FRANCONIA ....... 88 A FESTIVAL OF MUSIC IN PRAGUE .............. 56 Gstaad Menuhin Festival ................................... 189 Historic Musical Instruments ........................... 111 Incontri in Terra di Siena .................................. 121 Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival ........................ 64 The Leipzig Bach Festival .................................... 86 London Choral Day ............................................. 39 Lofoten Piano Festival ....................................... 154 Mozart in Salzburg .............................................. 48 Music & Ballet in Paris ........................................ 67 MUSIC IN BOLOGNA ...................................... 112 MUSIC IN THE COTSWOLDS .......................... 20 CHAMBER MUSIC RETREATS ........................ 34 Naples: Art, Antiquities & Opera ..................... 139 Oberammergau .................................................... 90 Opera in Cardiff ................................................... 45 Opera in Copenhagen ......................................... 60 Opera in Macerata & Pesaro ............................. 128 Opera in Stockholm........................................... 187 Opera in Vienna................................................... 48 THE RHINE VALLEY MUSIC FESTIVAL......... 88 The Ring in Leipzig .............................................. 86 The Ring in Munich ............................................. 91 The Ring in San Francisco ................................. 228 Savouring Lombardy ......................................... 109 The Schubertiade ................................................. 50 The Schubertiade – with mountain walks .......... 51 Torre del Lago .................................................... 125 Valletta Baroque Festival .................................. 149 Verona Opera .................................................... 104 Walking in Franconia .......................................... 88 Walking the Rhine Valley .................................... 88
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TOURS BY THEME
GASTRONOMY & WINE
HISTORY
Tours by theme
MRT MUSIC FESTIVALS
WALKING
THE DIVINE OFFICE ........................................ 20 A FESTIVAL OF MUSIC IN FRANCONIA ....... 88 A FESTIVAL OF MUSIC IN PRAGUE .............. 56 MUSIC IN BOLOGNA ...................................... 112 MUSIC IN THE COTSWOLDS .......................... 20 THE RHINE VALLEY MUSIC FESTIVAL......... 88 CHAMBER MUSIC RETREATS ........................ 34
Footpaths of Umbria.......................................... 117 The Schubertiade – with mountain walks .......... 51 Walking to Cornish Houses ................................ 16 Walking in the Cotswolds ................................... 17 Walking to Derbyshire Houses ........................... 15 Walking in Eastern Sicily .................................. 145 Walking in Franconia .......................................... 88 Walking & Gardens in Madeira ........................ 156 Walking Hadrian’s Wall ....................................... 22 Walking the Rhine Valley .................................... 88 Walking a Royal River ......................................... 13 Walking to Santiago ........................................... 164 Walking in Slovenia ........................................... 163 Walking in Southern Bohemia............................ 57
MODERN Art in Texas ........................................................ 235 Beauty & the Abyss: Viennese Modernism ........ 49 Copenhagen Modern ........................................... 61 Frank Lloyd Wright ........................................... 233 Galleries of the American Midwest .................. 231 Gardens & Landscapes of the Dutch Wave....... 150 Modern Art on the Côte d’Azur .......................... 76 Modern Art in Sussex .......................................... 29 Monet & Impressionism ...................................... 66 Picasso in Spain ................................................. 171 West Coast Architecture .................................... 231
Prices include: • The services of the lecturer and often a tour manager – sometimes also local guides. • Hotel accommodation. • All admissions to museums, galleries and sites visited in the itinerary.
TOURS BY THEME
• 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 lunches and dinners including wine or beer, water, soft drinks and tea or coffee. • All tips for waiters, porters, drivers, and local guides. • All state and airport taxes. 8
LAUNCHED SINCE THE 1ST EDITION ‘A Terrible Beauty’................................................ 40 Art in Switzerland.............................................. 188 Art in Texas ........................................................ 235 Arts & Crafts in the Cotswolds ........................... 18 Barenboim in Berlin ............................................ 83 Chippendale in Yorkshire.................................... 21 Copenhagen Modern ........................................... 61 Essential India .................................................... 210 Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania................................. 63 Gardens of the Bay of Naples ............................ 137 Gardens of Cheshire & Shropshire ..................... 19 Gardens & Landscapes of the Dutch Wave....... 150 Gastronomic Crete............................................... 95 Gastronomic Galicia .......................................... 166 Gastronomic Spain ............................................ 173 Gstaad Menuhin Festival ................................... 189 Guatemala, Honduras, Belize ........................... 223 The Hanseatic League .......................................... 84 Historic Musical Instruments ........................... 111 The Indian Mutiny ............................................. 212 Indian Summer .................................................. 205 Kingdoms of the Deccan ................................... 214 The Leipzig Bach Festival .................................... 86 Opera in Cardiff ................................................... 45 Orkney: 5000 years of culture ............................. 43 Ming & Qing Civilisation .................................. 200 Moscow & the Golden Ring .............................. 160 Moscow & St Petersburg .................................... 159 Naples: Art, Antiquities & Opera ..................... 139 Palestine, Past & Present ................................... 196 Parma & Bologna ............................................... 110
Illustrations. Above left: lithograph 1902. Right: glimpse of he re in fro van e i i Tower oscow O osi e o wood oc rin a awa nisada
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Picasso in Spain ................................................. 171 The Ring in Munich ............................................. 91 Rock Art in Scandinavia.................................... 186 Roman Palazzi.................................................... 128 Savouring Lombardy ......................................... 109 The Schubertiade ................................................. 50 The Schubertiade – with mountain walks .......... 51 Textile Arts of India ........................................... 208 Torre del Lago .................................................... 125 Walking in the Cotswolds ................................... 17 Walking in Franconia .......................................... 88 Walking the Rhine Valley .................................... 88 Western Andalucía............................................. 183 Verona Opera .................................................... 104
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. 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.) 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.
Travel insurance 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.
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.
Gastronomy tours On a tour that focuses on food, wine and traditional manufacturing methods and cooking traditions we regret that participants with special diets may not have the same gastronomic experience as those with no restrictions.
Walking tours
Responsible Tourism
Tours which are billed as walking tours, with hikes through hilly countryside of up to three hours, require a different scale of fitness and agility. Please attend to the descriptions of these tours carefully.
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. 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.
A certain level of fitness is a requirement for participation on our tours. We ask that all participants take these quick and simple tests to ascertain whether they are fit enough.
Financial security 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 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 247) for further details.
Our policy is published on our website: www.martinrandall.com/responsible-tourism.
MORE ABOUT OUR TOURS
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.
Amendments
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 three miles per hour for at least half an hour at a time, and to stand unsupported for at least fifteen minutes.
Tours do vary. Please refer to the How strenuous? paragraph in each tour description.
The Association of Independent Tour Operators. Martin Randall Travel Ltd is a member of AITO, an association of specialist travel companies most of which are independent and owner-managed. 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.
Experience tells us that free travel insurance offered by some credit card companies is not reliable in the event of a claim.
Financial protection for holidays that do not include a flight is provided by a bond held with ABTA.
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Great Houses of the South West Wiltshire, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Somerset, Dorset, Devon
15–22 May 2018 (me 870) 8 days • £3,260 Lecturer: Anthony Lambert Great country houses, historic gardens and parks in Wiltshire, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Somerset, Dorset and Devon. Major examples of a huge range of styles from the twelfth century to the twentieth. Many houses contain outstanding picture collections and exceptional furniture. Special arrangements and out-of-hours visits.
B R IT A IN
Hotels in former country houses.
& I R E L A N D : ENGLAND
The landscapes seen on this tour are immensely varied and endlessly alluring – the noble chalk downs of Wiltshire, the evocative Levels of Somerset, the enchanting patchwork fields of Devon, the verdant hidden valleys of Exmoor, the little hills of Dorset. The houses seen are equally varied. Lacock and Longleat and Montacute are among the finest of Henrician and Elizabethan mansions in England. The Stuart era is superbly represented by the incomparable Wilton House, star of the first phase of Palladian classicism in England, and by the Dutch classicism of Dyrham, while the eighteenth century is wonderfully exemplified at Stourhead and by the delicious Adam interiors at Saltram. Victoria’s reign has a magnificent ambassador in Tyntesfield, and the Edwardian continuation is beautifully if eccentrically demonstrated at Castle Drogo. Real castles are represented by the extraordinary Berkeley, still a family home, and, if now more picturesque than defensive, at Dunster. 1 0
A first-rate country house is more than a house. Clustering around are gardens, auxiliary buildings and a park – at Stourhead, perhaps the most influential one in the world – and beyond lie working farms and enterprises of all sorts. And of course inside the houses 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 Britain’s museums. Corsham and Kingston Lacy in particular are renowned for their picture collections. Word must be added about the hotels on this tour, all three of which are excellent, and two of which are former country houses.
It in e r a r y Day 1: The Vyne. Leave London at 11.00am and drive to Hampshire, arriving at The Vyne in time for lunch. A Tudor mansion built for Lord Sandys, King Henry VIII’s Lord Chamberlain. The house retains its Tudor chapel and has a portico designed by John Webb. Spend the first of three nights in a country-house hotel near the village of Bishopstrow, Wiltshire. Day 2: Wilton, Kingston Lacy. Inigo Jones contributed to the design of Wilton House, the outstanding achievement of the first phase of Palladianism in England. The double-cube room, with paintings by Van Dyck, is the most sumptuous English interior of the Stuart period. Also of the 17th century, Kingston Lacy is Illustration: Longleat, house and gardens as they appeared towards the end of the 17th century, steel engraving c. 1850.
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noted for its lavish interiors and outstanding art collection of Spanish, Italian and Flemish Old Masters. Both houses have important gardens and parkland. Overnight Bishopstrow. Day 3: Longleat, Corsham. Longleat was one of the largest and architecturally most progressive of Elizabethan houses, and is set in a ‘Capability’ Brown park. Corsham (Wiltshire) is an Elizabethan mansion enlarged in the 18th century and again in the 19th to display a collection of Old Master paintings, still in situ. Overnight Bishopstrow. Day 4: Stourhead, Montacute. Though built in two phases, 1720s and 1790s, Stourhead is the perfect classical villa. The landscaped park of the 1740s is the most important of its kind, with a lake, temples, careful planting and contrived, if seemingly natural, vistas. Montacute is a magnificent Elizabethan house with the longest long gallery in England. An outstation of the National Portrait Gallery, it is hung with 16thand 17th-century pictures. Garden layout and architecture survive. First of two nights in Taunton. Day 5: Saltram, Castle Drogo. Drive across Devon to Saltram, a largely 18th-century house with lavish Robert Adam interiors and fine pictures and furnishings. There are dramatic views of the Plym Estuary. A rugged Dartmoor setting overlooking the Teign Gorge matches Sir Edwin Lutyens’s imaginative exercise in mediaevalism at Castle Drogo, though inside there are all the latest in early 20th-century comforts. The castle is undergoing a 6-year restoration programme and while some rooms may be closed, it has meant the National Trust has opened rooms not normally
Great Houses of the East Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Rutland available for public viewing. Fine Arts & Crafts garden. Overnight Taunton. Day 6: Dunster, Tyntesfield. Drive between the Quantocks and Exmoor to the famously picturesque village of Dunster. Atop a wooded hillock, the castle of Norman origin long ago domesticated its defensive features, notably in the Carolean age. The great Gothic Revival mansion of Tyntesfield has hardly changed since the nineteenth century, caught in a time warp and stuffed with the authentic bric-a-brac of a Victorian country house. First of two nights in a country-house hotel in Colerne, Wiltshire. Day 7: Berkeley, Lacock. The keep of Berkeley Castle dates to 1117, the bulk of the rest to 1340–61. Little has been altered since, and yet it is still the private home of its builders, a family that served Edward the Confessor. The contents – tapestries, paintings, furniture – are magnificent. In one of the loveliest villages in England, Lacock Abbey retains a cloister from the nunnery dissolved by Henry VIII and given to a courtier. There are Georgian modifications and, being the home of William Fox Talbot, a window which was the subject of the first ever photographic negative. Overnight Colerne. Day 8: Dyrham. Transformed from a Tudor mansion at the end of the 17th century and scarcely changed since, Dyrham Park externally is mild Baroque in golden Bath stone, and inside exquisitely Anglo-Dutch with pictures and furnishings to match. Return to central London at c. 4.30pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,260. Single occupancy: £3,670. National Trust members (with cards) will be refunded c. £90.
28 June–6 July 2018 (me 936) 9 days • £3,140 Lecturer: Dr Andrew Moore The best country houses in East Anglia and the East Midlands, outstanding examples from the end of the Middle Ages to the Victorian era. The Tudor and Stuart age is particularly well represented, as is the Palladian style. Great architecture, major works of art, spectacular gardens, landscaped parks, life both sides of the green baize door. Exceptionally attractive towns and villages and magnificent lowland landscape. Special arrangements and out-of-hours visits. Why is Britain 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 we pass through places key to the Agricultural Revolution of the eighteenth century which further enhanced what Nature provided. The financial benefits of Britain’s primacy in trade and industry seeped 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 this tour have been in the same family for several generations. The broad spread of this tour, East Anglia and the East Midlands, allows for the inclusion of some of the very finest country houses in England. If all you ever see of eighteenth-century England are Houghton and Holkham, they will suffice to shine
in the memory forever as the epitome of restrained grandeur and elegant opulence. Burghley is the most elaborate and monumental of Elizabethan great houses, Blickling the most beautiful of Jacobean, Belton the most perfectly proportioned of the Restoration period. There are also several brilliant, if less mainstream, masterpieces. Layer Marney Tower is little more than a Tudor gateway, but what a gateway, the highest such in Britain. Felbrigg is not much more than a large-scale manor house, albeit an exceptionally handsome one, but it is one element in an enchanting ensemble which includes walled gardens, Italian paintings and a remote location. The Queen’s private estate at Sandringham will impress with its quietly regal interiors despite pretensions to be unexceptional. Deene Park will captivate with the depth of its history and the authenticity of its atmosphere. A feature of the tour is the opportunity to spend a little time in some of the loveliest towns and villages in England – Lavenham, Norwich, Stamford. And then there is the ravishing countryside, East Anglia with its broad undulations, big skies, fens and bosky vistas, and the rolling farmland and magnificent trees of the ‘Dukeries’.
It in e r a r y Day 1: Layer Marney (Essex). The coach leaves Witham Railway Station at 2.00pm. Layer Marney Tower is an apposite first visit: the seven-storey gatehouse is a final flamboyant fling of the Middle Ages, while its Renaissance ornament is harbinger of the classicism which dominated English architecture for the next 400 years. First of three nights in Lavenham (Suffolk). Illustration: Burghley, engraving c. 1700.
Included meals: 5 dinners with wine.
B R IT A IN
Accommodation. Bishopstrow House (bishopstrow.co.uk): the house dates from the early 19th century and has been a 4-star hotel for 35 years. The Castle Hotel, Taunton (the-castle-hotel. com): an award-winning family-run 4-star hotel, pleasingly decorated and with excellent service. Lucknam Park Hotel, Colerne (lucknampark. co.uk): this 5-star hotel is a fine example of a country-house hotel, set in 500 acres of parkland and with a Michelin-starred restaurant.
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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, the houses visited don’t have lifts (nor do all the hotels). Average distance by coach per day: c. 95 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Arts & Crafts, 25 May 2018 (please contact us for full details of this London Day or visit www.martinrandall.com).
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Great Houses of the East continued
‘Outstanding lecturer, exceptional tour manager, extraordinary and well-paced itinerary.’
Day 2: Audley End, Lavenham (Essex, Suffolk). Audley End was the most ambitious house to be built in the reign of James I but was later reduced, altered and re-Jacobeanised, revealing both changes in taste and styles of country house living. Delicious Robert Adam rooms and park landscaped by ‘Capability’ Brown. In the later afternoon explore the abundance of mediaeval and Elizabethan houses in Lavenham and its superb parish church. Overnight Lavenham.
Day 6: Houghton, Sandringham (Norfolk). 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. Sandringham was built for Edward VII when Prince of Wales and now belongs to the Queen. An attractive Jacobean-style mansion set in a landscaped garden, the principal rooms have the glittering opulence of a royal residence despite their intended informality. First of three nights in Rutland.
Day 3: Ickworth, Melford (Suffolk). Ickworth is almost as eccentric as its builder, the fourth Earl of Bristol (a bishop), a glorious Neo-Classical rotunda attached to curving wings intended to accommodate art and antiquities acquired on his incessant travels. Visit Melford Hall, a house largely built in the 16th century, with beautiful Edwardian gardens and fountain. Overnight Lavenham.
Day 7: Belvoir, Belton, Harlaxton (Leics, Lincs, Rutland). Belvoir Castle, a 19th-century Regency Gothic house has some magnificent ceremonial interiors. A building of supreme and serene beauty, Belton is the classic Restoration house. Fine contents and formal gardens. Victorian Harlaxton Manor is Elizabethan revival on steroids,
Dr Andrew Moore Writer and curator, and a specialist in the study of country houses and their art collections. He co-authored a reassessment of Sir Robert Walpole’s art collection at Houghton Hall in 2013. Formerly Keeper of Art at Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery. See pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies. laden with symbolism. Finish at Northampton Railway Station at c. 3.00pm. Please note that some appointments are not confirmed until the end of 2017. The starting and finishing points of this tour are railway stations because it is usually quicker to travel through London by train than by coach.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,140. Single occupancy: £3,620. National Trust: members (with cards) will be refunded c. £55. Included meals: 1 lunch and 7 dinners with wine. Accommodation. The Swan, Lavenham (theswanatlavenham.co.uk): dating from the 15th century, The Swan (4-star) has been an inn since 1667; rooms have been recently renovated yet retain their historical character; excellent restaurant. Congham Hall Hotel, Congham (conghamhallhotel.co.uk): rooms are airy and well appointed at Congham Hall (3-star) with a traditional country house décor; public rooms are pleasant and informal; attractive gardens. Barnsdale Lodge Hotel, Rutland (barnsdalelodge. co.uk): housed in an extended old farmhouse close to Rutland Water (3-star). Public rooms and bedrooms are arranged around a courtyard and have a traditional, country décor.
B R IT A IN & I R E L A N D : ENGLAND
Day 4: Norwich, Holkham (Norfolk). Stop for a while at Norwich, an exceedingly attractive county town with castle and cathedral. 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. First of two nights in Norfolk. Day 5: Felbrigg, Blickling (Norfolk). Felbrigg Hall is a lovely 17th-century house whose chief glory is the suite of rooms arranged in the 18th century to display paintings collected on the Grand Tour. Jacobean Blickling Hall is one of the loveliest of English country houses, red brick with stone dressings and mediaeval sprawl constrained by Renaissance symmetry. Among its treasures are a long gallery, library and a variety of art and furnishings, and the gardens are spectacular. Overnight Norfolk. 1 2
hallucinatory historicism, quite splendid (you might hate it). Overnight Rutland. Day 8: Boughton, Burghley (Northants, Lincs). Palatial in scale and sumptuously fitted out, Boughton House echoes Versailles (its builder was ambassador to the court of Louis XIV). It has scarcely changed since the end of the 17th century, and sits amid a great estate. The grandest of Elizabethan houses, Burghley was built by the Queen’s chief minister and magnificently remodelled internally a hundred years later. The paintings and furniture are superb. Time is spent in Stamford, one of England’s best preserved historic towns. Overnight Rutland. Day 9: Deene Park, Rushton (Northants). Though largely 16th-century, Deene Park feels very different and is still very much the home of the Brudenell family. Full of good things, there is also an enchanting riverside garden. Rushton Triangular Lodge, an Elizabethan miniature, is
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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, the houses visited don’t have lifts (nor do all the hotels). Average distance by coach per day: c. 87 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Norway: Landscape, Art, Architecture, 18–26 June 2018 (p.153); The Rhine Valley Music Festival, 20–27 June 2018 (p.88).
What else is included in the price? See page 8. Illustration: Layer Marney, watercolour publ. 1909.
Walking a Royal River Art, architecture and history from the source to Hampton Court 17–23 September 2018 (mf 156) 7 days • £2,460 Lecturer: Dr Paul Atterbury Walk from the source of the Thames to Hampton Court (2–5 miles a day) along the towpath, and through the gentle hills which flank the valley. Visit villages, churches, country houses, gardens and palaces with regal connections from the Middle Ages to the present day. Can be combined with our music festival, The Divine Office: Choral Music in Oxford, 24–28 September 2018 – see page 20.
Day 1: Thames Head. Ascent: 386m. Descent: 420m. Leave The Swan Hotel, Bibury, at 2.15pm or Kemble Railway Station at 3.00pm. The tour begins with the source of the Thames. A soaring rockface, a majestic spurt: an awesome spectacle. Actually, no. A damp patch, the trickle varying with yesterday’s weather, reached by walking across three fields. Total walk: 3½ miles on grassy, level paths. First of three nights in Bibury. Day 2: Inglesham, Lechlade, Great Coxwell. Ascent: 130m. Descent: 125m. Begin the day with
Day 3: Buscot, Kelmscott. Ascent: 239m. Descent: 258m. Begin the walk at Buscot, whose church has a Burne Jones window, and continue c. 2½ miles on a level, grassy path beside the Thames. Visit Kelmscott Manor, the Tudor house acquired by William Morris, founder of the Arts and Crafts movement. In the afternoon visit Buscot Park, a Palladian mansion with Burne Jones paintings and outstanding gardens. Day 4: Wittenham Clumps, Dorchester, Ewelme. Ascent: 464m. Descent: 470m. Begin at the river at Shillingford and then walk up to Wittenham Clumps, a pair of hillocks with views over a particularly attractive stretch of the Thames Valley. Descend through woods and across farmland, passing an Iron Age fort, to Dorchesteron-Thames. Total walk: c. 4½ miles. Visit the abbey church here, one of the finest mediaeval buildings in Oxfordshire, where St Birinus baptised King Cynegils of Wessex in 635. Continue to Ewelme, site of a Saxon palace, and today a unique complex of 15th-century church, almshouses and school, all still functioning. First of three nights in Marlow. Day 5: Hardwick, Henley-on-Thames, Cliveden. Mapeldurham House is an Elizabethan stately home that has been in the same family for about five hundred years. It is open by special arrangement. See the River and Rowing Museum at Henley-on-Thames with its extensive collection of art, photographs and boats relating to river history. Cliveden’s magnificent formal gardens and woods beside the Thames have been admired for centuries. Cliveden was once the glittering hub of society, visited by virtually every British monarch since George I, home to Waldorf and Nancy Astor in the early 20th century and renowned for its parties and political gatherings.
Day 6: Cookham, Windsor. Walk from the hotel beside the river (4½ miles on a level path along tarmac or grass) to Cookham, life-long home of painter Stanley Spencer (1891–1959); there is a gallery of his work and a fine parish church. Visit Windsor Castle, founded by William I and occupied by every monarch since. The Queen spends most of her private weekends at the Castle, which is also used for State occasions. Day 7: Hampton Court Palace, London. Hampton Court was begun by Cardinal Wolsey, enlarged by Henry VIII and 150 years later partly rebuilt by Christopher Wren for William III and Mary II. The most sumptuous of surviving Tudor palaces is joined to the most magnificent of 17th-century buildings in Britain; great interiors, fine works of art, beautiful gardens, a formal park. Drive to London, arriving by c. 3.00pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,460. Single occupancy: £2,790. Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. The Swan, Bibury (cotswoldinns-hotels.co.uk): former 17th-century coaching inn in the heart of the village (4-star). The Compleat Angler, Marlow (macdonaldhotels. co.uk): very comfortable hotel, well-positioned beside the Thames with excellent views (4-star). How strenuous? There are 6 walks of 2–5 miles, usually on flat, well-trodden grassy or woodland paths, with some paved roads and towpaths. Some walks include ascent and descent, climbing over stiles and on day 4, a climb of 230 feet. You should be accustomed to countryside walking and prepared for the (sometimes inclement) British weather. Average coach travel per day: 38 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Walking Hadrian’s Wall, 10–16 September 2018 (p.22); The Divine Office: Choral Music in Oxford, 24–28 September 2018 (p.20); Walking to Cornish Houses, 24–30 September 2018 (p.16). Illustration: Cookham, steel engraving c. 1850.
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It in e r a r y
Inglesham church, a beautifully isolated church dating to Saxon times. Continue on foot and walk c. 3 miles along the river to Lechlade-on-Thames, a vibrant small town with a fine Gothic church and a handsome bridge. Visit the masterful mediaeval barn at Great Coxwell, which King John gave to the Cistercian monks in 1203 as part of the Manor of Faringdon. Return to Bibury with a 2½-mile walk along grassy paths and through woodland from Coln St Aldwyns.
B R IT A IN
‘The Thames is no ordinary waterway. It is the golden thread of our nation’s history.’ It is not to disparage Churchill’s irresistibly orotund metaphor to assert nevertheless that, by comparison with the other great rivers of the world, the Thames is puny. But therein lies its enchantment. While in its lower reaches the river passed through what was for a couple of centuries the largest city in the world and host to its largest port, above the tidal limit at Teddington it was too narrow, too shallow and too meandering to contribute much to the industrial or commercial might of Britain in the early modern era. A vital channel of communication when oars and poles were the locomotive forces – not least to transport rulers and courtiers to their country retreats upstream of the capital – for much of its length the Thames is now a bucolic backwater. This tour selects some of the most attractive stretches of the river to walk along, but it does not follow a linear journey from one end to the other. While resorting regularly to the towpath (now a designated long-distance trail, the Thames Path), the itinerary also ranges through varied countryside and gentle hills, and includes a representative spread of the best of the buildings, artefacts and art in the region. As much as anything, this tour is an exploration of the English village. The numerous examples are as well-preserved as they are various. Parish churches and Iron Age forts, manor houses and major mansions, rapturous gardens and leafy churchyards, mediaeval, classical and railway-era bridges, associations with artists and writers, and of course quintessential riverine landscapes: these are chief among the attractions of the tour. It omits the larger towns; as a travel writer put it in 1910, ‘You cannot rusticate at Reading’. Even Oxford is by-passed; to cram the city into an afternoon would be cruel.
Royal Residences Palaces and houses in and around London, with private visits
14–18 August 2018 (me 981) 5 days • £2,280 Lecturer: Anthony Lambert Visits nine palaces and homes, several of which are still in use by the Royal Family. Up to three very special out-of-hours private tours, including Windsor Castle. As rich a theme as any that London and its environs has to offer, with outstanding art and architecture, with past and present brought alive. Good hotels near Windsor and in Whitehall.
B R IT A IN & I R E L A N D : ENGLAND
This tour studies some of the most splendid secular buildings in Britain: Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and Hampton Court are of a size and magnificence which are unrivalled. Others are glorious fragments – the Banqueting House and the Queen’s House, surviving parts of the longdemolished palaces of Whitehall and Greenwich, and the Great Hall of Westminster Palace, rebuilt as the Houses of Parliament. The dominant role of royalty in building activity in England ended abruptly with the death of Henry VIII and did not revive until the late eighteenth century under George III and George IV. Subsequently, royal patronage was constrained by the parsimony of Parliament and a prevailing dislike of Continental-style absolutism – and, long before constitutional monarchy emerged as the established political order after 1688, shortage of cash. There is no Versailles in England, no Caserta, no Winter Palace. Nevertheless, decorum continued to demand that the official residences of the monarch be appointed with a decorative richness which set them apart from even the grandest apartments 1 4
of the nobility. The gorgeous gilded interiors of Buckingham Palace need to be seen in this context, and the seemingly bombastic sequence of halls and chambers at Windsor and Hampton Court need to be read as symbolic of the might of the nation as well as of the aspirations of the sovereign. The taste and predilections of the inhabitants of these royal residences also contribute to their appearance, of course. Some members of the Royal Family have been passionate about art and architecture and aspired to be enthroned amidst the latest style and in maximum magnificence, but many have been content with – or even yearned for – something more modest. So within the remit of this tour are some charming, fascinating but really rather modest mansions – Frogmore House in Windsor Great Park and Clarence House in St James’s. Modesty, however, is relative, and these rank among the finest historic houses of England. Architecture and decoration are not the sole subjects of the tour. The Royal Collection is one of the greatest in the world; the Queen’s palaces are replete with paintings, sculptures, furniture, porcelain and textiles of international importance. The unoccupied palaces are also amply furnished and adorned. Art, architecture, history, personalities: the theme of royal residences is one which is as rich and stimulating as any that London and her environs has to offer.
National Portrait Gallery, stay for dinner at its roof top restaurant. First of two nights in London.
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Note that appointments for private tours cannot be confirmed until January 2018.
Day 1: Kensington Palace, Windsor. The coach leaves central London at 9.45am. Kensington Palace began modestly and was extended for William and Mary and the first two Georges by leading architects. Recently restored, it is thoughtfully presented to differentiate suites. Drive to Egham and settle into Great Fosters Hotel. There is a private evening tour of the state apartments of Windsor Castle, which was founded by William I – the Norman motte and bailey still dominates – and has been occupied by nearly every monarch since (the present Queen included). Centuries of embellishment has resulted in one of the most impressive palaces in the world. First of two nights in Egham. Day 2: Hampton Court, Frogmore. Hampton Court was begun by Cardinal Wolsey, enlarged by Henry VIII and 150 years later partly rebuilt by Christopher Wren for William III and Mary II. The most sumptuous of surviving Tudor palaces is joined to the most magnificent of 17th-cent. buildings in Britain; great interiors, fine works of art, beautiful gardens, a formal park. There follows a private visit to rarely-open Frogmore House. A farmhouse bought and enlarged by George III, it was used by successive sovereigns as a country residence, and is still used for entertaining. Day 3: Windsor, Clarence House. Return to Windsor Castle to see more of this vast complex, including St George’s Chapel, one of England’s finest Gothic buildings, and the Albert Memorial Chapel. In the late afternoon there is a private visit to Clarence House, a Nash mansion which was home to William IV while king, Princess Elizabeth from 1947, the Queen Mother from 1952 and the Prince of Wales from 2002. After seeing the excellent collection of Tudor portraits at the
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Day 4: Greenwich, Buckingham Palace. By fast river bus down the Thames to Greenwich. Of the great palace, a Tudor favourite, only the Queen’s House remains, designed by Inigo Jones in 1616 and the first truly Classical building in Britain. The rest was replaced by the Royal Naval Hospital built by Wren, Hawksmoor and Vanbrugh, the finest ensemble of Baroque architecture in Britain. In the afternoon visit the state rooms of Buckingham Palace. A mansion of 1703 remains at its core, but periodic refurbishment and enlargement, most significantly by John Nash for George IV in the 1820s, led to today’s truly palatial experience. Day 5: Westminster, Whitehall. Edward the Confessor began building an abbey and adjacent palace at Westminster in 1050. The Great Hall, the largest in Europe when built by William II 50 years later, and spectacularly re-roofed c. 1400, is the main mediaeval survivor; fires in 1512 and 1834 erased the rest. The present Houses of Parliament, designed by Barry and Pugin and the most richly ornamented of Victorian buildings, rose in its place and still ranks as a royal palace. Whitehall was one of the largest palaces in Europe but was burnt in 1698; only the epoch-making Banqueting House by Inigo Jones and Peter Paul Rubens survives. The tour ends at lunchtime.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,280. Single occupancy: £2,730. Included meals: 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Great Fosters, Egham (greatfosters.co.uk): located between Windsor and Hampton Court, Great Fosters is a 4-star hotel in a Grade One listed building of the 16th and 17th centuries, sympathetically restored and surrounded by acres of gardens and park. Bedrooms vary in size and décor, but many are furnished with antiques and all are well equipped with modern conveniences. Royal Horseguards Hotel, London (guoman.com/royal-horseguardshotel): 5-star hotel just off Whitehall and within walking distance of, or a short taxi ride to, most of the London palaces. The style is that of an international hotel and bedrooms are comfortable with all mod cons. How strenuous? Participants need to be good walkers and have stamina. On occasion there is a walk of 20 minutes or more between the coach (or water bus) and the palace, and some of the visits are of two hours or more without a break. Average distance by coach per day: 20 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: The Industrial Revolution, 6–11 August 2018 (p.30).
Illustration: Hampton Court, Ann Boleyn’s Gateway, watercolour by E.W. Haslehurst, publ. c. 1910.
Walking to Derbyshire Houses Magnificent countryside and great country houses 18–23 June 2018 (me 908) 6 days • £2,180 Lecturer: Dr Paul Atterbury Daily walks over hills, dales and landscaped parks followed by visits to country houses. A mixture of grand stately homes and smaller mansions: Kedleston, Haddon, Tissington, Casterne, Chatsworth, and Hardwick. Stay throughout in a comfortable hotel on the Chatsworth Estate.
Day 1. Derby, Kedleston Hall, Baslow. Leave Derby Station at 12.30pm for the 20-minute drive to Kedleston. Starting at the Doric gateway to the estate, walk through meadows, woodland and the ‘Capability’ Brown park to one of the supreme monuments of Classical architecture and decoration in England (40 minutes, cumulative elevation gain 15 metres). Inside and out Kedleston Illustration: Haddon Hall, mid-18th-century lithograph by L.Haghe after a drawing by W.Wood.
Day 2. Bakewell, Haddon Hall. Drive to the lovely historic town of Bakewell. Walk out into fields and gradually up through farmland to the village of Over Haddon (c. 55/60 mins, elevation gain 125m). After refreshments, descend through fields, gently at first, with views of the hillsides beyond the Wye and Lathkill Valleys, with tantalising glimpses of Haddon Hall in the valley (60/70 mins). Late mediaeval and Tudor, and with exquisite terraced gardens, Haddon Hall is for some the most arrestingly beautiful and atmospheric house in England. Return to Baslow by coach. Dinner at Michelin-starred restaurant, Fischer’s. Day 3. Tissington. Walk along an enchanting rural route to Tissington from the village of Parwich (1 hour, elevation gain 50m). Tissington is an extraordinarily pretty village, and the largely Jacobean Hall is a delight; Georgian interiors, family documents and terraced gardens. After lunch, Sir Richard FitzHerbert gives commentary during a walk through his estate (1½ hours, small elevation gain). The landscape is enchanting, quintessential Derbyshire, the hills gentle, trees plentiful, fields bounded by hedges or stone walls. Day 4. Dovedale, Casterne Hall. The River Dove has carved a spectacular limestone gorge which has delighted walkers for generations. Our route leads up Hall Dale and out into open countryside where livestock graze and the views stretch for miles across Ilam and the Manifold Valley. The 3-hour walk (with stops) shows all the diversity of the White Peak (6.2 miles, elevation gain 170m). Built in the 1730s, Casterne Hall is a manor house rather than a stately home, a perfect Classical structure rising from a farmyard. We are entertained for lunch by the owners. Day 5: Chatsworth House. Walk for half an hour from the hotel along the valley to Chatsworth House. Dating largely from around 1700 and the 1840s, Chatsworth is not only one of the grandest country houses in Britain but also an extraordinary treasure-house of art and
furnishings, brilliantly presented as refurbishment continues. A tour in the morning is followed by about three hours of free time, to revisit the house and to explore the gardens. Leave for an afternoon walk (75 mins, elevation gain 105m) past an inhabited Elizabethan tower back to the hotel. Day 6: Hardwick Hall. The final walk begins at the edge of an estate and winds through varied terrain to reach the house, which sits atop a high scarp. Features include two magnificent avenues and a woodland walk laid out by Lady Spencer, mother of Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire. (1½ hours, elevation gain 90m). Built in the 1590s by the richest woman in England, Hardwick Hall ranks among the greatest Elizabethan architecture and most memorable interiors in England. Return to Derby station by 5.00pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,180. Single occupancy: £2,350. Included meals: 3 lunches and 3 dinners (including 1 Michelin-starred) with wine. Accommodation. The Cavendish Hotel, near Chatsworth (cavendish-hotel.net): located on the Chatsworth Estate, it has been an inn for centuries. All bedrooms have good views and elegant décor with original artwork. (4-stars.) How strenuous? This is a walking tour, with 8–10 (two could be omitted) walks of 40 minutes–3 hours. Two are on fairly level terrain but some are moderately strenuous with cumulative elevation gain of up to 170 metres. Participants must be used to regular country walking with significant uphill element. A feature of the Peak District are the squeeze stiles, gaps in drystone walls too narrow for livestock. Some step stiles require walkers to raise the foot as high as their knee. Participants require fitness, stamina and agility. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Mediaeval Middle England, 25–29 June 2018 (p.27); Great Houses of the East, 28 June–6 July 2018 (p.11). 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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Hall has hardly changed since the 1760s. Continue to Baslow where all five nights are spent.
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One of the joys of a walk in the English countryside is glimpsing a great house in the distance. At first just dimly perceived chimneys and roofs, the rest screened by trees, but as the walk continues more is revealed, and beauty beckons. But after further progress along the path, foliage and land mass reassert themselves and the mansion passes from sight. Unless the house is the goal of the walk. Then it continues to grow in size, in detail, in magnificence, until one is examining it from the front lawn. Maybe next one mounts the steps and passes over the threshold; or peel away for refreshments or lunch – on this tour the more frequent course, given that arrival follows a country walk of an hour or two, or three. This tour includes some of the greatest houses in the country, outstanding representatives of their period, laden with treasures – Haddon, Hardwick, Casterne, Chatsworth, and Kedleston. Tissington also features, for contrast but also for its intrinsic delight. Famously, the Peak District offers wonderful walking country, and all but one of our walks are within the boundaries of this, the oldest National Park in Britain. Most consists of rumpled hills and their covering of little green fields, dry stone walls, deciduous trees and a dense population of cattle and sheep. There are only occasional hints of moorland. Landscaped parks are another feature, with their carefully composed arboreal clumps syncopated with grassy hillsides, serpentine lakes and grand avenues. River valleys provide another pleasure. Romantic poets delighted in Dovedale, for over two hundred years one of the most famous walks in the world. Wordsworth explored the valley as a young man and crystallised his recollections many years later in The Prelude: ‘In summer, making quest for works of art, / Or scenes renowned for beauty, I explored / That streamlet whose blue current works its way / Between romantic Dovedale’s spiry rocks’.
Walking to Cornish Houses Landscapes and history between Fowey and Padstow Day 3: Caerhays Castle, Trewithen. A 3-mile coastal cliffs and woodland walk to Caerhays Castle, with some steep ascents and descents, short stony sections and a long, stepped descent at the end (130 steps). There is a guided tour with the head gardener of this Grade II* listed estate. Day 4: Trerice to Padstow. Cross the peninsular towards the north coast, breaking the journey to visit Trerice, an Elizabethan manor house. In the afternoon there is a 5-mile coastal walk, before continuing to Padstow, a picturesque fishing port that has long attracted visitors, the allure recently enhanced by Rick Stein’s restaurants. First of three nights in Padstow. Day 5: the Camel Trail, Pencarrow. Drive to begin walking a 4-mile section of the level Camel Trail. After lunch drive to Pencarrow, the home of the Molesworth-St Aubyn family for 500 years; the current house is Georgian, delightful inside and out and with fine gardens. Return to Padstow for some free time.
24–30 September 2018 (mf 162) 7 days • £2,520 Lecturer: Dr Paul Atterbury Seven walks through delightful Cornish countryside followed by visits to country houses. A mixture of grand and smaller country houses and gardens, many visited by special arrangement. Stay in Fowey and Padstow, among the most vibrant and picturesque Cornish seaside towns, with charming hotels and modern British food.
B R IT A IN & I R E L A N D : ENGLAND
‘Cornwall is a land beyond England’, in Simon Jenkins’s happily ambiguous phrase. First, prosaically, it protrudes: with a coastal path of 300 miles and with no village more than 16 miles from the sea, the Cornish peninsula extends mainland England far to the south and west. Second, in some less definable way, it feels palpably distinct. Much of the landscape and streetscape is unmistakably and intensely English, but equally unmistakable is a pervasive all-enveloping Cornishness. The physical reality of slate and granite gave rise to tough economic realities; except at the height of the Industrial Revolution, Cornwall has usually been among the least prosperous parts of the country, mining and fishing and marginal farming providing hard ways to earn a living. Redolent of struggle and privation, the county provides a less luxuriant version of the traditional English scene – reminiscent in many ways of the England of a generation or two ago. There are moorland and coastal landscapes of rugged beauty, but also vistas of heart-stopping charm. There are dramatic cliffs, becalmed valleys with patchwork emerald fields, fecund gardens in sub-tropical microclimates, dour yet impossibly pretty fishing villages, architectural gems among country mansions, and proud little towns. 1 6
The added charm of these walks is that at the end of most is a country house or garden of distinction. We have chosen a selection based on their proximity to first-class countryside or coastal landscapes, but also to offer a variety of architectural periods and styles. Many are still privately owned and open to us by prior appointment or outside usual opening hours. The tour stays in Fowey and Padstow, both bustling holiday destinations in the summer months, but which exude a quieter charm and sense of purpose in the autumn. They are also both home to restaurants building their reputations on locally sourced and well-cooked British food.
It in e r a r y Day 1: St Germans, Port Eliot. The tour starts at Plymouth railway station at 1.00pm. Drive to the picturesque village of St Germans from where we begin a 1½-mile walk to Port Eliot, a Grade I listed house, substantially remodelled in the 18th-century, in part by Sir John Soane; the Round Room here is considered one of his masterpieces, now decorated with Robert Lenkiewicz’s mural ‘The Condition of Man’. Visit St German’s Priory, once the bishop’s seat for Cornwall. Continue to Fowey for the first of three nights. Day 2: Fowey, Lanhydrock. Topped and tailed with ferry crossings, this moderate to strenuous 6½ mile walk begins with the splendid cliffs of Lantic Bay and continues with undulating farmland, the soaring mediaeval parish church at Lanteglos-by-Fowey, a secluded wooded river valley and views across the estuary to Fowey. In the afternoon walk 1 mile through woodland to Lanhydrock House. A fine Jacobean mansion surrounded by gardens, park and landscape, the opulent interiors display the entire spectrum of life in a top-end Victorian household.
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Day 6: St Enodoc’s Church, Rock. Drive out to Polzeath before a 3-mile walk across Daymer Bay to Rock; John Betjeman is buried in the tiny church at Trebetherick. Return by passenger ferry from Rock to Padstow. Visit St Petroc’s Church and Prideaux Place, a gorgeous manor house, Elizabethan and Strawberry-Hill Gothic, still a private home. Day 7: Cotehele House. A Tudor house perched high above the River Tamar and once home to the Edgcumbe family. It is entirely hung with tapestries, mostly from the 17th century. The coach returns to Plymouth train station by 3.00pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,520. Single occupancy: £2,990. Included meals: 2 lunches, 5 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Fowey Hall (foweyhallhotel. co.uk): late Victorian mansion, set above the town centre with extensive estuary views from the grounds. Elegant public rooms compliment the comfortable bedrooms. In Padstow we occupy the rooms above Rick Stein’s Seafood Restaurant (rickstein.com). Rooms vary in size and outlook, but throughout décor is fresh and modern and the service is excellent. How strenuous? This tour should only be considered by those who are used to regular country walking, with some uphill content; some steep rises and falls are unavoidable, and walking sticks are recommended. Strong knees and ankles are essential, as are a pair of well-worn hiking boots with good ankle support. There are seven walks of between 1 and 6½ miles. Average distance by coach per day: 43 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Walking a Royal River, 17–23 September 2018 (p.13); Early Railways: The North, 16–22 September 2018 (p.28).
Illustration: Padstow, Place House, steel engraving 1832.
Walking in the Cotswolds Gardens, manor houses, parish churches and wonderful countryside 14–21 May 2018 (me 866) 8 days • £2,480 Lecturer: Dr Steven Blake Six walks through some of the loveliest countryside in the world with stops to enjoy buildings and landscape features. A carefully selected itinerary which favours the lesser-visited and less accessible places over some of the more touristy ones. Several outstanding gardens are a feature, as are manor houses and a handful of the finest parish churches in the country. Stay in Broadway, in a former 15th-century retreat for the Abbots of Pershore. Can be combined with Music in the Cotswolds, 21–24 May 2018 – see page 20.
Day 1: Broadway. The tour starts at Moreton-inMarsh railway station at 2.15pm. Leaving luggage on the coach, visit Broadway Tower, an 18thcentury folly placed there by ‘Capability’ Brown. Follow the Cotswold Way on foot into Broadway; all seven nights are spent here. Day 2: north Cotswolds. A morning visit to the 4,000-year-old Neolithic burial chamber of Belas Knap, the finest long barrow in Gloucestershire,
Day 4: Stanway and Sezincote. Visit Stanway House, a Jacobean mansion which is one of the Cotswolds’ loveliest manor houses and remains a family home. Walk from Stanway to Stanton (2 miles) and have lunch at a pub. Drive to Sezincote, built in the Mogul style of Rajasthan and the inspiration for the Brighton Pavilion. Day 5: Woodchester, Painswick and Quenington. Visit the not-quite finished Woodchester Mansion, a Victorian pile, abandoned just before occupation. Walk around Painswick, a beautiful little town with famous churchyard yews. Return to Broadway and see a branch of the Ashmolean Museum focusing on vernacular British decorative arts. Day 6: central Cotswolds. Beginning and ending in Sapperton, walk (5 miles) through undulating woodland and pasture, with periodic open vistas. Pass a number of buildings in the Arts and Crafts style. Cirencester is a flourishing market town with modern metropolitan businesses and streets with many 17th- and 18th-century delights. The soaring magnificence of St John the Baptist is of cathedral-like proportions, while the Corinium Museum houses a fine collection of RomanoBritish antiquities. Day 7: Chipping Campden. Walk to Chipping Campden from Dover’s Hill (1 mile), enjoying spectacular views over the escarpment. Possibly the most beautiful of all Cotswold towns, it is a gilded masterpiece of limestone and craftsmanship and home to one of the very finest wool churches in the area. Some free time here. Continue to Hidcote Manor Gardens, one of the most inventive and influential gardens of the 20th century, before visiting the gardens at Kiftsgate Court. Day 8: Southern Cotswolds. A special visit to the gardens at Highgrove, the country house of the Prince of Wales (subject to confirmation).The coach returns to Kemble railway station by 3.15pm.
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How strenuous? This tour should only be considered by those who are used to regular country walking, with some uphill content. The paths are usually on grassy tracks or through woodland, combined with some paved road. Climbing and crossing stiles are a regular feature on these paths. Strong knees are essential, as are a pair of well-worn hiking boots with good ankle support. There are six walks of between 1 and 5 miles. Average distance by coach per day: 45 miles. Group size: between 12 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Tudor Power in South & West, 8–13 May 2018 (p.32); Music in the Cotswolds, 21–24 May 2018 (p.20).
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Day 3: Kelmscott, Fairford, Bibury. In the morning visit Kelmscott Manor, the Tudor house acquired by William Morris, founder of the Arts and Crafts movement. The magnificent Perpendicular St Mary at Fairford is Britain’s only parish church with a complete set of mediaeval stained glass windows, and of the highest quality too. A walking tour of Bibury passes Arlington Row, the renowned terrace of cottages that led William Morris to refer to Bibury as the most beautiful village in England.
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The Cotswolds famously encompasses some of the loveliest countryside in England. Loveliness belongs not only to the countryside but also to the buildings that go with it – viscerally pretty villages, farmsteads, manor houses and market towns. An essential ingredient of the winning formula is the building stone, seemingly 80% honey and 20% lichen, extruded from the hills on which they stand and sculpted by generations of masons who honed their craft with instinctive good taste. The vernacular is timeless and utterly beguiling, though it incorporates some of the grandest and proudest town houses in England. Some could almost have been designed by Andrea Palladio himself – and some practically were, the designs transmitted to Gloucestershire artisans through the innumerable copycat pattern books which buoyed up English provincial building for a couple of centuries. Parish churches are a particular glory of the Cotswolds. Mostly mediaeval, they range from the diminutive, artless and additive – often blessedly under-restored and un-modernised – to the great churches in the larger villages and towns with soaring arcades, acres of glass, elaborately sculptured tombs and towers and spires to rival any in the country. Where did the money come from? Wool. Prized as the best in Europe by the Merchant of Prato in the fourteenth century, wool and cloth manufacturing was the basis for solid prosperity from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution – when the water power of the hills and valleys pushed the region to the forefront before the advent of steam power knocked it back again. Thus the Cotswolds slumbered, ripe for discovery as a rural idyll by the bicycle-mounted aesthetes and romantics of the late Victorian era.
followed by a walk along the Cotswold Way (2 miles) to Sudeley Castle, famous for its honeyed stone and magnificent gardens. After a break for lunch there is another walk (3 miles), through the attractive town of Winchcombe to Hailes, to visit the ruins of a 13th-century Cistercian abbey and a Romanesque church with wall paintings.
2–8 July 2018 (me 943) 7 days • £3,140 Lecturer: Marc Millon Very few spaces remaining Please contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com
Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,480. Single occupancy: £2,890. Included meals: 1 lunch and 5 dinners with wine. Accommodation. The Broadway Hotel, Broadway (cotswold-inns-hotels.co.uk): 4-star hotel, originally built as a rural retreat for the Abbots of Pershore in the fifteenth century.
What else is included in the price? See page 8. Illustration: Chipping Campden, by G.F.Nicholls, publ. 1920.
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Arts & Crafts in the Cotswolds Art and artefacts in the buildings they were designed for Janet Sinclair Art historian, curator and lecturer. She studied at the Courtauld and the Barber Institute, Birmingham. She has held senior management posts at several heritage sites and is currently Collections Manager at Petworth for the National Trust. She is a panel member of the Sustainable Communities Fund in the South Downs National Park. See pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies.
20–24 September 2018 (mf 163) 5 days • £1,740 Lecturer: Janet Sinclair Visits to see some of the finest output of the Arts and Crafts movement, including three private houses with work in situ. Includes Kelmscott Manor, Rodmarton Manor and Madresfield Court and workshops where the work was created. Some of the loveliest countryside in the world with the honey-coloured stone that marks the buildings from Oxford to the Severn Valley. Stay all four nights in the charming Cotswolds village of Broadway. Combine with The Divine Office: Choral Music in Oxford, 24–28 September 2018 – see page 20.
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Following the ideals of Pugin, amplified by Ruskin, the call for a return to a golden age of craftsmanship with respect for the individual became a moral as well as an aesthetic crusade in mid-century Britain. A number of idealistic artists, architects and thinkers found inspiration that was essentially mediaeval but went beyond the imitative aspect of the Gothic Revival. William Morris and his collaborators and followers, now collectively known as the Arts and Crafts movement, reacted against the worst byproducts of industrialisation, poverty and social injustice, and believed in a link between these ills and mass-manufactured, poorly designed goods and shoddy housing. Ironically perhaps, the railways, the most omnipresent sign of industrialisation, opened up unspoilt Cotswolds villages as an escape from sordid city life and provided easy access to its commercial markets. The villages of Daneway and Sapperton were colonised by craft workers who shared their wealthy patrons’ respect for past styles and high standards of craftsmanship. Inspired by Morris, their attitude towards historic buildings was based on conservation rather than ‘improvement’. Thus the past and the modern imperceptibly fuse at magical Owlpen Manor, while Rodmarton, begun as late as 1909, seems as if it has always been there. 1 8
Ernest Gimson and the Barnsleys, who built and furnished Rodmarton, were not alone: in 1902 C.R. Ashbee had moved the entire Guild of Handicraft, workers and their families, from East London to rural Chipping Campden. Later exponents, like C.F. Voysey, turned towards a newer, more ascetic style, yet worked alongside their mediaevally-inspired colleagues. Nowhere is this better illustrated than at Madresfield where Ashbee and Voysey worked in the early twentieth century with Payne’s Birmingham Group who created the extraordinary chapel later immortalised in Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited.
It in e r a r y Day 1: Oxford, Kelmscott, Broadway. The coach leaves Oxford Railway Station at 11.00am. Begin in the Ashmolean Museum – a treasure-house of art and artefacts from many civilisations. Kelmscott is the most evocative and best known of the houses associated with William Morris. It looked to him as if it had ‘grown up out of the soil’, and became his spiritual as well as his family home. It now holds an outstanding collection of his possessions and works: furniture, original textiles, pictures, books, carpets, ceramics and metalwork. All four nights are spent in Broadway. Day 2: Rodmarton, Sapperton, Owlpen. The first commission for Morris and Co was from architect G.F. Bodley for stained glass for All Saints Church on the Cotswold hills, which therefore contains work by Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Madox Brown, Philip Webb and Morris himself. Owlpen Manor, untouched since the 17th century, was sympathetically restored for the Mander family by craftsmen with sensitive respect for the past vernacular. In contrast, Rodmarton is one of the last country houses to be built and furnished in a traditional style, by hand with local stone, local timber and local craftsmen. Nearby Sapperton became home to several members of the Cotswolds group including Gimson and the Barnsleys. Day 3: Chipping Campden, Madresfield. In 1902 C.R. Ashbee and his Guild of Handicraft arrived in the hitherto quiet village of Chipping Campden. Here they set up workshops, some of which survive to this day, and their lives and skills are celebrated in a small museum. The Guild’s most important
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commission was the library for Lord Beauchamp at Madresfield Court, an ancient moated manor house sympathetically extended in the 19th century. At the same time the Birmingham Group led by Henry Payne decorated and furnished Madresfield’s celebrated chapel that so enchanted Evelyn Waugh, a family friend. Day 4: Broadway, Cheltenham. Broadway now houses a branch of the Ashmolean Museum focusing on vernacular British decorative arts. The Gordon Russell museum showcases an arts and crafts-trained designer whose work is influential today. The Museum and Art Gallery in Cheltenham, self-styled ‘capital’ of the Cotswolds, contains a nationally important Arts and Crafts collection, and contemporary work by their artistic descendants. Day 5: Oxford. Oxford was the meeting place of William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. Follow in their footsteps from Exeter College and its spectacular chapel by George Gilbert Scott. The coach takes you to Oxford Railway Station by 12.30pm. (If you are joining The Divine Office, festival staff at Oxford Railway Station will assist with getting a taxi to your chosen hotel. The first festival event is at 2.45pm.) Note that appointments for some private tours cannot be confirmed until January 2018.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,740. Single occupancy: £2,030. Included meals: 1 lunch and 3 dinners with wine. Accommodation. The Lygon Arms, Broadway (thehotelcollection.co.uk): 16th-century coaching inn; some parts date back to the 14th century. Situated in the high street of Broadway. 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. 64 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: The Divine Office: Choral Music in Oxford, 24–28 September 2018 (p.20).
Illustration: Kelmscott Manor, after a drawing by Charles G. Harper from ‘Thames Valley Villages’,1910.
Gardens of Cheshire & Shropshire To include the RHS Tatton Park Flower Show 16–21 July 2018 (me 916) 6 days • £1,970 Lecturer: Amanda Patton Some of England’s finest gardens with a focus on traditional and modern design and planting. One day dedicated to the RHS Tatton Park Flower Show, showcasing new and upcoming designers and summer plants from top nurseries. Trentham Estates’s Italian garden and ‘Capability’ Brown landscape, with modern updates by Tom Stuart-Smith and Piet Oudolf. Many of the gardens will be seen by special arrangement, and private gardens are a feature.
Day 1: Wollerton, Hodnet, Chester. Depart from Stoke-on-Trent Railway Station at 1.00pm for Wollerton Old Hall, a small Arts & Crafts-inspired garden set around an attractive 16th-century, half-timbered house. Nearby Hodnet Hall’s 1920s English landscape garden enjoys a lakeside setting and lovely planting beside the stream that feeds it. First of three nights in Chester. Day 2: Abbeywood, Peover, Adlington. Abbeywood’s ornamental area of experimental prairie planting is particularly lovely thanks to its wonderful backdrop of the rolling Cheshire countryside. Peover Hall’s charming Arts & Crafts garden, created in the 1890s, has a succession of colour-themed garden rooms and an unusual enclosed garden theatre. Adlington’s half-timbered Great Hall (built between 1480 and 1505) is surrounded by a sunken garden, rose garden and 17th-century landscape garden that follows the stream through a designed wilderness. Day 3: Arley. Arley Hall gardens were mainly laid out in the late 18th century by Roland and Mary Egerton-Warburton. The beautiful walled garden leads to the first double herbaceous border created in England, with its backdrop of buttressed formal hedging and yew topiary. After lunch at The Gardener’s Kitchen, return to Chester for some free time.
Day 4: Tatton Park, Rookery Hall. Today is dedicated to the RHS Tatton Park Flower Show. After the show drive to Rookery Hall Hotel for the first of two nights. Day 5: Biddulph, Henbury. Biddulph Grange is the life’s work of Victorian plant collector James Bateman. He arranged his collection according to the geographical region from which they originated, and embellished them with architectural features. Henbury Hall is an extraordinary private house modelled on Palladio’s La Rotonda. The gardens include a small but beautiful formal walled garden, a new large walled garden and a water garden with ‘Capability’ Brown-inspired lakes with walks, bridges and woodland planting. Day 6. While Trentham Hall was demolished in the 1930s, the structure of its expansive Italian garden, originally laid out in the 19th century, adjoining the ‘Capability’ Brown lake, remained intact. In an inspired move, Trentham Estates commissioned leading garden designer, Tom Stuart Smith, to replant the Italian garden to reflect contemporary planting ideas, resulting in one of the largest and most exciting new plantings in Europe. The garden also features a David Austin rose border as well as ‘rivers of grass’ and perennial plantings by renowned Dutch designer Piet Oudolf. Finish at Stoke-on-Trent Railway Station at c. 2.00pm.
Illustration: Trentham Hall, wood engraving c. 1880.
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Set among the rolling hills that lie between the northern Welsh borders and the Peak District, dotted with picturesque villages with halftimbered black and white houses, are some of the finest gardens in England. Traditional gardens have been lovingly restored, while exciting new gardens take the art of English garden-making into the twenty-first century. Foremost of these are the gardens at Trentham, comprising a formal Italian garden set within a ‘Capability’ Brown landscape, which have undergone a contemporary revival under some of the best-known garden designers currently working in the UK and abroad to achieve what is generally regarded as the finest garden in England. The expansive Italian garden, enclosed with David Austin roses, has been replanted under the direction of Tom Stuart Smith, who has won numerous gold medals at the Chelsea Flower Show, including Best in Show on three occasions. Tom’s distinctive style of clipped forms with naturalistic groupings of soft grasses and flowers, often planted to retain winter interest from seed heads, perfectly complements the original 19th-century structure implemented by Charles Barry. Adjacent to this are the Rivers of Grass and Floral Labyrinth designed by acclaimed Dutch plantsman Piet Oudolf (responsible for the High Line in New York) while the most recent addition to the gardens is the meadow created by Nigel Dunnett, the designer behind the Olympic Park plantings. Since 1984, Lesley and John Jenkins have been creating one of the most beautiful new English gardens of the 20th and 21st centuries around the 16th-century timber-framed Wollerton Old Hall. With strong structure and rich planting, it is a modern garden of rooms in the Arts and Crafts tradition, set against the architecture of the hall. A number of north-south and east-west axes divide the 4-acre garden into contrasting spaces exploring scale, formality and colour, from the simple greens of the Lime Allee and Font Garden to the controlled exuberance of the hot garden. The Royal Horticultural Society’s Tatton Park Flower Show, now in its 18th year, is firmly established as the top garden show in the north. The sumptuous floral marquee showcases some of the best growers in the country, featuring summer plants not seen at other shows, while Show Gardens, small Back to Back Gardens and Future Gardens provide inspiration from young and upcoming garden designers.
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Gardens of Cheshire & Shropshire continued
The Divine Office Choral music in Oxford
Amanda Patton Landscape and garden designer, writer and broadcaster specialising in the 20th-century garden. 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 Chelsea and Hampton Court flower shows. See pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price per person. Two sharing: £1,970. Single occupancy: £2,350. Included meals: 2 lunches, 3 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. The Chester Grosvenor, (chestergrosvenor.com): 5-star elegant hotel in an attractive timber, Grade II-listed building, located in the heart of Chester. Rooms are well proportioned. 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. Rooms are spacious. How strenuous? There is a lot of walking. Coaches can rarely park near the houses; many of the gardens are extensive with uneven ground or steps to reach different levels. Average coach travel per day: c. 56 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: The Georgians in Scotland, 23–31 July 2018 (p.42).
24–28 September 2018 (mf 180) Please contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com A celebration of choral music, largely liturgical, with mediaeval and Renaissance plainchant and polyphony prominent. The centrepiece of the festival is the Divine Office, the eight Offices of the Hours, sung at the appropriate times of day and night. Most of the performances take place in college chapels – Christ Church, Merton, All Souls, The Queen’s College and New, All Souls, Christ Church and Magdalen – with one in the University Church of St Mary’s. The best of Oxford’s college choirs perform together with some of Britain’s leading specialist choirs: The Tallis Scholars, Stile Antico, Intrada, Contrapunctus and Westminster Cathedral Choir. Access is limited to those who take a package which includes all the concerts, and accommodation in hotels or a college.
‘The music was the best I have ever heard. The Divine Office was a once in a lifetime experience.’ ‘I loved the choice of programme.’
Music in the Cotswolds
Country House Opera B R IT A IN
10–14 July 2018 Details available in November 2017 Please contact us to register your interest
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The Magic Flute at Garsington, and Madame Butterfly and Giulio Cesare at Glyndebourne. Stay at the Compleat Angler in Marlow and Pelham House Hotel in Lewes.
21–24 May 2018 (me 876) Please contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com Six private performances of English music in towns and villages in the Cotswolds, England’s prettiest region. Renaissance polyphony, 20th-century anthems, cornetts and sackbuts, orchestral rhapsodies, folk and art song. The Tallis Scholars, Gabrieli Consort, Orchestra of St John’s, The English Cornett & Sackbut Ensemble, tenor Matthew Long. Concerts in four glorious mediaeval churches, a Regency hall, and an Arts and Crafts home – access is exclusive to those who take a package which includes accommodation, dinners, talks, transport to each venue and much else besides. Choose from five hotels, all traditional countrystyle properties with modern facilities.
What else is included in the price? See page 8. 2 0
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Illustrations. Top: Oxford, Magdalen Chapel from ‘Magdalen College Oxford’, publ. 1907. Left: Northleach, Church of St Peter and Paul, lithograph published by Vincent Brooks Day & Son c. 1875.
Chippendale in Yorkshire Celebrating the 300th birthday of the great furniture maker 5–9 June 2018 (me 894) 5 days • £1,470 Lecturer: David Jones Celebrate 300 years since the birth of the great furniture maker Thomas Chippendale. Includes the complete conspectus and some of the best examples of Chippendale’s work. Outstanding collections at major country houses and lesser-known and private properties. Special arrangements and out-of-hours visits.
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Day 2: Temple Newsam, Nostell Priory. Temple Newsam House, one of the grandest ‘branch museums’ of any city, houses the collection of The Chippendale Society among an unparalleled repertoire of furniture and decorative art. Nostell Priory is a large Palladian house by architect James Paine; Robert Adam remodelled the hall and the principal rooms and Chippendale and his son furnished them. They show the designer’s development from his Director period to a fully fledged Neoclassical manner, including some of his finest Chinoiserie furniture.
Day 4: Burton Constable. Burton Constable contains one of the most coherent surviving schemes of furniture and interior decoration by Thomas Chippendale. William Constable, a cultured and discerning patron, modernised his Elizabethan seat in the 1760s, creating a striking suite of rooms furnished by the Chippendale workshop. The house also contains items from William Constable’s town house in Mansfield Street, Westminster, which were removed to Yorkshire in 1784. Day 5: Harewood. Generally recognised as Thomas Chippendale’s most magnificent, indeed ostentatious, commission, Harewood House was furnished ‘from top to bottom’ by his workshop over a period of thirty years. This John Carr house with principal rooms decorated by Robert Adam presented Chippendale with an opportunity to excel himself. The coach takes you to Leeds Railway Station by 3.00pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,470. Single occupancy: £1,630. Included meals: 1 lunch and 3 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Quebecs (quebecshotel.co.uk): centrally-located, 4-star hotel housed in a Grade II-listed former Liberal Club. How strenuous? Unavoidably there is quite a lot of walking on this tour and it would not be suitable for anyone with difficulties with everyday walking and stair-climbing. Coaches can rarely park near the houses, many of the parks and gardens are extensive, the houses visited don’t have lifts. Average distance by coach per day: 79 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Crown & Cromwell, 15–21 June 2018 (p.33).
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Day 1: Darlington. Leave Darlington Railway Station by coach at 1.30pm for a very special visit to a private home which contains a littleknown collection of furniture from the mature Director period. Overnights Leeds, where all four nights are spent.
Day 3: Newby Hall, Leeds. Newby is a 17th-cent. house with 18th-cent. wings and an interior remodelled by Robert Adam for which Chippendale provided furniture. The Tapestry room is a harmonious combination of Adam’s architecture and decoration, French looking glasses and tapestries and Chippendale’s mature period furniture. The chairs and sofas are the only ones by him to retain their original upholstery. An exhibition commemorates the 300th anniversary, an unprecedented retrospective which is filling gaps in our knowledge of the man and his furniture.
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Yorkshire contains the best concentration of documented commissions from the Thomas Chippendale workshop. Probably this is due to his family links with the county: he was born in the West Riding market town of Otley in 1718, and lived there until his move to St Martin’s Lane, London, at the age of thirty. The houses that contain his furniture were all either built or ‘modernised’ in the 1760s and 70s, some by local architects such as James Paine or John Carr, and some with striking interior schemes by Robert Adam. These provide a complementary backdrop to Chippendale’s effortlessly dignified ensembles. The furniture that we will be looking at varies from the simple and utilitarian, and sometimes engagingly old fashioned, to the most glamorous and expensive that Chippendale ever made. Analysing furniture at close quarters, we will learn how to identify a Chippendale piece (he never marked or stamped his furniture) from its construction and tell-tale features that characterise his workshop practice. For example, chairs are turned upside down to see the glue cramp cuts and setting out marks that his journeyman cabinet makers made, and the distinctive screw holes in the frames to fix a piece inside its packing case for the journey north by road and sea. At all locations, we view Chippendale’s furniture in its original context; accompanied by ‘Chinese’ wallpaper and accessories, for instance, in the Best bedroom at Nostell; surrounded by Grand Tour treasures and Gobelins tapestries at Newby; or simply en parade in the lavish Adam interiors at Harewood.
Dr David Jones Furniture historian specialising in English and Scottish furniture and Thomas Chippendale. He has taught at the University of St Andrews and the Smithsonian Institution. He advises on several collections including Hopetoun House, Dumfries House, and Paxton House, and uses these collections for teaching on site. See pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies.
Illustration: Harewood House, chromolithograph from ‘Country Seats Vol.I’, publ. 1880.
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Walking Hadrian’s Wall Roman civilisation at the edge of an Empire 14–20 May 2018 (me 865) 7 days • £1,980 Lecturer: Graeme Stobbs
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.
10–16 September 2018 (mf 110) 7 days • £1,980 Lecturer: Graeme Stobbs
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.
The archaeology and history of the largest Roman construction in northern Europe. The most spectacular stretches accessible only on foot, this is also a walking tour through some of the most magnificent scenery in England. Excursions from coast to coast include all the major Roman sites and relevant museums.
Day 5: walk Gilsland to Birdoswald; Newcastle. Walk through low-lying and pretty farmland with streams and wild flowers: 2 miles, c. 2 hours. Ascent: 104m. Descent: 75m. Included is the only mile with both milecastles and turrets visible, and good lengths of Wall. In Newcastle, the Great North Museum has the best collection of objects excavated along the Wall.
One hotel throughout, the best in the region.
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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 will-power, Hadrian’s Wall ranks among the most extraordinary of all Roman achievements. Its story does not end with its completion within Hadrian’s reign because for the remaining three centuries of Roman control there were constant changes both to the fabric and to its administration and occupation. 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 most thrilling, and it is in this central section, furthest from centres of population, 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, and to appreciate the vastness of the Roman achievement, to view many of its details and to immerse fully in the scenic beauties, there is no substitute for leaving wheels behind and walking along its course. How strenuous are the walks? On each of the five full days there is a walk of between two and three hours, covering up to four miles. The slow progress is in part due to stops to examine the 2 2
archaeology and to take in the wonderful views. But also the terrain is often quite rough, and periodically there are rises and falls, sometimes quite steep, though rarely of more than 50 metres and often aided by rough-hewn stone steps recently made for the Hadrian’s Wall Path. It is not a tough trek but nevertheless it should only be attempted by people whose regular country walks include some uphill elements. A coach takes you to the start of each walk and meets you at the end, eliminating the need to retrace steps or carry much except water and waterproofs. Each day has been planned to provide a balanced mix of archaeology, more general sight-seeing and cross-country trekking, and for this reason the walks do not constitute a linear progression. On most days you return to the hotel by 5.00pm, allowing time to relax before dinner.
It in e r a r y 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. The first walk is perhaps the most consistently rugged as it follows long, well-preserved stretches of the Wall through moorland above the cliffs of the Whinsill Crag; a thrilling walk: 2.6 miles, c. 2. hours 45 minutes. Ascent: 121m. Descent: 212m. 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. Again for much of the route the Wall rides the crest of the faultline of dolerite crags, dipping and climbing: 3.2 miles, c. 3 hours. Ascent: 233m. Descent: 174m. There are spectacular stretches,
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Day 6: walk Walltown to Cawfields; Carlisle, Bowness-on-Solway. The final walk is spectacularly varied, from rocky hilltops to lowland pasture: 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. Arrive by coach at Newcastle railway station by 2.30pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,980. Single occupancy: £2,120. 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? You should not consider this tour unless you possess a well-used pair of walking boots, are more than averagely fit, have good balance and a head for heights. Please also read the last two paragraphs of the introduction. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. In May, combine this tour with: Music in the Cotswolds, 21–24 May 2018 (p.20). Or in September, with: Walking a Royal River, 17–23 September 2018 (p.13). Illustration: bust of Hadrian, engraving c. 1840.
Northumbria Countryside, coast, architecture and art 6–14 June 2018 (me 898) 9 days • £2,880 Lecturer: Christopher Newall Wide-ranging exploration of the natural and man-made beauties of one of the least visited regions of England. Castles, country houses, villages, towns and cities and wonderful landscape. Several special arrangements, a private boat for a day, two exhilarating country walks (optional – alternative visits are provided for non-walkers). Good hotels: Jesmond Dene House in Newcastle and Doxford Hall near Alnwick. Northumbria is border country in depth. The Romans had a bumpy ride in their attempts to fix the limits of their empire and pacify the populace, despite the extraordinary achievement of Hadrian’s Wall. After the Norman Conquest the region was supposedly within England but was subject to frequent Scottish incursions and effectively ruled by a handful of clans beyond the writ of the English Crown. To this day castles characterise the region more than country houses, and yet those houses that exist share an austere aesthetic. But perhaps the most striking and alluring consequence of its buffer-zone heritage is the landscape. Remote and sparsely inhabited, ruffled by majestic undulations and etched with dry stone walls, rugged uplands mixing with picturesque farmland, Northumbria has some of the most enthralling scenery in all England. Such marginal land was a magnet to monastic foundations, and
outstanding mediaeval church architecture is another feature. And yet, by extreme contrast, the region became one of the powerhouses of the industrial revolution. The Tyneside conurbation has some of the most fascinating cityscapes in Britain. Beyond the city, wealth and innovation led to the great Victorian country estate such as Norman Shaw’s Cragside. Northumbria was far larger than the (relatively) modern counties of Northumberland, Durham and Tyne and Wear. This tour presents a grand sweep of history, architecture and landscape by selecting the finest sights in an itinerary that is balanced in content and pace.
It in e r a r y Day 1: Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Durham. The coach leaves the hotel at 1.00pm and Newcastle Central Station at 1.30pm. Drive to Durham Cathedral, one of the great monuments of Romanesque Europe, its glories enhanced by a hilltop site in one of the loveliest little cities in England. Return via St Paul’s church in Jarrow, the monastery home of the Venerable Bede (ad 673–735), one of the greatest intellectuals of the Middle Ages. First of five nights in Newcastle. Day 2: Newcastle. Built on high ground beside the Tyne, Newcastle has many architectural excitements, from a Norman keep to innovatory bridges. Grey Street and Grainger Street date to the 1830s, Classicism at its grandest and most picturesque. The Laing Art Gallery is particularly strong on Victorian art, including the local artist John Martin. There are special visits to the Literary and Philosophical Society, opened in 1825, and
the Gothic Revival library at the Mining Institute. Descend to the quayside for dramatic vistas and post-industrial regeneration – Wilkinson Eyre’s Millennium Bridge and Foster’s Sage Gateshead. Day 3: Bywell, Hexham, Hadrian’s Wall. Nestled in the Tyne Valley, the village of Bywell has two fine churches, one with a Saxon tower. The delightful town of Hexham grew up around an abbey founded in ad 674; the grand 13th-century church survives. An optional walk along Hadrian’s Wall from Housesteads (3½ miles), scenically and archaeologically perhaps the most spectacular stretch. Non-walkers visit Vindolanda, site of a Roman town; ongoing excavations are yielding exciting discoveries. Day 4: Alnwick, Edlingham, Cragside. Externally still a formidable mediaeval fortress, Alnwick Castle, seat of the Dukes of Northumberland, has sumptuous interiors and a superb painting collection. A beautiful drive via Edlingham to see the Norman church and remains of a 12th-century hall house. Cragside, built for Sir William Armstrong, is the masterpiece of Norman Shaw and the interiors form a wonderful sequence of late-Victorian taste and technology. Day 5: Warkworth, Woodhorn, Belsay. More palace than castle, the 15th-century Warkworth Castle towers above the town. Woodhorn Colliery is one of the best surviving examples of a 19th-century coal mine. After Sir Charles Monck’s return from Greece in 1805 he built Belsay Hall in a severely Grecian style, a contrast to the delightful woodland gardens which lead to a mediaeval castle. Illustration: Alnwick Castle, chromolithograph c. 1880.
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Northumbria continued
Day 6: Craster, Dunstanburgh. En route to Craster visit Tynemouth to see the impressive Collingwood Monument and the North and South piers at the mouth of the Tyne – astonishing pieces of engineering. Lunch in the pretty seaside town of Craster, kipper capital of the UK. A glorious coastal hillside walk to Dunstanburgh Castle (2½ miles round trip; optional), in splendid isolation on a rocky promontory. Non-walkers visit the gardens at Howick Hall. Drive to the hotel, Doxford Hall, which is 6 miles away. First of three nights here.
The Cathedrals of England Ely, Lincoln, Durham, York, Coventry, Gloucester, Bristol, Wells, Salisbury, Winchester
Day 7: Berwick-upon-Tweed, Norham, Bamburgh. The border town of Berwick has been much fought over by England and Scotland in the past. It is protected by the most complete set of ramparts in England. Barracks, Cromwellian church and Royal Border Bridge. Drive into wild Northumberland to the ruins of Norham Castle, once one of the strongest border castles and finally defeated by James IV of Scotland. Some free time at the hotel or in Bamburgh. Day 8: Farne Islands, Holy Island. Drive to Holy Island to see Lindisfarne Priory and the Castle which was later converted by Lutyens into Edward Hudson’s country home. Sail on a privately chartered boat to the Farne Islands and Inner Farne, famously the setting of Grace Darling’s heroism and home to some of England’s richest birdlife. St Aidan lived as a hermit here before establishing Lindisfarne Priory, as did St Cuthbert who later became the patron saint of Durham. Day 9: Newcastle. 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. Drive south to Newcastle, dropping off at the station by 1.45pm and at the Jesmond Dene House c. 2.30pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,880. Single occupancy: £3,220. National Trust or English Heritage members (with cards) will be refunded c. £45.
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Included meals: 1 lunch and 7 dinners with wine.
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Accommodation. Jesmond Dene House, Newcastle (jesmonddenehouse.co.uk): 4-star, 19th-century mansion in a quiet wooded suburb which opened as a hotel in 2007 and was awarded César City Hotel of the Year in 2013; stylish, very comfortable, exceptional service, good amenities, garden, excellent restaurant. Doxford Hall, near Alnwick (doxfordhall.com): 4-star, early 19thcentury country house designed by John Dobson; bedrooms have a traditional décor and there is a spa and gardens. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking involved, even without the two optional country walks. Coaches can rarely park near the sites and some places visited are extensive. Average distance by coach per day: 47 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Walking to Cornish Houses, 30 May–5 June 2018 (p.16); Crown & Cromwell, 15–21 June 2018 (p.33). 2 4
18–26 April 2018 (me 828) 9 days • £2,740 Lecturer: Jon Cannon 24 October–1 November 2018 (mf 282) 9 days • £2,740 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. This is an architectural journey that would be hard to equal for intensity of aesthetic delight and 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 – north, south, east and west – to see some of the most glorious mediaeval architecture to be found anywhere.
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Connoisseurs may carp at the omissions, but logistics exclude only a couple of cathedrals of comparable beauty, magnificence and interest. With an average of little over one cathedral a day, there is plenty of time to really get to know, assimilate, appreciate and contemplate each one. All but one are mediaeval, Norman (as Romanesque is generally called in Britain) and Gothic. It is easy to underestimate the length of time the Middle Ages encompasses: the span from the earliest work we see on the tour to the latest, from the Norman Conquest to the Reformation, equals that from the Reformation to the present day. There was huge variety in the building arts and historical circumstances during those 460 years. The one non-mediaeval cathedral on the itinerary is Coventry. Rebuilt after the Second World War, not only is it a treasure house of midtwentieth-century 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. Organ recitals are organised for us 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. For centuries, British scholars and critics laboured under an inferiority complex, believing English Gothic to be a defective derivative of the thoroughbred French version, inferior according to the degree to which it departed from the soaring,
‘Jon Cannon is the consummate teacher who made the complexity of the history, geography and structure of the cathedrals both interesting and accessible. We were constantly enthralled.’ clean-limbed and impeccably rational paradigms across the Channel. That cultural cringe has all but evaporated in the last couple of generations, not least because evidence has been piling up that masons and architects in England had entire confidence in their inventiveness and deliberately chose to shun French conventions in favour of England’s own distinctive and fascinating imaginative universe.
It in e r a r y Day 1: Ely. The coach leaves King’s Cross, 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 (c. 1110–30), with their thick walls, tiers of arches and clusters of shafts, leads to the crossing and its unique 14th-century octagonal lantern, a work of genius. The detached Lady Chapel, also in the Decorated style, is the largest and perhaps the finest in the country; the Early English quire 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. The steep streets of the ancient town are a delight. First of three nights in York. Day 3: Durham. By train to Durham (40 mins), where the topography and 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 churches. Overnight York.
Day 6: Gloucester, Bristol. The procession of tall cylindrical pillars in Gloucester’s nave is unadulterated Norman, but, following the burial of
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, 1220–58. To homogeneity are added lucidity of design and perfection of detail. Completed a century later, the spire at 404 feet is the tallest mediaeval structure in Britain. The close is the finest in the country, and the town beyond has an extensive expanse of historic fabric. Overnight Winchester. 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 (1079), 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
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,740. Single occupancy: £3,060. Included meals: 1 lunch and 6 dinners with wine. Accommodation. The Castle Hotel, Lincoln (castlehotel.net): 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 Stratford (Q Hotels), Stratford-uponAvon (qhotels.co.uk): 4-star, modern 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. You ought to be able to walk at about three miles an hour for up to half an hour. There are also a lot of steps and uneven surfaces. 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. In April, combine this tour with: Royal Churches, 13–15 April 2018 (p.26); Mediaeval Saxony, 30 April–8 May 2018 (p.85). Or in October, with: Mediaeval Alsace, 16–23 October 2018 (p.71). Illustrations. Opposite page: Lincoln, cathedral, wood engraving from ‘Cathedrals, Abbeys & Churches of England & Wales Vol.I’, publ. 1896. Above: Gloucester, cathedral cloister, engraving c. 1820.
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Day 5: Coventry. Coventry Cathedral is perhaps internationally Britain’s best-known 20th-century building. Built to designs by Sir Basil Spence beside the ruins of its predecessor, destroyed in 1940, it is both a showcase for some of the best art of the time (Graham Sutherland, John Piper, Jacob Epstein). In the evening, a walk through Stratford-upon-Avon, which has retained many buildings Shakespeare would have known. Overnight Stratford.
Day 7: Wells. An exceptionally unspoilt little city, Wells has a fortified bishop’s palace, 14thcentury houses of the Vicars Choral and much else of charm and interest. 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 experimental contrasted spaces of the Decorated east end, serene chapter house and Perpendicular cloisters all contribute to the cathedral’s exceptional allure. The strainer arches supporting the sagging tower are among the great creations of the Middle Ages. Overnight Wells.
Gothic micro-architecture. Wall paintings, floor tiles, the finest 12th-century Bible. Return to Tothill Street in central London by 4.00pm.
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Day 4: York. York Minster is the largest of English mediaeval cathedrals. Above ground it is all Gothic, from Early English to Perpendicular but predominantly 14th-century, demonstrating an exceptional knowledge of the latest French Rayonnant ideas. It is a treasure trove of original stained glass, and the polygonal chapter house is without peer. The city retains its mediaeval walls and an exceptional quantity of historic buildings. Overnight York.
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 mediaeval stained glass, is one of the largest in Europe. Bristol cathedral is a muchoverlooked gem with fine 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.
Royal Churches Windsor, Westminster, St Paul’s, Canterbury Day 2: Westminster, St Paul’s. Return to the Abbey to study inter alia the Henry VII Chapel, apogee of Perpendicular architecture, and its Tudor tombs. Wren’s masterpiece, St Paul’s Cathedral, is Britain’s greatest Classical monument, albeit with a Baroque inflection, and her most monumental building. Mother church of the Diocese of London, it retains special links with the City Corporation, guilds and institutions, as well as with the Crown. Day 3: Canterbury. England’s premier cathedral, Canterbury is the seat of the spiritual head of the Church of England. It retains its magnificent Norman crypt, while the eastern parts form the earliest major Gothic structure in England and the soaring nave and crossing tower are masterpieces of Perpendicular. Tombs of Henry IV and the Black Prince. Now ruined, St Augustine’s Abbey visibly takes us back to the roots of Christianity among the first English kings. Return to central London by 4.30pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,040. Single occupancy: £1,260. Included meals: 2 dinners with wine.
13–15 April 2018 (me 814) 3 days • £1,040 Lecturer: Jon Cannon Three of the greatest buildings in the land encapsulate aspects of a nation, its religious roots and its art. Stay in a comfortable hotel near St James’s Park. Combine this tour with The Cathedrals of England, 18–26 April 2018 – see page 24.
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Canterbury Cathedral, Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s Cathedral reflect the spiritual, dynastic and political interests of the English state; national monuments to Crown and Church alike. Patronised by the richest and most powerful figures for over 1,500 years, these mighty edifices embody the finest in architecture, sculpture and art. They are also imbued with the history and politics of the eras in which they were created and in which they flourished: periods in which both royal and religious powers were charged with the sacramental, before, latterly, the very essence of such claims to authority came under attack. Starting in the capital, this tour travels back to the origins of Christianity in England. Churches of the first order were erected in association with mediaeval England’s primary palaces at Westminster and Windsor. Westminster was a personal project of Henry III, designed to act as a monarchical mausoleum and a shrine to royal saint, Edward the Confessor, and to be a fitting location for coronations. Designed to outdo all other churches, it is at once the apogee of thirteenth-century design and the setting for a remarkable series of fittings and tombs. London’s other great church, St Paul’s, was rebuilt after the Great Fire in a self-conscious 2 6
attempt to create a Baroque great church for that very English creation, the Church of England. It is at once London’s cathedral and an embodiment of a new, more measured manifestation of Church and Crown, one both sensible of and shot through with restrained magnificence. St Paul’s shares with Westminster Abbey status as a national monument; venue for important events of state, and repository for the remains and monuments of the great and the good. The result of the epoch-making conversion to Christianity of the Kings of Kent, led by papal missionary Augustine, Canterbury still bears the traces of its early re-shaping from ad 597. Its great cathedral, the primatial church in England, was founded then. So too was the Abbey of St Augustine, which swiftly became the most important centre of learning in the country. Today St Augustine’s is an evocative ruin, but as the site of some of the most dramatic events in English history the cathedral complex retains the essence of its past to vivid extent. The tour makes a perfect complement to The Cathedrals of England (18–26 April 2018), giving due time and attention to some of the most significant structures not covered by that itinerary.
It in e r a r y Day 1: Westminster, Windsor. Leave the hotel on foot at 10.00am for a first visit to Westminster Abbey. Founded c. 1040 as monastery, palace and mausoleum by Edward the Confessor, every coronation since 1066 has taken place here. Today we examine the church built largely by Henry III from 1245 and the tombs of mediaeval monarchs. By train to Windsor Castle, which remains a functioning royal palace. St George’s Chapel, built by Edward IV as his burial place, is one of the most beautiful buildings of the 15th century.
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Accommodation. St Ermin’s Hotel, London (sterminshotel.co.uk): situated in central London but tucked into a tree-lined courtyard behind St James’s Park tube station. This 4-star hotel has a contemporary and tasteful décor. Excellent service. How strenuous? Unavoidably there is quite a lot of walking on this tour and it would not be suitable for anyone with difficulties with everyday walking and stair-climbing. Coaches can rarely park near the sites, the buildings visited don’t have lifts. Travel by underground railway within London. Average distance by coach per day: 57 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: The Ever Changing City Skyline, 10 April 2018 (contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com); The Cathedrals of England, 18–26 April 2018 (p.24).
Jon Cannon Writer, lecturer and broadcaster, and specialist in historic religious architecture. He teaches at Bristol University 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 book, The Secret Language of Sacred Spaces. See pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies.
What else is included in the price? See page 8.
Illustration: London, St Paul’s Cathedral, watercolour by A.R. Hope Moncrieff, publ. 1910.
Mediaeval Middle England Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Rutland, Nottinghamshire 25–29 June 2018 (me 931) 5 days • £1,410 Lecturer: John McNeill Well-balanced survey of the outstanding mediaeval monuments of Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, Rutland, Northamptonshire and the Soke of Peterborough. Includes beautiful drives through understated verdant landscapes. Stay in one hotel throughout. The East Midlands boasts some of the finest mediaeval ecclesiastical architecture in England. The region largely corresponds to the AngloSaxon kingdom of Mercia, which converted to Christianity during the seventh century and had already established a widespread network of churches and monasteries by the eighth century. Though the rich, agricultural territory remained disputed between the Saxons and the Danes until the Normans finally brought stability, those looking to explore its pre- and post-Conquest heritage will be delighted to find outstanding examples of Saxon, Norman and Gothic architecture. Two of the most impressive buildings the tour visits are Peterborough Cathedral and Southwell Minster. Peterborough, one of the five great mediaeval abbey churches, is the least altered of England’s Norman cathedrals, with a nave that retains the original 13th-century painted wooden roof – one of only four in Europe. Southwell Minster, with its distinctive pepper-pot spires, is another exceptional example of the Norman and Early English styles. The area is notable, too, for its fine mediaeval parish churches and amongst the highlights of the visit are: All Saints’ Brixworth, England’s largest and best preserved Saxon church; the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Northampton, built shortly after the First Crusade and inspired by the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem; and the 14thcentury St Mary Magdalen, Newark upon Trent, with its remarkable panel painting from the Dance of the Death.
English late mediaeval parish churches. Cross the Trent to the tiny jewel-like church in Holme. Day 3: Brixworth, Northampton, Earls Barton, Higham Ferrers, Geddington. A perfect opportunity to slip south into Northamptonshire. First to the great AngloSaxon minster church at Brixworth, and on to a wonderful pair of Romanesque churches: lavishly sculpted St Peter and the centrally-planned Holy Sepulchre, in Northampton. Drive to Earl’s Barton, the town beautifully punctuated by its late Anglo-Saxon tower, before continuing to Edmund Crouchback’s stunning church at Higham Ferrers and the most delicate of the surviving Eleanor Crosses at Geddington. Day 4: Melton Mowbray, Gaddesby, Oakham, Castor, Fotheringhay. A day of local horizons, starting with the majestic late mediaeval town church at Melton Mowbray, and maturing via Decorated Gaddesby, late-12th-century Oakham Castle, Romanesque Castor and the sometime Yorkist mausoleum at Fotheringhay. Day 5: Tickencote, Stamford. Drive along the northern shore of Rutland water to the enchanting Romanesque parish church at Tickencote. In Stamford visit the important late mediaeval chantry foundation known as Browne’s Hospital and the superb late mediaeval stained glass at St Martin. Return to Peterborough Railway Station by 2.30pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,410. Single occupancy: £1,540. Included meals: all dinners with wine. Accommodation. Barnsdale Lodge Hotel, Rutland (barnsdalelodge.co.uk): 3-star hotel 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. Bedrooms vary in size and outlook. There is a restaurant and lounge; service is friendly. There is no lift. 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: 61 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: The Cathedrals of England, 18–26 April 2018 (p.24); Castles, Campaigns & Countryside, 2–6 July 2018 (p.44).
Illustration: Peterborough Cathedral, wood engraving from ‘The Art Journal’ 1887.
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Day 1: Peterborough, Barnack. The coach leaves Peterborough Railway Station at 2.00pm for the short drive to Peterborough Cathedral, proud possessor of the most ambitious mediaeval painted ceiling to survive in England, as well as a majestic Romanesque nave, fan-vaulted east end and astonishingly inventive west front. A brief visit to the important early Gothic parish church of Barnack. First of four nights in Rutland. Day 2: Southwell, Hawton, Newark, Holme. A day devoted to Nottinghamshire, beginning with Southwell Minster, the pre-eminent mediaeval church of the county and a building justly celebrated for the exquisite naturalistic foliage of its chapter-house. Thence to the breathtaking early-14th-century chancel at Hawton. Visit Newark-on-Trent, whose mid-12th-century castle and new river crossing sowed the seeds of prosperity for the town, which led to the rebuilding of St Mary Magdalen as one of the finest of all 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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Early Railways: The North History, technology, architecture, landscapes 16–22 September 2018 (mf 155) 7 days • £2,570 Lecturer: Anthony Lambert
was a victim of the Beeching cuts but was brought back to life as a heritage railway using vintage rolling stock and engines. Travel for an hour (by steam maybe) through exceptionally lovely countryside to Grosmont. After lunch, return to Pickering for a little free time.
The pioneering periods of railway history– social, political and economic aspects, civil and mechanical engineering, architecture and art.
Day 5: Manchester, Marple. By rail to Manchester. The Liverpool & Manchester Railway opened in 1830 and the original station, the world’s oldest, survives. Castlefield has an extraordinary, Pirenesian conjunction of viaducts and canals, including the pioneering Bridgewater Canal (1761). A semi-rural afternoon near Marple outside Manchester along the towpath of the Peak Forest Canal to see the beautifully engineered flight of locks and astonishing 100 ft-high aqueduct (1800) across the River Goyt; the adjacent railway viaduct is even higher.
Includes a high proportion of the world’s earliest surviving steam locomotives, rolling stock, stations, bridges and viaducts. Most journeys are by train, some through outstanding scenery, some on historic railways, some steam traction likely. Hotels in Newcastle and York beside stations.
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It’s arguable whether any previous event had a more transformatory impact on the lives of inhabitants of this island than the coming of the railways. But whatever else could be suggested – the Norman Conquest, the Henrician Reformation – would be of merely local significance: the British invention of railways went on to change the lives of much of the population of the world. This tour examines the beginnings of this extraordinary development, of which there are surprisingly many physical remains, many visually stunning, many still in use. It is commonly but erroneously believed that railways were a Victorian phenomenon. The fact is that the first inter-city passenger service dates to the reign of William IV, the first public railway to use steam locomotives opened under George IV, the first viable steam engines were built while George III was still king, the first major railway bridge opened during the reign of George I, the earliest stationery steam engines started pumping while a Stuart, Queen Anne, was still on the throne and the earliest documented waggonways in England take railway history back to a Tudor, Elizabeth I. Victoria’s reign saw massive extension of the railways, but not its genesis. The scale of pre-twentieth-century railway engineering is almost inconceivable, especially given the limited mechanical aids available. Digging, blasting, tunnelling, embanking, bridging; thousands of navvies and skilled artisans employed on each major project; carving up the countryside, thrusting cacophonously into towns and cities, absorbing great wealth, yielding even greater riches, creating a vast penumbra of supporting businesses. A couple of the railway companies were for a while the world’s biggest public companies (one of many world records which will pepper the lecturer’s commentary). Railways transformed the world, transformed the way we live and think and imagine. And it all began in the North of England. Impelled by the need to transport coal and ore from mine to wharf, Tyneside and its vicinity became the crucible in which the assorted ingredients of the modern railway were finally fused together. Connecting inland Manchester with coastal Liverpool was an incentive on the other side of the country; London, soon to be the world’s biggest city, was irrelevant to the story in these pioneering years. While plenty of twentieth-century developments are seen in passing, the focus is earlier. Engineering and technology are of course 2 8
central to the tour, though much of the input from the lecturer is about social and political context, financial and economic factors and architectural and artistic matters. A number of attractive towns and cities are visited, and there are some splendidly scenic rail journeys.
It in e r a r y Day 1: Newcastle, Tanfield. Drive at 2.00pm from the hotel in Newcastle the few miles to the Tanfield Railway. With a claim to be the oldest working railway in the world, it opened in 1727 using gravity and horse power on wooden rails. Part of this extraordinary engineering enterprise was the Causey Arch, the world’s first railway bridge and the widest span in Britain for 30 years. Join a train at Andrews House Station and alight at Causey before returning. First of two nights in Newcastle. Day 2: Beamish, Shildon. Drive to Beamish, the North of England Open Air Museum, where the world’s finest collection of working replicas of early steam engines (Locomotion, Steam Elephant, Puffing Billy) plies the Pockerley Waggonway. The Shildon branch of the National Railway Museum is on the site of the engine works of the Stockton & Darlington Railway; among the exhibits is Timothy Hackworth’s Sans Pareil, runner-up in the Rainhill Trials of 1829. To avoid rush-hour on the roads, the last leg is by rail from Durham. Day 3: Newcastle, Darlington. Visually dramatic and historically important, the bridges spanning the Tyne includes R. Stephenson’s innovatory High Level Bridge for both road and rail (1845–9). Some free time in Newcastle, with the most impressive late Georgian architecture of any regional city, good Victorian buildings and art galleries. Drive to the Head of Steam Museum in Darlington whose prize exhibit is George Stephenson’s Locomotion which inaugurated the Stockton & Darlington in 1825. First of four nights in York. Day 4: North Yorkshire Moors Railway. By coach to the attractive market town of Pickering, the terminus for the North Yorkshire Moors Railway. Planned by G. Stephenson and opened in 1846, it
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Day 6: Settle-Carlisle Railway. ‘The most spectacular piece of railway engineering in Britain’, the Settle-Carlisle Railway (built 1869–75) traverses the moorland hills of the Yorkshire Dales. Twice last century it faced closure, but it survives as England’s most scenically exciting rail journey. Today’s itinerary: by train via Leeds to Settle, train to Ribblehead, walk around the viaduct and lunch, continue by rail to Kirkby Stephen, and then do the journey in reverse without stops except at Leeds. Day 7: York. The National Railway Museum in York is the world’s greatest such collection, with hundreds of engines, rolling stock and miscellaneous items – royal carriages, Mallard, a replica Rocket and other fascinating treasures. The lecturer finishes his tour by the end of the morning. As you are only a few minutes from the hotel and York Station you leave when you want.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,570. Single occupancy: £2,960. Included meals: 3 lunches, 5 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Crowne Plaza, Newcastle (crowneplaza.com): new 4-star hotel on the site of the Stephenson Works beside the station. The Principal York Hotel, York (phcompany.com/ principal/york-hotel): 5-star hotel built beside the station in 1878 by the North Eastern Railway, recently refurbished by the Principal Hayley group. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking including steps and short hills, so not suitable for people unused to daily walking and stair climbing. The option for keen walkers of a 2-mile moorland walk at Ribblehead requires stout footware. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: The Divine Office: Choral Music in Oxford, 24–28 September 2018 (p.20); Walking to Cornish Houses, 24–30 September 2018 (p.16).
What else is included in the price? See page 8.
Illustration: Stephenson’s Rocket, engraving c.. 1830..
Modern Art in Sussex Paintings and sculpture, artists and houses 24–28 April 2018 (me 836) 5 days • £1,460 Lecturer: Monica Bohm-Duchen The heart – and homes – of English modernism and the Romantic revival. Artistic houses, magical gardens and the charismatic personalities who created them. Exceptional collections of modernist art in awardwinning galleries and museums. Monica Bohm-Duchen is an expert on 20thcentury art and the historical events that influenced this artistically productive period.
Day 1: Woking, Chichester. The coach leaves Woking Railway Station at 11.00am. The Lightbox is a prize-winning museum and gallery, established in 2008. Highlights include the Ingram Collection of Modern British Art as well as the Joan Hurst Sculpture Collection. At the magnificent Gothic Cathedral in Chichester, the focus is on modern artworks by John Piper, Chagall, Sutherland and others. First of two nights in Chichester.
Day 3: East Sussex. In 1920 Eric Gill, Hilary Peplar and Desmond Chute founded a Roman Catholic art colony, the Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic, on Ditchling Common. A permanent collection of work by its members and other artists from the community is housed at the award-winning Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft. Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s modest 17th-century country retreat, Monk’s House, was occupied by the couple from 1919. Nearby, St Peter’s Church in Firle has a John Piper stained-glass window, and Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant are buried in the graveyard. Charleston Farmhouse, the country residence of Bell and Grant, has almost every surface decorated by them, and the same pair painted murals at St Michael’s, Berwick, in the early 1940s. First of two nights in Lewes. Day 4: East Sussex. Farleys House & Gallery is the former home of Surrealist artist and activist Roland Penrose and photographer Lee Miller, with works of art by them and their famous friends adorning the walls. In Bexhill-on-Sea, the once controversial, now iconic De La Warr Pavilion was designed in the mid-1930s by émigré architects Serge Chermayeff and Erich Mendelsohn. The Jerwood Gallery in Hastings opened in 2012 to house the fast-growing Jerwood Collection of Modern British Art.
Day 5: East Sussex, Tudeley. Designed by Rick Mather, the refurbishment of Towner Gallery in Eastbourne opened in 2009. Highlights of its permanent collection include work by Eric Ravilious, Christopher Wood, Alfred Wallis and Edward Burra. All Saints in the village of Tudeley is the only church in the world to have all its windows designed by Marc Chagall – nothing short of a revelation. The tour ends at Tonbridge Railway Station by 4.00pm. The starting and finishing points of some UK tours are railway stations because it is quicker to travel through London by train than by coach.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,460. Single occupancy: £1,700. Included meals: 3 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Harbour Hotel, Chichester (chichester-harbour-hotel.co.uk): smart boutique 4-star hotel in the centre of town, within walking distance of the Cathedral and Pallant Gallery. Pelham House Hotel, Lewes (pelhamhouse.com): housed in an old court house, this characterful 4-star hotel is located on the high street and has delightful gardens. How strenuous? Unavoidably there is quite a lot of walking on this tour and it would not be suitable for anyone with difficulties with everyday walking and stair-climbing. Average distance by coach per day: 53 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Monet & Impressionism, 15–20 April 2018 (p.66).
Illustration: Hastings, Pelham Crescent, engraving c. 1850.
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Day 2: West Sussex. The Cass Sculpture Foundation, founded in 1992 by Wilfred and Jeannette Cass, shows in an open-air setting changing displays of work by modern and contemporary artists. West Dean Gardens includes the Dalí-inspired Artichoke House. Pallant House Gallery in Chichester holds one of the finest collections of modern British art in the country. A large part was bequeathed by the collector and architect Sandy Wilson (British Library), whose final project was the sensitive modernisation of this gallery in its Queen Anne building. Some free time to explore Chichester.
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The light and topography of Sussex have drawn artists since the start of the eighteenth century. Turner made his first sketch at Petworth in 1809, while Constable, spurred to the coast by efforts to relieve his wife’s tuberculosis in the 1820s, found the sea, towns and landscapes a source of inspiration – although Brighton he called ‘Piccadilly by the sea’. A century later, in autumn 1916, the artist Vanessa Bell, seeking a new rural retreat from Bloomsbury, was struck by ‘the extraordinary peace and beauty’ of a spot beyond Lewes, and by ‘the very warm, most lovely browns & warm greys and reds’ of the countryside, combined with ‘the chalk everywhere giving that odd kind of softness’. She was not alone. The diverse and lovely natural environment of Sussex drew a number of painters, sculptors, architects and writers in the mid-twentieth century. Free from urban constraints and ideological and moral judgements, they formed communities – formal and informal – in which social experiment was a stimulating impetus. The flowering artistic output that ensued emanated from Eric Gill’s Arts & Crafts guild at Ditchling; Roland Penrose and Lee Miller’s Surrealist farmhouse hub near Chiddingly; and from Eric Ravilious and John Piper’s regular sojourns at Furlongs cottage near Firle. And, best known of all, from Charleston, the Bloomsbury ‘escape’ of Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, Roger Fry et al. Shared artistic and intellectual interests, coupled with turbulent events in Europe, propelled many Continental and transatlantic personalities to join them; Picasso, for example, was one of many art-world greats who paid visits to Farley Farm. The legacy of this creative vortex is celebrated in a number of first-class collections viewed on this tour, as well as in the homes, gardens, churches and institutions created and enhanced by these artists.
The Industrial Revolution Invention, manufacture and design in 18th-century England the development of an iconic English brand. First of three nights in Stoke-on-Trent. Day 4: Stoke-on-Trent. Stoke-on-Trent remains the world’s foremost pottery city despite the loss of much mainstream production. The Gladstone Pottery Museum is the only complete Victorian pottery factory: original workshops, bottle ovens, historic products. See the wonderfully archaic production processes at Burleigh Pottery and the Potteries Museum & Art Gallery in Hanley, which excellently displays Staffordshire wares and other ceramics; another outstanding museum. Overnight Stoke-on-Trent.
6–11 August 2018 (me 975) 6 days • £1,570 Lecturer: Dr Paul Atterbury The 18th-century Industrial Revolution when Britain led the world in technology, invention, manufacture and commerce. Highly significant industrial archaeology. Fine and applied arts, created with the wealth generated by industrialisation or which was the outcome of new factory processes.
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In a putative ‘Concise History of World Civilisation’, Britain might garner a few mentions (Magna Carta, Parliamentary democracy) but would probably be awarded only one substantial passage. This would be an account of the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth century. The modern world began in the English Midlands. It is difficult to overestimate the global impact of the technological developments which took place in this relatively out-of-the-way region of Europe (there were few roads in pre-modern Shropshire and Staffordshire). Enabled by the abundance of accessible mineral resources, propelled by an Enlightenment spirit of enquiry and experiment, and forged by the enterprise and ambition of a few exceptional individuals, Britain came to lead the world in manufacturing, commerce and science through to the middle of the nineteenth century. Places have been chosen to show most of the main constituents of the Industrial Revolution: water power and steam, coal and iron, textiles and pottery, the factory system and urbanisation, canals and roads. Sights include the visible remains of early industrial enterprise of the highest importance. The subsequent two centuries are not ignored. Indeed, much of the industrial archaeology and the art we see takes us well into the twentieth century. The tour concentrates on five centres. Two are the upper reaches of fast-moving rivers, the Severn in Shropshire (now dubbed Ironbridge Gorge) and the Derwent in Derbyshire. (Both, incidentally, are now tranquil and fairly rural, the Derwent Valley in particular being a place of outstanding 3 0
natural beauty.) The six towns of the Potteries in Staffordshire were a unique concentration of the ceramic industry – as indeed they still are. The fourth is the group of towns in the West Midlands known as The Black Country, and the fifth is Birmingham, ‘workshop of the world’.
It in e r a r y Day 1: Birmingham. The coach leaves from New Street Railway Station at 11.45am and there follows a walk around a nexus of canals – Birmingham famously has more canals than Venice. Soho House, excellently restored and presented, was the home of Matthew Boulton and a meeting place of the Lunar Society, a group of progressive thinkers, scientists and manufacturers who played key roles in the Industrial Revolution. Continue to Telford for the first of two nights there.
Day 5: Derwent Valley, Derby, Cheadle. A stretch of the River Derwent in Derbyshire is the birthplace of the modern textile industry (and another unesco Heritage Site). The world’s first water-powered cotton-spinning mill, built by Richard Arkwright in 1771, survives at Cromford, and his 1783 Masson Mills are equipped with 19th-cent. machinery. The Derby Museum displays many paintings by Joseph Wright, one of Britain’s finest 18th-cent. painters, who excelled at innovatory scenes of industry and scientific experiment and portraits of industrialists. The Church of St Giles at Cheadle, 1841–7, A.W. Pugin’s masterpiece, has been called ‘the outstanding English church of the 19th century’. Overnight Stoke-on-Trent. Day 6: Birmingham. Established in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter in 1881, J.W. Evans is an exceptional survival of a historic factory where little has changed for a century. Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery has the largest public collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings in the world. The tour ends at New Street Station by 4.00pm.
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Day 2: Ironbridge Gorge. By the end of the 18th century this short stretch of the upper River Severn (a unesco Heritage Site) was the most heavily industrialised location in the world. The blast furnace at Coalbrookdale, where in 1709 Abraham Darby I achieved the smelting of iron with coke and thus ushered in the modern world, survives as part of a fascinating Museum of Iron. Abraham Darby III was largely responsible for the Iron Bridge of 1779, an epoch-making structure of powerful beauty as well as an icon of the Industrial Revolution. Two mansions lived in by the Darby family overlooking the works retain original furnishings. Renovation works on the Iron Bridge begin in Spring 2017. Overnight Telford.
Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,570. Single occupancy: £1,740.
Day 3: Dudley, Barlaston. The Black Country is a contender for the title ‘birthplace of industry’, being named after the smoke from the unequalled density of mines, workshops and factories. An outstanding museum shows historic industrial installations, many in working order, including a replica of a Newcomen steam engine of c. 1717, and rescued houses, shops and other buildings furnished as 100 years ago. Josiah Wedgwood was a genius of the Industrial Revolution, dedicated equally to improvements in design and technology, to natural philosophy and commerce, and to social amelioration and progressive politics. The awardwinning Wedgwood Museum, one of the finest ceramics museums in the world, well documents
How strenuous? Some walking is unavoidable on this tour; it would not be suitable for anyone who has any difficulty with everyday walking and stairclimbing. Average coach travel per day: 42 miles.
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Included meals: 1 lunch, 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. The Telford Hotel and Golf Resort (qhotels.co.uk): modern, 4-star hotel in a quiet location on the edge of town. Swimming pool, fitness centre, spa. The Best Western Moat House (web search: ‘Best Western Moat House’): though incorporating the shell of Etruria Hall, Josiah Wedgwood’s home, it is also a new 4-star hotel, adequately comfortable, lively. Of both it can be said that the rooms are comfortable and the service willing, and that they are the best available in their localities.
Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: The Victorian Achievement, 13–20 August 2018 (p.31).
Illustration: Ironbridge, engraving from ‘The Rivers of Great Britain: South & West Coasts’, 1897.
The Victorian Achievement Architecture, industry and art in Lancashire and Yorkshire 13–20 August 2018 (me 980) 8 days • £2,080 Lecturer: Dr Paul Atterbury Studies the social history, industrial archaeology, architecture and art of the reign of Queen Victoria, a period when Great Britain led the world in trade, industry and ideas. Includes some of the most beautiful architecture of the era and immensely impressive works of engineering – canals, railways, bridges. Painting and sculpture in all its manifold variety features; many of the country’s best collections of Victorian art are in the region. The historical, social and economic context is an important strand of the tour, with attention to the lives of some of the greatest Victorians. A subsidiary theme is the remarkable postindustrial regeneration of recent years.
woollen cloth. Retaining a mediaeval street pattern on a sloping site, the centre has a magnificent set of Gothic Revival buildings. Day 5: Leeds, Liverpool. Among the sights today are the 1830s Parish Church, a key monument in the history of the Gothic Revival, an amazing Venetian Gothic warehouse disrupting the Georgian serenity of Park Square and the Municipal Buildings complex with the Art Gallery, Library and Tiled Hall. By coach from Leeds to Liverpool. First of three nights in Liverpool.
It in e r a r y Day 1: Manchester. Assemble at the Midland Hotel in Manchester and leave at 2.15pm for a walk to see many of the great Victorian buildings which still predominate in the city centre. The City Art Gallery has a superb collection of Victorian paintings, particularly Pre-Raphaelites. First of two nights in Manchester. Day 2: Manchester. The industrial landscape of Castlefield encompasses the world’s first passenger railway station (1830), the nodal point of England’s most important canal network and other monuments of the industrial revolution. A palatial manifestation of municipal pride, Alfred Waterhouse’s Town Hall (1867–77) is one of the most splendid buildings of the era, an imaginative Gothic design with glorious interiors and murals by Ford Madox Brown. An afternoon by coach includes the soaring beauty of Bodley’s St Augustine at Pendlebury. Day 3: Manchester, Saltaire, Leeds. The John Rylands Library (Basil Champneys) is late Victorian architecture at its most refined. In 1853 Titus Salt consolidated his five cloth factories into one, added a model town and named it Saltaire. It survives intact, a monument to Victorian ameliorism and to 21st-century regeneration. Arriving in Leeds, visit the stupendous Classical Town Hall (Cuthbert Broderick 1853) and the Corn Exchange (also Broderick), a masterpiece of Victorian commercial architecture. First of two nights in Leeds.
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Athens, Florence, Manchester: there is no fourth. Another risible Victorian polemic? No. The essence of this proposition concerning the paramount importance of Manchester in the history of civilisation remains valid. The impact of the industrial cities of Victorian Britain in shaping the modern world cannot be overestimated. But the era still needs rescuing from twentiethcentury disdain. Ignorance and misunderstanding remain deep and widespread. The truth is that nineteenth-century Britain was one of the most dynamic and innovative societies in history, and that Victorian cities, as the principal material manifestation of that great age – and their postindustrial reincarnation – are among the most fascinating features of the United Kingdom. In the earlier decades of the century Britain led the world in industrialisation and technology, dominated world trade and became the world’s wealthiest nation. It can also be claimed that Britain was a leader in the development of ideas, the extension of education, the practice of philanthropy and social amelioration and the advance (if haltingly) of political reform. Meanwhile the British Empire grew and grew, almost by accident, and became the most extensive the world has ever seen, and the best administered. London might have been the world’s biggest city and the seat of government of the Empire, but the crucible of progress did not lie beside the Thames. The great inventors were mainly from the north, railways were at first a northern phenomenon and the north was the source of many of the great ideas of the age, free trade among them. The arts, too, particularly architecture, were less Londoncentric than they became subsequently; a very large proportion of the great buildings of Victorian England are in the northern counties. (Liverpool has more listed buildings than any city outside London.) For variety, vigour, muscularity, ambition, technological boldness, ingenuity, symbolism and, yes, beauty, Victorian architecture has few peers in all history. Much of the interest of this tour lies in the built environment: palatial town halls, Pirenesian warehouses, fabulously embellished churches, noble Philosophical Institutes, mansions for the rich and tenements for the poor. But of
no less interest are the stunningly impressive engineering accomplishments – canals, railways, bridges – whether their aesthetic power arises from raw functionalism or historicist adornment. Victorian painting and sculpture is an important part of the tour; a good proportion of the country’s finest collections are in the North West. The best is world-class, the PreRaphaelites in particular, but irrespective of artistic merit the art is fascinating for what it reveals of Victorian attitudes and mores as well as for what it purports to depict. A week’s holiday in Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool is an unusual proposition, and this itinerary is probably unique. We might not have risked it ten years ago but recent regeneration has reversed decline and dramatically assisted the transformation to the post-industrial era. As a trio of cities to visit they should be considered to rank with, say, Bologna, Parma and Verona, or Augsburg, Nuremberg and Regensburg: there is as much of artistic and architectural interest to see, and arguably the historical significance is greater.
Day 4: Leeds, Bradford. The industrial heritage of Leeds: a vast 1840s mill, an Egyptian-style mill and factory chimneys imitating mediaeval Italian towers. The retail and commercial district is the most extensive and unspoilt area of Victoriana in Britain, with dazzlingly elaborate arcades and endlessly inventive façades. An afternoon in Bradford (20 minutes by train), source in the 1850s of two-thirds of Britain’s Illustration: Manchester, Town Hall, etching by Thomas Riley 1895.
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The Victorian Achievement continued
Tudor Power in South & West Forts, ships, mansions and abbeys
Day 6: Liverpool. The Albert Dock (1843) is among the most impressive constructions of the century, ruggedly functional but perfectly proportioned. Time for exploration, lunch and a museum or two (Tate Liverpool is here). See other waterside buildings, including the enormous Tobacco Warehouse. To the salubrious suburb of Sefton Park and two fine late Victorian churches, St Agnes (JL Pearson 1883) and St Clare (Leonard Stokes 1899). Overnight Liverpool. Day 7: Liverpool. St George’s Hall is the most magnificent of a group of buildings which are unequalled as a display of potential for variety of classical architecture. Another is the Walker Art Gallery with an outstanding collection of Victorian painting. Explore the architectural riches of the central business district including the former Bank of England (Cockerell 1845) and cast iron Oriel Chambers (1864). Finally Giles Gilbert Scott’s Anglican Cathedral, begun in 1904 so not quite Victorian but the superb, sublime culmination of the Gothic Revival. Overnight Liverpool. Day 8: Port Sunlight. Cross the River Mersey to Port Sunlight, the exceedingly pretty and superbly appointed township started in 1888 for workers at Lord Leverhulme’s adjacent soap factory. The Lady Lever Art Gallery is outstanding for English painting of the 18th and 19th centuries with masterpieces by Millais, Leighton, Burne Jones and others. Drive to Manchester, reaching Piccadilly Station by 3.30pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,080. Single occupancy: £2,450. Included meals: 5 dinners with wine.
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Accommodation. All hotels are excellently located within walking distance of much that is seen on the tour and are among the more comfortable hotels in each city; all are rated 4-star. The Midland, Manchester (qhotels.co.uk): large, elaborately adorned Victorian hotel, recent refurbishment blending something of its original character with modern comforts. Queens Hotel, Leeds (qhotels. co.uk): very comfortable 1930s establishment which has retained Art Deco interiors. Hope Street Hotel, Liverpool (hopestreethotel.co.uk): in a salubrious area between the cathedrals, it brings good modern design and comforts into a 19thcentury factory and adjacent 1960s police station. How strenuous? This tour would not be suitable for anyone who has difficulty with everyday walking and who cannot stand for long periods of time. Average distance by coach per day: 25 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: The Industrial Revolution, 6–11 August 2018 (p.30).
What else is included in the price? See page 8. 3 2
8–13 May 2018 (me 856) 6 days • £1,740 Lecturer: Professor Maurice Howard Tudor England studied through a variety of architecture, artefacts and artworks. Great country houses – most of which arose on the site of suppressed monasteries. Defence and warfare, coastal fortifications and the Mary Rose, the finest assembly of 16th-century goods to be found anywhere. Whether in a complete or fragmentary state, the buildings of Tudor England reflect the changing political, social and religious environment of the time. Travelling westwards from London brings home the increasing power of the capital, where the court resided, and the need for government to control and monitor parts of the country that took days to reach. At various points the itinerary intersects with the loyalty-building progress that Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn made in 1535 during the crisis of the break with Rome. Anxiety about foreign invasion led to the building of fortifications along the south coast, and to the construction of great warships. One of these has been retrieved from the seabed and gradually conserved and displayed: the Mary Rose and its amazing contents constitute the greatest single hoard of sixteenth-century quotidian artefacts anywhere in the world. Yet this was not entirely a time of exclusion from foreign influences on the arts and sciences; craftsmen, objects and prints (as sources of design and ornament) arrived, and we will see the impact of these in both religious and secular buildings. The revolutionary design of those coastal fortresses is a prime example. While the Reformation brought about destruction of the religious infrastructure of the past, there are continuities before and after the dramatic events of the 1530s, in the completion of great churches and the transformation of former monasteries with their
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dependent buildings into country houses, smaller dwellings and public buildings such as town halls, almshouses and schools. Great funeral monuments, however, do reflect profound shifts in religious observance, in the change of emphasis towards celebrating the individual’s worldly achievements with the grandest and most fashionable means possible through heraldry and colour. We end at Lacock, which through abbeyhouse and village shows the lasting legacy of this period and its re-shaping and preservation by subsequent generations.
It in e r a r y Day 1: The Vyne. The coach leaves central London at 11.30am. A great Tudor courtier house, partially preserved with fascinating evidence in 16th-century brickwork and original internal fittings. Changes from 17th to 19th centuries always respected the past. First of two nights in Portsmouth. Day 2, Portsmouth, Southsea. Portsmouth was a hive of activity during Henry VIII’s wars with France, and innovative fortifications were erected here and nearby. Through the miraculous survival not only of part of its hull but also of its myriad contents, the Mary Rose constitutes the richest material evidence we have of early Tudor times. These items are spectacularly displayed in a museum opened in 2013, where we are joined by Rear Admiral John Lippiett, former Chief Executive for the Mary Rose Trust. Day 3: Titchfield, Longleat. Titchfield is the spectacular ruin of a monastery taken over and transformed into a dwelling by Sir Thomas Wriothesley, a leading courtier of Henry VIII. His formidable tomb is in the local church. Likewise a former monastery, Longleat displays a completely new and fashionable Renaissance-style façade, its rebuilding dating to Elizabeth I’s reign. The house has its original great hall and a series of grand 19th-century state rooms with extraordinary collections. First of three nights in Bath.
Crown & Cromwell Battles of the English Civil War 1642–45 Day 4: Bath, Bradford-on-Avon. Bath Abbey is one of the handful of great late-mediaeval religious buildings completed in the first thirty years of the 16th century. There will be time also to explore aspects of 18th-century Bath, but with indications, as we walk around, of the footprint of the earlier city it replaced. Bradford-on-Avon has significant mediaeval buildings and a famous bridge and chapel. It also contains a few key 16th- and 17thcentury buildings that tell us of the growth of communities in the early modern period.
15–21 June 2018 (me 906) 7 days • £1,810 Lecturer: Patrick Mercer obe
Day 5: Montacute, Barrington, Sherborne. Montacute House is one of the country’s most significant late-Tudor houses, built with the finest local stone for a man with ‘new’ money. As a branch of the National Portrait Gallery, it displays Tudor pictures. Barrington Court is an early Elizabethan house with an impressive long gallery in the attic storey. Built by Sir Walter Raleigh, Sherborne Castle serves to introduce us to the ‘romance’ of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods in looking back to the past, thinking about history.
Led by a military historian whose background provides unparalleled insights into the politics and the fighting of the period.
Day 6: Lacock. Lacock Abbey was a nunnery until 1539, then became a private home, and the juxtaposition of preserved old buildings and new structures is especially interesting here. Both the house, in the 18th-century changes to the interior, and the extraordinary village tell us much about the later layers of building history at sites like this. Return to central London by 4.30pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,740. Single occupancy: £1,980. Included meals: 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. The Langstone Hotel, Portsmouth (langstonehotel.co.uk): on Hayling Island, overlooking the water, this 4-star hotel is modern and comfortable. Francis Hotel, Bath (sofitel.com/MGallery/Bath): 4-star boutique hotel set across several converted Georgian terraces on sought-after Queen’s Square.
Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
Shakespeare & His World July 2018 Details available in February 2018 Please contact us to register your interest
Illustration: Montecute House, Somerset, lithograph 1842. Right: portrait of Oliver Cromwell, wood engraving c. 1880 after Sir P. Lely.
Three fine hotels in the heart of England.
What makes this tour stand out is the way that past and present are startlingly linked. For, although it’s more than 350 years since Britain was plunged into the bitter chaos of civil war, the scars still remain: churches whose spires have been shot away or pulled down, earthworks and trenches, gun-damaged walls and ramparts, mass graves – all of these sites are still there to be seen if you know where to find them. These, of course, are only the physical signs of strife; the constitutional and emotional fault-lines still affect our daily lives. In England and Wales 85,000 men were killed in battle while another 127,000 people died of warrelated disease or starvation. Yet from slaughter and regicide came our Parliament, our democracy and the bastions of society – the monarchy, the church, the tenets of our law, our navy and our army. Less positively, though, the embers of hatred, which flare to this day in parts of Ireland, were fanned by the events that we’ll be examining. Three major battlefields of the First English Civil War are visited, Edgehill in Warwickshire, Marston Moor in Yorkshire and the Crown’s final defeat at Naseby in Northamptonshire. But we’ll see far more than these sites as we walk over sconces and redoubts, ravelins and lunettes in some of England’s most beautiful and bestkept secret countryside. We’ll see how York was ravaged, reveal Oakwell Hall’s Civil War connections, see Newark Castle, Lincoln Cathedral and the very ground where the New Model Army won its spurs, as well as a host of smaller battles and skirmishes – the anvils upon which modern Britain was forged.
It in e r a r y Day 1: Siege of York. The tour begins at 2.00pm at the hotel in York with a walk to see the sites of the siege and capture of the city. In April 1644 Scots and Parliamentary troops besieged the Royalist garrison until 1 July when the city was relieved by Prince Rupert of the Rhine. But Rupert was defeated the next day at the decisive Battle of Marston Moor, and the siege resumed until the city was surrendered with the ‘honours of war’ on 16 July. Overnight York. Day 2: Battle of Adwalton Moor. In the morning we will focus on weaponry at Oakwell Hall, before commencing our investigation of the battlefield. In June 1643 the Earl of Newcastle marched a vast force of 10,000 Royalist troops towards the Parliamentarian stronghold of Bradford. In defence of the town, Lord Fairfax advanced with 3,500 men and the two armies met on Adwalton
Moor. The overwhelming number of Royalist pikemen eventually forced the Parliamentarians back, the Royalist cavalry completing the victory. This rout guaranteed the King control over most of northern England until the next year. Overnight York. Day 3: Battle of Marston Moor, the biggest battle ever to be fought in Britain. Having taken York on 1 July 1644, Prince Rupert sought to destroy Parliament’s much larger forces. He should have attacked earlier but was dissuaded and during the day both sides gathered their full strength on Marston Moor, west of York. The Scots Covenanters and Parliamentarians launched a surprise attack. After a melee lasting two hours, Cromwell’s troops drove Royalist cavalry from the field whilst Leven’s infantry wiped out what remained of Rupert’s infantry. Overnight Lincoln. Day 4: Battle of Winceby, Lincoln. In October 1643, Henderson, the Royalist Governor of Newark, took Horncastle from a detachment of Fairfax’s troops. Determined to reverse this, Parliamentary cavalry met their enemies in what became the almost entirely mounted battle of Winceby. Still early in his military career, Cromwell feigned a retreat, lured the Royalists onto flat ground and then charged home. We will see where Cromwell himself was unhorsed, where his troopers smashed the Royalist Horse and the bloody aftermath. In Lincoln Cathedral, examine its Civil War and other military monuments. Overnight Lincoln. Day 5: Sieges of Newark. The wonderful old market town of Newark was besieged three times in the Civil War. First, briefly, in 1643, after which it was dashingly relieved in 1644 by Rupert before becoming the scene of King Charles’s surrender in 1646. Spectacular earthworks still exist and we’ll visit the new National Civil War Centre, see the site of a mass grave and recreate the final months of the King’s reign in this atmospheric setting. Overnight Stratford-on-Avon. Day 6: Battles of Edgehill, Cropredy Bridge. The first pitched battle of the War, in October 1642, Edgehill was designed as a knock-out blow by the King against the main Parliamentary army. It ended inconclusively and condemned the country 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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Combine this tour with: Walking Hadrian’s Wall, 14–20 May 2018 (p.22).
Some of the most beautiful and least visited battlefields in the country.
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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. Average distance by coach per day: c. 78 miles.
The most important contests of the first English Civil War
Crown & Cromwell continued
CHAMBER MUSIC RETREATS In Somerset and Suffolk – Spring 2018
Patrick Mercer OBE Military historian. He read History at Oxford University 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. See pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies. to four more years of strife. At Cropredy Bridge, things were more clear cut in June 1644. After several reversals earlier, Charles’s troops captured 11 guns from the Parliamentarians and crushed Waller’s forces. We’ll tread in the king’s footsteps and see how his cause was reinvigorated at this crucial point. Overnight Stratford-on-Avon. Day 7: Battle of Naseby. The last pitched battle of the war, Naseby proved to be Charles’s final throw of the dice, his first and last chance to shatter the recently created New Model Army. In June 1645 Charles and Rupert chose to stand and fight; initially things went well with Fairfax’s Parliamentarians falling back. But Cromwell turned the tide; his Dragoons manoeuvred brilliantly and Rupert’s own Bluecoat Regiment were depleted as they formed the rearguard for the Royalist army and for Charles’s last hope of victory. Coach to Northampton railway station arriving c. 1.30pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,810. Single occupancy: £2,110. Included meals: 4 dinners, 3 lunches, with wine.
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Accommodation. We stay in three fine hotels in the heart of England. The Grange, York (grangehotel.co.uk): a 4-star hotel 10 minutes’ walk from the Minster, décor and furnishings combine period and modern in this converted Georgian town house. The Castle Hotel, Lincoln (castlehotel.net): 4-star, luxury hotel in Lincoln’s historic quarter, close to the cathedral. The Arden Hotel, Stratford-upon-Avon (theardenhotelstratford.com): comfortable, 4-star, waterside hotel situated opposite the RSC theatres. How strenuous? There is a large amount of walking (up to 2 miles each day; both Marston Moor and Naseby also include modest hills) and quite a lot of standing (up to 60 minutes) in exposed spots. Average coach travel per day: 65 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Northumbria, 6–14 June 2018 (p.23); Mediaeval Middle England, 23–29 June 2018 (p.27).
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Please contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com A music retreat arranged by Martin Randall Music Management is a very special experience. There is the pleasure, first, of hearing music performed by artists of the highest calibre, who are all among the very best in their fields. Second, the music is performed in an intimate setting, a hall little bigger than a large drawing room – just the sort of size which composers used to have in mind for chamber music. The audience is rarely more than 100, and consists mainly of those who stay throughout and attend all concerts. Third, our music retreats take place in excellent hotels. The Castle Hotel in Taunton and The Swan
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in Lavenham are among the most agreeable and comfortable hotels in England. We usually have exclusive use, and there is the opportunity for artists and audience to mingle. While these events are undeniably indulgent and leisurely retreats, they are also intended to stimulate the mind and delight the aesthetic sensibilities. Within an over-arching theme, the music is carefully chosen and programmed to provide an illuminating sequence – while each concert is satisfyingly self-sufficient. Pre-concert talks are also included, by a musicologist or by the musicians themselves. Prices include accommodation, most meals, admittance to the concerts and talks, and much else besides. Individual concert tickets are also available to purchase, for those who live locally.
‘I have been in a euphoric state since each concert. The music was so well chosen and exquisitely performed and the subtle rapport of the players added to the lovely atmosphere.’
The Schubert Ensemble Piano Quartets: Classical and Romantic
The Schubert Ensemble ©John Clark.
26–28 January 2018 (me 749) The Castle Hotel, Taunton 3 days • 4 concerts • From £730 Musically-illustrated talks by the musicians William Howard (piano); Simon Blendis (violin); Douglas Paterson (viola); Jane Salmon (cello). The Schubert Ensemble is one of the world’s leading exponents of music for piano and strings – this is one of the last opportunities to watch them perform before they retire as an ensemble at the end of June 2018. Their programme concentrates on piano quartet repertoire; Dvořák and Brahms feature prominently, as well as music by Mozart, Chausson, Schumann and Fauré. Musicially-embellished talks are given by the ensemble themselves.
9–11 March 2018 (me 771) The Castle Hotel, Taunton 3 days • 4 concerts • From £730 Speaker: Richard Wigmore
13–15 April 2018 (me 811) The Castle Hotel, Taunton 3 days • 4 concerts • From £730 Speaker: Richard Wigmore
Sebastian Schmidt (violin); Nanette Schmidt (violin); Andreas Willwohl (viola); Bernhard Schmidt (cello).
Levon Chilingian (violin); Ronald Birks (violin); Susie Mészáros (viola); Stephen Orton (cello); guest player, Prunella Pacey (viola).
The Mandelring Quartet return to Taunton to perform a programme of string quartets by Haydn, Schubert and Beethoven.
The Chilingirian Quartet has performed many times at The Castle Hotel – this will be their thirteenth appearance since 1978.
As with several of these music retreats, preconcert talks are given by musicologist, writer and broadcaster Richard Wigmore.
A programme of string quartets and quintets by Mozart and Haydn.
The Phoenix Piano Trio The ‘English Impressionist’: John Ireland and his influences
The Elias String Quartet After Beethoven
4–6 May 2018 (me 844) The Castle Hotel, Taunton 3 days • 4 concerts • From £730 Speaker: to be confirmed Jonathan Stone (violin); Christian Elliott (cello); Sholto Kynoch (piano). The Phoenix Piano Trio perform works by composers who became dominant influences on John Ireland. The weekend culminates in a performance of Ireland’s Piano Trio No.3 in E. Illustration: ‘The Fugue’, lithograph 1861 by Edouard Ender.
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The Chilingirian Quartet Haydn and Mozart: String Quartets and Quintets
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The Mandelring Quartet Haydn, Schubert and Beethoven
4–6 June 2018 (me 895) The Swan Hotel & Spa, Lavenham 3 days • 4 concerts • From £710 Speaker: Richard Wigmore Sara Bitlloch (violin); Donald Grant (violin); Martin Saving (viola); Marie Bitlloch (cello). The superb Elias Quartet perform a weekend of music by Beethoven and those who were influenced by him. Takes place from a Monday to Wednesday. Photographs from top: The Mandelring Quartet ©Uwe Arens; The Chilingirian Quartet ©Kevin Laitak; The Phoenix Piano Trio ©Robert Piwko; The Elias String Quartet ©Benjamin Ealovega.
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Archaeology at The Castle A weekend of talks and discussions in Taunton 16–18 February 2018 (me 757) From £700 per person Speakers: Dr Paul Bahn; Dr David Beresford Jones; Felicity Cobbing; Professor Simon Esmonde Cleary; Lucia Gahlin; Professor Norman Hammond; Professor Lloyd LlewellynJones; Tom Mayberry mbe; Professor Antony Spawforth; Dr Nigel Spivey; Jonathan Tubbs; Gareth Williams Twelve forty-minute talks, question and answer sessions and a panel discussion. Esteemed archaeologists speak on diverse subjects from Greek Temples to Maya Kingship. Based at the ever-welcoming Castle Hotel in Taunton for two nights.
Our now renowned series of symposia have so far featured historians, art historians, biographers, travel writers and politicians. This edition draws on the talents of eminent archaeologists. The twelve forty-minute talks will cover a huge variety of subject matter: from the Vikings to the Etruscans, from Palestine to Easter Island, from Roman Palaces to Greek Temples. The speakers are respected scholars, have been involved in excavations worldwide and most have a book to their name, or several. We are also joined by Tom Mayberry, CEO of the South West Heritage Trust, responsible for the modernisation of The Museum of Somerset located 100 yards from the hotel. There is free time to visit the collections in between talks. The venue is the perennially charming Castle Hotel in Taunton with a well equipped meeting room and an excellent restaurant. There is also the option to book tickets to the talks only – see ‘Practicalities’.
T h e P ro g r a m m e Friday 16th February 2018 Afternoon session 3.00pm–6.00pm
Illustration below: Palmyra, western side of the ruins of the Temple of the Sun, wood engraving c. 1880. Above right: Peruvian artefacts, engraving 1874.
Tom Mayberry. Title to be confirmed. Dr Gareth Williams. Was Alfred so great? Alfred and the Vikings in the light of recent finds. Afternoon tea Professor Norman Hammond. Maya Art and Maya Kingship. Drinks reception and dinner Saturday 17th February 2018 Morning session 9.30am–12.30pm Dr Felicity Cobbing. Cook’s tours and the Palestinian Exploration Fund. Dr David Beresford-Jones. A story of nets – how a cotton revolution lies behind the origins of civilisation in the Andes. Coffee break Jonathan Tubb. The road to Qatna: the development and destruction of Syrian archaeology. Afternoon session 3.30pm–6.20pm
B R IT A IN
Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones. Do animals have histories? The culture of animals in the ancient world.
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Dr Nigel Spivey. Those mysterious Etruscans – demystified? Professor Simon Esmonde Cleary. Palaces of the later Roman Emperors. Dinner Sunday 18th February 2018 Morning session 9.30am–12.30pm Professor Antony Spawforth. Greek Temples. Lucia Gahlin. The Art of Akhenaten and Nefertiti, Ancient Egypt’s Unique Royal Couple. Coffee break Dr Paul Bahn. The archaeology of Easter Island. Panel discussion Finish c. 2.45pm
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‘It was a wonderfully varied programme with speakers of very high quality and ability to communicate. One always leaves knowing more, but with a desire to explore the subjects further when one returns home.’ S p e a k e r s Dr Paul Bahn, Britain’s foremost specialist in prehistoric art, author of Prehistoric Rock Art and Journey Through the Ice Age. Dr David Beresford Jones, Fellow of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge University, specialising in the Andes. Felicity Cobbing, Executive and Curator of the Palestine Exploration Fund and widely published on the archaeology of the Levant. Professor Simon Esmonde Cleary, Professor of Roman Archaeology at the University of Birmingham specialising in Gaul and Spain in late antiquity as well as on Roman Britain. Lucia Gahlin, Lecturer in Egyptology at Exeter and Bristol Universities. Professor Norman Hammond, a leading expert on Maya civilisation and archaeology and Archaeology Correspondent for The Times. Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Chair of Ancient History at the University of Cardiff and specialist in the history and culture of ancient Iran, the Near East and Ancient Greece.
Above: The Castle Hotel. Portraits, from top, left to right: Dr Paul Bahn; Dr David Beresford-Jones; Felicity Cobbing; Professor Simon Esmonde Cleary; Lucia Gahlin; Professor Norman Hammond; Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones; Professor Antony Spawforth; Gareth Williams.
Tom Mayberry mbe, CEO of the South West Heritage Trust, responsible for the modernisation of The Museum of Somerset. Professor Antony Spawforth, historian, broadcaster, lecturer and writer specialising in Greek and Roman antiquity. Dr Nigel Spivey, Senior Lecturer in Classical Art and Archaeology at the University of Cambridge. Jonathan Tubb, Keeper of the Middle East Department of the British Museum. Gareth Williams, Curator at the British Museum, specialising in Viking history and archaeology.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s
‘No dinners’ option: if you would prefer not to join the two evening meals there is a price reduction of £80 per person. Accommodation. The Castle Hotel, Taunton (the-castle-hotel.com): The Castle Hotel is 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
(where all talks and discussions take place) 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.
T a lk s o n ly If you wish to participate in the talks only, without accommodation, tickets are priced at £40 per session or £150 for all four sessions combined. Refreshments during breaks are included, but not lunches or dinners. 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: hotel accommodation for 2 nights; breakfasts and 2 dinners with wine; admission to the talks; drinks reception; refreshments during coffee and tea breaks; gratuities for hotel staff; a detailed programme booklet.
B R IT A IN
Prices, per person. Two sharing: standard double or twin £700; garden room £760. Single occupancy: single room (single bed) £700. Depending upon availability, we may be able to offer double rooms for sole use at around 10 weeks prior to the weekend at £750 – please let us know on your booking form if you would be interested in upgrading should the opportunity arise.
LONDON DAYS
If you would like to receive fortnightly e-mail updates on the latest range of London Days, please contact us. Details and dates are released frequently throughout the year.
‘Dear, damn’d, distracting town’ – Alexander Pope For full details, please contact us for the current London Days brochure or visit visit www.martinrandall.com
FEBRUARY 2018 6
Great Railway Termini (le 753) Professor Gavin Stamp
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. All are accompanied by a trained administrator to ensure the smooth running of the day. 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. The programme also encompasses several larger events in London throughout the year – two of which are described below and opposite.
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Seven Churches & a Synagogue (le 764) Peter Howell
JANUARY 2018
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Ancient Greece (le 751) Antony Spawforth
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The Genius of Titian (le 754) Sheila Hale
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Caravaggio & Rembrandt (le 763) Dr Helen Langdon
MARCH 2018 9
Ancient Egypt at the British Museum (le 769) Lucia Gahlin
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Caravaggio & Rembrandt (le 838) Dr Helen Langdon
MAY 2018 12
The London Squares Walk (le 857) Martin Randall
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The London Backstreet Walk (le 859) Barnaby Rogerson
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Arts & Crafts (le 877) Dr Paul Atterbury
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The Tudors (le 853) Dr Neil Younger
JUNE 2018 5
Handel in London (le 779) Richard Wigmore
Seven Churches & a Synagogue (le 899) Peter Howell
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The Italian Renaissance (le 783) Dr Michael Douglas-Scott
The London Backstreet Walk (le 921) Dr Geoffrey Tyack
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Paintings of the Passion (le 796) Dr Antonia Whitley
London Gardens Walk (le 912) Louisa Allen
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CHARLES I: KING & COLLECTOR (le 798) Per Rumberg, Leanda de Lisle & Desmond Shawe-Taylor
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Paintings of the Passion (le 797) Dr Antonia Whitley
APRIL 2018
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Islamic Art in London (le 746) Professor James Allan
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The Ever-Changing City Skyline (le 809) Professor Peter Wynne Rees cbe
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The Italian Renaissance (le 747) Dr Michael Douglas-Scott
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London’s Underground Railway (le 821) Andrew Martin
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Spanish Art in London (le 748) Dr Xavier Bray
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Seven Churches & a Synagogue (le 837) Professor Gavin Stamp
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Impressionism in London (le 745) Dr Diane Silverthorne
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The London Backstreet Walk (le 831) Sophie Campbell
B R IT A IN
Tuesday 27 March 2018 (le 798) Price: from £195 Talks by Dr Per Rumberg, Leanda de Lisle & Dr Desmond Shawe-Taylor
Lectures and exhibition at the RA
In 2018, on the occasion of its 250th anniversary, the Royal Academy of Arts is organising a oncein-a-lifetime exhibition on the legendary art collection of King Charles I. During his reign, he acquired works by some of the finest artists of the past – Titian, Holbein, Mantegna – and commissioned leading contemporaries such as Van Dyck and Rubens. Following the King’s execution in 1649, his collection was sold off and scattered across Europe. While many works were recovered at the Restoration, others now form the core of museums such as the Louvre and the Prado. Organised in partnership with Royal Collection Trust, Charles I: King and Collector will reunite these astounding treasures. On the occasion of this landmark event, MRT is holding a study day with lectures by three outstanding experts followed by lunch and a visit to the exhibition. Two of the speakers are the exhibition’s curators, Dr Per Rumberg, Curator at the Royal Academy, and Desmond ShaweTaylor, Surveyor of The Queen’s Pictures; the third is historian Leanda de Lisle, author of the
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Charles I: King & Collector
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JULY 2018 3
The Ever-Changing City Skyline (le 945) Professor Peter Wynne Rees cbe
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LONDON CHORAL DAY (le 957)
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The London Backstreet Walk (le 967) Barnaby Rogerson
AUGUST 2018 22
London Gardens Walk (le 986) Louisa Allen
SEPTEMBER 2018 3
The Tudors (lf 118) Dr Neil Younger
forthcoming book White King: Charles I – Traitor, Murderer, Martyr. The talks take place in the Society of Antiquaries, one of the five Learned Societies based at Burlington House. Admission to the exhibition is by prebooked ticket only and entry will be staggered across two time slots to ensure everyone has a comparatively unimpeded view of the array of miniatures, drawings, paintings, sculptures and an extraordinary set of tapestries that will be on display. Audio guides are included, and the speakers will be on hand to respond to questions.
Practicalities Start: 10.10am, Society of Antiquaries. Doors open for the lecture at 9.50am. Finish: you enter the exhibition between 2.30pm and c. 3.00pm; you stay as long as you want, but the exhibition closes at 6.00pm. Price: £195, or £179 for RA members. This includes morning refreshments, lunch and admission to the RA exhibition. Group size: maximum 80 participants.
Illustration: Charles I, steel engraving c. 1850.
London Choral Day Three choirs and three churches in Chelsea Tuesday 10 July 2018 (le 957) Price: from £195 Our London Choral Days showcase outstanding choral ensembles in a selection of the most beautiful buildings in and around the capital. They take the form of a day-long sequence of performances, refreshments and talks in venues which are within walking distance of each other. The day has been conceived not as three discrete concerts but as an integrated sequence, a single great musical experience in which the individual parts illumine and enlarge upon what has gone before. Moreover, there is some connection between the venues and the music performed in them. This may be chronological – music of the same period as the building – or associational, a specific historical link between music and church. Before being engulfed by ‘the Great Wen’ in the nineteenth century, Chelsea was one of the more substantial of the largely agricultural communities a few miles from the capital. Half London’s fruit and vegetables used to come from Chelsea. Throughout the nineteenth century, however, market gardens and pleasure gardens were steadily covered by terraces ranging from artisan cottages to vast houses by Richard Norman Shaw. Chelsea remains one of the most attractive areas of inner London.
C h e ls e a O ld C h u r c h
H o ly T r in it y S lo a n e S q u a r e A Gesamtkunstwerk of architecture, sculpture, metalwork, painting and stained glass – and, for you, music – John Betjemen dubbed the church of Holy Trinity ‘the Cathedral of the Arts & Crafts movement’. It is a place of staggering beauty, so it beggars belief that in the 1970s it was closed and scheduled for demolition (it now regularly achieves a three-figure Sunday congregation). Begun in 1888 and consecrated in 1892, though embellishment continued well into the next century, it was paid for by Earl Cadogan, the landlord of much of this part of Chelsea, and designed by John Dando Sedding. Many of the leading artists and craftsmen of the time,
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Start: 11.30am at Chelsea Old Church, SW3 5DQ. Doors open at 11.20am, though the adjacent church hall will be serving refreshments from 10.45am. At the junction of Cheyne Walk beside the Thames and Old Church Street, it is about 20 minutes on foot from Sloane Square Station (District and Circle Lines) and a little more from South Kensington Station (District, Circle and Piccadilly Lines). Black cabs should be plentiful. Finish: c. 6.00pm, Holy Trinity, Sloane Street, SW1X 9BZ. Sloane Square Station is 2–3 minutes away. 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 two longer walks at a cost of £20 per person. Price: £195, or £215 with transport by taxi as specified above. This includes lunch and morning and afternoon refreshments as well as exclusive admission to the three concerts and short talks by architectural historian Professor Gavin Stamp. Lunch and refreshments: Lunch in good neighbourhood restaurants; the audience is split into three. Refreshments are served on arrival at Chelsea Old Church in the church hall, and 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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Illustration: Royal Hospital Chelsea, early-18th-century copper engraving.
The Royal Hospital in Chelsea was founded by Charles II for retired soldiers – a function it retains to the present day as home to the Chelsea Pensioners. Sir Christopher Wren was the architect, and the red brick ranges around grassed courts and grounds which reach down to the Thames form one of the most appealing of London’s historic precincts. The scale is regal, but the architecture restrained to the point of being almost domestic in feel. Capacious, serene and filled with light, and ornamented with a light dusting of carved wood and stucco, the chapel is perhaps the noblest of Wren’s churches, St Paul’s aside. It is embellished with one of the finest (if least seen) paintings in London, The Resurrection by Sebastiano Ricci in the apse vault. The short life of Henry Purcell, England’s greatest native composer (and a Londoner), overlapped with that of the chapel (consecrated 1692) by three years. Strangely little is known of his life, but it is inconceivable that he did not visit Chelsea Hospital and hear some of his works here. The other composers in today’s programme are English contemporaries of Purcell or from earlier in the century – Tomkins, Gibbons, William Croft and Pelham Humfrey. The chapel’s superb professional choir has taken wing under the directorship of the multi-talented William Vann, who conducts today’s concert.
including William Morris and Edward BurneJones, contributed a diverse range of artworks. Holy Trinity Choir is the church’s professional ensemble directed by Oliver Lallemant. John Ireland, organist c. 1897, described the church as having the ‘reputation of the best musical service in London’. This programme is conceived as a celebration of this great church, a musical transition through the old and new, combining the temporal with the secular, woven around select movements from two masses by Tomás Luis de Victoria and Vaughan Williams. Other composers are John Wilbye (1574–1638), Robert Lucas Pearsall (1795–1856), William Harris (1883–1973), Holst, Ireland, Parry and Grainger.
B R IT A IN
The parish church, dedicated to All Saints but generally known as Chelsea Old Church, developed over several centuries and was largely mediaeval and 17th-century until it took a direct hit in 1941. Painstaking restoration results in visitors assuming it had suffered damage without realising the extent of destruction. Its additive, irregular fabric and accretion of monuments and furnishings make it a rarity in the metropolitan area for its retention of the appearance and atmosphere of a country parish church. Some of England’s earliest Renaissance detailing can be found in the chapel built for Thomas More (Sir or St according to taste), though the Tower of London came to be his final resting place. We are delighted to welcome back the Orlando Consort, internationally known for their ground-breaking performances and recordings of mediaeval and Renaissance music. Their programme of late 15th and early 16th-century music focuses on two Chelsea connections: Thomas More and gardens. In his book Utopia, More describes the Renaissance style of ‘Musica Reservata’, seeing it as a return to the ancient ideal of music in which text takes precedence, eschewing complex counterpoint and structure. The programme includes floral madrigals by Sermisy, Arcadelt, Crecquillon and Lupi, together with Robert Fayrfax’s beautiful benedicite, What Dreamed I, a piece known to be directly connected to More himself.
R o y a l H o s p it a l C h e ls e a
‘A Terrible Beauty’ Ireland and the Troubles 1916–1998 It in e r a r y Day 1: Dublin. The tour begins at 3.00pm with a talk at the hotel on Home Rule and the Easter Rising. (Flights are not included in the price of the tour – see ‘Practicalities.’) There follows 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. 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.
9–14 July 2018 (me 953) 6 days • £1,760 • 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.
B R IT A IN & I R E L A N D : IRELAND, N. IRELAND
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 40
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.
Illustration: Holding a Dublin Street against the Rebels, © National Museums NI, Collection Ulster Museum.
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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: Belfast. (12th July: day of Protestant celebration of William of Orange’s victory at the Battle of the Boyne 1690.) 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 5: Derry-Londonderry, Omagh. Drive two hours through strikingly beautiful countryside to Londonderry, and explore Bogside and the Creggan Estate. Within sight of the 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 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.
Western Ireland Archaeology, history and landscape Patrick Mercer OBE Military historian. He read History at Oxford University 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. See pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,760. Single occupancy: £2,080. Flights are not included in the price of the tour. Several airlines link Dublin and Belfast with many UK and other airports. You are free to choose flights which are the most convenient for you. Included meals: 2 lunches, 3 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. O’Callaghan Stephen’s Green Hotel, Dublin (stephensgreenhotel.ie): modern hotel, centrally-located and within walking distance of the National Gallery. Rooms are somewhat lacking in character but contain all mod cons. Europa Hotel, Belfast (hastingshotels.com/ europa-belfast): 1960s 12-storey tower of historical significance, recently refurbished, comfortable and with excellent service. How strenuous? There’s rather more time spent outside than indoors on this tour and it involves walks of up to a mile or so. Average distance by coach per day: 58 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Castles, Campaigns, Conquest, 2–6 July 2018 (p.44); Gardens of Cheshire & Shropshire, 16–21 July 2018 (p.19).
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. Visits the Dingle Peninsula, the Burren, the Aran Islands.
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.
It in e r a r y Day 1. Leaves Cork airport by coach 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. Dún Beag is a cliff-edge Iron Age fort with four earthen rings and a souterrain overlooking the sea and the Illustration: cliffs of Moher, wood engraving c. 1880.
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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 between fantastic archaeological sites and scenery, superb accommodation and relative peace and quiet. Our extensive itinerary is planned to take
B R IT A IN
What else is included in the price? See page 8.
2–8 July 2018 (me 941) 7 days • £2,310 • Flights not included Lecturer: Professor Muiris O’Sullivan
Western Ireland continued
The Georgians in Scotland Architecture, interiors & landscape most famously, Robert, who came to dominate the building of Georgian Scotland. Among their architectural triumphs is the grand palace that is Hopetoun, a splendid setting for George IV’s visit in 1822. Arniston is still very much a family home and its estate has been in the Dundas family for 400 years. Among its treasures, Paxton houses the most important collection of Chippendale furniture on display in Scotland while the stark battlemented face of Mellerstain belies its refined and elegant interiors. A supremely handsome Adam creation, the polished rooms of Dumfries House hold the fruits of Chippendale’s first major commission but perhaps Robert’s finest achievement is Culzean Castle, romantically perched on a rocky cliff overlooking the Firth of Clyde. While the emphasis is on houses of the Georgian period, others serve to set 18th-century architecture and culture in context. Of these, the most ancient is Traquair, once a hunting lodge for Scottish kings. Holmwood, a 19th-century suburban villa, delights with its flamboyant, architecturally eclectic façade. Evoking the era of lavish weekend parties, Edwardian Manderston epitomises the last hurrah of country house entertaining on a grand scale.
Iveragh 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 12thcentury Kilmalkedar church. Visit the region’s museum in the village of Ballyferriter. Day 4: County Clare. Visit the 15th-century castle at Listowel, once occupied by the Firzmaurice lords of Kerry; it occupies 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 Co. Clare. Visit the 12th-century 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 mediaeval 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. Drive to Shannon airport by 11.00am where the tour ends.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,310. Single occupancy: £2,640.
B R IT A IN
Included meals: 2 lunches, 5 dinners, with wine.
& I R E L A N D : IRELAND, SCOTLAND
Accommodation. Acton’s Hotel, Kinsale (actonshotelkinsale.com): a business-orientated 4-star hotel in five converted Georgian town houses on the waterfront. The Dingle Skellig Hotel (dingleskellig.com): 4-star and functional; out-of-town overlooking Dingle Bay. Gregans Castle Hotel, Ballyvaughan (gregans.ie): 4-star country house hotel set in gardens and woodland. Flights are not included in the price. We will send recommended flight details and ask that you make your own reservation. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking and scrambling over archaeological sites, so surefootedness is essential. You are outside on exposed sites for most of the time. Average distance by coach per day: 61 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Mediaeval Middle England, 25–29 June 2018 (p.27). 42
It in e r a r y 23–31 July 2018 (me 966) 9 days • £3,260 Lecturer: Gail Bent Stay in The Principal hotel in Edinburgh, a country house hotel in the Borders and as guests at Ardgowan, a grand 18th-century country house which remains a private home, not a hotel nor a museum. Visit several houses not generally open to the public, some by special arrangement or with privileged access. Pass through the wonderful coastal and Lowland landscapes of western Scotland. Edinburgh stands amid a majestic landscape forged from volcanic rock, forming a dramatic and intimate affinity with its formidable setting. The story of Edinburgh is a tale of two cities, vastly opposed in architecture and lifestyle. Constricted by Arthur’s Seat on one side and Calton Hill on the other, the mediaeval Old Town, with its cramped and unsanitary conditions, became increasingly unpalatable to a growing and prosperous middle class in the 18th century. A Georgian New Town, with its broad avenues and leafy squares, lined with stylish Palladian façades, was, and still is, considered to be a masterpiece of urban planning. The spectacular scenery of the Scottish Borders masks its bloody and turbulent history, its lands ravaged by merciless English armies and rife with violent family feuds. Pacified with the Union of Scotland and England in 1707, Edinburgh’s increasingly wealthy businessmen, lawyers and aristocrats saw in its scenic countryside an idyllic setting for their country houses and it was an Edinburgh firm of architects, William Adam and his sons John, James and,
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Day 1: Edinburgh. Assemble at the hotel and leave on foot at 3.00pm for a walk up Calton Hill to see an assembly of monuments including the National Monument, a reproduction of the Parthenon (Edinburgh: ‘the Athens of the North’). First of three nights in Edinburgh. Day 2: Hopetoun House, Dalmeny. In the morning visit Hopetoun House, a few miles outside Edinburgh. Property of the Earl of Hopetoun, the house was begun by Sir William Bruce in 1699 and added to by William Adam in 1721. It has a large collection of James Cullen furniture and an excellent art collection including works by Rubens, Raeburn and Canaletto. Dalmeny House overlooks the Firth of Forth. Property of the Earl of Rosebery, there are superb collections of fine and decorative art, in particular British paintings and 18th-century French furniture of the highest quality. Day 3: Edinburgh. The day is spent on foot in Edinburgh. Begun in 1766, the New Town is a magnificent expanse of wide streets, squares, circuses, crescents and parks and terraces, and is one of the finest areas of Georgian architecture in Britain. Robert Adam’s dome in Register House is his largest room. Finish the day with a private visit to the Georgian House, furnished as a typical New Town home belonging to a wealthy family might have been in 1790–1810, the time of the first owner, John Lamont of Lamont. Day 4: Arniston, Mellerstain. Palladian Arniston is an important William Adam house with family portraits by Ramsay and Raeburn. The house remains in the Dundas family today. Unique in being built by both William Adam and his son Robert, Mellerstain House has some of the finest Adam interiors, with a classic enfilade of rooms, exquisite plasterwork and a magnificent Great Gallery. First of two nights in Roxburghe.
Orkney: 5000 years of culture Neolithic, Iron Age, Viking, present day Day 5: Manderston, Paxton. Built in the late 18th century, Manderston was completely rebuilt in the early 1900s with breathtaking ‘Adam Revival’ interiors. Paxton House, designed by John Adam in grand 18th-century Palladian style and almost untouched, houses paintings from the National Galleries of Scotland and a remarkable collection of Chippendale furniture original to the house. Day 6: Traquair, Pollok House. One of the most romantic houses in the Borders, Traquair is an almost untouched 16th- and 17th-century castle house, a high Catholic stronghold still lived in by a royal Stuart descendant. 18th-century Pollok House, designed by William Adam for the Maxwell family, houses works by El Greco, Murillo and Goya. First of three nights in Ardgowan. Day 7: Ardgowan. All day is spent at Ardgowan, a superb mansion of the 1790s designed by a follower of Robert Adam. There is time at leisure as well as the opportunity to tour the house. Day 8: Culzean, Dumfries. Drive to the clifftop Culzean Castle, Robert Adam’s boldest creation, with oval stair hall and round drawing room with views out to sea. Also by Adam, Dumfries House, famously saved for the nation with the help of the Prince of Wales in 2007, is a perfect Palladian composition which retains unspoilt interiors and a unique set of Chippendale furniture. Day 9: Holmwood House, Glasgow. Holmwood House was designed by Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson and was built in 1857–8 for James Couper, a local businessman. From here the coach takes you to Glasgow Railway Station by 12.30pm and to Glasgow Airport by 1.30pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,260. Single occupancy: £3,770. Included meals: 2 lunches, 7 dinners, with wine.
Group size: 10 to 18 participants. Combine this tour with: Gardens of Cheshire & Shropshire, 16–21 July 2018 (p.19).
Illustration: Culzean Castle, steel engraving c. 1850.
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. 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,
It in e r a r y Day 1: Kirkwall. Arrive at Kirkwall independently (see ‘Practicalities’ for further details). Hotel rooms are available to check in from 2.00pm. Leave the hotel at 3.45pm with a visit to the Orkney Museum in Kirkwall and an overview of the history of the islands. Stay in Kirkwall throughout. 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 Illustration: Kirkwall, steel engraving c. 1850.
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How strenuous? A fair amount of walking is unavoidable. Coaches can rarely park near the entrance to houses; grounds are often extensive. Most of the houses visited do not have lifts.
Study the ‘Heart of Neolithic Orkney’, a unesco World Heritage Site.
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.
B R IT A IN
Accommodation. The Principal Hotel, Edinburgh (phcompany.com): recently renovated, well-situated 4-star hotel; occupies 5 Georgian town houses and the former offices of the Caledonian Insurance Company. Period and modern touches nod to the literary associations of the buildings’ former occupants. The Roxburghe Country House Hotel (roxburghe-hotel.net): 4-star hotel in an 18th-century manor house set in the 50,000-acre Roxburghe Estate. Ardgowan (ardgowan.co.uk): a private house, not a hotel – keys to bedrooms are not provided. Each room has its own bathroom, though in some cases this is a few yards along a corridor. Single rooms have single beds in them.
28 July–3 August 2018 (me 969) 7 days • £1,830 • Flights not included Lecturer: Caroline Wickham-Jones
Orkney: 5000 years of culture continued
Castles, Campaigns, Conquest Military architecture and mediaeval Wales
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. 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. Day 6: Birsay. Cross the tidal causeway from Mainland to Birsay to explore Pictish, Norse and mediaeval 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 2.00pm or 3.00pm and Stromness ferry terminal by 3.45pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,830. Single occupancy: £1,920. Included meals: 4 lunches, 4 dinners, with wine.
B R IT A IN
Accommodation. The Ayre Hotel, Kirkwall (ayrehotel.co.uk): 3-star hotel in the centre of Kirkwall; rooms are comfortable and service willing; the best available in the locality.
& I R E L A N D : SCOTLAND, WALES
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, or to get the ferry from Aberdeen to Kirkwall or Scrabness to Stromness. We will send recommended transport options with your confirmation of booking and ask that you make your own reservation. Transfers will be provided for these recommended options. How strenuous? There is a lot of walking or scrambling over archaeological sites. Surefootedness and fitness are essential. 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. Combine this tour with: The Industrial Revolution, 6–11 August 2018 (p.30).
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2–6 July 2018 (me 942) 5 days • £1,240 Lecturer: Dr Marc Morris The finest concentration of castles in Europe, set in exceptionally lovely landscape. Includes the great Edwardian castles of the 1280s, the most advanced of their time. A history tour as much as an architectural one. Concise but unrushed: ten castles in five days. Wales has the greatest concentration of castles of any region in the British Isles. For variety, architectural excellence, historical interest and state of preservation the group is perhaps unsurpassed in all Europe and Latin Christendom. This short tour encompasses most of the best of them, from Gwent in the south to Gwynedd in the north, and – it should be inserted here as not the least attractive feature – traverses some exceptionally lovely countryside. It is a common fallacy to consider castles to be defensive in function. Many are nakedly aggressive, boldly planted on foreign land. Only one of the castles seen on this tour was built by a Welshman; the other nine were built by English invaders. There had been incursions from England even before the Norman conquest, sometimes by rapacious barons acting free-lance, sometimes by armies of the Crown. But the Welsh refused to be subdued and, time and again, having recuperated in their mountain fastnesses, swept down and ousted the invader. Edward I, the most warlike of English mediaeval monarchs, embarked in 1277 on a campaign of reconquest. Within twenty years, despite setbacks, Wales had lost its independence – forever – and the northern heartland was ringed by new castles, technically as advanced as anything in Europe and the Mediterranean. Craftsmen and labourers were recruited from nearly every county in England, but the master designer was a Savoyard, James of St George, the
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finest military architect of his generation. This group of Edwardian castles alone collectively constitutes one of the finest sights mediaeval Britain has to offer. Not only are they wonderfully well preserved, they are immeasurably enhanced by their sites. Each was designed to be provisioned from the sea, so they enjoy the matchless setting of waterfront site and mountainous backdrop. It is fascinating to see them in the context of five hundred years of military architecture represented in the other castles. But setting is again important. Wales has some of the loveliest countryside in the British Isles. We journey through a landscape of highly picturesque hills, little green fields, plentiful broadleaves and occasional majestic moorland. At the expense of a couple of castles of note, we have avoided even the fringes of larger towns and cities in favour of countryside, market towns, villages and back roads.
It in e r a r y Day 1: Chepstow. Leave Newport Station (Gwent) at 2.00pm and drive to Chepstow Castle, a massive series of enclosures and towers on the cliffs above the River Wye – the border with England. Immensely impressive, there is work from many periods between the 11th and 17th centuries, the great Norman tower standing comparison with those in London and Colchester. Continue to the delightful market town of Abergavenny; first of two nights here. Day 2: Grosmont, Skenfrith, Raglan. ‘The Three Castles’ were built in earth and timber shortly after the Conquest, upgraded in stone a century later and reconstructed c. 1200–40 with the latest features. Today we see Grosmont and Skenfrith – relatively small, evocative, ensconced in charming villages. Lunch in the historic town of Monmouth. Largely 15th-century, Raglan Castle is a beautifully ornamented architectural composition, lavishly equipped with defensive devices, by now obsolete: the triumph of art over warfare.
Opera in Cardiff Tosca and La forza del destino Day 3: White Castle, Harlech. Third of the ‘Three Castles’, the impressiveness of White Castle is enhanced by its remote countryside setting (inaccessible by coach, taxis required). Drive 130 miles (with two stops) through the unremitting loveliness of the hilly heart of Wales. Harlech Castle clings to a crag by the sea, a compact concentric type with high walls and towers, one of the great sights of the British Isles. Built 1283–89, architect James of St George, patron Edward I of England. First of two nights near Caernarfon. Day 4: Dolbadarn, Caernarfon, Beaumaris. The only native Welsh castle on the tour, Dolbadarn was built in the 13th century to control the route to Snowdonia. Intended as a seat of government, Caernarfon is the greatest of Edward I’s castles, and the high curtain wall and mural towers rising from the estuary’s edge incorporate symbolism evoking his imperial aspirations. Cross the Menai Strait to Anglesey. Beaumaris is the last of James of St George’s constructions and, in terms of its defensive apparatus, the most sophisticated. Day 5: Conwy. Walk atop the walls encircling Conwy, the town founded by Edward I. The castle is one of the great achievements of mediaeval military architecture, and its curtain walls and many mural towers survive intact. The tour finishes here, and the coach drives to Llandudno Junction railway station (5 minutes) 2–3 times between 12.30 and 3.00pm to meet trains. There is more to see here, including Britain’s finest surviving Elizabethan town house.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,240. Single occupancy: £1,410. Included meals: 3 dinners with wine. Accommodation. The Angel Hotel, Abergavenny (angelabergavenny.com): former Georgian coaching-inn, now a 3-star hotel with comfortable rooms and excellent restaurant. Ty’n Rhos, near Caernarfon, Snowdonia (tynrhos.co.uk): charming, country house hotel in a tranquil and attractive rural setting.
Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
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. Michael Blakemore’s production of Puccini’s Tosca sets the opera in the middle of Rome in 1800, just as it says in the libretto. Cavaradossi paints in the church of Sant’Andrea della Valle, surrounded by chapel railings and holy statues; Scarpia’s office in the Palazzo Farnese (now the French Embassy) has an en-suite torture chamber; and the final act is played out on the roof of the Castel Sant’Angelo, with the archangel’s statue brandishing its sword above the firing-squad as the sun rises over Rome. The WNO chorus is in its element with the glorious Te Deum that brings the first act to its climax, and the bells that ring over Rome at the start of Act 3 include one that was cast especially for this production. Verdi’s opera on the power of fate – or the force of destiny – is set in Spain and Italy in 1750, and tells the story of the Marquis of Calatrava, and of his daughter Leonora’s love for Don Alvaro, a Peruvian adventurer whom her father detests. When Alvaro goes into hiding, Leonora’s brother Don Carlo sets off in pursuit. Verdi’s opera is the occasion for rousing choruses, lyrical arias, and a comic role for the baritone Fra Melitone, a Franciscan who becomes involved in the plot to reunite Leonora with her lover. 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 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.
Return to the hotel, lecture, dinner and at 6.30pm: La forza del destino (Giuseppe Verdi), David Pountney (director), Carlo Rizzi (conductor), Mary Elizabeth Williams, Gwyn Hughes Jones, Justina Gringyte, Luis Cansino, Miklós Sebestyén, Donald Maxwell, Alun Rhys-Jenkins, Wyn Pencarreg. Day 3. A guided tour of the WMC is followed by Cardiff Castle – a mediaeval 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.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £790. Single occupancy: £930. Included meals: 2 dinners with wine. Accommodation. St David’s Hotel & Spa (thestdavidshotel.com): this is 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. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: The Genius of Titian, 14 February 2018 (contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com).
It in e r a r y Day 1. The tour begins at 4.00pm with a walk from the hotel across the Cardiff Bay development to the Wales Millennium Centre (WMC) for a lecture and pre-opera dinner. 7.15pm: Tosca (Giacomo Puccini), Michael Blakemore (director), Carlo Rizzi (conductor), Claire Rutter, Hector Sandoval, Daniel Grice, Donald Maxwell, Mark S. Doss. Illustration: Chepstow Castle, watercolour by Charles H. Ashdown, publ. 1911.
Day 2. Take the boat from Cardiff Bay to the National Museum of Wales, with one of the finest collections of Impressionist paintings in the UK.
Illustration: Cardiff, National Museum of Wales, after a drawing 1927 by Joseph Pike.
What else is included in the price? See page 8. 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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Combine this tour with: Mediaeval Middle England, 25–29 June 2018 (p.27).
The Welsh National Opera in their home theatre, the acoustically and architecturally excellent Wales Millennium Centre.
B R IT A IN
How strenuous? There are many steps, much uneven paving, muddy paths and quite a lot of walking. Average coach travel per day: c. 71 miles.
16–18 February 2018 (me 758) 3 days • £790 (Including tickets to 2 performances) Lecturer: Simon Rees
Occupation in the Channel Islands Hitler’s ‘impregnable fortress’ 20–24 May 2018 (me 874) 5 days • £2,130 Lecturer: Dr Paul Sanders In-depth look at a fascinating and relatively unknown portion of WWII history. Visits Jersey’s and Guernsey’s primary military sites including special appointments and talks by local experts. Features walks along striking coastlines. Excellent hotels on both islands. The Channel Islands, the oldest possession of the British Crown, were the only part of the British Isles to be occupied by German forces during the Second World War. Following the fall of France in June 1940 the British government withdrew from the islands, their exposed position in the bay of Saint-Malo having rendered them strategically untenable. On 19 June 1940, the islands were demilitarised, and it was announced that those who wanted to be evacuated should register forthwith. German forces landed in Guernsey on 30 June 1940 and in Jersey the next day. There was no organised resistance movement against German forces – only acts by individuals or small groups. The occupying forces enforced a number of restrictions such as a nightly curfew and censorship of the press. In 1942 the deportation began of about 2,000 British-born Channel Islanders to internment camps in Germany. Other residents were deported to concentration camps. During the occupation the islands were heavily fortified as part of Hitler’s ‘Atlantic Wall’. Construction was overseen by the German Forces and the Organisation Todt – a paramilitary engineering outfit. Forced labourers were imported to build the fortifications. This included Spanish Republican refugees from France who had been surrendered by the Vichy government, and people rounded up in Eastern Europe who were treated as work-slaves. Visitors to the islands are often struck
by the scale of construction; a staggering 10% of German resources spent on the Atlantic Wall were used to fortify the Channel Islands, much of which remains visible today. This has been deliberately preserved by local volunteers, as a reminder of this chapter in Channel Islands history. The D-Day landings in June 1944 came as both a blessing and a curse. While they marked the beginning of the end for the German occupiers who relied on supply lines from the continent, they also meant that food imports were cut. As supplies dwindled, islanders faced starvation. However, following trilateral negotiations involving the Foreign Office, the Germans and the Red Cross, the SS Vega was authorized to deliver food, saving the lives of many islanders. The islands were finally liberated on 9 May 1945, the day after VE Day. HMS Beagle and HMS Bulldog arrived in Jersey and Guernsey respectively, with on board British officers who finalised the unconditional surrender of German forces in the islands. This tour visits the two largest islands exploring a fascinating and little understood episode of Britain’s WWII history.
It in e r a r y Day 1: London to Jersey. Fly at c. 11.05am (British Airways) from London Gatwick to Jersey. The vast complex of the Jersey War Tunnels provide an excellent introduction to the background of the Occupation of Jersey including individual wartime stories and award winning galleries. It also provides an idea of the scale and intent of the occupying forces in defending the Islands. First of two nights in Jersey. Day 2: Noirmont Point, St Ouen, St Brelades. The dramatic coastline on Jersey’s western and northern fronts were some of the most heavily defended parts of the island. The coastal artillery batteries protected German shipping between Cherbourg and Brest as well as providing all-round defence from the air and sea. The location of these batteries provide the opportunity to
look inside these impressive outposts while enjoying some of Britain’s finest coastal scenery. St Ouen’s Bay, one of the island’s most picturesque bays, was one of the most vulnerable and is now the location of the privately owned Channel Islands Military Museum. Day 3: St Martin, St Helier, St Peter Port. In 2011 the Jersey Occupation Collections held at Jersey Archive were inscribed on the unesco UK Memory of the World Register. After a guided tour and lecture enjoy some free time in St Helier before a short flight to Guernsey for the first of two nights. Day 4: Fort Hommet, Pleinmont, St Peter Port. Guernsey, the first Channel Island to be occupied, has much in common with its sister Island but is distinctly different. The excellent German Occupation Museum displays an impressive collection of occupation memorabilia while Fort Hommet and Pleinmont Tower on the island’s western coast reveal the scale of German defences that contributed to Hitler’s Atlantic Wall. The afternoon is free to wander the charming streets of St Peter Port, considered one of the prettiest of Channel Island towns. Day 5: St Peter Port. The headquarters of the German Naval Commander Channel Islands handled all the important radio signals traffic for the German forces in the Channel with messages being transmitted and received by naval codes using the Enigma enciphering machines. Housed in the original bunker, the headquarters have been accurately restored providing a rare opportunity to see inside a German military operations centre. Fly c. 4.30pm (Aurigny) arriving Gatwick at approximately 5.30pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,130 or £1,890 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,430 or £2,190 without flights. Included meals: 2 lunches, 4 dinners with wine.
B R IT A IN & I R E L A N D : CHANNEL ISLANDS
Accommodation. The Somerville Hotel, Jersey (dolanhotels.com): located above the picturesque St Aubin’s Bay, the hotel enjoys wonderful sea views and excellent facilities (4-stars). Old Government House, Guernsey (theoghhotel.com): former Governor’s residence, this historic hotel is considered the best on the island and is located in the heart of St Peter Port (5-stars). How strenuous? This tour would not be suitable for anyone who has difficulty with everyday walking. Some sites visited are on exposed cliff paths, so a good level of fitness and sure-footedness is essential. Our hotel in Jersey is located part way up a steep hill, not accessible by coach. Military bunkers often have numerous steps and low ceilings; sufferers of claustrophobia might struggle in some of the inner chambers. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Berry & Touraine, 28 May–5 June 2018 (p.69).
Illustration: Guernsey, German military band marching past Lloyds Bank on The Pollet, St Peter Port. © IWM.
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Albania: Crossroads of Antiquity Archaeology, history, art and landscape 11–20 April 2018 (me 820) 10 days • £2,680 Lecturer: Carolyn Perry 12–21 September 2018 (mf 125) 10 days • £2,680 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.
It in e r a r y Day 1. Fly at c. 5.00pm (British Airways) from London Gatwick to Tirana. Dinner and first of two nights in Tirana. Day 2: 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. Day 3: Durrës, Apollonia. Dürres was a key port for both the Greeks and the 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. Then it’s time for 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. First of two nights in Berat.
Day 5: 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.
Day 6: 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 7: 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 8: Gjirokastra, Labova e Kryqit. The steep cobbled streets and stone-roofed Ottoman houses of Gjirokastra are best appreciated from the castle. 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 Gjirokastra. Day 9: Ardenica, Tirana. Drive north to the Monastery of Ardenica, built in 1282 by Byzantine Emperor, Andronikos II Palaiologos and famous as the site of the wedding in 1451 of Albania’s national hero, Skanderbeg. From here, we continue to Tirana for some free time. 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 Illustration: Berat, lithograph 1851 by Edward Lear.
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E U R O P E : ALBANIA
Day 4: 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 17thcentury Christian art and a beautiful iconostasis are displayed. Overnight in Berat.
Here, we see the Muradie Mosque; built in 1537 by the greatest of Ottoman architects, Mimar Sinan. Overnight in Vlora.
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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 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: two visits to its bustle and optimism bookend the tour.
Albania: Crossroads of Antiquity continued
Opera in Vienna Puccini, Verdi, Beethoven It in e r a r y
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.
Day 1. Fly at c. 2.15pm from London Heathrow to Vienna (British Airways). Arrive at the hotel in time to settle in before dinner.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s
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 imperial apartments. Evening opera at the Staatsoper: La Bohème (Giacomo Puccini), Speranza Scappucci (conductor), Jean-François Borras (Rodolfo), Anita Hartig (Mimì), Alessio Arduini (Marcello), Valentina Naforniţa (Musetta).
Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,680 or £2,430 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,930 or £2,680 without flights. Included meals: 8 lunches, 8 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Kotoni, Tirana (hotelkotoni.com): boutique hotel in a restored government building on a quiet side-street off the main boulevard. 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): luxury resort hotel away from the main centre with sea-views. Hotel Argjiro, Gjirokastra (hotelargjiro.al): recently opened hotel in the the historical centre. Doubles for single occupancy in some hotels have twin beds. 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.
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In April, combine this tour with: Palladian Villas, 3–8 April 2018 (p.105); Western Andalucía, 3–11 April 2018 (p.183); Modern Art on the Côte d’Azur, 5–11 April 2018 (p.76); Romans in the Rhône Valley, 23–29 April 2018 (p.73); Gastronomic Valencia, 23–30 April 2018 (p.177). Or in September, with: Walking in Slovenia, 3–10 September 2018 (p.163); Bilbao to Bayonne, 3–10 September 2018 (p.169); Poets & the Somme, 7–10 September 2018 (p.68); Pompeii & Herculaneum, 24–29 September 2018 (p.138); Lucca, 24–30 September 2018 (p.124).
E U R O P E : ALBANIA, AUSTRIA
Mozart in Salzburg 27 January–1 February 2018 (me 750) 6 days • £3,510 Lecturer: Richard Wigmore Very few spaces remaining Please contact us for details or visit www.martinrandall.com
What else is included in the price? See page 8. 48
Day 3. The daily talk precedes a visit to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, one of the world’s greatest art galleries. Walk through a series of gardens to a restaurant for lunch. Free time, or visit an apartment lived in by Beethoven. An evening at the Staatsoper: Otello (Giuseppe Verdi), Dan Ettinger (conductor), Roberto Alagna (Otello), Dmitri Hvorostovsky (Iago), Alexandru Moisiuc (Lodovico), Aleksandra Kurzak (Desdemona).
16–20 March 2018 (me 784) 5 days • £2,440 (including tickets to 3 performances) Lecturer: Barry Millington Two performances at the Staatsoper, one of the world’s greatest opera houses and one at the historic Theater an der Wien. La Bohème (Puccini), Otello (Verdi) and Fidelio (Beethoven, concert performance). Based at a venerable and very comfortable hotel perfectly located beside the Staatsoper. Not content with being the most important city in the history of western music, Vienna continues to nurture an exceptionally active cultural life of a high level of excellence. Music and opera are cherished (and paid for) by government and citizens perhaps more than anywhere else in the world. Vienna is notoriously wedded to tradition, and Staatsoper productions are generally not what could be called progressive by standards prevalent in the German-speaking world. But stagecraft, stage design and dramatic portrayal are of the highest order, and the house continues to attract the world’s finest singers and conductors. And of course it enjoys the supreme skills and sumptuous sound of the Vienna Philharmonic, the orchestra in residence. Highly sophisticated audiences and critics give no quarter to complacency or laziness; opera at the Staatsoper is a fairly safe bet. The Theater an der Wien was built by the impresario who first staged Mozart’s Magic Flute, Emanuel Schikenader, in 1801. Each day there is a session of talks and discussions about the evening’s opera. There are also guided tours on foot to a choice selection of Vienna’s art and architecture and musical heritage, but also plenty of free time for rest, recuperation and preparation for the next performance.
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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 late-afternoon talk, an early dinner and an evening performance at the Theater an der Wien: Fidelio (Beethoven, concert performance), Giovanni Antonini (conductor), Annette Dasch (Leonore), Klaus Florian Vogt (Florestan), Regula Mühlemann (Marzelline), Sebastian Holecek (Don Pizarro), Stefan Cerny (Rocco), Patrick Grahl (Jaquino), Matthias Winckhler (Don Fernando), Kammerorchester Basel, Gaechinger Cantorey. Day 5. Free morning before the flight to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 4.15pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,440 or £2,260 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,710 or £2,530 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 3 dinners with wine. Music: tickets (first category) for 3 operas are included, costing c. £425. 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: Beauty & the Abyss: Viennese Modernism, 21–25 March 2018 (p.49); Art in Madrid, 21–25 March 2018 (p.176).
Illustration: Scene from ‘Othello’, wood engraving from ‘The Works of Shakespeare Vo.III’, 1866.
Beauty & the Abyss: Viennese Modernism Klimt, Wagner, Schiele, Moser 21–25 March 2018 (me 792) 5 days • £1,960 Lecturer: Gavin Plumley A one-off tour to mark the 2018 centenary of the deaths of Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Koloman Moser and Otto Wagner. Visits several special commemorative exhibitions as well as permanent collections and buildings. Intensive study of architecture, design and art of the Vienna Secession, Art Nouveau, Arts & Crafts and early Modernism.
Day 2. Morning lecture. The Museum of Applied Arts has excellent collections, strikingly displayed, of work by Hoffmann, Moser and other designers of the Wiener Werkstätte, as well as by the Scotsman Charles Rennie Mackintosh. An afternoon walk to see Secessionist designs by Otto Wagner, Max Fabiani, Josip Plecnik and Adolf Loos (including a public lavatory and a menswear shop). Visit to and dinner at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, one of the world’s greatest art galleries, with a special exhibition focused on Klimt’s Nuda Veritas and representations of self-perception. Time for independent exploration of the permanent collection. Day 3. Visit the Museum of the History of Vienna, a fascinating survey whose collections are particularly rich in turn-of-the-century art and artefacts. It will house the first major exhibition dedicated to Otto Wagner to be staged for more than fifty years. See also the decommissioned railway station pavilions by Wagner and Olbrich and the exhibition hall (the ‘Golden Cabbage’) designed in 1898 by Olbrich as an exhibition hall for the Secession. Klimt’s 34-metre long Beethoven Frieze is here. A special exhibition at the Imperial Furniture Collection presents the work of the leading architects of Viennese Modernism: Wagner, Loos and Hoffmann as interior and furniture designers.
Day 4. 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 ground floor of the villa used by Klimt as a studio between 1911 and 1918 features a reconstruction of the original furnishings and various media related to Klimt’s work. Day 5. The Leopold Collection, opened in 2001, is an excellent collection of works by Secessionist artists, especially Schiele. The flight to Heathrow arrives at c. 6.45pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,960 or £1,750 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,230 or £2,020 without flights. Included meals: 3 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Bristol (bristolvienna. com): 5-star hotel in a superb location on the Ringstrasse, traditionally furnished and decorated. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking. Average distance by coach per day: 9 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Opera in Vienna, 16–20 March 2018 (p.48); Music & Ballet in Paris, 27–31 March 2018 (p.67).
Vienna, Secession Building, wood engraving 1898 (the year of its completion).
M A IN L A N D E U R O P E : AUSTRIA
Vienna at the turn of the twentieth century was a city in ferment – a bastion of the established order, a hotbed of radical politics, a crucible of intellectual and artistic revolution. As the capital of a multinational empire, residence of Europe’s premier monarchy, centre of an omnipresent bureaucracy and headquarters of a formidable army, Vienna projected an image of unshakeable power and respect for tradition. Lift not the painted veil: behind it lay widespread discontent, a crumbling moral order and myriad cracks in the coherence of empire. With remarkable suddenness, there emerged from this complacent, decadent and artistically stagnant society a brilliant array of artists and intellectuals who were determined to break with the past and were prepared to risk affronting the establishment in doing so. This was the city of Mahler, Schönberg, Schnitzler and Freud, and also of the protagonists of this tour, Klimt, Schiele and Otto Wagner and their friends, collaborators and rivals. The Great War brought Austrian suzerainty of Central Europe crashing to an end, causing death, destruction and trauma along the way. And then the ’flu pandemic of 1918 killed even more, including Schiele, Klimt and Moser. In the first decades of the twentieth century Art Nouveau in its multifarious manifestations and transformations spread like wildfire around Europe and beyond. In the realm of architecture and ornamentation the Viennese variant was more measured than elsewhere, and more classical. In the first years of the new century, applied ornament retreated further to expose pure form and rational design. Here are the roots of modernism which, in turn, became the dominant orthodoxy of the twentieth century. By contrast, the revolution in painting and the graphic arts had little international influence, but resulted in works which were exceptionally luxuriant and expressive.
Nyolcak group, among others. This visit is led by a museum curator; Gavin Plumley joins the tour in the morning on Day 2.
It in e r a r y Day 1. Fly at c. 9.00am from London Heathrow to Vienna (Austrian Airlines). Drive straight to the Gallery of Austrian Art in the Baroque magnificence of the Belvedere Palace to see the collection of paintings by Klimt (the world’s largest, including The Kiss), Schiele, Kokoschka and their contemporaries. The Lower Belvedere hosts a special exhibition, Austria-Hungary 1918, in which Klimt and Schiele are presented in dialogue with a variety of figures including leading Czech Cubists and painters in the Hungarian 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 Schubertiade Music and mountains in the Vorarlberg 27 August–2 September 2018 (me 999) 7 days • £3,780 (including tickets to 10 performances) Lecturer: Misha Donat Ten performances; artists include Elisabeth Kulman, Elisabeth Leonskaja, Andrè Schuen, Julia Fischer, Daniel Behle, Francesco Piemontesi and Sir András Schiff. Excursions to surrounding towns and optional walks led by a local guide. All concerts are held in the Angelika-KaufmannSaal in Schwarzenberg. 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 to Schwarzenberg, described by Herder as ‘the prettiest village in Europe’. Our tour is based in the neighbouring village of Mellau, seven miles away.
with Andrè Schuen (baritone), Daniel Heide (piano): Schubert, Die schöne Müllerin. Dinner in Schwarzenberg. Evening concert with the Hagen Quartet, Danjulo Ishizaka (cello): Beethoven, String Quartet in A, Op.18 No.5; Webern, Six Bagatelles for String Quartet, Op.9; Schubert, String Quintet in C, D956. Day 4. Optional morning mountain walk followed by free time in Mellau. Drive to Schwarzenberg. Some free time. Afternoon recital with Francesco Piemontesi (piano): Schubert, Sonata in A minor, D845; Eleven Ecossaises, D781; Four Impromptus, D935. Dinner in Schwarzenberg. Evening concert with Elisabeth Kulman (mezzo-soprano), Daniel Behle (tenor), Camerata Musica Limburg: selected Lieder by Schubert. Day 5. Visit 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 driving to Schwarzenberg. Afternoon recital with the Pavel Haas Quartet: Schubert, String Quartet in A minor, D804 ‘Rosamunde’; Dvořák, String Quartet in A flat, Op.105. Dinner in Schwarzenberg. Recital with Sir András Schiff (piano): Mendelssohn, Fantasie in F-sharp minor, Op.28; Beethoven, Sonata in F sharp, Op.78; Brahms, Eight Pieces, Op.76; Schubert, Sonata in A, D959. Day 6. Free morning. Early afternoon lecture. Afternoon concert with Julia Fischer (violin), Nils
It in e r a r y M A IN L A N D
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.
E U R O P E : AUSTRIA
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 mediaeval defences, town hall and Gothic cathedral (altarpiece by Wolf Huber). Drive to Schwarzenberg for an afternoon Lieder recital with Elisabeth Kulman (soprano), Eduard Kutrowatz (piano): songs by Schubert, Frederic Kroll and Wagner. Dinner in Schwarzenberg. Evening concert with the Artemis Quartet, Elisabeth Leonskaja (piano): Schumann, String Quartet in A minor, Op.41 No.1; String Quartet in A, Op.41 No.3; Piano Quintet in E flat, Op.44. Day 3. Optional morning stroll in the surrounding countryside followed by some free time in Mellau. Drive to Schwarzenberg. Afternoon Lieder recital 50
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Mönkemeyer (viola), Daniel Müller-Schott (cello): Beethoven, String Trio in C minor, Op.9 No.3; Martinů, String Trio No.2; Schubert, String Trio in B, D581. Dinner in Schwarzenberg. Evening Lieder recital with Daniel Behle (tenor), Oliver Schnyder (piano): Schubert, Winterreise. Day 7. Fly from Zurich arriving at London Heathrow at c. 4.30pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,780 or £3,570 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,940 or £3,730 without flights. Included meals: 6 dinners with wine. Music: tickets (top category) to 10 performances are included, costing c. £650. 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. Average distance by coach per day: 55 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: King Ludwig II, 20–25 August 2018 (p.89); Walking in Slovenia, 3–10 September 2018 (p.163); Moscow & St Petersburg, 3–11 September 2018 (p.159).
The Schubertiade – with mountain walks The music festival with hill-walking 27 June–1 July 2018 (me 939) 5 days • £2,690 (includes tickets to 7 performances) Lecturer: Richard Wigmore Seven performances; artists include Igor Levit, Christoph Prégardien, Marlis Petersen, Ian Bostridge and The Elias String Quartet with Paul Lewis. Country walks in the surrounding mountains: two to three hours long, led by an experienced walking guide.
It in e r a r y Day 1. Fly at c. 9.30am 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. Dinner in the hotel. Lieder recital with Marlis Petersen (soprano) and Camillo Radicke (piano): selected songs by Schubert. Day 2. Morning walk. Distance: c. 6 km. Duration: c. 2 hours 30 minutes. Ascent: 315m. Descent: 162m. The funicular transports us to 1400m where this walk begins. Gentle but persistant climbs with no shade make this a moderately strenuous route, with spectacular views. Mid-afternoon lecture before driving to Schwarzenberg. Afternoon recital with The Elias String Quartet, Paul Lewis (piano): Schubert, Quarttsatz in C minor, D703; Mozart, Piano Concerto in A, K.414; Schubert, String
Quartet in D minor, D810 ‘Death & the Maiden’. Dinner in Schwarzenberg. Evening Lieder recital with Ian Bostridge (tenor) and Igor Levit (piano): selected songs by Schubert. Day 3. Morning walk. Distance: c. 4.5 km. Duration: c. 1 hour 30 minutes. Ascent: 56m. Descent: 144m. An easy to moderate, low level walk from the hotel along the Mellen stream that later climbs to enjoy views of the surrounding mountains. Mid-afternoon lecture before driving to Schwarzenberg. Afternoon concert with MarcAndré Hamelin (piano): Beethoven, Adelaide (arranged for solo piano by Franz Liszt); Schubert, Sonata in A, D959; Schumann, Fantasie in C, Op.17. Dinner in Schwarzenberg. Concert with Igor Levit (piano), Ning Feng (violin), Volker Jacobsen (viola), Isang Enders (cello): Brahms, Piano Quartet in G minor, Op.25, Piano Quartet in C minor, Op.60, Piano Quartet in A, Op.26. Day 4. Morning walk. Distance: c. 6 km. Duration: c. 2 hours 30 minutes. Altitude gain: 280m. Beginning with an ascent of about 45 minutes, walk through deciduous forest and emerge on to high pasture for wonderful views of the Kanisfluh mountains and the Argenschlucht waterfall. Return to Mellau for lunch and a free afternoon. Early evening lecture before driving to Schwarzenberg. Evening Lieder recital with Christoph Prégardien (tenor) and Malcolm Martineau (piano): Schubert, Die Schöne Müllerin. The Vorarlberg (Feldkirch), lithograph c. 1850.
Day 5. Morning lecture before driving to Schwarzenberg. Late-morning concert with Igor Levit (piano), Ning Feng (violin), Daniel MüllerSchott (cello): Schubert, Piano Trio in B flat, D898, Piano Trio in E flat, D929. Lunch in Schwarzenberg following the concert. Fly from Zurich arriving at London Heathrow at c. 7.30pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,690 or £2,520 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,800 or £2,630 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 3 dinners with wine. Music: tickets (top category) to 7 performances are included, costing c. £450. 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? This is a walking tour: it is essential for participants to be in good physical condition and to be used to country walking which includes steep inclines and some walking at altitude. Participants should have appropriate walking footwear. Average distance by coach per day: 55 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Norway: Art, Architecture, Landscape, 18–26 June 2018 (p.153); Danish Castles & Gardens, 2–8 July 2018 (p.58).
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, and CD booklets for many labels. Currently he is working on a new edition of the Beethoven piano sonatas being published by Bärenreiter.
Richard Wigmore
M A IN L A N D E U R O P E : AUSTRIA
Music writer, lecturer and broadcaster for BBC Radio 3. He writes for BBC Music and Gramophone and 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. See pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies.
What else is included in the price? See page 8. 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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Flemish Painting From van Eyck to Rubens: Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp, Brussels 5–9 September 2018 (mf 112) 5 days • £1,810 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.
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.
It in e r a r y
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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).
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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 and Child. St Salvator’s cathedral contains a triptych by Dirk Bouts. 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 since dispersal by the French in 1799. The house and 52
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Dr Sophie Oosterwijk Researcher and lecturer with degrees in Art History, Mediaeval 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 also co-editor of the journal Church Monuments. See pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies. 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. In Bruges, see the mediaeval Hospital of St John, now a museum devoted to Hans Memling; it contains many of his best paintings. See the market place with its soaring belfry, Gothic town hall and Basilica of the Holy Blood. In Ghent, visit the Museum of Fine Arts, principally to see a work by 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.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,810 or £1,630 without Eurostar. Single occupancy: £2,040 or £1,860 without Eurostar. Included meals: 3 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel NH Gent Belfort (nhhotels.com): a 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 Imperial Riviera, 10–16 September 2018 (p.106).
What else is included in the price? See page 8. Illustration: Ghent, St Nicholas, etching c. 1900.
Rubens & Baroque ‘The Prince of Painters’ from Antwerp to Brussels 4–7 October 2018 (mf 218) 4 days • £1,870 Lecturer: Bert Watteeuw Celebrating the life and work of Peter Paul Rubens, greatest of Baroque painters. An in-depth and in-context exploration of art in early modern Antwerp. A distinctive feature is the number of paintings in the buildings for which they were created. First-class train travel from London.
Day 1: Antwerp. Depart at c. 11.00am from London St Pancras by Eurostar for Brussels, and from there take the train to Antwerp. The great port on the Scheldt has an abundance of historic buildings and museums and churches of the highest interest. Visit the church of St Charles Borromeo, its Jesuit facade inspired by the Gesù in Rome, with sumptuous decoration partly attributed to Rubens.
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Day 3: Antwerp. Visit the MAS Museum and the temporary exhibition in collaboration with the Rubenshuis, contrasting intimate commissions with large Baroque paintings. An opportunity to visit the Mayer van der Bergh Museum before the church of St Paul, filled with over fifty paintings by Rubens, Van Dyck and Jordaens. Walk to the church of St James, one of the largest in the city, and the final resting place of Peter Paul Rubens.
How strenuous? There is quite a lot of standing and walking on this tour, often on cobbled or roughly paved streets. You will need to be able to carry (wheel) your luggage on and off the train and within stations. Some days involve a lot of driving. Average distance by coach per day: 11 miles.
Day 4: 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.
Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,870 or £1,620 without Eurostar. Single occupancy: £2,070 or £1,820 without Eurostar. Included meals: 2 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Julien, Antwerp (hoteljulien.com): contemporary 4-star boutique hotel.
Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Walking & Gardens in Madeira, 8–15 October 2018 (p.156); Roman Italy, 8–17 October 2018 (p.135); Walking in Eastern Sicily, 8–15-October 2018 (p.145). Illustration: late-18th-century copper engraving (detail) after Rubens’ ‘The Descent from the Cross’ (in Antwerp Cathedral).
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Day 2: Antwerp. Four of Rubens’ most powerful paintings are in the vast Gothic cathedral, reunited 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. The Plantin Moretus Museum presents Rubens as a book designer and illustrator, while the church of St Andrews displays artwork by Rubens’ apprentice, Otto van Veen.
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On 20th August 1566, the tide of iconoclasm swept through Antwerp, then the commercial heart of northern Europe. Out of a small mediaeval nucleus on the banks of the river Scheldt, Antwerp had grown into a modern metropolis. With trade came new ideas, which through a progressive printing and book-dealing culture found an audience among Antwerp’s well-connected and wellinformed citizens. After the disastrous attacks on religious imagery in Antwerp’s churches, a stint of Protestant rule from 1581 to 1585 would further empty them of their fabled treasures. A decisive reversal of fortune followed in 1585 when the city fell to the armies of Catholic Spain. A massive exodus ensued, with many of the educated refugees bringing specialised skills to Europe’s newly emerging Protestant capitals. Firmly under Spanish rule, Antwerp reasserted itself as a northern bulwark of Habsburg and Catholic forces. The city was to become a beacon of the triumphant Counter-Reformation, a superb stage on which to display the new Roman policy on the use of religious images. In this climate of artistic restoration and rejuvenation, commissions for altarpieces soared, and strong domestic and international markets for Antwerp paintings thrived. Peter Paul Rubens was very much more than the right man in the right place at the right time. He delivered, consistently and on a major scale. He returned to Antwerp after his family had fled to protestant Siegen and travelled extensively in Italy (and Spain) from 1600 to 1608. His return to Antwerp is a major turning point in European art history. A career spanning the continent followed, including massive cycles and ensembles commissioned by royal patrons in Madrid, London and Paris. Antwerp’s monumental churches and its museum collections, among them the Rubenshuis, offer the opportunity to step into the artist’s universe and to delve deep into the historic fabric of the city that made him: from Rubens’ home and workshop to his tomb.
The Western Balkans Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro: history past and present
7–20 May 2018 (me 845) 14 days • £4,610 Lecturer: Elizabeth Roberts 1–14 October 2018 (mf 210) 14 days • £4,610 Lecturer: Elizabeth Roberts 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.
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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 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. 54
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. 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.
pivotal in Prince Eugene’s wars with the Turks. First of two nights in Belgrade (Serbia).
It in e r a r y
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.
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, free time to visit the Modern Art Gallery and Museum of Arts and Crafts. 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
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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 provided by the café culture typical of the Balkans. 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.
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 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 museum it is strangely moving to see the trousers of the man who started the First World War. 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 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, Kotor. 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 Kotor (Montenegro).
Treasures of Moravia Town and countryside of a forgotten province 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. 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. Day 14. Fly from Dubrovnik, arriving London Gatwick at approximately 1.00pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £4,610 or £4,370 without flights. Single occupancy: £5,060 or £4,820 without flights. Included meals: 9 lunches, 10 dinners, with wine.
Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. In October, combine this tour with: Lucca, 24–30 September 2018 (p.124); Gastronomic Spain, 15–22 October 2018 (p.173); Civilisations of Sicily, 15–27 October 2018 (p.141); Mediaeval Alsace, 16–23 October 2018 (p.71).
What else is included in the price? See page 8. Illustration: Kotor, watercolour by William Tyndale, publ. 1925.
Unspoilt historic towns, Renaissance palaces, extraordinary Baroque churches. Enchanting landscape and historic gardens. Combine this tour with A Festival of Music in Prague, 13–19 June 2018 (see page 56). For a couple of decades in the ninth century the Great Moravian Empire encompassed not only Czech and Slovak lands but also parts of what are now Austria, Hungary and Poland. This agglomeration of territories rapidly disintegrated, and neighbouring Bohemia began to take shape and take priority. Ever since then Moravia has been the lesser member in an enduring partnership with Bohemia. Yoked together, they fell together under Habsburg suzerainty in 1526, emerged together in 1920 to form (with Slovakia) the new Czechoslovakia, and stayed together in 1993 to form the Czech Republic (shorn of Slovakia). It may have been politically provincial but it was a prosperous area and quite close to the chief metropolis of Central Europe, Vienna. Its rich architectural and artistic patrimony includes fine Renaissance country houses, outstanding Baroque palaces and churches, bizarre buildings by Jan Santini-Aichel, historic gardens both formal and landscaped, galleries of fine and decorative art, much beautiful streetscape in towns and villages, and rolling landscape. Moravia gets better every year. Architectural conservation proceeds apace, towns are smartened up, hotels and restaurants are improving, and museums and historic buildings are
It in e r a r y Day 1: Zd’ár nad Sázavou, Brno. Fly at c. 9.45am from London Heathrow to Prague (British Airways) and drive south into Moravia. Visit the pilgrimage church at Zd’ár nad Sázavou, a Baroque-Gothic creation by the maverick architect Santini-Aichel and among the most bizarre and fascinating buildings of the 18th century. Continue to Brno where the next five nights are spent. Day 2: Brno. The present capital of Moravia, and the second largest Czech city, Brno has a wealth of Gothic and Baroque churches and fine architecture of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. A walk includes the mediaeval town hall, the fine Gothic church of St James and the Baroque Minorite church, among other treasures. Villa Tugendhadt is a superb house by modernist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Day 3: Slavkov, Kroměříž. Alias Austerlitz, Slavkov gave its name to Napoleon’s 1805 victory against Austro-Russian armies. After surveying the battlefield, visit the imposing Baroque mansion, which contains a fine art collection. The Bishop’s Palace at Kroměříž with magnificent Rococo hall and fine art collection (Titian, van Dyck, Brueghel). The 17th-century walled garden with pavilion and immense colonnade is an astounding survival. Day 4: Lednice, Rajhrad. On a vast estate straddling the Austrian border once owned by the Liechtensteins, the richest magnates in the Habsburg Empire, Lednice has a superbly crafted Gothic Revival mansion, magnificent Baroque stables and a landscaped park dotted with Illustration: Lednice, after Josef Vaic (1884–1961).
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How strenuous? 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.
A little-known corner of Europe with a fascinating architectural patrimony.
refurbished and better presented. In spite of these developments Moravia is much less on the tourist track than Bohemia and remains fairly unspoilt.
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Accommodation. The Regent Esplanade Hotel, Zagreb (esplanade.hr): grand 5-star hotel, 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): welllocated, comfortable hotel built in 1926 with a lot of character; recently renovated. Hotel Crystal, Kraljevo (hotelcrystal.rs): simple, adequate 4- star with welcoming service; the only acceptable hotel in a region with little tourism. Hotel Europe, Sarajevo (hoteleurope.ba): central 5-star hotel, the best in the city, built in the late 19th century; comprehensively renovated. Hotel Mepas, Mostar (mepas-hotel.ba/en): modern 5-star business hotel, a short drive from the historic centre. Hotel Cattaro, Kotor (cattarohotel.com): located within the old city walls, this 4-star hotel provides an excellent base from which to explore.
6–13 June 2018 (me 900) 8 days • £2,820 Lecturer: Dr Jarl Kremeier
Treasures of Moravia continued
A Festival of Music in Prague A unique experience from Martin Randall Travel
architectural follies. Rajhrad monastery was built in the eighteenth century on a vast scale, and has a magnificent church by Santini-Aichel, the genius of Bohemian Baroque.
13–19 June 2018 (me 905) Please contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com
Day 5: Olomouc, Bučovice. Olomouc, former capital of Moravia, has many fine churches, a Romanesque episcopal palace and Renaissance town hall. Several magnificently sculpted fountains are spread through a large tract of highly attractive historic townscape, surely the loveliest little city in Europe which is not yet on the tourist trail. Bučovice has a splendid Renaissance mansion with arcaded courtyard and stucco interiors of a quality virtually without equal in northern Europe.
Ten private concerts of music from the Czech lands in magnificent and appropriate historic buildings, with musicians of the highest calibre, from the Czech Republic and Britain.
Day 6: Naměst nad Oslavou, Telč. Dramatically sited above a little town in the valley below, the fabric of the castle at Naměst nad Oslavou dates largely to the later 16th century. There is a large Baroque hall with frescoes by Carpoforo Tencalla, 1670–73. Telč is a tiny town with the loveliest square in the Czech Lands, lined with Renaissance and Baroque façades above a meandering Gothic arcade. First of two nights in Telč.
Music from Renaissance to 20th century, with plenty of Baroque, and Smetana and Dvořák well represented. Professor Jan Smaczny gives talks on the music, and Professor Tim Blanning on history. Choose from a range of 4-star and 5-star hotels in the centre of the city. Free time to explore Prague, one of the most picturesque cities of Europe, and optional walks with specialists.
Illustration: Prague, Old Town Square, lithograph by Samuel Prout c. 1840.
Day 7: Vranov nad Dyji, Jaroměřice. Perched high above a gorge close to the Austrian border, the great oval Hall of Ancestors at Vranov is one of the most impressive Baroque creations in Central Europe, the creation of the greatest architect and greatest painter in the region at the time. The splendid mansion at Jaroměřice sprawls irregularly, but contains some wonderful 18thcentury interiors and an enormous chapel. Day 8: Telč. The castle in Telč was extended in stages during the 16th century with a series of halls of brilliant, eccentric decoration around elegant, arcaded courtyards; a jewel of the Northern Renaissance. Some free time before driving to Prague for the return flight to Heathrow, arriving c. 6.15pm. Many of the houses on this itinerary require special permission to visit. The order may therefore vary a little from this description.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s M A IN L A N D
Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,820 or £2,610 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,060 or £2,850 without flights. Included meals: 4 lunches, 6 dinners, with wine.
E U R O P E : CZECH REPUBLIC
Accommodation. Grandezza Hotel, Brno (grandezzahotel.cz/): newly opened boutique hotel located in the heart of the historic centre. Hotel U Hraběnky, Telč (hotel-uhrabenky.cz/en): the only usable hotel for miles around, this 4-star hotel is fairly old-fashioned, if adequately equipped. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking, some of it up slopes or up steps. You must be able to manage daily walking and stair-climbing without difficulty. There is a fair amout of driving. Average distance by coach per day: 100 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: A Festival of Music in Prague, 13–19 June 2018 (see right); Art in Switzerland, 16–20 June 2018 (p.188). 56
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Walking in Southern Bohemia Castles, country houses and country walking 8–13 June 2018 (me 904) 6 days • £2,260 Lecturer: Dr Jana Gajdošová 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. Combine this tour with A Festival of Music in Prague, 13–19 June 2018 (see opposite).
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 3: Jindřichův Hradec, Spolí, Třeboň. Morning visit to Jindřichův Hradec castle with arcades and an exquisite Renaissance rotunda. Afternoon walk: Spolí to Lake Svet, 7 km. Ascent: 52m, descent: 60m. 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 have dinner here before returning to Hluboká. Day 4: Krtely, Kratochvíle, Kladné, Český Krumlov. Walk: Krtely to Kratochvíle, 3 km. Ascent: 38m, descent: 100m. A gentle 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 the afternoon walk into Český Krumlov: 6 km. Ascent: 154m, descent: 198m. This is a varied and picturesque 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. Circular walk from Vyssí Brod: 6 km. Ascent: 214m, descent: 201m. Skirting the monastery complex, we follow an extremely scenic route via the waterfalls of Menší Vltavice and a neoRomanesque chapel with lovely views of the Šumava foothills. Day 6: Český Krumlov, Prague. Visit 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 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 this description.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,260 or £2,050 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,410 or £2,200 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? It is essential for participants to be in good physical condition and to be used to country walking, including hills. Average distance by coach per day: 82 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: A Festival of Music in Prague, 13–19 June 2018 (see opposite); Illustration: Hluboká, Schwarzenberg Castle, mid-19thcentury engraving.
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Day 2: Staré Město pod Landštejnem, Slavonice, Samosoly, Červená Lhota. Walk: Staré Město to Slavonice, 8 km. Ascent: 88m, descent: 181m. The walk begins with wonderful views of unspoiled, hilly countryside marking the boundary of the Czech Republic and Austria. Continue through forests of fir and pine, passing defences which the Czech army was obliged to relinquish as a consequence of Chamberlain’s acquiescence to Hitler’s demands in 1938. Lunch in the beautiful little town of Slavonice, its two squares lined with 16th-century houses, arcaded and gabled. Drive to Samosoly for a short 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. Ascent: 38m, descent: 37m.
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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.
Danish Castles & Gardens North Sealand and the Danish Riviera
2–8 July 2018 (me 944) 7 days • £3,070 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. Dr Margrethe Floryan is a garden historian and curator at the Thorvaldsen Museum.
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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 58
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. Our lecturer, Margrethe Floryan, is curator of Copenhagen’s Thorvaldsen Museum, the creation of the Neoclassical sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770–1844), and has written books on gardens and garden history.
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It in e r a r y 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. Set in the King’s Garden, it 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 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. 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 lunching in the palace. Visit the Hermitage in Jægersborg Deer Park, recently restored to its 17th-century glory, and still used by the Danish court.
Vikings & Bog Bodies Ancient Denmark 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. 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. Day 7: 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 London Heathrow at c. 7.30pm.
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Included meals: 4 dinners and 1 lunch with wine.
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: Rock Art in Scandinavia, 24 June–1 July (p.186); The Schubertiade with mountain walks, 27 June–1-July 2018 (p.51); French Gothic, 9–15 July 2018 (p.65).
Illustration: Hillerød, Frederiksborg, wood engraving c. 1880.
See some of the best-preserved ‘bog bodies’: Tollund Man and Grauballe Man. Stay in central Copenhagen, the charming mediaeval town of Ribe and the important regional city of Aarhus. Journey through idyllic countryside and visit the environmentally precious wilderness of the Wadden Sea. Dr Gareth Williams is a leading expert in Viking history, and curator at the British Musuem. A country with a fierce and proud national history, but which today is renowned for its excellent food, world-class museums and high standards of art, architecture and design, Denmark is a pleasure to visit. Its archaeological treasures include the collections of the National Museum in Copenhagen, the Viking ships at Roskilde and the exceptionally well-preserved Iron Age ‘bog bodies’ known as Tollund Man and Grauballe Man. The peaceful and prosperous image of modern Denmark belies its roots as northern Europe’s first, and most aggressive, nation state. Between the eighth and the eleventh centuries ad, Danes attacked, conquered and colonised a wide swath of Europe. Bands of well-armed warriors spread out from its fjords and islands in ships of unrivalled quality and effectiveness. They travelled the northern seas, wreaking terror on indigenous populations and causing political chaos. Treaties and buy-offs, such as ‘Danegeld’ paid by the English under Æthelred ‘The Unready’, consolidated their power. The keys to understanding Denmark’s rise as a centralised state are its compact geography and the ease of communication across its waterways and gently contoured landscape.
It in e r a r y Day 1: Copenhagen. Fly at c. 9.00am (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Copenhagen. Much of the surviving artistic finery of Denmark’s Viking Age, in metal, wood, bone and semiprecious stone, can be found in the National Museum. It hosted the first stage of the Vikings: Life & Legend exhibition; its prehistoric exhibits are also exceptional, and it has played a key role in the history of European Archaeology. First of two nights in Copenhagen. Day 2: Roskilde. Excursion to the small historic city of Roskilde to see the Viking Ship Museum, where several original vessels and reconstructions can be viewed. There is an opportunity to be part of the crew and sail a reconstructed Viking long ship into the Roskilde Fjord. Day 3: Trelleborg, Ribe. The well-preserved circular military fortress at Trelleborg is part of a network of similar ‘command and control’ sites across Denmark. Picturesque mediaeval Ribe is Denmark’s oldest town, and one of the earliest in post-Roman Europe. First of two nights in Ribe. Illustration: watercolour by A.R. Hope Moncrieff, publ. 1920.
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Accommodation. Phoenix Copenhagen (phoenixcopenhagen.dk): traditional 4-star hotel close to the Amalienborg Palace. Beach Hotel Marienlyst (marienlyst.dk/en): comfortable and contemporary 4-star hotel, rooms have a sea view.
The most important Viking sites in Denmark including Roskilde, Copenhagen and Jelling.
Emerging from warring Iron Age tribes, a succession of ambitious and successful rulers established national defences, roads, bridges, canals and a network of towns. Trade and the new religion of Christianity prospered. The high-point of the Viking Age occurred under the Jelling dynasty, which began with the reign of Gorm the Old in the early decades of the tenth century. Gorm’s son Harold Bluetooth, his grandson Svein Forkbeard and his great-grandson Cnut the Great presided over a ‘golden age’ of Danish achievement, marked by the construction of spectacular dynastic monuments and accompanied by astonishing artistic endeavour. Under Cnut, Denmark’s conquests extended to parts of Norway, Sweden, Germany and, its greatest prize, the Kingdom of England.
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Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,070 or £2,860 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,520 or £3,310 without flights.
3–10 July 2018 (me 946) 8 days • £3,340 Lecturer: Dr Gareth Williams
Vikings & Bog Bodies continued
Opera in Copenhagen The Barber of Seville and The Magic Flute
Day 4: Wadden Sea, Ribe. Spend the morning at the environmentally precious wilderness of the Wadden Sea. In the afternoon visit the excellent Viking Museum in Ribe. Some free time. Day 5: Ravning, Jelling, Silkeborg. There is a short walk to Ravning, the site of the Viking bridge built by Harold Bluetooth across the Vejle valley, 760 metres long and over five metres wide. The small eastern Jutland town of Jelling, now a World Heritage Site, preserves a vast stone ship-setting, two immense burial mounds and the rune-stones of Gorm and Harold which record the early history of their dynasty. These stand outside a stone church, emblematic of the rise of Christianity. In Silkeborg see the best-preserved Iron Age bog body known as Tollund Man. The final three nights are spent in Aarhus. Day 6: Moesgaard, Aarhus. In charming countryside, the state-of-the-art museum at Moesgaard, designed by Henning Larsen Architects houses exhibitions on prehistory, including Grauballe Man who was discovered in a peat bog in 1952 and dates to the 3rd century bc. Return to Aarhus for some free time. Day 7: Lindholm Høje, Aalborg, Fyrkat. Head north to Lindholm Høje, a major late-Viking burial site. Rare ship monuments (burial sites demarcated by stones in the shape of ships) are found as well as hundreds of burial sites marked with stones or mounds. Stop in the pleasant market town of Aalborg for lunch before visiting the Viking fortress of Fyrkat. Day 8: Ladby, Copenhagen. The only ship burial discovered in Denmark, the Ladby boat is a Viking chieftain’s burial vessel. The wood of the 22-metre ship has long since rotted away but left a perfect impression in the earth. Buried with 11 horses and many valuables and possessions, the skeletal remnants of the animals are all that remain of the contents. Fly from Copenhagen to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 6.20pm.
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Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,340 or £3,190 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,790 or £3,640 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 5 dinners with wine.
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Accommodation. Phoenix Copenhagen (phoenixcopenhagen.dk): traditional 4-star hotel close to the Amalienborg Palace. Hotel Dagmar, Ribe (hoteldagmar.dk): characterful 3-star hotel on the town square with views of the cathedral. Hotel Royal, Aarhus (hotelroyal.dk): 4-star in the centre; public rooms are opulent and luxurious while bedrooms are classic and comfortable. How strenuous? Walking is necessitated over the uneven terrain of Viking sites, and there is quite a lot of standing. There are two hotel changes. The optional boat trip in Roskilde involves manning oars. Average distance by coach per day: 92 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Rock Art in Scandinavia, 24 June–1 July (p.186).
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9–12 March 2018 (me 776) 4 days • £1,990 (including tickets for 2 performances) Lecturer: Dr John Allison Two performances at Copenhagen’s extraordinary opera house, one of the most exciting created in recent years. Rossini’s enduringly popular The Barber of Seville, a brilliant mix of elegance and buffoonery, and the last of Mozart’s operas, The Magic Flute, a masterpiece of deep philosophical seriousness and enchanting entertainment. Time to explore one of northern Europe’s most beautiful cities with its world-class art collections and museums. We include a private tour of the opera house and a walk in the historic centre with a local guide. Combine this tour with Opera in Stockholm, 6–9 March 2018. A transfer between the two tours can be arranged. See page 187 for details.
It in e r a r y Day 1. Fly at 1.45pm from London Heathrow to Copenhagen (British Airways). 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 (across the water) the opera house. Free afternoon. The National Museum is recommended (artefacts prehistoric to contemporary, Vikings the highlight) or one of the city’s many other museums and galleries (the tour includes a card granting free admission). Dinner
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at the Copenhagen Opera House: The Barber of Seville (Rossini), Michael Hofstetter (conductor), Martin Lyngbo (director), cast to be confirmed. Day 3. Lecture on the evening’s opera. Cross the water by boat for a private tour of the opera house. Lunch at the Copenhagen Opera House before an afternoon opera: The Magic Flute (Mozart), Joana Mallwitz/Perry So (conductor), Marco Arturo Marelli (director), Petri Lindroos (Sarastro), David Danholt (Tamino), Vassiliki Karayanni (Queen of the Night), Gisela Stille (Pamina), Palle Knudsen (Papageno). Cross the water again and return to the hotel for some free time before dinner. Day 4. The morning is free. Fly to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 4.15pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,990 or £1,860 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,270 or £2,140 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 3 dinners with wine. Music: 2 opera tickets are included, 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. You must be fit enough to manage this and cope easily with stair climbing. Average distance by coach per day: 5 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Opera in Stockholm, 6–9 March 2018 (p.187)
Above: Copenhagen Opera House ©Royal Danish Opera.
Ballet in Copenhagen August Bournonville and the Royal Danish Ballet 31 May–4 June 2018 (me 890) 5 days • £2,280 (including tickets to 3 performances) Lecturer: Jane Pritchard mbe Three performances by the Royal Danish Ballet, at the Old Stage (1874) and the Opera House (2005). Napoli and Swan Lake are choreographed by Nikolaj Hübbe, and Bournonville repertoire is showcased in Bournonvilleana. Private tours of the Opera House and the court theatre at the Christiansborg Palace. A walk with a local guide and free time for the city’s outstanding museums.
See pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies.
It in e r a r y Day 1. Fly at c. 12.30pm from London Heathrow to Copenhagen (British Airways). There is time to settle into the hotel before dinner. Day 2. Morning lecture followed by a guided walk through the historic centre. Free afternoon; we recommend the remarkable Viking collections at the National Museum or Danish art at the Hirschsprung Collection. Dinner. Performance at the Old Stage: Napoli, Royal Danish Ballet, Nikolaj Hübbe (choreographer), Graham Bond (conductor). Day 3. Free morning. We suggest a visit to the Rosenborg Palace, a fully furnished royal residence from the 17th century, or the Ny Carlsberg Glyptoteket for its Danish, French and ancient art. An afternoon lecture precedes a guided tour of the court theatre at the Christiansborg Palace. Dinner. Evening performance at the Old Stage: Bournonvilleana, Royal Danish Ballet. Day 4. Morning lecture. Cross by boat for a private tour of the Operaen (Copenhagen Opera House), built 2005 to the designs of Henning Larsen and others. Lunch here before a performance: Swan Lake, Royal Danish Ballet, Nikolaj Hübbe & Silja Schandorff (choreography), Jakob Hultberg (conductor). Some free time before dinner. Day 5. Break the journey to the airport at Frederiksberg Gardens, a lovely landscaped park of the early 19th century. Return to London Heathrow at c. 5.30pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,280 or £2,110 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,630 or £2,460 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 3 dinners with wine.
Copenhagen Modern 21–25 June 2018 (me 928) 5 days • £2,310 Lecturer: Professor Harry Charrington Very few spaces remaining Please contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com An invigorating insight to one of the world’s most carefully designed and vital cities, with walks in the historic centre balanced by excursions out along the Øresund shore. Follows the city’s development from the Renaissance to the present day with the emphasis on the great 20th-century modern tradition.
Music: top-category tickets to three ballet performances are included, costing c. £255
Visits include Jørn Utzon’s Bagsværd Church and PV Jensen-Klint’s expressionist Grundtvig Church, two of the great modern ecclesiastical buildings.
Accommodation. Phoenix Copenhagen (phoenixcopenhagen.dk): traditional 4-star hotel close to the Amalienborg Palace.
Among the domestic architecture: Finn Juhl’s home, Utzon’s Fredensborg courtyard houses and Arne Jacobsen’s Bellevue complex.
How strenuous? We reach the opera houses on foot and by boat. Participants need to be fit enough to manage this, the city walk and to cope easily with stair climbing. . Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Moscow & the Golden Ring, 19–28 May 2018 (p.160).
The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art is world-class, see also Bindesbøll’s unparalleled Thorvaldsen Museum and Bjarke Ingels’ extraordinary Danish Maritime Museum.
Illustration: Copenhagen, Rosenborg, lithograph c. 1850.
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What else is included in the price? See page 8.
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, and she has curated and written for BFI Southbank and the British Council.
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Copenhagen is a strikingly attractive capital, and relatively small. It has a wealth of museums and art galleries, palaces and theatres ranging from the court theatre at the Christiansborg Palace to the Peacock theatre staging commediadell’arte-inspired pantomimes in the pleasure gardens of Tivoli. The Royal Danish Ballet, founded in 1784, is not only one of the longest established dance companies in the world but also one of the most enjoyable of those performing today. It combines a rich heritage repertory with contemporary creativity. International impact came after the Second World War, with growing awareness that Denmark was producing dancers of the highest calibre and awareness also of the ballets by the nineteenth-century choreographer August Bournonville, whose work had been virtually unknown outside Copenhagen. Bournonville (1805–79) was trained in the French Romantic style of the time which was characterised by a lightness and flow of movement. Footwork was fast and springy with high quick jumps and beaten steps. Pirouettes would be controlled whether the turns were fast or slow. The stage on which he created his ballets was relatively small so changes of direction were necessary for flow to be maintained and these became a hallmark of his choreography. Today the Royal Danish Ballet performs at a range of theatres. We will see them at the recently refurbished Old Stage, dating to 1874, and at the Opera House which opened in 2005. Napoli as staged by Nikolaj Hübbe and Sorella Englund in 2009 is a version of Bournonville’s 1842 masterpiece, updated to the world of Federico Fellini’s Dolce Vita and La Strada while the best of Bournonville’s choreography, notably the third act celebration, is retained. Hübbe, the company’s director, together with Silja Schandorff, are responsible for the modern staging of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, memorable for its impressive abstract designs by Mas Stensgaard and lighting by Mikke Kunttu. The third programme (there is only one performance) is Bournonvilleana which showcases highlights from the traditional Bournonville repertoire which has been summed up as ‘primarily an expression of joy, ease, naturalness, grace and beauty.’
Jane Pritchard MBE
Estonia 100 years after its Declaration of Independence It in e r a r y Day 1: Tallinn. Fly at 10.20 from London Heathrow via Helsinki to Tallinn (Finnair) for the first of three nights. Day 2: Tallinn. Walk to the Museum of Russian Icons, remarkable for what has survived during so many wars, and to the Occupation Museum, a grim chronicle of WWII and of the 46-year Soviet era which followed. Afternoon in the Upper Town, the oldest part, to the Russian Orthodox Cathedral, to the Dome Church, for centuries the religious centre for the Baltic Germans, and along the city walls, to finish at the 15th-century Town Hall, still used for ceremonial events. Day 3: Tallinn. Coach to Tallinn Synagogue, a new building opened in 2007, and to the Jewish Museum beside it. Now, as so often in the past, Tallinn provides a sanctuary for those persecuted elsewhere. Then to the massive Song Festival Grounds, so crucial for keeping alive Estonia’s national consciousness in Soviet times and still a major choral centre. Afternoon to Kumu Art Gallery, the repository for the best of 200 years of Estonian painting in totally modern surroundings. Continue to Maarjamae Palace, reopening in spring 2018 as Estonia’s early 20th century museum, on the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Behind it are many of the communist statues hurriedly removed from the streets in 1991. Day 4: Tallinn, Tartu. Morning drive to Tartu, with a stop en route at Paide, with its limestone tower and outdoor sculpture exhibition. Afternoon drive to the National Museum, opened in 2016 in a completely new building outside the town at a former military base and manor house. Its architecture, lighting and space leave as powerful an impression as any of the exhibits, covering life in towns and in the countryside over 2000 years. First of two nights in Tartu.
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6–14 August 2018 (me 976) 9 days • £2,870 Lecturer: Neil Taylor Picturesque towns and cities, an appealing mix of architectural styles. Gentle landscapes of farmland and forests and sandy Baltic coasts.
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Still unspoilt, but perhaps the most successful, progressive and attractive of ex-Soviet states. Few visitors venture beyond the capital. Estonia and the Estonians have recently recovered from seven hundred years of conquest. Estonians are their own masters now, excelling in the use to which they put both town and country. Their eclectic tastes and diverse skills, just as evident in a piece of fabric, glass or juniper as in a skyscraper, can finally enjoy free expression. Their art galleries and concert halls offer variety which a country ten times its size would find hard to match. With a history of constant warfare, the towns and countryside still show the stamp of the various occupations. Those that left the most obvious architectural legacy were the Baltic Germans, with 62
their red-brick fortresses and their ubiquitous manor houses. These, their contents and what has been bequeathed from town residences, are a testimony to both wealth and to good taste. As one would expect, the Swedish legacy is more modest, mainly some town houses in Tartu and Kuressaare. The Tsarist Russian one is more obvious, with the late nineteenth-century Orthodox Cathedral dominating the Tallinn skyline, although ironically the regime would collapse twenty years later. The Soviet legacy is largely restricted to the outskirts of Estonia’s larger towns so intrudes little on what visitors see. Estonians themselves were experts with wood throughout their centuries of occupation, and much remains of this, particularly in the coastal spa town of Parnu which became rich in the 1920s and 1930s. On Saaremaa Island, wood has often been the major material for the local churches. Forests clothe much of the gently undulating landscape, interspersed with picturesque farmland. The countryside and seashore have always played as important a role in Estonia as any town. It is where local people enjoy space, time and colour, and when occupied, where they enjoyed relative freedom.
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Day 5: Tartu, Lake Peipsi. Morning walk through Estonia’s university capital to the aula where students receive their degrees and the lock-up where in the 19th century they could be confined for not returning library books or for abusing women. Many 18th- and 19th-century buildings in Tartu have survived the War: the Jaani Church (St John’s), with its unique rows of terracotta sculptures, was restored soon after re-independence in 1991. Afternoon drive to Lake Peipsi; the villages along the shore are still inhabited by Old Believers, driven into exile here because of their unwillingness in the 17th century to accept changes in the Russian Orthodox Church. Dinner at Alatskivi Castle, modelled on Balmoral in Scotland, which houses a museum in honour of the composer Eduard Tubin. Day 6: Viljandi, Pärnu, Saaremaa Island. Visit the Paul Kondas Gallery in Viljandi to see work he was never allowed to exhibit during his lifetime in the Soviet period. Drive to Pärnu, a spa town known for its functionalist buildings and its turn of century flamboyance along the coast. Ferry to Muhu Island where many of the pleasures of rural Estonia remain, wooden cottages, windmills and wild seacoasts, then drive across a causeway to Saaremaa Island. First of two nights in Kuressaare.
Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania Art, architecture and history of the Baltic States Neil Taylor A 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 publications include Bradt Guides to Estonia, Tallinn and Baltic Cities and A Footprints Guide to Berlin. See pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies.
Day 7: Saaremaa Island. Spend the morning in Kuressaare, the capital of Saaremaa island with its Swedish town houses and intact castle, the only one remaining in Estonia, which now houses the island museum and an extensive natural history collection. An afternoon tour of the 13th-century island churches and the ruins of Pöide. The artistry of the wall paintings, stone carvings and masonry show the links between the island across the Baltic and even to Western Europe. Nowadays the link is provided with stained glass. Day 8: Muhu Island, Haapsalu, Tallinn. Before taking the ferry back to the mainland, visit Muhu Church in the village of Liiva, a 13th-century building with 14th-century mural paintings. Haapsalu owes everything to royal patronage in the 19th century, when Tsars Nicholas I and Alexander II were frequent summer visitors, as was Tchaikovsky. The railway station, with appropriate elegance, dates from that time. Overnight Tallinn. Day 9: Tallinn. Fly from Tallinn to London Heathrow (British Airways), arriving c. 3.00pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,870 or £2,530 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,210 or £2,870 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 7 dinners with wine.
Group size: between 12 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Verona Opera, 16–20 August 2018 (p.104).
Illustration: Tallinn, from Castle Hill, 20th-century etching.
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. 2018 marks the centenary of all three countries’ declarations of independence. 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.
It in e r a r y 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 (visit subject to confirmation). 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 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. 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 Illustration: Vilnius, wood engraving c. 1890.
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How strenuous? There is a reasonable amount of walking each day and some long coach journeys, which are broken en route. Outdoor terrain is good but there are few steep slopes. Average distance by coach per day: 75 miles.
Three countries with different languages, diverse histories and distinct cultural identities.
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.
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Accommodation. Hotel Palace, Tallinn (tallinnhotels.ee/hotel-palace-tallinn): comfortable 4-star hotel on the edge of the old town, recently reopened after a smart refurbishment. London Hotel, Tartu (london.tartuhotels.ee): modern, centrally located 4-star hotel with a good restaurant; decor is quite bright. Georg Ots Spa Hotel, Kuressaare (gospa.ee/eng): plain but comfortable 4-star spa hotel on the waterfront.
22 July–4 August 2018 (me 965) 14 days • £4,110 Lecturer: Neil Taylor
Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania continued
‘The itinerary was superb. It gave me a wide appreciation of the places visited, and allowed for a real understanding of why the countries were linked by history but were also very different in lots of ways.’
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.
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 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 recenty re-opened Estonian National Museum.
Day 10: Kaunas (Lithuania). 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 neo-Baroque Synagogue.
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.
M A IN L A N D E U R O P E : ESTONIA, FINLAND
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 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 Museum or the Jewish Museum. 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 64
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. 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 c. 3.15pm.
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P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £4,110 or £3,660 without flights. Single occupancy: £4,510 or £4,060 without flights. Included meals: 5 lunches, 8 dinners, with wine. 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; decor 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.
Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival July 2018 Details available in November 2017 Please contact us to register your interest Illustration: Tallinn, the Upper Town, lithograph c. 1840.
French Gothic The great cathedrals of northern France 9–15 July 2018 (me 955) 7 days • £2,210 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 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-laJolie. 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.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,210 or £2,070 without Eurostar. Single occupancy: £2,470 or £2,330 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. 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: Danish Castles & Gardens, 2–8 July 2018 (p.58), The Hanseatic League, 15–22 August 2018 (p.84).
What else is included in the price? See page 8. Illustration: Chartres Cathedral, steel engraving c. 1840.
It in e r a r y M A IN L A N D
Day 1. Travel by Eurostar at c. 11.00am from St Pancras to Lille. Continue by coach to Laon and the hotel, in an attractive lakeside setting. First of three nights near Laon.
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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: Reims, Soissons. 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 sculpture. At the church of St Rémi the heavy Romanesque nave contrasts with the light Early-Gothic choir. Soissons Cathedral is a fine example of the rapid changes which took place in architecture at the end of the 12th century. 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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Monet & Impressionism Paintings and places in Paris and Normandy 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.
15–20 April 2018 (me 816) 6 days • £2,230 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. Good hotels in Paris and Rouen.
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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 66
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.
It in e r a r y Day 1: Paris. Leave London St Pancras at c. 10.30am by Eurostar. In 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.
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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. Overnight Paris. 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.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,230 or £2,040 without Eurostar. Single occupancy: £2,570 or £2,380 without Eurostar. Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Mercure Rouen Centre Cathédrale (mercure.com): modern, functional 4-star in the historic centre. Hotel Édouard 7, Paris (hoteledouard7-paris.com): comfortable 4-star, 5 minutes’ walk from the Opéra Garnier. 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. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Romans in the Rhône Valley, 23–29 April 2018 (p.73); Modern Art in Sussex, 24–28 April 2018 (p.76).
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Music & Ballet in Paris Pergolesi, Gluck, Berlioz, Bach 27–31 March 2018 (me 799) 5 days • £2,570 (including tickets to 4 performances) Lecturer: Dr Michael Downes Franco Fagioli and Julia Lezhneva sing Pergolesi’s exquisite Stabat Mater. Two celebrated staged productions: Pina Bausch’s Orphée et Eurydice at the Opéra Garnier and Terry Gilliam’s Benvenuto Cellini at the Opera Bastille. A new realisation of J.S. Bach’s lost St Mark Passion by composer, conductor and scholar Jordi Savall. Visits to the Palais Garnier, the Musée de la Musique and the Musée Jacquemart André.
Day 1. Travel by Eurostar at c. 10.30am from London St Pancras to Paris. A lecture and dinner preceed a concert at the Théâtre des ChampsElysées: Stabat Mater (Pergolesi), Cappella Gabetta, Andres Gabetta (director), Julia Lezhneva (soprano) and Franco Fagioli (counter-tenor). Concerto Grosso No.10 after Corelli (Platti), Nisi Dominus (Vivaldi), Salve Regina (Porpora). Day 2. Lecture before a guided tour of the sumptuous Palais Garnier opera house. Some free time before dinner. Return to the Palais Garnier:
See pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies. Orphée et Eurydice (Gluck) (danced version), Ballet de l’Opéra de Paris, Pina Bausch (choreography), Manlio Benzi (director), Balthasar Neumann Choir, Maria Riccarda Wesseling (Orphée), Yun Jung Choi (Eurydice) and Chiara Skerath (Amour). Day 3. Free morning. In the afternoon, drive to Porte de la Villette to visit the Cité de la Musique concert hall, designed by Christian de Pontzamparc, and the music museum. Dinner before a performance at the Opera Bastille: Benvenuto Cellini (Berlioz), Philippe Jordan (conductor), Orchestre et Choeurs de l’Opéra de Paris, José Luis Basso (chorus master), John Osborn (Cellini), Maurizio Muraro (Giacomo Balducci), Audun Iversen (Fieramosca), Marco Spotti (Pope Clement VII), Vincent Delhoume (Francesco), Luc Bertin-Hugault (Bernardino), Rodolphe Briand (Pompeo), Se-Jin Hwang (Cabaretier), Pretty Yende (Teresa), Michèle Losier (Ascanio). Day 4. Morning lecture followed by a visit to the Jacquemart André museum. This lavish residence, built in 1875 for the banker Edouard André, houses the collection he made with his wife, Nélie Jacquemart, a painter. It has a fine collection of 18th-cent. paintings, Dutch, Flemish and Italian masters. Free time before dinner in the panoramic restaurant at the Philharmonie de Paris before the concert: St Mark Passion (J.S. Bach), La Capella Reial de Catalunya, Le Concert des Nations, Jordi Savall (director), Emöke Barath (soprano), Reinoud Van Mechelen (tenor) and Konstantin Wolff (bass). Day 5. Free morning before taking the Eurostar to London St Pancras, arriving at c. 2.45pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,570 or £2,450 without Eurostar. Single occupancy: £2,910 or £2,790 without Eurostar. Included meals: 4 dinners with wine. Music: tickets to 4 performances are included, costing c. £440. Accommodation. Hotel Édouard 7, Paris (hoteledouard7-paris.com): comfortable 4-star hotel, 5 minutes on foot from the Opéra Garnier. How strenuous? One of the performances is reached on foot. Visits require a fair amount of walking and standing around. There are some late nights but starts are leisurely. You need to be able to lift your luggage on and off the train.
Paintings in Paris October 2018 Full details available in January 2018 Please contact us to register your interest
Châteaux of the Loire
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It in e r a r y
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.
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During each of the last five centuries, music, opera and ballet, and the buildings that house them, have been subjects of intense public debate in Paris, perhaps more than in any other city. This tour offers the chance to witness some of the world’s most brilliant interpreters – including singers, a choreographer, a director and a conductor-scholar – bring to life four beautiful but controversial masterpieces, in buildings that have themselves helped to shape the city’s history. The opening of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater was praised by no less a critic than Jean-Jacques Rousseau as ‘the most perfect and touching duet to come from the pen of any composer’. In this performance the intertwined voices will be those of Franco Fagioli, the hugely admired young counter-tenor, and the fast-rising Russian soprano Julia Lezhneva. The performance will take place in the art deco Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, which saw the première of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Visits to Paris’s two iconic and very different opera houses follow. In the sumptuous Palais Garnier Pina Bausch’s reinterpretation of Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice brings out both the physicality and the delicate ambivalence of the music. Meanwhile at the Bastille, one of the grandest projects of the Mitterand era, we see a production by Terry Gilliam that revels in the exuberance and eccentricity of Benvenuto Cellini, one of the revolutionary works with which the young Berlioz confounded the interpreters of his day. Few musicians are better equipped to tackle the daunting challenge of animating the libretto of Bach’s lost St Mark Passion than Jordi Savall, who brings to the task a composer’s insight as well as a lifetime’s experience as a leading proponent of period performance. This concert takes place in the newest addition to Paris’s impressive array of musical spaces, the Philharmonie, opened in 2015.
Dr Michael Downes
27–30 May 2018 (me 886) 4 days • £1,640 Lecturer: Steven Desmond Very few spaces remaining Please contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com What else is included in the price? See page 8.
Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Beauty & the Abyss: Viennese Modernism, 21–25 March 2018 (p.49).
Illustration: Paris, Palais Garnier, watercolour by Yoshio Markino, publ. 1908.
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Poets & The Somme oetry o the reat
ar in att efie d conte t 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 A Soldier’s Funeral by John William Streets, read at his graveside, 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.
7–10 September 2018 (mf 115) 4 days • £1,430 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. Commemorating the centenary of the death of Wilfred Owen. Led by military historian Andrew Spooner.
M A IN L A N D E U R O P E : 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 68
context of the battlefield and of the lives (and deaths) of the many and varied individuals who wrote them. 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.
It in e r a r y 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.
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Day 3: Longueval, Mametz, Ors. Start in 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.’ In the afternoon, visit Ors to follow the attack route of Wilfred Owen and the 2nd Manchesters along the canal, and visit Owen’s grave. 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.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,430. Single occupancy: £1,570. Included meals: all lunches, all dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hôtel de l’Univers, Arras (univers.najeti.fr): traditional 3-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: Hungary, 12–19 September 2018 (p.96); Albania: Crossroads of Antiquity, 12–21 September 2018 (p.47).
Illustration: British troops on the Western Front, 1916.
Berry & Touraine Central France, Romanesque to Renaissance 28 May–5 June 2018 (me 887) 9 days • £2,730 Lecturer: John McNeill
John McNeill Architectural historian and a specialist in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. He lectures for Oxford University’s Department of Continuing Education and is Honorary Secretary of the British Archaeological Association, for whom he has edited collections of essays on mediaeval Anjou, King’s Lynn and the Fens, Cloisters, and Romanesque and the Mediterranean.
Travels through charming and relatively unexplored areas of central France. A good mix of secular and sacred buildings including some outstanding ones. An important and influential area for mediaeval and Renaissance architecture.
See pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies. Day 7: Noirlac, Nohant-Vic, Issoudun. This is a varied and fundamentally rural day measured out among the smaller centres of southern Berry. Noirlac has an unusually intact Cistercian monastery (church, cloister, refectory, storerooms). St-Martin in Nohant-Vic displays the other magnificently orchestrated cycle of Romanesque wall paintings. Overnight Bourges. Day 8: Nevers, La Charité-sur-Loire, Donzyle-Pré. The cathedral of Nevers is a national monument to Saints Cyricus and Julitta, the present building a combination of Romanesque and Gothic styles. In the afternoon drive to La-Charité-sur-Loire to visit the unesco-listed church of Sainte-Croix-Notre-Dame and the almost entirely ruined Benedictine priory of Donzy-le-Pré. Overnight Bourges. of St-Martin. Afternoon excursion to Loches, a stunning mediaeval hill-town punctuated by the rising accents of the Logis Royal, St-Ours and the Donjon. Overnight Tours. Day 3: Azay-le-Rideau, Chinon, L’Île Bouchard. Gilles Berthelot’s château at Azay-le-Rideau is one of the great Renaissance buildings of France. Continue to Chinon, home to the recently excavated St-Mexme as well as Henry II’s beloved ‘castle in the middle of France’. Return to Tours via Cravant-les-Coteaux and the 11th-century ruins of St-Léonard in l’Île Bouchard. Overnight Tours.
Day 1. Take the Eurostar at c. 10.30am from London St Pancras to Paris and continue by coach to Tours. First of four nights in Tours.
Day 5: Blois, Selles-sur-Cher, Brinay-sur-Cher, Bourges. In the morning visit Blois for the former abbey church of St-Nicolas and the royal château, residence of several French kings. Drive along the Cher valley to Selles and Brinay, site of one of two truly great cycles of Romanesque wall paintings in Berry. First of four nights in Bourges.
Day 2: Tours, Loches. The morning is spent in Tours, visiting the superb, largely 13th-century cathedral, with its virtually complete programme of choir glass, and the Tour Charlemagne, a mournful relic of the mighty pilgrimage church
Day 6: Bourges. In the morning, visit Bourges cathedral, a building it is inappropriate to eulogize here, save to suggest that as an architectural experience it rests in a very select league indeed. Free afternoon and overnight in Bourges.
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P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,730 or £2,540 without Eurostar. Single occupancy: £3,150 or £2,960 without Eurostar. Included meals: 5 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hôtel Oceania L’Univers, Tours (oceaniahotels.co.uk): central 4-star hotel opposite the town hall. Hôtel de Bourbon Mercure Bourges (mercure.com): recently renovated 4-star hotel in a 17th-century abbey. How strenuous? A considerable amount of walking and standing around is involved. You will need to lift your own luggage on and off the train and wheel it within stations. Average distance by coach per day: 98 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Wellington in the Peninsula, 15–27 May 2018 (p.184); Treasures of Moravia, 6–13 June 2018 (p.55); The Leipzig Bach Festival, 7–11 June 2018 (p.86).
Bilbao to Bayonne, 3–10 September 2018 – see page 169. Illustration: Loches, St-Ours, by A.B. Atkinson, publ. c. 1910.
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Day 4: Vendôme, Loir Valley. La Trinité in Vendôme has a flamboyant west front, 11thcentury chapter house painting, 14th-centurystained glass and early-16th-century choir stalls; all in all one of the most complete and heterogeneous ensembles of mediaeval work still to be found in a French monastic complex. Drive along the Loir Valley, with stops in Montoire (StGilles), Lavardin (St-Genest) and St-Jacques-desGuérets. Overnight Tours.
Day 9. The major Benedictine abbey in St-Benoîtsur-Loire houses the relics of St Benedict, with work ranging from the celebrated capitals of its early tower-porch to the sublime columnar arcade of its Romanesque choir. Take the Eurostar from Paris arriving at London St Pancras c. 6.30pm.
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To many a nineteenth-century English traveller, Berry and Touraine offered a vision of French art and culture that was not only exemplary, but unrivalled outside Paris – as central to the identity of France as is Tuscany to Italy. While this view has been modified by more recent commentators, who criticise relative stagnation of the region during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it remains the case that Berry and Touraine were responsible for some of the most significant cultural initiatives to grace mediaeval and Renaissance Europe. One might see this at a number of levels: in the early development of the feudal system, for instance, in Thibaud le Tricheur and Foulques Nerra, feudalism found its pioneers along the banks of the Loire. The most visible symbol of this, the castle, also has its roots in the region, and was developed here from donjon and domicilium into the vast integrated structures one finds at Chinon. Its subsequent emergence as a fortified chivalric palace, the stuff of the calendrical illustrations to Jean, Duc de Berry’s Très Riches Heures, finds its most complete expression here, in buildings such as the Logis Royal at Loches and Gilles Bertholot’s château at Azay-le-Rideau. The frame of the church was subject to equally inventive shifts of form and identity. The fundamental Romanesque research was probably conducted at St-Benoît-sur-Loire, and in its nave and choir one might see the monumental strategies of twelfth-century Europe mapped out. Even the smaller churches of the region took up the call to make the Christian message vivid and, falling back on simpler and cheaper methods, invested in breathtakingly lucid cycles of wall paintings, as at Brinay-sur-Cher and Vicq. In the west, at centres such as Loches, an extraordinarily distinctive version of twelfthcentury architecture was developed, adjusting domes, rib vaults and pyramidal roofs to fit aisleless church frames. Gothic thus arrived early and in two different forms, sparking off a second wave of experimentation, tentative at first but blossoming at Bourges cathedral into one of the finest essays on the possibilities of architecture the western world has produced.
Mediaeval Burgundy Abbeys and churches of the high Middle Ages 9–16 June 2018 (me 902) 8 days • £2,790 Lecturer: John McNeill A superb collection of Romanesque and early Gothic buildings. Exceptionally well-preserved historic towns. Rural drives through beautiful landscapes. 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, ranking 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.
It in e r a r y in b r ie f Please contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com Day 1. Eurostar at c. 11.00am from London St Pancras to Paris and then by TGV (high-speed train) to Mâcon. Coach to Tournus for two nights. Day 2: Cluny, Berzé-la-Ville, Tournus. Day 3: Beaune, Autun, Dijon for three nights. Day 4: St Thibault, Semur-en-Auxois, Fontenay. Day 5: Dijon. Day 6: Saulieu, Avallon, Vézelay, Auxerre for two nights. Day 7: Auxerre. Day 8: Sens. Eurostar from Paris arriving at London St Pancras c. 6.30pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,790 or £2,620 without Eurostar and TGV. Single occupancy: £3,150 or £2,980 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. Hostellerie du Chapeau Rouge, Dijon (chapeau-rouge.fr): centrally located, comfortable 4-star. Hôtel Le Parc des Maréchaux, Auxerre (leparcdesmarechaux.com): 3-star hotel in an 18th-century hôtel particulier. There are no twin rooms at the Hôtel Le Parc des Maréchaux. Please contact us for a quote if you would prefer two single rooms to a double-bedded room.
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How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking, some of it on steep hillsides, and standing. Average distance by coach per day: 72 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
The Beaune Music Festival 19–23 July 2018 Full details available in November 2017 Please contact us to register your interest Illustration: Cluny Abbey, wood engraving c. 1880.
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Mediaeval Alsace Both sides of the Rhine in France and Germany 16–23 October 2018 (mf 250) 8 days • £2,980 Lecturer: Dr Alexandra Gajewski 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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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.
Ages. The excellent city museum has recently reopened after major restoration.
Day 4: Molsheim, Rosheim, Obernai. A day of small places. Molsheim has a Jesuit church and 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.
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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. 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
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. 10.45am by TGV for Paris and continue by Eurostar to London St Pancras, arriving c. 4.45pm.
Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,980 or £2,700 without Eurostar & TGV. Single occupancy: £3,560 or £3,280 without Eurostar & TGV. Included meals: 1 lunch and 5 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Cour du Corbeau, Strasbourg (cour-corbeau.com): beautifully restored 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? A fair amount of walking and standing. 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: Ravenna & Urbino, 10–14 October 2018 (p.114); Siena & San Gimignano, 10–14 October 2018 (p.123); Walking in Eastern Sicily, 8–15 October 2018 (p.145).
Illustration: Colmar, rue des Marchands, etching by Charles Pinet (1867–1932).
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Day 1: London to Strasbourg. Leave London St Pancras by Eurostar at c. 9.30am for Paris, and continue by TGV (high-speed train) to Strasbourg. Arriving before 5.00pm, there is plenty of time to settle into the hotel, for an introductory talk and dinner. All seven nights are spent in Strasbourg.
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 16thcentury pictures, chief of which is Grünewald’s Issenheim altarpiece, the most searing of all images of the Crucifixion.
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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. 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.
Provence & Languedoc Art and architecture in the Midi 27 September–6 October 2018 (mf 186) 10 days • £3,480 Lecturer: Dr Alexandra Gajewski Fine Roman remains that had a decisive impact on mediaeval architecture and sculpture. Truly great secular buildings, including the papal palace at Avignon, and pre-eminent Romanesque churches. Superb modern art at the Musée Granet in Aix-en-Provence and at the Fine Arts Museum in Marseille. A natural setting of exceptional attractiveness.
The picture of Mediterranean France as an exotic land subject to a wide range of foreign influences is borne out by a glance at the region’s complex history. This tour traces the wide-ranging influences on Provence and eastern Languedoc throughout the centuries. Provence was the first province established by the Romans outside Italy and impressive Roman work survives at Nîmes, St-Rémy and Arles. In Arles, as one moves into Late Antiquity, one is also witness to the most significant Early Christian city of Mediterranean Gaul. This Roman infrastructure is fundamental, and the pre-eminent Romanesque churches of Provence may come as something of a surprise. The sculpture is more skilfully and self-consciously antique than any outside central Italy, and is often organised in a manner designed to evoke either fourth-century sarcophagi or Roman theatres and triumphal arches. The Italian connection was strengthened when, for much of the fourteenth century, the papacy came to reside in Avignon, one of the loveliest cities in France. We spend five nights here. The complete circuit of walls is an impressive survival from this time, as is the Palais des Papes, perhaps the finest Palace to have survived from the Middle Ages, and several Gothic churches.
Despite the upheavals of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when Provence lost its independence and the whole region was riven by religious wars, local patrons, such as the Duke of Uzès, began to employ artists capable of creating Italian Renaissance motifs. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, at Nîmes and Aix, Parisian Baroque architecture became the dominant model. The intensity of the light, the brightness of the colours and the raw beauty of the Midi purified palettes, dissolved form and changed the course of western art. Van Gogh and Gauguin sojourned in Arles in 1888, Cézanne returned to his birthplace, Aix-en-Provence, in 1886. Signac, Matisse, Derain, Marquet, Camoin, Dufy, Bonnard and Braque also set up in productive propinquity along the coast and their art has remained in the region’s collections. Time is spent in Aix, the attractive old capital of Provence and the new capital, Marseille, handsome and vibrant and at times gritty. Oscillating between small provincial town and big city, Marseille was propelled into the 21st century by Norman Foster, Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid who all contributed to the civic improvements and architecturally striking new museums for its year as European Capital of Culture in 2013.
It in e r a r y Day 1. Fly at c. 1.00pm (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Marseille. Drive to Aix-enProvence for two nights. Day 2: Aix-en-Provence. Walk through the old town, including the Cathedral of St Sauveur with 5th-cent. baptistry, cloisters and 15th-cent. triptych The Burning Bush by Nicolas Froment. The Musée Granet has a good permanent collection of French painting from the 16th-cent. onwards and a room dedicated to works by Cézanne. Cézanne’s studio remains as he left it on his death in 1906, and a short drive away is a fine view of the Mont Sainte-Victoire, the most recognisable motif in modern art. Overnight Aix-en-Provence.
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Day 3: Les Baux, St Rémy. Morning walk through the delightful mediaeval and Renaissance town of Les Baux, whose citadel sits on top of a rocky spur in the Alpilles. Continue to St Rémy, 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. See also the former monastery where Van Gogh was hospitalised, including the Romanesque cloister and scenes that he painted. Continue to Avignon for the first of five nights.
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Day 4: Avignon. The Palais des Papes is the principal monument of the Avignon papacy, one-time site of the papal curia and by far the most significant 14th-cent. building to survive in southern France. The collections of late Gothic sculpture and painting in the Petit Palais act as a splendid foil to the work at the papal palace. Day 5: Pernes-les-Fontaines, Vaison, Venasque. Stroll through Pernes, a fortified river town with an important Romanesque church and 13thcent. frescoed tower. Continue over the Dentelles de Montmirail to the stunning early mediaeval baptistery at Venasque. Free afternoon in Avignon. 72
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Romans in the Rhône Valley Spectacular remains of Provincia Romana Day 6: Nîmes, Uzès, Pont du Gard. Nîmes has two of the most famous of Roman monuments: the amphitheatre and the Maison Carrée, a perfectly preserved temple. The Jardin de la Fontaine is a beautiful 18th-cent. garden around the terminus of an aqueduct – the water brought here across the Pont du Gard, an astonishing feat of engineering over the River Gardon. The Romanesque tower of Uzès cathedral sits against a backdrop of picturesque mediaeval streets and Baroque houses.
Nîmes, Arena, after a drawing by René Piot, publ. 1922.
Day 7: Arles. The amphitheatre at Arles is a justly famous early 2nd-cent. structure of a type developed from the Colosseum. The Romanesque Cathedral of St-Trophime is home to one of the greatest cloisters of 12th-cent. Europe. The Musée Départmental Arles Antique houses a quite spellbinding collection of classical and early Christian art. Day 8: Villeneuve-lez-Avignon, Marseille. See Pope Innocent VI’s now ruined Charterhouse at Villeneuve-lez-Avignon and the Musée Pierre de Luxembourg, with works from the 14th–17th cents. in a former Cardinal’s palace. Continue to Marseille. Visit first the Basilique St Victor, which has a 5th-cent. crypt. First of two nights here. Day 9: Marseille. Walk through the Vieux Port and Panier districts, including the remains of the city’s ancient Greek then Roman port at the Jardin des Vestiges and La Vieille Charité, 17–18th cent. almshouses with a fine Baroque chapel. The Musée des Docks Romains illustrates the importance of Marseille in Mediterranean maritime trade. In the afternoon visit the Musée des Beaux Arts, where the highlight is a fine collection of 19th-cent. French art. Day 10: Marseille. Free morning. Suggestions include the modern and contemporary collections of the Musée Cantini or the Musée des Civilisations d’Europe et de la Méditerranée, containing collections from the former Musée des Arts et Traditions Populaires in Paris. Fly from Marseille, arriving at Heathrow at c. 5.45pm.
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Included meals: 7 dinners with wine.
How strenuous? Quite a lot of walking is involved, particularly in town centres. There are some long days and coach journeys. Average distance by coach per day: 32 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Gardens & Villas of the Italian Lakes, 20–26 September 2018 (p.97); Roman Italy, 8–17 October 2018 (p.135). Illustration: Aix, Cathedral of St Sauveur, after a drawing by H.P. Clifford publ. 1901.
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. ‘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. 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
It in e r a r y Day 1. Fly at c. 2.15pm (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Lyon. Spend one night here. 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. 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. Grand Hotel Roi René, Aix-enProvence (mgallery.com): 4 star, centrally located. Hôtel d’Europe, Avignon (heurope.com): central 5-star hotel in a former 16th-cent. residence. Grand Hotel Beauvau, Marseille (mgallery.com): 4 star hotel in the old port area with sea views.
A group of the finest Roman monuments surviving anywhere in the empire, with some of the most famous examples of Roman architecture and engineering.
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 monuments there are museums, some recently created to the highest international standards, housing sculptures, mosaics, carved marble sarcophagi and humbler items of daily life recovered from excavations.
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Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,480 or £3,320 without flights. Single occupancy: £4,000 or £3,840 without flights.
23–29 April 2018 (me 833) 7 days • £2,490 Lecturer: Professor Simon Esmonde Cleary
Romans in the Rhône Valley continued
The Wines of Bordeaux Châteaux and vineyards, tradition and innovation
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 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. Day 6: Pont du Gard, Arles. A 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.
22–28 October 2018 (mf 269) 7 days • £3,090 • Flights not included Lecturer: Roderick Smith MW
Day 7: Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Drive to StRémy-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 for the afternoon flight landing at London Heathrow at c. 5.45pm.
Stay in a five-star hotel in Bordeaux.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,490 or £2,300 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,840 or £2,650 without flights.
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Included meals: 2 lunches, 4 dinners, with wine.
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Accommodation. Hotel Le Royal, Lyon (lyonhotel-leroyal.com): located on the main square of the Presqu’île; elegant and welcoming; comparable to a good 4-star. Vienne, Hotel La Pyramide (lapyramide.com): 4-star hotel walking distance from the centre of town, and renovated in 2015. Rooms here are contemporary with modern furnishings. Arles, Hotel Jules César (hoteljulescesar.fr): formerly a 17th-century Carmelite Convent, now a 5-star boutique hotel. Rooms have been recently refurbished and have modern fittings. There is a pool. How strenuous? Quite a lot of walking is involved, particularly in the town centres. There are some long days and coach journeys. Average distance by coach per day: 29 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Monet & Impressionism, 15–20 April 2018 (p.66); Mediaeval Saxony, 30 April– 8 May 2018 (p.85). 74
Tutored tastings and visits to eight châteaux from St Estèphe to Sauternes. Accompanied throughout by a Master of Wine, expert in Bordeaux wines. Free time to visit the recently-opened museum of wine, la Cité du Vin. Bordeaux stands proud on the banks of the Garonne, with its glorious eighteenth-century architecture testament to the golden age of trade with far-flung destinations, at one time only rivalled in Europe by its northern former-ruler, London. But Bordeaux is firmly situated in the south, its long hours of sunshine conducive to sitting at open-air cafés in grand squares, and drinking wine. For wine and its trade are at the heart of Bordeaux’s prosperity. The Gironde estuary north of the city is not only a positive influence on the temperature and soils of the nearby châteaux, but has been the conduit for their wines to be shipped to foreign markets for centuries. The vine was introduced to the region by the Romans in the first century ad, but it was the 1855 classification of the Médoc and Sauternes which firmly established its burgeoning worldwide reputation for quality. In spite of more recent international competition, the eyes of the world are still drawn to these top appellations for their expertise and complex wines. It is thrilling to travel by road between neat rows of vines punctuated by fairytale châteaux, their familiar names such as Pichon Baron or d’Yquem discreetly inscribed over imposing gateways, so imposing as to discourage the casual visitor. But the facades belie the welcome and enterprise that await us behind the closed
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doors we are opening on this tour. Ancient, or occasionally starchitect, walls surround modern, shiny, squeaky-clean stainless-steel tanks, and vast temperature-controlled underground halls of newoak casks are designed to make these renowned wines consistently ‘précis’. It is said that to make a small fortune in the wine business, you need to start with a large one. Bordeaux is no exception, with many châteaux owned by large corporations, or more boutique wineries run as vanity projects for their individual proprietors. But all of the wines tasted on this tour are made by teams of people passionate about what they do, many of whom we shall meet, and who bring to life the story behind the science.
It in e r a r y Day 1: Bordeaux. Leave Bordeaux Airport following the arrival of the flight from London Gatwick (easyJet, currently 9.25pm) (flights are not included - see ‘Practicalities’). Transfer to the hotel. All six nights are spent in central Bordeaux. Day 2: Bordeaux. A morning introductory lecture and tutored tasting in Bordeaux of representative white and red wines. After lunch visit the contemporary Château les Carmes Haut-Brion designed by Philippe Starck and the architect Luc Arsène-Henry on the outskirts of the city. Day 3: Pessac-Léognan, Sauternes. Today’s journey south is to Pessac-Léognan to appreciate its white wines. The appellation was created in the 1980s largely by the revered André Lurton of Château la Louvière where we taste wines from the estate and elsewhere. The influence of the river Ciron, near the diminutive village of Sauternes, is key to the development of noble rot. Château d’Yquem opens its doors to us for a tour of its spectacular cellars which culminates in a tasting. In order to enjoy more personal visits, the group is required by Château d’Yquem to divide in two today, and travels by minibus.
Gardens of the Riviera In and around Menton and Nice Day 4: St Émilion, Pomerol. A Merlot day. Drive east to the charming, mediaeval town of St Émilion and visit the traditional Premier Grand Cru Clos Fourtet, acclaimed for its terroir. After some free time, it is a short journey to the smaller, celebrated appellation of Pomerol and its opulent and velvety wines. The compact, modern Château Petit-Village is located at the highest point of the gravel plateau, neighbouring le Pin and Pétrus. Day 5: St Estèphe, Pauillac. Drive north through the expanse and beauty of the Haut-Médoc to reach St Estèphe and specifically the privatelyowned Cos d’Estournel. The extensive and exotic 19th-century exterior is mirrored in the ultramodern interior where we taste deep-coloured, long-lived wines. Returning south through Pauillac, Château Pichon Baron Longueville plays host in the 19th-century fairytale turrets, but makes its superb Cabernet-dominated wines in modern, neo-Egyptian cellars. Day 6: Bordeaux, Margaux. Free morning to visit la Cité du Vin or for independent exploration of Bordeaux. In the afternoon return north to Château Kirwan for a visit, tasting and dinner. Day 7. Drive to Bordeaux Airport in time for the flight to London Gatwick (British Airways, currently departing 10.05am). 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.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,090. Single occupancy: £3,570. Included meals: 3 lunches, 3 dinners, with wine. Flights are not included in the price because the most convenient flight out is with EasyJet with whom we cannot make a booking without knowing the passenger name. Suggested flight details will be provided, but please contact us if you require details sooner.
Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Dark Age Brilliance, 14–21 October 2018 (p.115); Picasso in Spain, 29 October– 4 November 2018 (p.171).
What else is included in the price? See page 8. Illustration: Bordeaux, steel engraving c. 1850.
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.
It in e r a r y 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. Drive 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. 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. 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 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 from across the world, the surviving rotunda decorated with 100 tiles illustrating Illustration: Menton, watercolour by W. Scott, publ. 1907.
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How strenuous? There is a large amount of walking and standing in possibly muddy vineyards and cool cellars. Average distance by coach per day: 39 miles.
Inspiring historic gardens in spectacular settings, with exceptional growing conditions.
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Accommodation. Intercontinental Le Grand Hôtel, Bordeaux (bordeaux.intercontinental.com): majestic, Neo-Classical 5-star hotel opposite le Grand Théâtre in the centre of Bordeaux. Rooms are ornate and traditional in style.
11–17 April 2018 (me 810) 7 days • £2,290 Lecturer: Caroline Holmes
Gardens of the Riviera continued
Modern Art on the Côte d’Azur Picasso, Matisse, Chagall and their contemporaries
Cervantes’s Don Quixote encapsulates the mood. Dinner 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 these gardens can only be visited by special arrangement and are subject to confirmation.
‘I enjoyed this tour very much; the various gardens, the excellent dinners, and the good leadership.’ P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Rear-view room, two sharing: £2,290 or £2,160 without flights. Single occupancy with rear view: £2,570 or £2,440 without flights. Sea view room, two sharing £2,370 or £2,240 without flights. Single occupancy with sea view: £2,720 or £2,590 without flights. Included meals: 2 picnic lunches and 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Napoléon, Menton (napoleon-menton.com): modern, comfortable 4-star hotel 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.
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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.
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Combine this tour with: Modern Art on the Côte d’Azur, 5–11 April 2018 (see right); Gardens & Villas of the Italian Lakes, 19–25 April 2018 (p.97); The Grand Duchy of Tuscany, 19–28 April 2018 (p.119).
What else is included in the price? See page 8. 76
5–11 April 2018 (me 806) 7 days • £2,560 Lecturer: Mary Lynn Riley 18–24 October 2018 (mf 252) 7 days • £2,560 Lecturer: Monica Bohm-Duchen 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. 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
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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.
It in e r a r y Day 1: Nice. Fly at c. 11.40am 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. 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 3: Antibes, Vallauris, Cagnes-sur-Mer. Most of the paintings Picasso produced in his studio in
Georgia Uncovered Treasures of the Southern Caucasus 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. 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. 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 afternoon visit Chapelle du Rosaire, a Dominican chapel designed by Matisse.
8–17 September 2018 (mf 117) 10 days • £3,470 Lecturer: Ian Colvin Churches and monasteries dating from the sixth century and earlier.
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.
Exquisite jewellery and metalwork from the Bronze Age and Antiquity.
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.
A delicious and varied regional cuisine in a land that is the cradle of wine.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,560 or £2,430 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,890 or £2,760 without flights. Included meals: 4 dinners with wine.
Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. In April, combine this tour with: Gardens of the Riviera, 11–17 April 2018 (p.75). Or in October, with: Roman Italy, 8–17 October 2018 (p.135); Normans in the South, 26 October–3 November 2018 (p.140).
Illustration: Antibes, oiliograph c. 1870.
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How strenuous? There is a fair amount of walking and standing around in museums. Average distance by coach per day: 40 miles
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. 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, according to their inclination and strategic necessity, backed one side or the other, and 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.
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Accommodation. Hotel La Pérouse, Nice (leshotelsduroy.com): stylish 4-star hotel partially built into the cliff overlooking the Promenade des Anglais. Furnished in modern Provençal style, our rooms are at the back of the hotel. Rooms with sea views are available for a supplement.
Spectacular mountain landscapes.
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. Its kings 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. 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
Georgia Uncovered continued
cost. Nationalism and a longing for ‘freedom’ brought the end of the Soviet Union. It brought 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.
It in e r a r y 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. Gremi the 16th-century capital of Kakheti, illustrates the trading wealth of this east Georgian kingdom.
M A IN L A N D E U R O P E : GEORGIA
Day 4: Tbilisi. Tbilisi’s Ethnographic open air House Museum conserves and 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 Prospero’s Books, Tbilisi’s English language bookstore. Day 5: Mtskheta, Gudauri. Just north of Tbilisi is the old capital, Mtskheta, scene of the country’s fourth-century conversion and still the religious heart of this strongly Christian country. Its spiritual landmarks include: the sixth-century Jvari (Holy Cross) Church, perched high above the town; the tiny 5th-century Antioch church; and the 11th-century Cathedral of Svetitskhoveli (the Living Column), 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. 78
Day 6: Gudauri. Drive over the Jvari pass to Stepantsminda on the headwaters of the Terek. 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 west Georgian kingdoms of Colchis and Egrisi-Lazika, 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. The wellpreserved Roman fortress of Apsarus at Gonio, is a site of such continuous strategic importance that one can see concrete WWII machine gun embrasures cut into the masonry of the secondcentury Roman, then Byzantine, Genoese and Ottoman refortifications.
Ian Colvin Historian and Byzantinist specialising in Late Antiquity and the South Caucasus. Trained at Oxford, he is now a researcher at Cambridge. He is also directing an ongoing archaeological expedition to ancient Archaeopolis in the South Caucasus. See pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,470 or £3,140 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,990 or £3,660 without flights. Included meals: 8 lunches, 8 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Marriott Tbilisi (marriott. co.uk/hotels): 5-star hotel behind a 19th-century façade, within walking distance of Tbilisi’s main attractions. Marco Polo Hotel, Gudauri (marcopolo.ge/en/): 4-star spa hotel with spectacular views of the mountains. Bagrati 1003, Kudaisi: a modern hotel, adequately comfortable and the best available. 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: Walking to Santiago, 4–15 September 2018 (p.164); History of Medicine, 17–23 September 2018 (p.112); The Etruscans, 17–23 September 2018 (p.133); Gastronomic Galicia, 17–24 September 2018 (p.166); Tastes of Le Marche, 17–24 September 2018 (p.126); Civilisations of Sicily, 17–29 September 2018 (p.141).
Day 10: Batumi to London. Fly at c. 10.30am from Batumi Airport to London, via Istanbul, arriving at Gatwick at c. 6.00pm (Turkish Airlines).
What else is included in the price? See page 8. Illustration: Tblisi, mid-19th-century engraving.
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The House of Hanover Duchies, Electorate and Kingdom in Germany 16–22 May 2018 (me 868) 7 days • £2,570 Lecturer: Dr Jarl Kremeier Studies the German territories ruled by the dynasty from which came the Hanoverian kings of Great Britain 1714–1837. Includes well-preserved small towns, mediaeval monuments, some good art collections, city palaces, country houses and gardens. History as well as art history and architecture.
Day 1: Lüneburg. Fly at c. 10.40am from London Heathrow to Hamburg. Drive to Lüneburg, capital of the eponymous duchy until 1373 when the city expelled the ducal family. See the important town hall with original interiors, St Michael’s Church (where J.S. Bach went to school) and St Johannes (magnificent organ). On the market square is the 1690 dowager palais of Duchess Eleonore (aunt by marriage of George I and widow of the last duke of Braunschweig-Lüneburg, who was succeeded by George I in 1705). Overnight Lüneburg.
Day 3: Hanover, Marienburg. Visit the Historisches Museum, where a permanent exhibition illustrating the development of Hanover over 750 years includes the golden carriages of the Guelfs. Drive out to Marienburg, a strikingly situated castle commissioned by Georg V in 1857 with some good interiors, pictures and furniture. Return to Hanover for a visit to the Landesmuseum, which houses a good collection of paintings from the former royal collection.
Included meals: 2 lunches, 5 dinners, with wine.
Day 4: Celle. Celle is another of the most charming of smaller German cities with a well preserved centre with much half timbering. The Schloß, residence of the dukes (Lüneburg branch) since the 14th century, has a wonderfully decorated Renaissance chapel and apartments rebuilt by Georg Wilhelm (George I’s uncle) with Italian stucco and a tiny court theatre. See the house and garden used by George III’s brotherin-law, the duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, and the church with tombs of George I’s uncles and aunt. Celle also served briefly as residence of George III’s sister Caroline Mathilde.
Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,570 or £2,380 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,950 or £2,760 without flights. Accommodation. Hotel Bergström, Lüneburg (bergstroem.de): charming 4-star hotel on the banks of the River Ilmenau in the heart of town. Kastens Luisenhof, Hanover (kastens-luisenhof. de): 5-star hotel in the heart of the city. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking on this tour, some over uneven ground. Average distance by coach per day: 93 miles.
Day 5: Herrenhausen. The small Fürstenhaus palace on the Herrenhausen estate is still owned by the Prinz von Hannover (and Duke of Cumberland!) and has good furniture and portraits and one of the grandest complexes of historic gardens in Europe. A vast formal, FrancoDutch layout was started by George I’s uncle, enlarged by his parents and finished by himself (waterworks). There is also a magnificent orangery with frescoed interiors, a botanical garden and landscaped gardens with the summer house of Graf Johan Wallmoden, illegitimate son of George II. The Welfenschloss was started in 1858 for Georg V but not quite finished by the end of the Hanoverian monarchy in 1866. Day 6: Braunschweig (Brunswick), Wolfenbüttel. Drive to territories of George I’s cousins, the dukes of Braunschweig-Lüneburg-Wolfenbüttel. The recently renovated Herzog Anton-Ulrich Museum in Braunschweig has most of the collections of the eponymous duke (died 1714), Rubens, van Dyck, Rembrandt, Vermeer, etc. Schloss Richmond is a delightful villa built in 1768 for Duchess Augusta (sister of George III, mother of Queen Caroline), surrounded by landscaped gardens. Continue to Wolfenbüttel, residence of the Wolfenbüttel branch of Guelf dukes (1432–1753). The town is a very well-preserved with a Schloss of various periods, one of the few major purpose-built Protestant churches (started 1604) and the important HerzogAugust-Bibliothek, a library which in the 17th century was perhaps the largest in Europe.
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M A IN L A N D
Great-grandson of James I and VI, consistently through the female line, George Ludwig Elector of Hanover (1660–1727) might have been fifty-second in line to the thrones of Great Britain at the death of Queen Anne. But a combination of premature deaths and, much more devastatingly, the Act of Settlement of 1702 which barred the throne to Roman Catholics, enabled him to succeed as King George I in 1714. The House of Hanover was to reign in Britain until 1837. This tour travels to the territories the Hanoverians ruled before, during and after this episode. The Guelphs, or Welfen, are one of the great dynasties of Europe. The attempt of Henry the Lion (1129–95) to bring himself in line for the possible election of Holy Roman Emperor eventually failed, but as dukes of BraunschweigLüneburg (since 1235) the family played a decisive role in German politics and patronage of the arts. Both activities were greatly enhanced by Duke, and from 1692 Elector, Ernst August (1629–98) and Duchess Sophie, parents of the future George I. When George moved his residence from Hanover to London, the sudden loss of the court was a severe blow to arts patronage, but there is still a great deal to see in the area of the former duchies. The erstwhile residences at Celle and Wolfenbüttel have large palaces set in charming cities; the ‘Großer Garten’ at Herrenhausen near Hanover and the landscaped parts next to it rank among the finest in the history of gardening; Braunschweig (Brunswick) has a magnificent collection of old master paintings and bronzes assembled by George I’s cousin. The tour also includes a number of mediaeval places connected to the Guelphs, as well as some nineteenth-century buildings erected by the then kings of Hanover after the union-by-king of Great Britain and Hanover. The union came to an end in 1837 because the electorate submitted to the Salic law which did not permit a female monarch, and the kingdom became extinct after it backed the losing side in the war between Austria and Prussia in 1866; Hanover was absorbed into Prussia.
Day 2: Lüneburg, Medingen. Drive south to Kloster Medingen, convent then girls’ school, which burnt down in 1781; George III as Elector of Hanover contributed to the cost of re-building. Drive to Hanover for the first of five nights.
Day 7. Fly from Hanover, arriving at London Heathrow at c. 12.00 midday.
Illustration: Brunswick, town hall, lithograph by Samuel Prout 1839.
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Gardens & Palaces of Berlin & Potsdam Architecture, interiors, garden design and horticulture the Great’s expansionism. An extravagant homage to the Enlightenment, he created this earliest of English parks on the continent as the centrepiece of his new social order. His models in this great enterprise were Palladio, Brown and Rousseau, and the magnificent park is studded with mementos of Stourhead, Coalbrookdale and the idea of the ferme ornée. Even Vesuvius is here, overlooking its own Bay of Naples. Day 4. Today we explore the parks which gather around the River Havel and dependent lakes between Potsdam and Berlin which, though created independently, took into account views of the other gardens. The great landscape designer Peter Josef Lenné (1789–1866) had a hand in all of them; Peacock Island, with its ‘ruined’ castle folly, is ‘the most peaceful and enchanted landscape… in the whole of Germany’; the gloriously Gothic garden of Babelsberg, where Lenné collaborated with Prince Pückler, evolved around a WindsorCastle style Schloss and is as different as can be imagined from Sanssouci; the villa of KleinGlienicke is a dream of Italy, its gardens strewn with Neoclassical garden buildings.
15–20 May 2018 (me 875) 6 days • £2,220 Lecturer: Steven Desmond Surveys one of Europe’s finest concentrations of palaces, historic gardens, parks and pavilions. Includes an excursion to Wörlitz, a key early landscape garden in Germany.
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Perhaps in compensation for nature’s parsimony, one of the greatest concentrations of landscape gardens in continental Europe is to be found in an area of unproductive sandy heathland, scrub forests and marshy plains. Poorly endowed with natural resources, Brandenburg was a minor German state when in the seventeenth century it acquired the much bigger and more prosperous state, which was then known as Prussia. But by dint of ruthless and energetic rule, backed by military prowess for which it became a byword, Brandenburg-Prussia became one of the most powerful states 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. Before the landscape movement came Baroque formality, the perfect expression of the absolutism of the time. Most of the innumerable princes of the highly disunited Germany had aspirations to magnificence manifested in the building of palaces and the creation of gardens – regarded as an indispensable extension of the other. As the most ambitious of all dynasties, with most to prove, the Kings of Prussia bestowed on posterity some of the grandest schemes in Europe. As well as being one of the most able of rulers and soldiers, Frederick was also a lover of art, music and gardening. Sanssouci, his retreat 80
from the affairs of state at Potsdam, is a uniquely extensive and well-preserved complex of gardens and palaces, extended and embellished by his successors. Sanssouci is the Mecca for all lovers of historic gardens, but there are also other outstanding parks, gardens and palaces close by. Based for all five nights in Potsdam, this tour surveys the superb and elaborate gardens and palaces from Baroque to Romanticism created by the Hohenzollern royal family. There is also a day in the neighbouring state of Sachsen-Anhalt to see Wörlitz, the first and most important landscape garden in Germany.
It in e r a r y Day 1. Fly at c. 8.45am from London Heathrow to Berlin (British Airways). Spend the afternoon at Schloss Charlottenburg, the earliest major secular building in the Berlin area, an outstanding Baroque and Rococo summer palace with excellent interiors of the 1690s and 1750s (with Frederick II’s collection of paintings by Watteau). The first French-style formal garden in Germany extends into landscaped areas with a villa and mausoleum by Schinkel. Continue to Potsdam where all five nights are spent. Day 2. Intimacy and opulence jostle for space in Sanssouci. A full day is devoted to the 300 ha site which was in continuous additive development between 1744 and 1913. A string of contrasting palaces, the famous terrace garden and a series of ornamental buildings reflecting Italian, Chinese, Greek, Roman and Rococo tastes follow one another in this huge park. Day 3: Wörlitz. 90 km to the south, Wörlitz was the creation of Prince Franz of Anhalt-Dessau, his libertarian idealism contrasting with Frederick
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Day 5. The Neuer Garten, laid out from 1786 by Friedrich Wilhelm II, embraces the artfully informal, English landscaped style, while the lakeside Marble Palace at its centre is modest and playful and interestingly furnished. The Elizabethan-style Schloss Cecilienhof (1913–17) was site of the Potsdam Conference 1945. Free afternoon, opportunity perhaps to explore the town of Potsdam with its lively Dutch Quarter and Schinkel cathedral. Day 6. Walk once more though Park Sanssouci to the delicious Neo-Classical retreat of Charlottenhof and the adjoining Roman Baths. A sequence of Roman and Renaissance style rooms, patios and baths, this part was once a separate estate and was laid out by Lenné and Schinkel. Depart for Berlin Airport at midday, arriving Heathrow c. 3.30pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,220 or £1,980 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,360 or £2,120 without flights. Included meals: 2 lunches, 3 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Hotel am Luisenplatz, Potsdam (hotel-luisenplatz.de): comfortable 4-star hotel on the edge of Sanssouci park, overlooking the town square. How strenuous? The parks are large and the tour would not be suitable for anyone who has any difficulties with everyday walking. Average distance by coach per day: 26 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Footpaths of Umbria, 7–14 May 2018 (p.117); Music in the Cotswolds, 21–24 May 2018 (p.20).
Illustration: Schloss Charlottenburg, engraving c. 1880.
Berlin, Potsdam, Dresden Art and architecture in Brandenburg and Saxony 20–28 September 2018 (mf 167) 9 days • £2,920 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.
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 arena for festivities, part museum for cherished collections. Visit the excellent porcelain museum and the fabulously rich Old Masters Gallery, particularly
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,920 or £2,790 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,280 or £3,150 without flights. Included meals: 3 lunches, 5 dinners, with wine.
Day 4: Dresden, Potsdam. Drive 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 buildings. In the afternoon visit his relatively modest single-storey palace atop terraces of fruit trees and the exquisite Chinese teahouse. Overnight Potsdam.
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, close to Sanssouci Palace. Regent Hotel, Berlin (theregentberlin.de): elegant 5-star hotel decorated in Regency style, close to Unter den Linden.
Day 5: Potsdam, Berlin. Spend the morning on the Alter Markt; see the Nikolaikirche, a Classiciststyle, Lutheran church. The Museum Barberini was built on the site of the original Barberini Palace – largely destroyed by bombing in 1945 and demolished three years later. Walk through the city’s historical Dutch Quarter. After lunch drive to Berlin. The villa of Klein-Glienicke is a dream of Italy; visit its gardens strewn with Neo-Classical buildings. First of four nights in Berlin.
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.
Illustration: Dresden, lithograph after Samuel Prout, 1839.
Day 6: Berlin. A walk to see a selection of historic and new architecture, passing Bebelplatz, the Gendarmenmarkt with its twin churches and concert hall, and the Humboldt-Forum, a new museum project on the site of the former City Palace, due for completion in 2019. Spend the afternoon on ‘Museums 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.
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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.
Monument for the Liberation Wars, designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel in 1821. Fly from Berlin to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 3.30pm.
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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.
strong on Italian and Netherlandish painting. The Green Vault of the Residenzschloss displays one of the world’s finest princely treasuries.
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 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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Frederick the Great Controversial King of Prussia 13–17 August 2018 (me 978) 5 days • £1,980 Lecturer: Professor Tim Blanning A study of the life, achievements and artistic patronage of the most prominent and divisive king of the eighteenth century. Based in Berlin for all four nights with excursions to palaces at Rheinsberg, Charlottenburg and Potsdam. Led by one of the leading experts on eighteenthcentury Europe whose biography of Frederick (2015) won widespread praise. Frederick II of Prussia acquired the sobriquet ‘the Great’ within four years of the commencement of his 46-year reign. One of the sharpest minds ever to grace a European throne, he was impressively well read, passionately engaged as a connoisseur of music, art and architecture and a prolific writer of prose and verse. These are qualities which are unusual but not unknown among hereditary rulers; in Frederick, quite exceptionally, they were combined with fierce executive energy, indomitable will and ruthlessness of action in the service of both civil governance and military matters. To his contemporaries, Frederick was the most salient and divisive ruler of the eighteenth century, abhorred and adored in equal measure. Subsequent students of German history have also
been divided, and controversy continues. Was he one of the greatest generals of all time, or merely the lucky beneficiary of an army he inherited? (Blanning’s verdict: ‘he was an indifferent general but a brilliant warlord.’) Apostle and friend of Voltaire and insistent on equality before the law, he has been lauded as the Enlightenment enthroned; but he was also absolutist, capricious, vindictive and cruelly disdainful of the common people. What is beyond controversy is that he turned Brandenburg and Prussia from a third-rate power into one that was feared and respected throughout Europe. There is somewhat less wholehearted agreement that he began the process which, if not exactly lineal, led to a united Germany under Prussian leadership becoming the dominant power in continental Europe. That Frederick seems to be at the source of developments that led to the Third Reich still adds a frisson to the mention of his name. This is one of the many themes the tour will explore. Tim Blanning is the author of a biography of Frederick which has received accolades from all quarters. Formerly Professor of Modern European History at the University of Cambridge, and a renowned lecturer, he has spent a lifetime studying the eighteenth century and the German speaking lands. His depth of understanding of music and the visual arts adds a dimension which is not often provided by political historians. Any study of Frederick must begin with his monstrous bully of a father, Frederick William I, to whom his intellectual and aesthetic interests as well as his sexual preferences were an anathema (most biographers have drawn a discreet veil over the latter). The son attempted to exorcise the ghost of his uncouth, foul tempered and militaristic parent by exceeding him in agression, beginning within weeks of becoming king by seizing Silesia, the Austrian monarchy’s richest province.
For the twenty-first-century traveller, however, Frederick’s legacy consists most strikingly of a series of palaces – Rheinsberg, Charlottenburg, Sanssouci and the New Palace at Potsdam – which are exquisitely decorated and filled with furniture and works of art.
It in e r a r y Day 1: Berlin. Fly at c. 11.00am from London Heathrow to Berlin Tegel (British Airways). A walk along Unter den Linden passes buildings erected during Frederick’s reign – opera house, Catholic cathedral, library, Prince Henry’s palace – and the famous statue unveiled 1851. All four nights are spent in Berlin. Day 2: Rheinsberg, Ravensbrück. Frederick later said of his years at Schloss Rheinsberg, his court from 1736 until his accession, that they were the happiest of his life. It has been restored after subsequent vicissitudes. Visit the memorial and museum at the site of Ravensbrück concentration camp for discussion of the relationship between the Nazis and Prussian history. Day 3: Charlottenburg. The palace and gardens at Charlottenburg originated at the end of the 17th century, but Frederick added a wing with his favoured Rococo decoration and installed there his collection of paintings by Watteau and his followers. There is free time to visit the other museums at Charlottenburg including the collection of Berlin porcelain whose production Frederick encouraged. Day 4: Potsdam. Created by Frederick as a retreat from the affairs of state, the extensive, park of Sanssouci consists of gardens, parkland, palaces and pavilions. Visit his relatively modest single-storey palace atop terraces of fruit trees, the exquisite Chinese teahouse and the large and imposing Neues Palais. Drive through Potsdam town centre with its Dutch quarter and Nikolaikirche by Schinkel.
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Day 5: Berlin. The German Historical Museum is a fascinating and unflinching display of the sort which Germany does well. Some free time for the museums on Museums Island. Fly to Heathrow, arriving c. 4.45pm.
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Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,980 or £1,840 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,240 or £2,100 without flights. Included: 1 lunch and 3 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Regent Hotel, Berlin (theregentberlin.de): elegant 5-star hotel decorated in Regency style, close to Unter den Linden. How strenuous? Quite a lot of walking is required and standing is unavoidable. Average coach travel per day: 42 miles (mainly on two days of the tour.) Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: King Ludwig II, 20–25 August 2018 (p.89). Illustration: Berlin, statue of Frederick The Great (Christian Daniel Rauch) mid-19th-century engraving.
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Barenboim in Berlin Art, architecture and music in the German capital 27 March–1 April 2018 (me 800) 6 days • £2,980 (including tickets to 4 performances) Lecturer: Barry Millington Two operas at the newly reopened Staatsoper Unter den Linden: Falstaff (Verdi) with Michael Volle (Falstaff) and Parsifal (Wagner) with René Pape (Gurnemanz). Both are conducted by Daniel Barenboim. Two concerts at the Philharmonie with Martha Argerich (piano) and Daniel Barenboim. Museum and gallery visits with local guides or curators as well as daily talks on the music.
Day 1. Fly at c. 10.45am 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’, a group of major museum buildings. 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 before an evening performance of Falstaff (Verdi) at the Staatsoper with Daniel Barenboim (conductor), Mario Martone (director), Michael Volle (Falstaff), Simone Piazzola (Ford), Francesco Demuro (Fenton) Jürgen Sacher (Dr Cajus), Stephan Rügamer (Bardolfo), Jan Martiník (Pistola), Maria Agresta (Mrs Alice Ford), Nadine Sierra (Nannetta), Daniela Barcellona (Mrs Quickly), Katharina Kammerloher (Mrs Meg Page). Day 3. 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 with Daniel Barenboim (conductor), Martha Argerich (piano), Anna Prohaska (soprano), Marianne Crebassa (mezzo-soprano), Anna Lapkovskaja (alto): Claude Debussy, Fantaisie for piano and orchestra, Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien (mystery play for soloists, choir and orchestra). Day 4. The morning is free for independent exploration. Afternoon performance at the Staatsoper: Parsifal (Wagner) with Daniel Barenboim (conductor), Dmitri Tcherniakov (director), Lauri Vasar (Amfortas), René Pape (Gurnemanz), Andreas Schager (Parsifal), Nina Stemme (Kundry), Falk Struckmann (Klingsor), Reinhard Hagen (Titurel).
Day 5. Europe’s greatest building project in the 1990s, Potsdamer Platz showcases an international array of architects (Piano, Isozaki, Rogers, Moneo). 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. Concert at the Philharmonie with Daniel Barenboim and Martha Argerich (piano): works for piano duo. Wagner, Overture to Der Fliegende Holländer (arr. Debussy); Debussy, ‘Six épigraphes antiques’; ‘En blanc et noir’; ‘Lindaraja’; ‘Prélude à l’après-midi d’un Faune’; ‘La Mer’. Dinner is in the rooftop restaurant of the Reichstag. Day 6. Fly to London Heathrow from Berlin Tegel, arriving at c. 1.15pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,980 or £2,860 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,310 or £3,190 without flights. Included meals: 3 dinners with wine. Music: 1st and 2nd category tickets to 4 performances are included, costing c. £675. Tickets at the Philharmonie and for Parisfal are wellplaced in the 2nd category. Falstaff tickets are a mixture of 1st and 2nd category, and allocated in order of date of booking. There is a £50 reduction for 2nd category tickets for this performance. 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 in museums and galleries. Average distance by coach per day: 9 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Beauty & the Abyss: Viennese Modernism, 21–25 March 2018 (p.49). 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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Illustration: Berlin, Staatsoper, early-19th-century engraving.
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The Staatsoper Unter den Linden, under renovation since 2009, has finally reopened for the 2017–18 season and this tour provides an unmissable opportunity to experience the newly refurbished house with its extended proscenium and improved acoustics. On the roster are productions of Falstaff and Parsifal under Daniel Barenboim, widely regarded as the greatest living Wagner conductor. The operas are interspersed with two concerts at the Berlin Philhamornie where Barenboim and Martha Argerich combine to perform works by Debussy. Berlin possesses some of the finest art galleries and museums in the world and offers the highest standards of music and opera performance. It is endowed with a range of historic architecture and is the site of Europe’s greatest concentration of first-rate contemporary architecture. Once again a national capital, it is also one of the most exciting cities on the Continent, recent and rapid changes pushing through a transformation without peacetime parallel. One of the grandest capitals in Europe for the first forty years of the last century, it then suffered appallingly from aerial bombardment and Soviet artillery. For the next forty years it was cruelly divided into two parts and became the focus of Cold War antagonism, a bizarre confrontation between an enclave of western libertarianism and hard-line Communism. Since the Wall was breached in 1989 the city has been transformed beyond recognition. From being a largely charmless urban expanse still bearing the scars of war, it has become a vibrant, liveable city, the very model of a modern major metropolis. The two halves have been knitted together and cleaning and repair have revealed the patrimony of historic architecture to be among the finest in Central Europe. The art collections, formerly split, dispersed and often housed in temporary premises, are now coming together in magnificently restored or newly-built galleries. Berlin possesses international art and antiquities of the highest importance, as well as incomparable collections of German art. The number and variety of museums and the quality of their holdings make Berlin among the world’s most desired destinations for art lovers. With three major opera houses and several orchestras, Berlin is a city where truly outstanding performances can be virtually guaranteed.
The Hanseatic League Germany’s Baltic Coast 15–22 August 2018 (me 983) 8 days • £2,760 Lecturer: Andreas Puth 12–19 September 2018 (mf 165) 8 days • £2,760 Lecturer: Andreas Puth Very few spaces remaining 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.
It in e r a r y 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.
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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.
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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 well84
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preserved 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. 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 Eldena, immortalised by Caspar David Friedrich. 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. Free afternoon. You may wish to visit the island of Rügen, renowned for its chalk cliffs, silver sands and beautiful, deciduous woodland. Day 8: Prenzlau. Drive South to Prenzlau, once also a member of the League; it was badly damaged during the war and rebuilt in typical GDR Plattenbau style, yet the imposing rebuilt Marienkirche can be seen for miles. Fly from Berlin Tegel, arriving London Heathrow c. 6.00pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,760 or £2,550 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,100 or £2,890 without flights. Included meals: 5 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Radisson Blu Senator Hotel, Lübeck (radissonblu.com): 4-star hotel 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): 4-star hotel in converted historic townhouses. How strenuous? Fitness is essential. Average distance by coach per day: 60 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Illustration: Lübeck, wood engraving c. 1880.
Mediaeval Saxony Carolingian, Ottonian, Romanesque 30 April–8 May 2018 (me 840) 9 days • £2,740 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.
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Day 2: Paderborn, Corvey. At Paderborn are the fascinating 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 preRomanesque predecessor. 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. First of two nights here. Day 3: Hildesheim. Hildesheim is of enormous importance in the history of Romanesque art and architecture. The cathedral has some of the
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. 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 10th-century crypt. St Cyriakus at Gernrode is a church of exceptional beauty; begun 961, it is the oldest large-scale Ottonian building surviving. Day 6: Halberstadt. 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. The rest of the afternoon is free. Day 7: Magdeburg. 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. Day 8: Königslutter. 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. Visit the Monastery and
church of St Pankratius in Hamersleben, a hidden gem of Romanesque architecture. 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. 9.05pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,740 or £2,560 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,950 or £2,770 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 5 dinners with wine. Accommodation: Hotel zur Mühle, Paderborn (hotelzurmuehle.de): modern 3-star hotel in the centre. Van der Valk Hotel, Hildesheim (hildesheim.vandervalk.de): modern 4-star hotel with a historical façade on the market square. Romantik Hotel am Brühl, Quedlinburg (hotelambruehl.de): comfortable 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. Some days involve a lot of driving. Average distance by coach per day: 91 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Romans in the Rhône Valley, 23–29 April 2018 (p.73).
Illustration: Quedlinburg, early-20th-century etching.
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Day 1: London to Paderborn. Fly at c. 10.45am from London Heathrow to Düsseldorf (British Airways). Overnight in Paderborn.
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.
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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 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 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.
The Leipzig Bach Festival Music by J.S. Bach and his contemporaries 7–11 June 2018 (me 901) 5 days • £2,425 (including tickets to 8 performances) Lecturer: Dr David Vickers
the Nikolaikirche with the Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists, Sir John Eliot Gardiner (conductor): J. S. Bach, Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen (BWV12), Ihr werdet weinen und heulen (BWV103), O ewiges Feuer, O Ursprung der Liebe (BWV34), O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort (BWV20).
Eight concerts featuring mainly the music of J.S. Bach and contemporaries. Artists include the Monteverdi Choir with Sir John Eliot Gardiner, the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and Bach Collegium Japan. Guided walks to explore the architecture and museums of this historic and lively city.
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Over 80 members of the Bach family are listed in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. For two centuries the Bachs, Johann Sebastian among them, plied their trade in the employ of courts, churches and free cities in Thuringia, Sachsen-Anhalt and Saxony. Though geographically in the heart of Germany, these places were not among the major political or cultural centres of Europe. And their location on the other side of the Iron Curtain in the later 20th century enveloped them further in obscurity. There was no star system in the Bachs’ time; genius was an alien concept. The tradition the family worked in was one of sheer dogged professionalism, with ability generally recognised and rewarded. Actually, Johann Sebastian was the third choice of the city fathers for the post of Cantor at St Thomas’s Church in Leipzig. And, astonishingly, until 1999 Leipzig had never mounted a fully-fledged annual festival devoted to their most famous employee. Happily the event has quickly established itself as one of the major items in the calendar of European festivals, and tickets are becoming hard to get. Many of the concerts we have selected are performed in the voluminous parish church of St Thomas, Bach’s principal auditorium during the 27 years, 1723–50, when he was effectively the city’s Director of Music, in the impressive Gewandhaus Opera House and in the Nikolaikirche, which has a splendid Neo-Classical interior. The musical history of Leipzig encompasses not only J.S. Bach and his sons but also Telemann, Robert and Clara Schumann, Mendelssohn, Wagner and Mahler. Morning walks and visits investigate this heritage, and also take in the art and architecture of the city. Plenty of time is left for individual exploration or simply resting between concerts. Leipzig is now, again, a handsome and lively city, following an almost miraculous transformation which began in the 1990s. Cleaning, restoration and rebuilding was accompanied by the emergence of cafés, smart shops and good restaurants. There are excellent museums, including the Fine Arts Museum in spectacular new premises, the radically refurbished Museum of Musical Instruments and, of course, the Bach Museum.
It in e r a r y Day 1: London to Leipzig. Fly at c. 10.45am from London Heathrow to Berlin (British Airways). Drive to Leipzig (c. 3 hours), arriving at the hotel in time for dinner. 86
Day 2. The first of two walking tours to see the main monuments of Leipzig. A large market place lies at the heart of this ancient trading city, with the Renaissance arcaded Old Town Hall along one side. Around is a network of alleys, courtyards and arcades, and the former stock exchange. The walk finishes at the Bach Archive, which has a good public display. Free afternoon. Early evening concert at the Thomaskirche with the Thomanerchor Leipzig, Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig, Gotthold Schwarz (conductor), Ullrich Böhme (organ), Gerline Dämann (soprano), Stefan Kahle (alto), Gun-Wook Lee (bass): J. S. Bach, Toccata and Fugue in D minor (BWV565); J. H. Schein, Herr Gott, dich loben wir (Te Deum Laudamus); Bach, Mass in F (BWV233); Mendelssohn, Verleih uns Frieden gnädiglich; motets from J. H. Schein’s Israelsbrünnlein and Schütz’s Geistliche Chormusik, followed by an evening concert at the Nikolaikirche with the Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists, Sir John Eliot Gardiner (conductor): J. S. Bach, Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland (BWV61); Schwingt freudig euch empor (BWV36); Wachet! betet! betet! Wachet! (BWV70); Unser Mund sei voll Lachens (BWV110). Day 3. A walk concentrating on Leipzig’s musical heritage includes the Grassi Museum of Musical Instruments, the little museum in the house where Mendelssohn lived and died, the Gewandhaus (concert hall), opera house, and the Wagner memorial. Concert at the Thomaskirche with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir, Ton Koopman (conductor), Maarten Engeltjes (countertenor), Tilman Lichdi (tenor), Klaus Mertens (bass): J. S. Bach, Sie werden aus Saba alle kommen (BWV65); Jesus schläft, was soll ich hoffen (BWV81); ich habe genug (BWV82); Liebster Immanuel, Herzog der Frommen (BWV123). Lunch, and concert at the Thomaskirche with the Bach Collegium Japan, Masaaki Suzuki (conductor), Hannah Morrison (soprano), Robin Blaze (alto), Makoto Sakurada (tenor), Dominik Wörner (bass): J. S. Bach, Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern (BWV1); Himmelskönig, sei willkommen (BWV182); Der Himmel lacht! Die Erde jubilieret (BWV31); Bleib bei uns, denn es will Abend werden (BWV6). Evening concert at
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Day 4. Free morning. Afternoon concert at the Nikolaikirche with the Gaechinger Cantorey, Hans-Christoph Rademann (conductor), Dorothee Mields (soprano), Wiebke Lehmkuhl (alto), Patrick Grahl (tenor), Tobias Berndt (bass): J.S. Bach, Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis, BWV21; Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen (BWV56); Herr, gehe nicht ins Gericht (BWV105). Early evening concert at the Thomaskirche with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and Choir, Ton Koopman (conductor), Martha Bosch (soprano), Maarten Engeltjes (Countertenor), Tilman Lichdi (tenor), Klaus Mertens (bass), J.S. Bach, Komm, du süße Todesstunde (BWV161), Liebster Gott, wenn werd ich sterben (BWV8) Christus, der ist mein Leben (BWV95) Wer weiß, wie nahe mir mein Ende (BWV27). We finish with an evening concert in the Salles de Pologne with Andreas Staier (harpsichord) and Alexander Melnikov (piano): J.S Bach, Preludes & Fugues from The Well-Tempered Clavier; Shostakovich, Preludes & Fugue from Op.87. Day 5. Transfer to Berlin for the flight back to London Heathrow, arriving c. 3.30pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,425 or £2,305 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,685 or £2,565 without flights. Included meals: 2 lunches, 2 dinners, with wine. Music: tickets to eight performances are included (six performances in top category, and two performances in second category). Accommodation. Hotel Fürstenhof (hotelfuerstenhofleipzig.com): the finest hotel in the city, yet not large and with the feel of a discreet private club. A converted 19th-century building, it is furnished with antique furniture. Situated just outside the line of the mediaeval walls. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking involved, some of it on cobbled streets. The venues are 15–20 minutes on foot from the hotel; you will be walking to and from the concerts. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with A Festival of Music in Prague, 13–19 June 2018 (p.56).
The Ring in Leipzig 10–16 April 2018 (me 812) 7 days • £2,930 Lecturers: Dr John Allison & Tom Abbott Very few spaces remaining Please contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com Illustration: J.S. Bach, 19th-century engraving.
Franconia Art and architecture in Germany’s mediaeval heartland 8–15 September 2018 (mf 108) 8 days • £2,810 Lecturer: Dr Jarl Kremeier A neglected region of southern Germany which has an exceptional heritage of art and architecture, enchanting streetscape and natural beauty. Mediaeval art including Romanesque sculpture (the Bamberg Rider) and late mediaeval wood carving by Tilman Riemenschneider.
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 18th-
century 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 Illustration: Nuremberg, St Sebaldus’ tomb (in the church of the same name), wood engraving 1893.
Baroque and Rococo palaces, churches and paintings (including Tiepolo’s masterpiece).
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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. The end of the Middle Ages was artistically one of the most creative in Franconia, with Tilman Riemenschneider and Veit Stoss, two of 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.
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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. 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. 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. 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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Franconia continued
A Festival of Music in Franconia Concerts between Danube and Rhine 25 August–1 September 2018 (me 990) Please contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com
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.
Eight private concerts in beautiful and appropriate historic buildings, with musicians of the highest calibre, from Germany, Austria, Belgium, Italy and Britain.
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, under the patronage of the Markgraf. Visit Wagner’s Festspielhaus, built to the composer’s specifications on a hill outside the town.
Baroque and Classical music appropriate to the buildings in which it is performed. Time in Regensburg, Nuremberg and Bamberg, among Germany’s finest historic cities. Talks on the music and the history of the region.
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).
Accommodation on board a comfortable modern river cruiser – or, alternatively, stay in hotels and combine concert-going with walks through beautiful countryside (see below right). Illustration: Nuremberg, Altes Rathaus, engraving c. 1845.
The Rhine Valley Music Festival A musical journey through Germany and Switzerland 20–27 June 2018 (me 920) Please contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com Nine private concerts in beautiful and appropriate historic buildings, with musicians of the highest calibre from Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands and Britain.
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.
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Music from the Renaissance to the twentieth century, most composed in the countries through which we pass.
Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,810 or £2,680 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,110 or £2,980 without flights.
Choice between accommodation on a ship which cruises from Basel to Amsterdam or in hotels for a variant which features country walks (see below).
Included meals: 1 lunch and 5 dinners with wine.
Daily talks by leading authorities on music and history: Stephen Johnson and Giles MacDonogh.
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Accommodation. Hotel Rebstock, Würzburg (rebstock.com): well-located, comfortable 4-star hotel. Hotel Villa Geyerswörth, Bamberg (villageyerswoerth.de): elegant, quiet 4-star hotel located close to the old town. Le Méridien Grand Hotel, Nuremberg (lemeridiennuernberg. com): modern 4-star hotel in a late 19th-century building, 10 minutes on foot from the centre. How strenuous? There is a fair amount of walking; vehicular access in the town centres is restricted. There are several long drives. Average distance by coach per day: 55 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: The Etruscans, 17–23 September 2018 (p.133); History of Medicine, 17–23 September 2018 (p.112); Tastes of Le Marche, 17–24 September 2018 (p.126); Gastronomic Galicia, 17–24 September 2018 (p.166); Civilisations of Sicily, 17–29 September 2018 (p.141).
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Illustration: St Goar and Rhinefels, steel engraving c. 1850.
Walking the Rhine Valley
Walking in Franconia
20–27 June 2018 (me 919) 8 days • £2,990 Lecturer: Richard Wigmore
25 August–1 September 2018 (me 989) 8 days • £2,930 Lecturer: Richard Wigmore
The Rhine Valley Music Festival with country walks and seven private concerts.
Seven private concerts from A Festival of Music in Franconia, combined with five country walks.
Travel through Switzerland and Germany, staying along the way in hotels in Basel, Speyer, Bad Godesberg, Cologne and Utrecht.
This group of up to 22 participants stays on land in hotels in Regensburg and Bamberg.
Music from the Renaissance to 20th century, most composed in the countries through which we pass.
book online at www.martinrandall.com
The group is led by musicologist and lecturer Richard Wigmore, and is accompanied by one of our experienced tour managers.
King Ludwig II and the Wittelsbach palaces of Bavaria 20–25 August 2018 (me 985) 6 days • £2,360 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. There is the option to combine this tour with A Festival of Music in Franconia, 25 August–1 September 2018 (see opposite).
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. Please note: the Venus grotto is closed for renovations until 2020. First of three nights in Murnau am Staffelsee.
‘Tom Abbott was superb. Very interesting, on a huge range of topics, very erudite, very courteous. As good as they get.’
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.
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?
the state apartments, Hofgarten (Court Garden) and a collection of Meissen porcelain in Schloss Lustheim. First of two nights in Munich.
It in e r a r y 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 Rococo period. There is a gallery of Baroque art, sculpted stucco of exceptional quality in 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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King Ludwig II continued
Munich’s Masterpieces Art and architecture in the Bavarian capital
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It in e r a r y
Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,360 or £2,190 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,690 or £2,520 without flights.
Day 1. Fly at c. 9.00am from London Heathrow to Munich (British Airways). 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.
Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Torbräu, Munich (torbraeu.de): well-located 4-star, traditional in style and decor. Hotel Alpenhof, Murnau (alpenhof-murnau.com): rambling 5-star hotel on the outskirts of Murnau with a country house feel.
Day 2. By coach along some of the principal streets and boulevards of the city to see architecture of the 19th and 20th centuries. Disembark in the vicinity of the main art galleries and visit the Alte Pinakothek, one of the world’s greatest collections of Old Masters. 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.
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: Frederick the Great, 13–17 August 2018 (p.82); A Festival of Music in Franconia, 25 August–1 September 2018 (p.88); The Schubertiade, 27 August–2 September 2018 (p.50).
Day 3. 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 art-historical importance from Renaissance to Romantic, and a marvellous Rococo theatre. After lunch visit the excellent collections of sculpture and decorative arts at the Bavarian National Museum.
Oberammergau 21–27 July and 17–24 August 2020 Full details available in January 2018 Please contact us to register your interest 1–5 September 2018 (mf 114) 5 days • £1,780 Lecturer: Patrick Bade A short, sharp study of the best of the art in the city – painting, sculpture and decorative arts. Also the key architectural monuments and characteristic streetscape. The option to combine this tour with A Festival of Music in Franconia, 25 August–1 September 2018 – see page 88.
M A IN L A N D E U R O P E : GERMANY What else is included in the price? See page 8. Illustration: Oberammergau, wood engraving c. 1880.
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Munich is everyone’s favourite German city. Not only is it the most prosperous in the country, but the attractiveness of the cityscape, the abundance of cultural activity, the relatively relaxed lifestyle and generally amenable ambience make it the most sought-after place to live and work in Germany. The seat of the Wittelsbachs, who ruled Bavaria from 1255 until 1918 as Counts, Dukes, Electors and, from 1806, as Kings, Munich was a city which grew up around a court, not one spawned by trade or industry. Consequently, artistically and architecturally it is still one of the best-endowed centres in Europe. There are fine buildings of every period, and it is also a city of museums. The Alte Pinakothek has one of the finest collections of Old Masters in the world, and the Treasury in the Residenz and the classical sculpture in the Glyptothek are among the best collections of their kind. The accompanying lecturer, Patrick Bade, is an art historian with a wide range of knowledge and a deep understanding of contemporary Germany.
book online at www.martinrandall.com
Day 4. On the edge of Munich, Nymphenburg is one of the finest palace complexes of the 17th and 18th centuries, with main palace, park, gardens and pavilions. The delightful Amalienburg represents the apogee of secular Rococo interiors, and the carriage museum has sleighs made for King Ludwig II. Return to the centre of Munich and visit the Neue Pinakothek, which houses paintings from the 18th to the early 20th centuries. Day 5. A morning walk includes the vast Gothic cathedral and the Town Museum which displays among many other artworks the famous Gothic Morris dancers, created by Erasmus Grasser for the festival hall of the Altes Rathaus. Some free time. After lunch a guided tour of the Villa Stuck, a museum and historic Art Nouveau house dedicated to the works of the Bavarian painter, Franz Stuck. Fly from Munich to London Heathrow arriving at c. 5.30pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,780 or £1,600 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,090 or £1,910 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 3 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Torbräu (torbraeu.de): a friendly, family-run, 4-star hotel in the city centre. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking, and standing in galleries. Fitness is essential. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Poets & the Somme, 7–10 September 2018 (p.68).
Illustration: Munich, Frauenkirche, watercolour by E. Harrison Compton, publ. 1912.
The Ring in Munich Wagner in the Bavarian capital 19–28 July 2018 (me 961) 10 days • £4,920 (including tickets to 4 performances) Lecturers: Barry Millington & Tom Abbott
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Wagner’s monumental Ring of the Nibelung cycle anatomises the shortcomings of materialistic society – mankind’s greed, its lust for political power, its despoliation of the environment – and offers a powerful vision of a better future.
Day 2. 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 – it can close for rehearsals at short notice). Free afternoon. Nationaltheater, 7.00pm: Das Rheingold. Kirill Petrenko (conductor), Wolfgang Koch (Wotan), Jonas Kaufmann (Siegmund), Anja Kampe (Sieglinde), Stefan Vinke (Siegfried), Nina Stemme (Brünnhilde), Hans-Peter König (Hagen), John Lundgren (Alberich), Wolfgang AblingerSperrhacke (Mime), Ain Anger (Fafner), Okka von der Damerau (Erda).
The world-class cast includes Jonas Kaufmann and Nina Stemme. Visits on most days to study the art, architecture and history of Munich and the surrounding area, including excursions to Linderhof Palace and Regensburg.
Day 4. Drive along some of the principal streets and boulevards of the city to see architecture of the 19th and 20th centuries. Disembark in the vicinity of the main art galleries and visit the Alte Pinakothek, one of the world’s greatest collections of Old Masters. Free afternoon. Nationaltheater, 5.00pm: Die Walküre. Kirill Petrenko (conductor), Jonas Kaufmann (Siegmund), Ain Anger (Hunding), Wolfgang Koch (Wotan), Anja Kampe (Sieglinde), Nina Stemme (Brünnhilde), Ekaterina Gubanova (Fricka), Daniela Köhler (Helmwige), Alexandra LoBianco (Gerhilde), Anna Gabler (Ortlinde), Okka von der Damerau (Waltaute), Helena Zubanovich (Siegrune), Jennifer Johnston (Roßweiße), Heike Grötzinger (Grimgerde), Rachael Wilson (Schwertleite). Day 5: Herrenchiemsee, Munich. 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. A morning and early afternoon in and around Königsplatz, a noble assembly of NeoClassical museums; visit the Glyptothek, an outstanding collection of Greek and Roman sculpture. The Lenbachhaus has an outstanding collection of German Expressionist paintings. Nationaltheater, 5.00pm: Siegfried. Kirill Petrenko (conductor), Stefan Vinke (Siegfried), Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke (Mime), Wolfgang Koch (Der Wanderer), John Lundgren (Alberich), Ain Anger (Fafner), Okka von der Damerau (Erda), Nina Stemme (Brünnhilde).
Day 7. Free day in Munich. We hope to offer a choice of two optional performances this evening. Full details will be available in Spring 2018. Day 8: Regensburg, Munich. Travel by coach to Regensburg, one of Germany’s finest mediaeval cities, with a Gothic cathedral and parliament of the Holy Roman Empire. Day 9. In the morning visit the Church of St Peter and the Asamkirche, built and decorated by Egid Quinn Asam. Free afternoon. Nationaltheater, 4.00pm: Götterdammerung. Stefan Vinke (Siegfried), Markus Eiche (Gunther), Hans-Peter König (Hagen), John Lundgren (Alberich) Nina Stemme (Brünnhilde), Anna Gabler (Gutrune), Okka von der Damerau (Waltraute), Elsa Benoit (Woglinde), Rachael Wilson (Wellgunde), Jennifer Johnston (Floßhilde). Day 10. Fly at c. 12.40pm (British Airways) from Munich to London Heathrow.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £4,920 or £4,760 without flights. Single occupancy: £5,580 or £5,420 without flights. Included meals: 2 lunches, 3 dinners and interval canapés at 3 performances, all with wine. Music: tickets (top category) for 4 performances are included costing c. £920. Accommodation. Hotel Platzl, Munich (platzl.de): 4-star hotel in the heart of the old city, a 5-minute walk from the opera house. How strenuous? There is unavoidably a lot of walking and standing. Fitness is essential. Average distance by coach per day: 33 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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Illustration: A Wagnerian audience by Aubrey Beardsley (1872–1898).
Day 3. On the edge of Munich, Nymphenburg is one of the finest palace complexes of the 17th and 18th centuries, with main palace, park, gardens and pavilions. The Amalienburg represents the apogee of secular Rococo interiors, and the carriage museum has sleighs made for King Ludwig II. Return to central Munich in the early afternoon. The rest of the day is free.
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It would be difficult to assemble a cast of greater world-beating talents than the Bayerische Staatsoper has for its Ring in 2018. Jonas Kaufmann, undoubtedly the most popular singer on the opera stage today, takes the role of Siegmund opposite Anja Kampe’s Sieglinde. Nina Stemme, widely regarded as the finest Wagner soprano of our time, sings Brünnhilde opposite the Siegfried of Stefan Vinke and the Wotan of Wolfgang Koch. Kirill Petrenko, who has conducted the Ring at Bayreuth three times in recent years, is currently the Generalmusikdirektor of the Bayerische Staatsoper but scheduled to take over the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in 2019. The production, by Andreas Kriegenburg is notable for its imaginative, often breathtaking, use of the human body to represent the elements, objects, ideas and emotions. Thus the dragon in Siegfried is a swarming mass of blood-red human figures against a blue background, with two athletic extras swinging to and fro to represent a flicking, forked tongue. Theatrical trickery is often used also to comic effect. As the Wagner Journal review of the 2012 production concluded: ‘Kriegenburg’s staging ideas are rarely gratuitous: they develop from and illuminate the characters and their emotions, and thus engage the audience’s sympathies.’ Munich is perhaps the most attractive of Germany’s cities, and has always been a major centre for opera. The Nationaltheater is at the moment enjoying a reputation as one of the finest houses in Europe: ‘La Scala may be grander…, Vienna more stately, the Metropolitan more prestigious… but for all-round excellence in pretty well every department, Munich’s Nationaltheater has the edge, both in matters of creature comforts and sheer dedication to the art’. Opera apart, Munich is widely considered to be the most agreeable city in Germany in which to live, and rivals Berlin for wealth of art and historic architecture. The seat of the Wittelsbachs, who ruled Bavaria from 1255 until 1918 as Counts, Dukes, Electors and, from 1806, as Kings, Munich was a city which grew up around a court, not one spawned by trade or industry. Consequently, artistically and architecturally it is still one of the best-endowed centres in Europe.
Day 1. Fly at c. 12.40pm (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Munich. Evening lecture and dinner in the hotel.
Baroque & Rococo In Southern Germany The Baroque style was the perfect expression both for the Church Triumphant and for the temporal ruler who, taking his cue from Louis XIV at Versailles, wished to overawe his subjects and impress on all visitors the might and magnificence of his person. The Rococo, which arrived in Germany in the 1730s, was delicate and light-hearted by comparison with the imposing magnificence of High Baroque, but produced some of the most exquisite interiors in the history of art.
It in e r a r y Day 1: Zwiefalten, Weingarten. Fly at c. 8.00am (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Stuttgart. Visit the double-towered church of Zwiefalten by J.M. Fischer followed by a visit to the magnificent Baroque basilica of Weingarten Abbey, ‘the St Peter’s of Germany’. First of two nights in Weingarten. Day 2: Steinhausen, Bad Schussenried, Birnau. Begin with a visit to the oval church at Steinhausen, built and decorated by the Zimmermann brothers then on to the glorious library hall at Bad Schussenried convent with abundant imagery. Finally, to Birnau, among vineyards above Lake Constance and one of the most delectable of Rococo churches. Day 3: Ottobeuren, Wies. A pinnacle of Baroque and Rococo emotional power is achieved at J.M. Fischer’s church and abbey at Ottobeuren. The pilgrimage church of Wies in the foothills of the Alps, created by the Zimmermann brothers, is of astounding beauty. First of three nights in Munich.
8–16 August 2018 (me 977) 9 days • £2,790 Lecturer: Tom Abbott Some of the most uplifting and spectacular buildings in Europe.
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Glorious countryside, unspoilt towns, charming villages, all well maintained.
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Baroque and Rococo reached a triumphant fulfilment in the churches and palaces of southern Germany, and the styles are manifested in the region. It is astonishing that these marvels are not better known, but the artistic heritage of Germany continues to be sadly undervalued. Moreover, many of the choicest items on this tour are not easily accessible, being situated deep in the countryside. Around the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there was something of an economic miracle in the German lands, accompanied by a frenetic upsurge in building activity. This followed nearly a whole century which was blighted by wars and economic collapse. At the end of it the Catholic Church emerged revitalised, wealthier than ever and triumphant in its defeat of Protestantism. In the temporal sphere, the creed of absolutism, which imposed few constraints on the power of the prince or local lord, was at its height. 92
Day 4: Nymphenburg, Augsburg. On the outskirts of Munich, the palace, pavilions and gardens of Nymphenburg, summer residence of the Electors of Bavaria; the Amalienburg pavilion is the apogee of secular Rococo interiors. Continue to the magnificent Schaezlerpalais in Augsburg. Its sumptuous gilded, mirrored, ballroom, built between 1765–70, survives in its original state. Day 5: Munich. Visit the Italian-built Theatinerkirche, one of the first Baroque churches north of the Alps. The little church of St John Nepomuk, created by the Asam brothers for their own use. The Residenz, palace of the Electors of Bavaria, with sumptuous Rococo interiors and recently restored theatre by the architect Cuvilliés. Free afternoon. Day 6: Weltenburg, Rohr, Pommersfelden. Two abbey churches by the Asam brothers: Rohr, with the altar of The Assumption, highpoint of Baroque sculpture, and Weltenburg, with controlled lighting and rich decoration suggestive of transcendental theatricality. Take a short cruise along the Danube. Visit Schloss Pommersfelden, a splendid country house with a grand Baroque staircase. First of three nights in Bamberg. Day 7: Bamberg. One of the loveliest and least spoilt of German towns, Bamberg has fine streetscape, riverside walks and a picturesque upper town around the Romanesque cathedral. The Diocesan Museum has outstanding mediaeval textiles, the Baroque former town hall built on a bridge houses a porcelain collection. Free afternoon.
book online at www.martinrandall.com
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. See pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies.
Day 8: Bayreuth, Vierzehnheiligen. An enchanting version of Rococo decoration developed in Bayreuth in the town palace and at the Hermitage, a complex of gardens, palaces and pavilions and the wonderful Baroque opera house (by Giuseppe Bibbiena). Visit the pilgrimage church of Vierzehnheiligen (Balthasar Neumann), perhaps the greatest of Rococo churches. Day 9: Würzburg. Visit the Residenz in Würzburg, the Archbishop’s palace, the finest Baroque palace in Germany, designed by Balthasar Neumann with frescoes by G.B. Tiepolo. Fly from Frankfurt, arriving Heathrow c. 6.00pm.
‘Particularly complex itinerary and extremely well done. Exquisite.’ P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,790 or £2,670 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,190 or £3,070 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 6 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Altdorfer Hof, Weingarten (altdorfer-hof.de): quiet 4-star hotel with a good restaurant. Hotel Torbräu, Munich (torbraeu.de): well-located 4-star, traditional in style and decor. Hotel Villa Geyerswörth, Bamberg (villageyerswoerth.de): 4-star hotel, elegant and quiet. How strenuous? There is a fair amount of walking on this tour. It would not be suitable for anyone with difficulties with everyday walking and stairclimbing. The average distance covered by coach per day is 86 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
What else is included in the price? See page 8. Illustration: Bamberg, Rathaus, watercolour by E. Harrison Compton, publ. 1912.
Minoan Crete History and archaeology 19–28 March 2018 (me 787) 10 days • £2,980 Lecturer: Dr Alan Peatfield Concentrates on the extraordinary civilisation of the Minoans, but also pays due attention to Classical and later cultures. Plenty of time for Knossos and the main sites and includes many remote and little-visited ones. Wonderful, contrasting landscapes at a beautiful time in the island’s calendar.
It in e r a r y
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. Illustration: Bull’s head from Knossos, after a drawing by John Duncan ARSA, publ. 1917.
Day 4: Arhanes, Vathypetro, 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. 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. Day 7: Agia Photia, Petras. Visit Agia Photia, a collection of early Bronze Age sites including a cemetery and a small settlement. Continue to the Minoan Palace at Petras. 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. 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.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,980 or £2,600 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,180 or £2,800 without flights. Included meals: 4 lunches, 5 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. Combine this tour with: Israel & Palestine, 6–15 March 2018 (p.192); Jonathan Keates’s Venice, 12–18 March 2018 (p.100).
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Day 1. Fly at c. 12.15pm from London Heathrow to Heraklion via Athens (Aegean Airlines). First of four nights in 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.
M A IN L A N D
‘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. Flourishing in the second millennium bc, the Minoans created the first great palace civilisation of Europe. Their art is wonderfully expressive, and its influence spread throughout Greece, Egypt and the Near East. Pottery, sealstones, frescoes and architecture reached peaks of excellence unforeseen in the prehistoric Aegean. Mycenaean, Hellenistic, Classical Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Venetian and Turkish domination followed. The books written on the island’s World War II 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.
Classical Greece The Peloponnese, Attica and Athens 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.
It in e r a r y
12–21 May 2018 (me 862) 10 days • £3,340 Lecturer: Professor Antony Spawforth 15–24 September 2018 (mf 150) 10 days • £3,340 Lecturer: Dr Andrew Farrington A comprehensive survey of the principal Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic sites in mainland Greece. Highlights include Mycenae, Olympia, Delphi. In Athens, a full day on the Acropolis and in the ancient Agora.
M A IN L A N D E U R O P E : GREECE
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 knowledge 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 94
Day 1. Fly late morning (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Athens. The little port of Nauplion is one of the most attractive towns in mainland Greece. Arrive here in time for dinner. First of three nights in Nauplion. 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 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.
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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 Acropolis is the foremost site of Classical Greece. The Parthenon (built 447–438 bc) is indubitably the supreme achievement of Greek architecture. Other masterpieces are the Propylaia (monumental gateway), Temple of Athena Nike, and Erechtheion. First of three nights in Athens. Day 8: Athens. 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. The Agora (market place) was the centre of civic life in ancient Athens, with the small Doric Hephaisteion, the bestpreserved of Greek temples. Day 9: Athens. Kerameikos Cemetery was where Athenians were buried beyond the ancient city walls. 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. 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. 5.30pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,340 or £3,170 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,690 or £3,520 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. Best Western Hotel Europa, Olympia (bestwestern.com): characterful hotel outside the town. Hotel Amalia, Delphi (amalia.gr/delphi-hotel): a modern hotel, a short coach ride from the archaeological site. Electra Palace Hotel, Athens (electrahotels.gr): smart hotel near the Plaka quarter. How strenuous? This is a long tour. You will be on your feet for long stretches, in some cases on exposed sites and walking over rough terrain. Average distance by coach per day: 70 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. In May, combine this tour with: Gardens of the Bay of Naples, 5–11 May 2018 (p.137). Or in September, with: Provence & Languedoc, 27 September–6 October 2018 (p.72). Illustration: Athens, Acropolis, by Jules Guérin, publ. 1913.
Gastronomic Crete Ambrosia and díaita, from land to table 30 September–8 October 2018 (mf 198) 9 days • £3,240 Lecturer: Rosemary Barron A tour celebrating Cretan gastronomy, from ancient to modern, country simplicity to epicurean sophistication. Feast with a shepherd in the mountain foothills, taste wine at a vineyard overlooking ancient Gortyn and meet restaurateurs championing Cretan cooking. The lecturer is an expert on Greek cuisine and ran a cookery school on Crete for six years. Visit some of the archaeological highlights of the island with local expert, George Spyridakis.
It in e r a r y Day 1: Heraklion. Fly at c.12.15pm from London Heathrow to Heraklion via Athens (Air Aegean). Arrive at the hotel in time for a meze supper. First of three nights in Heraklion. Day 2: Heraklion, Anogiea, Ideon Andron. After an introduction to Cretan gastronomy, we drive inland, ascending to Anogiea, in the northern foothills of Mount Ida. A short walk up onto the Nida Plateau to meet a shepherd (and his flock). Lunch is served in this beautiful mountain setting. Return to Heraklion and the Archaeology Museum, with its exceptional collection of Minoan artefacts. Day 3: Heraklion, Knossos. Early start to explore Heraklion market on foot. At its heart, a family bakery has deep roots in the Cretan baking tradition. The excavations and reconstructions at Knossos, capital of Minoan Crete and centre of the Bronze Age Aegean, enrich our understanding of early civilisation and Cretan díaita. An olive oil tasting precedes dinner at Peskesi, a restaurant specialising in modern Cretan cooking. Day 4: Heraklion to Zaros. Heading southwest into the glorious rural hinterland, visit a sophisticated, family-owned winery cultivating island grape varietals. 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 on the terrace of her home. Gortyn, the Roman capital of Crete, is en route to the tranquil village of Zaros, where we spend the next two nights.
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 and taste some of the dishes created in these eras. First of three nights in Chania. Day 7: Chania. Start with a visit to the market and an opportunity to explore the specialist foods
Day 8: Chania. Etz Hyyim 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 beach-side 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 Nykterida, Babis Mastoridis’ pioneering restaurant overlooking Souda Bay. Day 9. Fly to London Heathrow via Athens arriving c.3.30pm. The opening of sites on Crete 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.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,240 or £2,900 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,440 or £3,100 without flights. Included meals: 5 lunches, 7 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. Hotel Keramos, Zaros: familyrun country guest house, basic but clean with traditional decor, showers not baths. 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. 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. Illustration: Crete, wood engraving c. 1890.
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Day 5: Zaros, Phaestos, Agia Triada. Phaestos is the second largest Minoan palace. Nearby villa remains at Agia Triada, in sight of the Bay of Mesara, are thought to have been its summer resort. Sample more native varietal wines and traditional drinks at a beautifullysited winery on the rocky, calciferous slopes of Orthi Petri. Overlooking parts of ancient Gortyn, organically-cultivated grapes are grown here at an altitude of 500m.
shops and local delicacies that can 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). Dinner at one of the finest restaurants here.
M A IN L A N D
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. 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 mediaeval 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 – 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 home-cooks, wine producers, bakers and olive 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. 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.
Hungary Transdanubia and the Great Plain Dr József Sisa Art historian specialising in the 19th century. He is Head of Department at the Research Institute for Art History at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest. A native Hungarian with fluent English, he lectures in the UK, across Europe and the USA and co-edited The Architecture of Historic Hungary.
See pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies. of Hungary, has picturesque streetscapes and fascinating Baroque and Neo-Classical architecture. Overnight Székesfehérvár. Day 5: Kecskemét. Kecskemét, city of the Great Plain, is surrounded by vineyards and orchards, particularly of apricots. The centre is largely composed of turn-of-the-century architecture by Ödön Lechner and others. Continue to Eger, architecturally one of the finest 18th-century Hungarian cities. First of three nights in Eger.
12–19 September 2018 (mf 141) 8 days • £2,260 Lecturer: Dr József Sisa Historic towns in a part of the country little visited by tourists. Much fine mediaeval, Renaissance and Baroque architecture and art. The lecturer, Dr József Sisa, is an art historian and native Hungarian.
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While the magnificence of Budapest and the superb holdings of its museums now attract large numbers of visitors, the cultural riches of the rest of Hungary are still unjustly neglected. Hungary was formed in the tenth century by horsemen from the Central Asian steppes. Emerging as a powerful and prosperous state at the end of the Middle Ages, it was the first country outside Italy to receive Renaissance architecture and to apply it with understanding. The subsequent Turkish conquest resulted in the elimination of nearly all political and cultural achievements, though impressive Romanesque and Gothic monuments remain, as well as tantalising fragments of great fifteenth-century Italianate palaces. From the eighteenth century there was steady reconstruction as part of the Austrian empire, resulting in some magnificent Baroque and Classical buildings and large-scale decorative painting. In the nineteenth century the accelerating drive towards independence was accompanied by outstanding artistic and architectural creativity. This tour includes historic towns, churches, abbeys and country houses in the west and the north of the country.
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It in e r a r y Day 1: Sopron. Fly at c. 11.30am from London Heathrow to Vienna. Drive through the Austrian province of Burgenland, which was part of Hungary until 1919, and across the border to Sopron, one of the best preserved and most picturesque towns in Hungary. Around a Fire Tower of mediaeval foundation and Baroque termination crowd dozens of ancient patrician houses, churches and synagogues. First of three nights in Győr. Day 2: Győr, Pápa, Pannonhalma. The spires and domes of the country town of Pápa can be seen from many miles away. Once an important ecclesiastical and administrative centre, it has a splendid late-Baroque church and a magnificent Esterházy palace. Győr has a very lovely and extensive historic centre with buildings of many periods, including a Romanesque-cum-Baroque cathedral with a 15th-century golden reliquary. Pannonhalma has a major Benedictine abbey situated on a hill with bold Neo-Classical tower, church, library and an art gallery. Day 3: Eszterháza, Sárvár, Sümeg. Eszterháza (Fertőd) is the most magnificent of Hungarian country houses; built in the 1770s, Joseph Haydn worked here every summer for thirty years. Episcopal patronage in the little town of Sümeg provided a beautiful 18th-century parish church with frescoes which are the masterpiece of Franz Anton Maulbertsch, the greatest of Austro-Hungarian Rococo painters. Sárvár has a pentagonal Renaissance fortress, with fine rooms of the 16th to 18th centuries. Day 4: Veszprém, Tihany, Székesfehérvár. The episcopal seat of Veszprém has a cluster of fine buildings crowning a ridge among the Bakony mountains and suave 18th-century edifices rise from remnants of the mediaeval citadel. Beautifully sited on a promontory protruding into Lake Balaton is the abbey of Tihany. Székesfehérvár, a former capital
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Day 6: Eger, Noszvaj. Begin with a morning walk through Eger, including a visit to the massive Neo-Classical cathedral. Afternoon excursion to Noszvaj to visit the De la Motte Mansion, a country house with Rococo decoration. Day 7: Eger, Bélapátfalva. The splendid former university built 1765–85 has a Maulbertsch fresco in the chapel and a magnificent library with the ceiling painted by J.L. Kracker. Then on to the Baroque County Hall with outstanding wrought-iron gates, the Gothic Bishop’s Palace and 18th-century Archbishop’s Palace and finally the splendid Minorite church designed by K.I. Dientzenhofer. There is an afternoon excursion into the countryside to see the Romanesque Cistercian church at Bélapátfalva. Day 8. Fly to Heathrow, arriving at c. 3.00pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,260 or £2,070 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,400 or £2,210 without flights. Included meals: 7 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Capitulum, Győr (capitulum.hu/en): comfortable 4-star hotel located in the historical centre. Novotel Székesfehérvár (accorhotels.com): functional business hotel, locally rated as 4-star. Hotel Park, Eger (hotelegerpark.hu): clean and comfortable, ideally located in the heart of the old town; rated as 4-star. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking and some long coach journeys. Average distance by coach per day: 96 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Flemish Painting, 5–9 September 2018 (p.52); Gardens & Villas of the Italian Lakes, 20–26 September 2018 (p.97); Berlin, Potsdam, Dresden, 20–28 September 2018 (p.81). Illustration: Veszprém, mid-19th-century steel engraving.
Gardens & Villas of the Italian Lakes Como and Maggiore 19–25 April 2018 (me 829) 7 days • £3,090 Lecturer: Steven Desmond 20–26 September 2018 (mf 170) 7 days • £3,090 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. Stays in historic lakeside hotels.
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 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
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.
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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. Some of the gardens are extensive; all have uneven ground. Participants need to be fit and sure-footed. Average distance by coach per day: 23 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine.
In April, combine this tour with: Gardens of the Riviera, 11–17 April 2018 (p.75); Charles Dickens, 18 April 2018 (contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com). Or in September, with: Hungary, 12–19 September 2018 (p.96); Provence & Languedoc, 27 September–6 October 2018 (p.72).
Accommodation. Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni, Bellagio (villaserbelloni.com): a historic 5-star hotel situated on the edge of the lake. Lavishly decorated public rooms and well-appointed bedrooms that vary in size; those with a lake view are available on request, for a supplement. Grand
Illustration: Lake Como, watercolour by Ella du Cane, publ. 1905.
Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,090 or £2,960 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,490 or £3,360 without flights.
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It in e r a r y
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.
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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.
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’.
Genoa & Turin Palaces and galleries in northwest Italy 6–12 May 2018 (me 851) 7 days • £2,440 Lecturer: Dr Luca Leoncini Two cities, often unaccountably overlooked. One, a leading republic of mediaeval Italy and birthplace of Columbus; the other developed on a grand scale in the 17th and 18th centuries. Magnificent palaces and churches, from Mediaeval to Baroque. Exceptional picture collections with particularly fine examples of Van Dyck and Rubens. ‘Secret cities’ would have been an absurd subtitle for two such major places, but did seem to suggest itself because of the rarity with which Britons find themselves there. But every art lover should go. The prevailing images are perhaps still predominantly commercial and industrial, but not only do both Genoa and Turin have highly attractive centres but both are distinguished by the preservation of a large number of magnificent palaces and picture collections. Genoa lays claim to the largest historic centre of any European city. It was one of the leading maritime republics of mediaeval Italy (with Marseilles it remains the largest port in the Mediterranean), and enjoyed a golden age during the seventeenth century. In the 1990s civic improvements and building restorations were
undertaken to prepare the city for celebrations connected with the quincentenary of Columbus’s first voyage to the Americas, and the cultural momentum has continued. In the earlier seventeenth century, Genoa was artistically the equal of almost anywhere in Italy except for Rome and Naples. More than any other Italian school of painting, the Genoese was indebted to the Flemish school: Rubens made a prolonged visit to Genoa in 1605 and Anthony Van Dyck was based there from 1621 to 1627. Many of his paintings remain here. Turin, the leading city of Piedmont, was formerly capital of Savoy and later of the kingdom of Sardinia. Developed on a grand scale in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the historic centre is laid out on a regular plan with broad avenues and spacious piazzas. Architecture is mainly Baroque and classical. Guarino Guarini and Filippo Juvarra, among the best architects of their time, worked here for much of their lives.
The Cathedral of S. Lorenzo, built 12th–16th centuries, possesses many works of art and a fine treasury. See the Via Garibaldi, lined with magnificent palazzi, most from the 16th century.
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Day 5: Turin. A morning walk through the beautiful Piazza S. Carlo, with arcades and 18thcentury churches, is followed by a visit to the Royal Palace, built 1660, with wonderful interiors from the 17th–19th centuries. The Galleria Sabauda, housed in the Palace, has an excellent picture collection. In the afternoon visit the cathedral, with Guarini’s Chapel of the Holy Shroud.
Day 1: Genoa. Fly at c. 9.15am (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Milan Linate. Upon arrival visit the Villa del Principe with Perin del Vaga frescoes. First of three nights in Genoa. Day 2: Genoa. In the morning visit the Palazzo Reale which has a magnificent stairway, splendidly furnished rooms and a fine collection of pictures.
Day 3: Genoa. Visit the church of S. Luca with its beautifully decorated interior. Palazzo Spinola has good pictures, Van Dycks in particular, and Palazzo Rosso has fine furnishings and excellent pictures. See also the adjacent church of the Annunciation and the Piazza S. Matteo, formed by the imposing palaces of the Doria family, which overshadow the small family church of S. Matteo. Day 4: Cherasco, Venaria. Leave Genoa and take a cross-country route through the beautiful countryside and wine-producing area of Le Langhe. Stop in Cherasco which has a 14thcentury Visconti castle for a typical Piedmontese lunch. En route to Turin is the magnificent royal palace of Venaria (Amedeo Castellamonte, 1659) reopened in 2007 following extensive renovation work. First of three nights in Turin.
Day 6: Turin. Morning visit to the Palazzo Madama in the centre of Piazza Castello, now housing the City Art Museum, and the little church of S. Lorenzo, a Guarini masterpiece. Some free time in Turin. Day 7: Superga, Turin Lingotto. Visit the votive church of Superga, a magnificent hilltop structure by Juvarra, and the Pinacoteca Giovanni and Marella Agnelli at Lingotto which has a small but excellent quality collection in a building designed by Renzo Piano. Fly from Milan Malpensa, returning to London Heathrow c. 8.00pm.
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Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,440 or £2,110 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,790 or £2,460 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine.
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Accommodation. Grand Hotel Savoia, Genoa (grandhotelsavoiagenova.it): 5-star hotel close to the Palazzo Reale. Grand Hotel Sitea, Turin (grandhotelsitea.com): 4-star hotel, comfortable, elegantly furnished and very central. How strenuous? There is a lot of walking in town centres, where vehicular access is restricted, and standing in museums. The transfer days between Milan’s airports and the hotels and between Genoa and Turin involve a lot of driving. Average distance by coach per day: 51 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Courts of Northern Italy, 13–20 May 2018 (p.107).
Illustration: Turin, Palazzo Madama, engraving c. 1880.
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Venice Revisited From prison to palazzo: art and life in historic Venice 13–18 November 2018 (mf 345) 6 days • £2,710 Lecturer: Dr Susan Steer Explores treasures which are lesser-known, rarely accessible or simply off the beaten track. Access to many is by special arrangement; some are still in private hands. Also an after-hours visit to the Basilica di San Marco. Designed for those already familiar with the main buildings and museums of the city. Revised itinerary for 2018, with visits to the islands of Murano and San Lazzaro.
It in e r a r y Day 1. Fly at c. 12.30pm from London Gatwick to Venice (British Airways). Cross the lagoon by motoscafo (water taxi); luggage is transported separately by porters. Day 2. The morning walk looks at the identity and social make-up of the Castello sestiere. See two of the orphanages renowned as centres of musical excellence, the Ospedaletto and its church of Sta. Maria dei Derelitti, and the Pietà, where Vivaldi was director of music; private visit to its museum. Outstanding Renaissance paintings are seen in San Giovanni in Bragora (Cima da Conegliano’s Baptism) and in the Scuola di S. Giorgio degli Schiavoni (Carpaccio’s stories of saints). In the supremely beautiful Palazzo Ducale visit areas only seen by special arrangement where prison cells rub shoulders with the Doge’s apartments. Day 3. Head off the beaten track for a guided tour of the Ghetto and its synagogues, around the markets and former trading houses of the Rialto district, and Cannaregio, a tranquil area of the city little known to visitors. Cross to the glass-making island of Murano by private motoscafo to see SS. Maria e Donato with 12th-century mosaics and pavement, and S. Pietro Martire with paintings by Bellini and Tintoretto. After-hours visit to the Basilica di San Marco where the mosaic-encrusted interior is illuminated exclusively for your benefit.
Day 6. The final morning is dedicated to Armenian Venice. Head in the direction of the Lido by motoscafo to visit San Lazzaro, the Armenian monastery island and temporary residence of Lord Byron. Return to the Dorsoduro to see the grand ballroom of the 17th-century Collegio Armeno in Palazzo Zenobio. Transfer to Venice airport and fly to London Gatwick, arriving c. 6.00pm. 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 outlined above may change and there may be substitutions for some places mentioned.
Illustration: after a drawing by Joseph Pennell, publ. 1897.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,710 or £2,550 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,190 or £3,030 without flights. Included meals: 3 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Splendid, Venice (starhotels.com): delightful 4-star hotel situated between Piazza San Marco and the Rialto bridge. How strenuous? Mainly, we travel on foot; the nature of Venice makes no other mode feasible. So there is a lot of walking along the flat, and also up and down bridges. Standing around in museums and churches is also unavoidable. Group size: between 10 and 18 participants. Combine this tour with: Venetian Palaces, 6–10 November 2018 (p.101); Florentine Palaces, 7–11 November 2018 (p.122). 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 5. Cross the bacino to the island of San Giorgio Maggiore to see the church, cloisters and conventual buildings of the Benedictine monastery. Here is the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, an impressive cultural centre, and the new glass museum, the ‘Stanze del Vetro’. Continue to the tranquil Giudecca to see Palladio’s most sophisticated church, Il Redentore, before a free afternoon for independent exploration. In the evening visit Palazzo Albrizzi,
which has some of the finest stucco decoration in Venice (by special arrangement).
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Day 4. Visit the great Franciscan church of Sta. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari with outstanding artworks including Titian’s Assumption. The Venetian State Archives are the repository of a millennium of history, stored on some 60km of shelving (special arrangement). The afternoon is dedicated to Venice’s confraternities: the Scuola Grande dei Carmini with paintings by Tiepolo, the Scuola Grande di S. Giovanni Evangelista with its grand Renaissance stairway and a magnificent hall, and the Scuola Grande di S. Rocco, with compelling paintings by Tintoretto.
Jonathan Keates’s Venice History, literature, art and architecture in La Serenissima 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. Day 5: 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.
12–18 March 2018 (me 778) 7 days • £2,780 Lecturer: Jonathan Keates Novel itinerary which reaches parts rarely visited as well as seeing major items. Led by Jonathan Keates, historian, writer and distinguished Venetianist, 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 seven 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 staggering 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. 1 0 0
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Day 6: 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 1. Fly at c. 12.30pm (British Airways) from London Gatwick to Venice. Cross the lagoon by motoscafo (water taxi) to the hotel.
Day 7. Free morning. Travel by motoscafo to Venice airport. Fly to London Gatwick, arriving at c. 5.45pm.
Day 2: The Dorsoduro. The Dorsoduro is the 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.
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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.
Day 3: Santa Croce. Antonio Fumiani’s amazing 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. Day 4: Castello. Two palaces tell contrasting stories: Querini Stampalia offers a patrician art
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Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,780 or £2,610 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,210 or £3,040 without flights. Included meals: 3 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. Fitness and stamina are essential. Group size: between 8 and 18 participants. Combine this tour with: Florence, 5–11 March 2018 (p.120); Venetian Palaces, 20–24 March 2018 (opposite page).
Illustrations. Above: watercolour of Venice by Sir Alfred East RA, publ. 1914.
Venetian Palaces The greatest and best-preserved palaces of La Serenissima 20–24 March 2018 (me 789) 5 days • £2,480 Lecturer: Dr Michael Douglas-Scott 6–10 November 2018 (mf 303) 5 days • £2,480 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. Also a private after-hours visit to St Mark’s Basilica. Stays in a 4-star hotel on the Grand Canal.
See pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies. A private, after-hours visit to the Basilica 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.
It in e r a r y 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 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 the airport. Fly to London Gatwick, arriving c. 6.15pm.
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 outlined above may change and there may be substitutions for some palaces mentioned.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,480 or £2,340 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,820 or £2,680 without flights. Included meals: 3 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. Fitness and stamina are essential. Group size: between 8 and 18 participants. In March, combine this tour with: Jonathan Keates’s Venice, 12–18 March 2018 (opposite page). Or in November with: Music in Bologna, 1–6 November 2018 (p.112); Civilisations of Sicily, 12–24 November 2018 (p.141); Venice Revisited, 13–18 November 2018 (p.99).
What else is included in the price? See page 8. 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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Illustration: Venice, Palazzo Ferbo, wood engraving c. 1880.
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.
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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.
Dr Michael Douglas-Scott
The Venetian Terra Ferma s ectru o northeast ta y s finest art and architecture 2–9 June 2018 (me 893) 8 days • £2,530 Lecturer: Dr Michael Douglas-Scott Mediaeval frescoes (Giotto), Renaissance paintings (Titian), 18th-century interiors (Tiepolo), Neoclassical sculpture (Canova). Rich artistic and architectural centres from the Adriatic to Lake Garda: Padua, Verona, Vicenza, Treviso, and many others. Spans an entire region from one base, Vicenza, Palladio’s home town. For centuries the Veneto comprised the heartland of Venice’s terra ferma empire, stretching from the Adriatic to Lake Garda, and from the plain of the Po to the foothills of the Dolomites. But the Veneto is no mere subordinate appendage to La Serenissima, culturally or politically. The region is too large and varied for such relegation, and has a history which is far longer than that of the upstart maritime republic. The towns and cities on this tour are among the most illustrious and art-historically important places in Italy, as well as being some of the most attractive. Most have Roman or pre-Roman origins; at many the mediaeval circuit of walls is still intact. In the fields of painting and sculpture the Trecento (fourteenth century) is particularly well represented, with Giotto’s finest fresco cycle heading the list. From the fifteenth century are masterpieces by Pisanello, Donatello, Mantegna and Bellini; great paintings by Titian, Giorgione and Veronese show the High Renaissance to advantage, and the eighteenth century is represented by Tiepolo, the consummate master of the age.
Architecture ranges from Roman through Romanesque to Gothic, and on to Renaissance and Neoclassical. There are some great buildings here, but the appeal of the tour lies as much in the vernacular and the streetscape as in monumental set pieces. A recurring theme is the genius of Andrea Palladio. To this one man is owed the appearance of most of the villas in the countryside, and indeed of much of eighteenth-century England, for he became the most internationally influential of all Italian architects. Work by another Italian architect also makes repeated appearances: Carlo Scarpa created some of the most affecting designs of the twentieth century, blending old with new.
It in e r a r y Day 1. Fly at c. 11.30am (British Airways) from London Gatwick to Venice and drive to Vicenza, where all seven nights are spent. Day 2: Vicenza. The beautiful little city of Vicenza is architecturally the noblest and most homogenous in northern Italy, much of the fabric consisting of Renaissance palaces. Andrea Palladio spent most of his life there, and his buildings include the town hall (Basilica Palladiana), an epoch-making theatre (Teatro Olimpico) and several aristocratic residences, one of which, the Palazzo Chiericati, houses an excellent art gallery. Day 3: Verona. A major Roman settlement, Verona also flourished in the Middle Ages under the tyrannical rule of the Scaligeri dynasty. A sequence of interconnecting squares lie at the heart of the city, lined with magnificent mediaeval palazzi. The vast Gothic church of Sta. Anastasia has a fresco by Pisanello and S. Zeno is a splendid Romanesque church with an altarpiece by Mantegna. The elegant red-brick castle contains a very fine art gallery.
Day 4: San Vito, Asolo, Possagno. The Brion cemetery complex at San Vito by Carlo Scarpa is 20th-century architecture at its most beautiful and moving. Lunch at Asolo, a hilltop town with a Lotto altarpiece in the cathedral. Possagno was birthplace of the leading Neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova and he rebuilt the church as his memorial, a cross between the Pantheon and Parthenon. Full-scale models for many of his sculptures have been assembled in a museum. Day 5: Padua. Giotto’s fresco cycle in the Arena Chapel is one of the greatest achievements in the history of art and marks the beginning of the modern era in painting. Further outstanding 14th-century fresco cycles are by Giusto de’ Menabuoi in the Baptistry and by Altichieri in the vast multi-domed Basilica of St Anthony. The Renaissance is represented by Donatello’s altar panels here and the bronze equestrian statue outside, the Gattamelata. The mediaeval town hall and surrounding squares are among the finest of such ensembles in Italy. Day 6: Vicenza, Vicentine villas. There is free time in Vicenza in the morning. The afternoon excursion is to places just outside the city: the hilltop ‘La Rotonda’, the most famous of all Palladian villas, and the adjacent Villa Valmarana ‘ai Nani’, with superb frescoes by Giambattista Tiepolo and his son. Day 7: Treviso. Once an important fortress city, Treviso has a fine historic centre with imposing public buildings and many painted façades. The cathedral has a Titian Annunciation, but the hero of the day is the 14th-century painter Tommaso da Modena: his frescoes of learned monks in the chapter house of St Nicholas are extraordinary, as is the St Ursula cycle in the church of Sta Caterina. Day 8: Castelfranco Veneto. Drive to the delightful little walled town of Castelfranco. The cathedral has Giorgione’s wonderful Madonna Enthroned and a museum in his house next door. Explore one of Palladio’s most evolved, most beautiful and most influential buildings, the Villa Cornaro at Piombino Dese. Fly from Venice, returning to Gatwick at c. 6.30pm.
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P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,530 or £2,310 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,920 or £2,700 without flights.
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Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 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. The coach can rarely enter town centres. Fitness and sure-footedness are essential. Average distance by coach per day: 50 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
Illustration: Asolo, engraving from ‘The Magazine of Art’, 1887.
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Gastronomic Veneto From Verona to the Adriatic, the Po Valley to the Dolomites 16–23 May 2018 (me 871) 8 days • £3,430 Lecturers: Marc Millon & Dr R. T. Cobianchi One of Italy’s most varied regions, both gastronomically and geographically. Some of Italy’s greatest and best-known wines including Amarone and Prosecco, at their absolute best in historic wineries and Michelinstarred restaurants. Artistic riches are not ignored, with time spent in the dazzlingly picturesque Verona, architecturally spectacular Vicenza and charming smaller towns such as Bassano del Grappa and Asolo.
Day 1: Verona. Fly at c. 1.30pm (British Airways) from London Gatwick to Verona. Dinner at an historic restaurant. First of three nights in Verona. Day 2: Verona, Sant’Ambrogia di Valpolicella. A major Roman settlement, Verona also flourished in the Middle Ages under the tyrannical rule of the Scaligeri dynasty. A sequence of interconnecting squares lie at the heart of the city, lined with magnificent mediaeval palazzi. Outside Verona,
Day 3: Isola della Scala, Verona. Drive south to the rice fields near Isola della Scala to visit the historic rice mill at Riseria Ferron, which dates to 1650. There is a cooking demonstration here of typical rice dishes, and lunch. In the afternoon visit an olive oil producer near Verona, which uses artisanal harvesting methods to create only the highest-quality oils, tasted during the visit. Day 4: Vicenza, Breganze. Leave Verona for the beautiful little city of Vicenza, architecturally the noblest and most homogenous in northern Italy, much of its fabric consisting of Renaissance palaces. Andrea Palladio spent most of his life here, and his buildings include the town hall (Basilica Palladiana) and an epoch-making theatre (Teatro Olimpico). Continue to the lovely hilltop town of Asolo where the next four nights are spent. Day 5: Valdobbiadene. Spend the morning at the renowned Bisol winery in the Cartizze hills, family-run for over 500 years. Visit the cellars and have a Prosecco tasting here, before a rustic lunch nearby overlooking the vineyards, each hill’s contours finely etched by parallel lines of vines. Some free time in Asolo before a wine tasting led by the lecturer. Day 6: Canove di Roana, Bassano del Grappa. Drive into the mountains to a cheese-maker on the Altopiano, a high Alpine plain on the northern edge of the Veneto, past brightly-coloured houses, pines and meadows. Taste Asiago cheese and see where it is produced. Return to the plain to visit the charming town of Bassano del Grappa for a lunch of the celebrated local asparagus. Grappa tasting in the most eminent distillery in town, overlooking the bridge designed by Palladio. Day 7: Treviso, Castelfranco Veneto. Once an important fortress city, Treviso has a fine historical centre with imposing public buildings and many
painted façades. The cathedral has a Titian Annunciation, but the hero of the day is the 14thcentury painter Tommaso da Modena: his frescoes of learned monks in the chapter house of S. Nicolò are extraordinary. Return to Asolo. In the evening drive to Castelfranco Veneto for the final dinner of the tour (1-star Michelin). Day 8: Mazzorbo. Drive to the coast and cross the lagoon by motoscafo (water-taxi) to the island of Mazzorbo, with wide vistas of breathtaking stillness. Visit the beautiful orti (kitchen gardens) of the acclaimed Venissa restaurant (1-star Michelin), taste wine produced from grapes grown here, and lunch. Fly from Venice, returning to Gatwick at c. 7.00pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,430 or £3,270 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,810 or £3,650 without flights. Included meals: 6 lunches, 4 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Due Torri Hotel, Verona (hotelduetorri.duetorrihotels.com): luxurious 5-star, excellently located near Piazza delle Erbe. Hotel Al Sole, Asolo (albergoalsoleasolo.com): small 5-star hotel, full of charm, with wonderful views from the terrace and a good restaurant. How strenuous? The tour involves a lot of walking, sometimes uphill and over unevenly paved ground. The coach can rarely enter town centres. Fitness and sure-footedness are essential. Some days involve a lot of driving. Average distance by coach per day: 45 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Foothpaths of Umbria, 7–14 May 2018 (p.117).
Illustration: Verona, market place, watercolour by W.W. Collins, publ. 1911.
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visit the atmospheric Villa di Serego Alighieri, surrounded by Valpolicella vineyards, for a private wine tasting and lunch. 21 generations after Dante Alighieri’s son bought the estate, the house and surrounding land still belong to his direct descendants, the Counts Serego Alighieri.
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While the opulence of the Doges and the abundant feasts depicted in the paintings of Veronese may be less evident today, Venice’s influence still extends over a vast region, from Padova, Vicenza and Verona, all the way to the banks of Lake Garda; and to the north, over vine-covered foothills leading up to the jagged peaks of the Dolomites. This region, known as the Veneto, later came under the influence of the Austro-Hungarians, who similarly left their mark on a cucina with middle-European accents and a coffee culture that rivals Vienna. La Serenissima’s enduring influence is evident in a love of fish and shellfish from the lagoon and the Adriatic, while, even though transport and refrigeration render the process unnecessary, baccalà – air-dried (not salted) cod – remains a favourite today. Mountain traditions, meanwhile, are steadfastly safeguarded through cheeses produced from fragrant alpine milk, smoked meats, and the art of distillation. Corn was first introduced into the Italian diet some five hundred years ago and polenta remains the staple. Vialone nano rice, cultivated near Verona, is the favoured variety for making deliciously soupy risotti. Fruits and vegetables abound: asparagus from Bassano del Grappa, radicchio from Treviso and Castelfranco Veneto, cherries from Marostica, and tiny violet artichokes from Sant’Erasmo. Grapes grow almost everywhere, producing some of the country’s greatest wines, as well as more accessible if no less satisfying everyday ones. Our tour begins in Verona with visits to churches and Roman monuments, small producers and outstanding restaurants. We travel through the wine hills of Breganze to Asolo, striking out in search of outstanding mountain cheese, gorgeous sparkling wines, fiery grappa. And we end on the Venetian lagoon with lunch on a private island with its own vineyard.
Verona Opera Lyric spectacle in the Veneto ‘Fabulous combination of spectacular opera and wonderful trips to museums and churches.’ ‘This tour exceeded my expectations.’
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.
It in e r a r y Day 1. Fly at c. 3.30pm 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 mediaeval tombs of the ruling della Scala family. Take walk in Verona, passing through beautiful streets and squares, and visit the Romanesque church of San Fermo. Some free time. Evening opera in the Arena (July: Turandot; August: The Barber of Seville). 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 (dir. Zeffirelli); August: Nabucco).
17–21 July 2018 (me 960) 5 days • £2,630 Turandot, Aida, Nabucco Lecturer: Dr Luca Leoncini 16–20 August 2018 (me 982) 5 days • £2,630 The Barber of Seville, Nabucco, Aida Lecturer: Dr Michael Douglas-Scott
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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.
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Both tours are accompanied by art historians who lead walks and visits during the day, rather than by a musicologist. 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 which is to follow. Even the most dour of dusty-hearted opera purists cannot help but be uplifted. 1 0 4
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. Illustration: Verona, Arena, wood engraving from ‘The Art Journal’, published 1887.
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Day 4. The morning walk includes the Castelvecchio, a graceful mediaeval 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: Nabucco; August: Aida (1913 production). Day 5. Fly from Verona, arriving at London Gatwick at c. 1.00pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,630 or £2,430 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,980 or £2,780 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine. Music: Tickets to 3 performances are included, costing c. £290. Supplement for poltronissime gold seats: £270. Accommodation. Due Torri Hotel, Verona (hotelduetorri.duetorrihotels.com): luxurious 5-star hotel; c. 20 minutes walk from the Arena (a shuttle is provided to and from the operas). How strenuous? 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 French Gothic, 9–15 July 2018 (p.65). Or in August, with: Torre del Lago, 9–13 August 2018 (p.125) – we are happy to assist with transport and extra nights between these two tours; please contact us.
Palladian Villas The greatest house builder in history
3–8 April 2018 (me 804) 6 days • £2,160 Lecturer: Dr Michael Douglas-Scott 2–7 October 2018 (mf 205) 6 days • £2,160 Lecturer: Dr Sarah Pearson A survey of various surviving villas and palaces designed by Andrea Palladio (1508–80), the world’s most influential architect. Stay throughout in Vicenza, Palladio’s home town and site of many of his buildings. With many special appointments, this itinerary would be impossible for independent travellers.
It in e r a r y Day 1. Fly at c. 2.00pm (British Airways) from London Gatwick to Venice. Drive to Vicenza where all five nights are spent. Day 2. 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.
Day 4. 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. 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.
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.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,160 or £1,980 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,460 or £2,280 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? There is a lot of walking, some of it uphill or over unevenly paved ground. The coach can rarely get close to villas or enter town centres. There is a lot of standing. 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 April, combine this tour with: Gardens & Villas of Campagna Romana, 9–14 April 2018 (p.130); Pompeii & Herculaneum, 9–14 April 2018 (p.138). Or in October with: Walking in Eastern Sicily, 8–15 October 2018 (p.145); Siena & San Gimignano, 10–14 October 2018 (p.123). Illustration: The Villa Foscari ‘La Malcontenta’, from an 18th-century etching.
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Day 3. 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.
Day 6. 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.
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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 firma 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. 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.
The Imperial Riviera Trieste, Ljubljana and the Istrian Peninsula 10–16 September 2018 (mf 124) 7 days • £2,290 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. 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-the-
century 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.
It in e r a r y 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, ending on the Molo Audace from where in the 19th and 20th centuries several Habsburgs sailed to violent deaths in faraway lands. Day 2: Trieste. The morning is spent climbing the cathedral hill through the old Venetian town and visiting the grave of the 19th-century scholar of Neo-Classicism, 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 c. 7.00pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s M A IN L A N D
Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,290 or £2,070 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,610 or £2,390 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine.
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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? There is quite a lot of walking, some of it uphill, or in town centres where vehicular access is restricted. Streets are often cobbled. 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: Walking in Slovenia, 3–10 September 2018 (p.163); History of Medicine, 17–23 September 2018 (p.112); The Etruscans, 17–23 September 2018 (p.133). Illustration: Trieste, gardens at Miramar Castle, watercolour by Mima Nixon, publ. 1916.
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Courts of Northern Italy Princely art of the Renaissance 13–20 May 2018 (me 864) 8 days • £2,380 Lecturer: Dr Michael Douglas-Scott 9–16 September 2018 (mf 109) 8 days • £2,380 Lecturer: Professor Fabrizio Nevola 21–28 October 2018 (mf 268) 8 days • £2,380 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. The most glorious concentration of Byzantine mosaics and important works by Alberti, Mantegna, Piero della Francesca and Correggio.
Day 1: Mantua. Fly at c. 8.15am (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Bologna. Drive to Mantua where the first four nights are spent. After a late lunch, visit the Ducal Palace, 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 Sant’Andrea, the Romanesque Rotonda of S. Lorenzo and Giulio Romano’s uncharacteristically restrained cathedral. In the afternoon, drive to Sabbioneta, an ideal
Day 4: Mantua. After a free 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 was centre of the city-state 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 15th-century stronghold, and the cathedral. Palazzo Schifanoia is an Este retreat with elaborate astrological frescoes. 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 splendid centrally planned church of S. Vitale with 6th-century mosaics of Emperor Justinian and Empress Theodora. 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. 8.30pm. Illustration. Ferrara, Castello Estense, wood engraving c. 1880.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,380 or £2,180 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,660 or £2,460 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. 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. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. In May, combine this tour with: Genoa & Turin, 6–12 May 2018 (p.98). Or in September, with: History of Medicine, 17–23 September 2018 (p.112); The Etruscans, 17–23 September 2018 (p.133); Tastes of Le Marche, 17–24 September (p.126); Civilisations of Sicily, 17–29 September 2018 (p.141). Or in October, with: Memories of Monte Cassino, 12–18 October 2018 (p.134); Music in Bologna, 1–6 November 2018 (p.112). 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: 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 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.
M A IN L A N D
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.
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.
Gastronomic Emilia-Romagna Food and art along the Via Emilia 7–13 April 2018 (me 805) 7 days • £2,890 Lecturers: Marc Millon & Dr R. T. Cobianchi Emilia-Romagna is one of the world’s most famous food-producing regions. A food-lover’s paradise: source of the best cured meats including Prosciutto di Parma and Culatello di Zibello, Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, authentic traditional balsamic vinegar, and silky handmade egg pasta. See how they are produced and enjoyed and meet their producers. Two lecturers: an art historian and a gastronomic specialist – Marc Millon is author of The Food Lover’s Companion to Italy.
Emilia-Romagna, shaped like a wedge of its renowned Parmesan cheese, is rich in every way – artistically, culturally, economically and, by no means least, gastronomically. To journey along the Via Emilia, the long, straight Roman road from Milan to the Adriatic coast, is to immerse oneself in a gloriously hedonistic garden of Eden that is the source of some of the greatest foods in the world. The lovely cities of Parma and Bologna are the ideal bases from which to explore some of the masterpieces of Italian gastronomy, including the two jewels in the region’s crown; sweet prosciutto di Parma, air-cured by dry mountain winds that sweep down from the Apennines, and parmigiano-Reggiano, the king of cheeses. Here, within their strictly defined areas of origin, there is a rare opportunity to see the production of these protected foods and to taste them in the company of the producers themselves.
We also visit a family-run acetaia to discover the mysterious art of producing traditional balsamic vinegar, the rich, complex condiment that must be aged for a minimum of twelve years. Vast oceans of inferior imitations may be found on tables all around the world, but the real thing, aged in batteries of wood, unctuous and thick, is known as ‘black gold’: an incredibly concentrated elixir that is part of the region’s great gastronomic patrimony. The trademark of Bologna is its hand-made egg pasta, which appears in many guises from filled tortellini to rich, luscious lasagne. A visit to Bologna’s food market with its vast array of fresh pasta, mortadella and salami, breads, cakes and ice cream explains why this city is known as la grassa (the fat one). Wine, too, is an important feature throughout. We discover expressions of the grape that may not be as exalted as the region’s foods but which are perfect accompaniments, made from ancient grapes such as Malvasia, Trebbiano and Sangiovese. We also discover the real Lambrusco, foaming wildly, raspingly dry and rich in acidity. Although the main focus of this tour is gastronomy, both Parma and Bologna have a wealth of artistic treasures and time is allowed to explore these in the expert company of an art historian. Feeding the body, feeding the mind: this is the gastronomy of Emilia-Romagna.
It in e r a r y Day 1: Parma. Fly at c. 10.30am (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Milan. Drive to Parma. In the afternoon see the astonishingly vital and illusionistic frescoes by Correggio, Parma’s finest painter, in the cathedral and the church of S. Giovanni Evangelista. First of four nights here.
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Day 2: Parma, Polesine Parmense. Parma is of great importance in particular for its High Renaissance school of painting. See the good art collection in the Palazzo della Pilotta, and also the exquisite Camera di S. Paolo. At the 13th-century Antica Corte Pallavicina in Polesine Parmense discover the rare and prestigious culatello di Zibello, made from the rump of a specially bred pig and cured for over a year in cellars to a nearunbelievable intensity of flavour and sweetness. Lunch is in the family-run restaurant here. In the afternoon visit the nearby Villa Verdi, which the composer built for himself.
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Day 3: Parma and surroundings. ParmigianoReggiano has been made in the area around Parma using the same methods for over 700 years. Watch the process at a modern caseificio, with tasting. Then visit a family-run acetaia to see the hand production of traditional balsamic vinegar and to have a rustic lunch. In the early evening the lecturer leads a wine tasting in the hotel. Day 4: Torrechiara, Langhirano. In the morning visit the 15th-century castle in Torrechiara. Continue to a producer of prosciutto di Parma and see the age-old process of curing and drying, before tasting it later with wines and lunch at a good winery. Illustration: Bologna, Fountain of Neptune, wood engraving c. 1880.
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Savouring Lombardy Opera, food, wine, art and architecture in northern Italy Day 5: Modena. In Modena visit the cathedral, among the finest Romanesque buildings in the region, and also the market. Continue to Bologna for a visit to the vast Gothic church of S. Petronio, with sculpture by Jacopo della Quercia. The last two nights of this tour are spent in Bologna. Day 6: Bologna, Dozza, Imola. The famous food market in Bologna sprawls through a maze of streets where shops and stalls display an overwhelming array of fresh pasta, artisanal mortadella, hams and salamis, cheeses, fresh fruit and vegetables, and an irresistible variety of bread and pastries. Taste these products in some of the city’s historic food shops. See also the enchanting early mediaeval church complex of S. Stefano. In the evening drive to Dozza for a tasting of wines from Romagna, before continuing to Imola for dinner at one of the region’s finest and most famous restaurants (two Michelin stars). Day 7: Forlimpopoli. Forlimpopoli is the birthplace of Pellegrino Artusi, the author of the original Italian national cookbook. A demonstration of fresh pasta-making is followed by lunch. To see pasta being made by hand is to witness a near miraculous transformation of the simplest ingredients, flour and eggs, into the most ingenious collection of shapes and forms. Fly from Bologna, arriving Heathrow at c. 8.15pm.
‘Both Roberto and Marc were superb, and in the future I would seek out tours they are involved in.’
18–24 May 2018 (me 867) 7 days • £3,770 Lecturer: Fred Plotkin Very few spaces remaining Please contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com A spectacular range of geography yields diverse, superb food and wine. Includes a top category ticket to Aida at the renowned Teatro alla Scala in Milan. Visit the charming cities of Bergamo and Cremona, as well as the magnificent Certosa di Pavia and 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. 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, 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.
Illustration: Milan, La Scala, aquatint c. 1830.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,890 or £2,740 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,200 or £3,050 without flights. Included meals: 4 lunches, 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.
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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. Coaches cannot enter some of the historical town centres. Some days involve a lot of driving. Average distance by coach per day: 65 miles.
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Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Monet & Impressionism, 15–20 April 2018 (p.66); Civilisations of Sicily, 16–28 April 2018 (p.141).
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Parma & Bologna Churches, cathedrals and castles in Emilia-Romagna 24–31 October 2018 (mf 295) 8 days • £2,470 Lecturer: Dr Kevin Childs Art and architecture in the major cities and s mall towns which lie along the Roman road, the Via Emilia. Romanesque architecture and 16th-century painting are particularly strongly represented. Based in the utterly charming ducal city of Parma and in the university city of Bologna. Option to combine this tour with Music in Bologna, 1–6 November 2018 – see page 112. 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. 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, one of the two bases for this tour, 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 other base for this tour.
It in e r a r y Day 1: Parma. Fly at c. 3.00pm from London Heathrow to Bologna, drive to Parma. First of five nights in Parma. Day 2: Parma. Parma is of great importance in particular for its High Renaissance school of painting. The cathedral and baptistery are outstanding for their Romanesque architecture and sculpture. See the astonishingly vital and illusionistic frescoes by Correggio in the cathedral, as well as the church of S. Giovanni and the exquisite Camera di S. Paolo. In the Palazzo della Pilotta is a good art collection and a rare Renaissance theatre. Day 3: Cremona, Fidenza. Once a major Lombard city state, Cremona has one of the handsomest squares in Italy with a Romanesque cathedral,
Italy’s tallest mediaeval campanile, baptistery and Gothic civic buildings. Fidenza has a beautiful Romanesque cathedral, with excellent sculpture. Day 4: Piacenza, Parma. Piacenza, which is on the border of Lombardy, has many mediaeval buildings on its Roman grid plan, among them an outstanding town hall and Romanesque cathedral. From the Renaissance there is the beautiful church of the Madonna di Campagna and the equestrian statue of Alessandro Farnese is a masterpiece of Baroque sculpture. Some free time in Parma. Day 5: Fontanellato, Sabbioneta. Fontanellato is a little town with an enchanting moated castle containing wonderful frescoes by Parmigianino. Sabbioneta was built as an ideal city on an almost miniature scale: a magical assembly of ducal palace, theatre, one of the world’s first picture galleries and all the appurtenances of a Renaissance ducal town. Day 6: Modena, Torrechiara. Modena, capital since the 16th century of the Este dukedom, has one of the finest Romanesque cathedrals in the region, with marvellous 12th-century sculpture by Wiligelmo. The Galleria Estense is particularly good for 16th- and 17th-century painting. The castle in Torrechiara has 15th-century frescoes. First of two nights in Bologna. Day 7: Bologna. Bologna is one of the most attractive of the larger cities in Italy, with Renaissance arcades flanking the streets. At its mediaeval heart are massive civic buildings and the vast Gothic church of S. Petronio, with sculpture by Jacopo della Quercia. The Pinacoteca Nazionale is one of Italy’s finest picture galleries (Raphael, Carracci family, Guido Reni). Finally, see the early mediaeval S. Stefano and S. Domenico, with the tomb of St Dominic Day 8: Bologna. See Carracci frescoes in former Palazzo Magnani Salem (subject to confirmation, by special arrangement). Fly from Bologna to London Heathrow arriving at c. 2.00pm, or stay in Bologna to join Music in Bologna. (Final day of the festival, 6th November: fly from Bologna, arriving at London Heathrow at c. 2.00pm.)
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P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,470 or £2,320 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,810 or £2,660 without flights.
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Included meals: 5 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 hotels. Hotel Corona d’Oro, Bologna (hco.it): an elegant 4-star hotel in the heart of Bologna; single rooms here have a French bed. How strenuous? There is a lot of walking on this tour. Average distance by coach per day: 50 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Mediaeval Alsace, 16–23 October 2018 (p.71); Music in Bologna, 1–6 November 2018 (p.112). Illustration: Bologna, Governor’s Palace, a copper engraving of c. 1709.
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Historic Musical Instruments Museums and private collections in northern Italy, with recitals 28–31 October 2018 (mf 292) 4 days • £1,740 Lecturer: Professor Robert Adelson 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. Recitals on period instruments and the opportunity to meet the collectors. Dates chosen so that participants can continue onwards to Music in Bologna, 1–6 November 2018 – see page 112.
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 3: Cremona. This glorious town in the Po Valley was home to 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 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 – unless staying in Bologna to join Music in Bologna, which starts the following day. (Final day of the festival, 6th November: fly from Bologna, arriving at London Heathrow at c. 8.00pm.)
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 and Documents, 1785-1959. See pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,740 or £1,620 without flights. Single occupancy: £1,930 or £1,810 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 3 dinners with wine. 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.
What else is included in the price? See page 8. Illustration: Cremona, cathedral and baptistery, from ‘A Dawdle in Lombardy & Venice’ by I.S. Williams, 1928.
Combine this tour with: Civilisations of Sicily, 15–27 October 2018 (p.141); Art in the Netherlands, 21–27 October 2018 (p.152); Music in Bologna, 1–6 November 2018 (p.112).
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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.
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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. 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.
History of Medicine Florence, Bologna and Padua in the Age of Humanism
17–23 September 2018 (mf 159) 7 days • £2,620 Lecturers: Professor Helen King & Dr Luca Leoncini Italy’s two oldest university towns, Bologna and Padua, where Vesalius and Galileo lectured. Historic anatomical theatres, including the earliest in the world, some of the best scientific museums in Italy, and an exploration of the anatomical studies of Leonardo and Michelangelo. This unique tour is led by a leading professor of Classical medicine and an art historian.
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It is almost impossible to overemphasise the leading role that Italy played in creating the civilisation of the modern world. Developments in the arts of painting, sculpture and architecture during the Italian Renaissance came to dominate the art of the Western world until the beginning of the last century. Humanism, a range of intellectual endeavours which built on the achievements of the classical world, matured into the critical, liberal attitude which underlies current modes of thought and ideas about education. From patisserie to opera, boarding schools to astronomy, in countless areas of human endeavour and intellectual achievement a seminal Italian input can be traced. In no field is the contribution of Italy greater than in the science of medicine. Bologna and Padua are homes to the oldest universities in Italy – indeed, in Europe – and their medical schools have for centuries made important contributions to the study of anatomy and the practice of surgery. Florence also has a good range of historical medical institutions, as well as the finest artistic patrimony of any city in the world.
It in e r a r y Day 1: Florence. Fly at c. 8.45am (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Pisa. Visit the Museo Galileo, which covers scientific studies from the Medici right through to current theory. First of three nights in Florence. Illustration: Bologna University, engraving c. 1900.
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Day 2: Florence. Visit the Natural History Museum, La Specola. The oldest scientific museum in Europe, it also houses an excellent anatomical section. In the afternoon visit the Museo del Bigallo, a 14th-century orphanotropium, the polychromatic marble cathedral capped by Brunelleschi’s massive dome, and the Piazza della Signoria, civic centre of Florence with masterpieces of public sculpture.
Day 6: Padua. A full-day excursion to Padua, an important university city where Galileo once lectured. In the university itself, items include Galileo’s chair, William Harvey’s emblem and, above all, the 16th-century anatomical theatre, the oldest in the world. Visit the new Museum of the History of Medicine, which uses interactive displays. See also Giotto’s fresco cycle in the Arena chapel, one of the landmarks in the history of art.
Day 3: Pisa. In the High Middle Ages Pisa was one of the most powerful maritime city-states in the Mediterranean, the rival of Venice and Genoa, deriving great wealth from its trade with the Levant. The Campo dei Miracoli is a magnificent Romanesque ensemble of cathedral, monumental burial ground, campanile (‘Leaning Tower’) and baptistery. The Campo Santo, for centuries the burial place of the Pisan upper classes, was built using earth brought back from Golgotha during the crusades and has frescoes depicting death. In the afternoon visit the botanical gardens.
Day 7. Fly from Bologna to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 2.00pm.
Day 4: Florence. See the Ospedale degli Innocenti, a children’s orphanage designed by Brunelleschi, and Michelangelo’s David in the Accademia. Visit also the Casa Buonarroti, house of Michelangelo’s family, which has models revealing his unprecedented knowledge of anatomy. Leave Florence for Bologna, where the following three nights are spent. Day 5: Bologna. The Archiginnasio has an 18thcentury anatomical theatre and écorché figures by Lelli. At the oldest university in Italy visit the Museo di Palazzo Poggi, which has sections devoted to obstetrics and anatomical waxworks. In the afternoon visit the Basilica di San Domenico, with the tomb of St Dominic, and the lateBaroque church of Santa Maria della Vita.
Music in Bologna Celebrating the arts of Italy 1–6 November 2018 (mf 301) Please contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com Combine music, architecture, good food and relaxation for a joyous unique experience. Eight private concerts in beautiful and appropriate historic buildings, some not open to the public. Music largely by composers associated with Bologna from the Middle Ages to the 20th century. Includes Rossini’s glorious Stabat Mater on the 150th anniversary of the composer’s death, and a reconstruction of the 1530 coronation of Charles V. Participating musicians are among the leading specialists in Italy, and also come from Britain, Belgium, Sweden, Switzerland and Australia. Talks by leading experts on music and history, and optional guided tours with art historians. Photograph courtesy of Palazzo Albergati, Bologna.
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P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,620 or £2,310 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,040 or £2,730 without flights. Included meals: 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Santa Maria Novella, Florence (hotelsantamarianovella.it): delightful 4-star hotel in a very central location. Hotel Commercianti, Bologna (en.art-hotelcommercianti.com): charming 4-star hotel in the heart of Bologna, rooms vary in size but are all classically furnished and comfortable. How strenuous? This tour would not be suitable for anyone who has difficulties with everyday walking or stair-climbing. Average distance by coach per day: 57 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Courts of Northern Italy, 9–16 September 2018 (p.107); The Imperial Riviera, 10–16 September 2018 (p.106); Lucca, 24–30 September 2018 (p.124); Pompeii & Herculaneum, 24–29 September 2018 (p.138).
Art in the Po Valley Romanesque and Renaissance architecture in the Val Padana 30 September–7 October 2018 (mf 199) 8 days • £2,610 Lecturer: John McNeill An enthralling compendium of architecture and the building arts from the end of Antiquity to the beginning of the Renaissance. A core of Romanesque work, including much of the greatest sculpture of the 12th century. Stays in just two centres, Parma and Verona, with excursions to hill villages as well as to other great historic cities.
Day 1. Fly at c. midday (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Milan, then transfer by coach to Parma. First of three nights in Parma. Day 2: Parma, Fidenza, Fornovo. Though superb, Parma’s Romanesque cathedral is excelled by its free-standing octagonal baptistry, one of the architectural triumphs of its time (begun 1196) and richly ornamented with sculpture and paint outside and in. Visit the Benedictine Abbey,
Day 3: Piacenza and environs. Situated on a terrace above the southern bank of the River Po, Piacenza was a strategic Roman city and an important bishopric. Visit San Savino, a remarkable parish church with 11th-century capitals. The interior of the 12th-century cathedral vies with Pisa for complexity and majesty. In the afternoon visit the wonderfully well preserved Cistercian monastery of Chiaravalle della Colomba. Continue on to see the delightful complex of hexagonal baptistry and church at Vigolo Marchese and the breathtaking juxtaposition of collegiate church and 14thcentury castle (exterior only) at Castell’Arquato. Day 4: Modena, Nonantola, San Benedetto Po. Modena cathedral is one of the great buildings of Romanesque Europe, and was highly influential in Lombardy-Emilia; begun in 1099, it possesses the earliest and most famous of the region’s programmes of elaborate relief sculpture, Willigelmo’s magnificent Genesis frieze. In the afternoon visit two Benedictine monasteries to the north of the Po, San Silvestro at Nonantola, reconstructed after the earthquake of 1117, and San Benedetto Po, greatest of the Cluniac houses of northern Italy. Both monasteries were partially damaged in the 2012 earthquake, restoration work is slowly progressing. Continue to Verona where four nights are spent. Day 5: Verona. A morning walk leads across the River Adige to the well preserved Roman theatre for views of one of the most architecturally enthralling cities of Europe. Nearby Santo Stefano embodies the standard features of Veronese mediaeval architecture. The ravishing display of Romanesque sculpture on the west front of the
John McNeill Architectural historian and a specialist in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. He lectures for Oxford University’s Department of Continuing Education and is Honorary Secretary of the British Archaeological Association, for whom he has edited collections of essays on mediaeval Anjou, King’s Lynn and the Fens, Cloisters, and Romanesque and the Mediterranean. See pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies. cathedral is in exhilarating contrast to the Late Gothic élan of its interior. In the afternoon visit the great Benedictine church of San Zeno, begun c. 1120, which features a dramatic two-tier east end and bronze doors with narrative scenes. See the 14th-century Castelvecchio with an excellent collection of mediaeval painting and sculpture. Day 6: Verona. An astonishing clutch of palaces and loggie that housed the organs of mediaeval city government are ranged around a sequence of beautiful squares. Situated in the heart of the city’s mercantile quarters, the churches of the Dominicans at Sant’Anastasia and the Franciscans at San Fermo Maggiore were effectively transformed into funerary basilicas, and their chapels are a virtual primer of Italian late mediaeval painting. The afternoon is free. Day 7: Brescia. The historic core of Brescia is perhaps the most extensively excavated of any in Italy, and consequently it is possible to demonstrate the importance of the Roman city, the impact of Barbarian invasions and the reorientation of the settlement away from the forum and around the cathedral and bishop’s palace. The Museo della Città reveals an 8th-century nunnery built on top of Imperial Roman courtyard houses 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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whose three interlocking cloisters were exquisitely rebuilt towards the end of the 15th century. In the afternoon visit Fidenza, whose cathedral possesses the greatest assemblage of late Romanesque sculpture in northern Italy, and the stunning early Romanesque parish church at Fornovo di Taro.
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The Po Valley, or Val Padana, consists of a great alluvial plain formed by the river Po, bounded to the south by the Apennines and to the north by the foothills of the Alps. Its historical development owes most to Roman settlement, when the cities were established and the fertile and well watered land between them was farmed from substantial rural villas. Matters changed with barbarian settlement, and though it is rare to find material from this period surviving, the eighth-century royal nunnery at Brescia stands as one of the most compelling structures of Longobardic Italy. By contrast, the major Romanesque buildings are twelfth century, and the quality and quantity of work that survives here is impressive. The crucial first step was taken at Modena cathedral, and its combination of architectural scale and narrative relief sculpture exerted a profound influence on later building across the region. Capitals, corbels, arches and stringcourses were embellished with new and unexpected forms – developing into vehicles of mesmerising virtuosity as designers and patrons sought to create buildings of unparalleled richness and expressive power. By the second quarter of the twelfth century public spaces were enlivened by costly and ambitious facades: those at San Zeno in Verona, and the cathedrals of Piacenza and Fidenza ranking among the most exciting essays on the interaction of sculpture and architecture of twelfth-century Europe. And other art forms were not neglected – as is beautifully illustrated by the stunning wall paintings of the baptistery at Parma, while the treasuries of Modena and Brescia house some of Italy’s greatest metalwork. Full dress Gothic never arrived in the Po Valley, though there is another type of building – a rather chaste, elegant, almost modular Renaissance architecture – that constitutes the second of the tour’s main themes, brilliantly realised in the interlocking cloisters of San Giovanni at Parma, the Casa Romei at Ferrara or the magnificent interiors of the new monastery of San Benedetto, Po.
Art in the Po Valley continued
Ravenna & Urbino Byzantine capital, Renaissance court
and displays many precious early mediaeval artworks. Also seen are Vespasian’s Capitoline temple, the centrally planned Romanesque cathedral and its rebuilt predecessor, the mighty Duomo Vecchio.
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 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.
Day 8: Ferrara. The outer shell of Ferrara cathedral remains largely of the 12th century, with a majestic portal composition by Master Niccolò, but with its late-mediaeval/early-Renaissance palaces the city brings the tour to a fitting end. The Casa Romei and Palazzo Schifanoia both retain impressive painted interiors, the breathtaking Cycle of the Months at the Schifanoia surviving as one of the most accomplished and intellectually demanding painted interiors of 15th-century Europe. Fly from Bologna, arriving at London Heathrow c. 8.00pm.
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‘John McNeill is astonishing in his erudition, enthusiasm and comprehensive knowledge of the subject matter of the trip.’ P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,610 or £2,430 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,040 or £2,860 without flights. Included meals: 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Stendhal, Parma (hotelstendhal.it): a quiet 4-star hotel, the best located in the middle of the historic centre, run by Mercure hotels. Due Torri Hotel, Verona (hotelduetorri.duetorrihotels.com): luxurious 5-star, excellently located near Piazza delle Erbe. How strenuous? There is a lot of walking, much of it on steep and roughly paved streets: fitness, agility, stamina and sure-footedness are essential. Coaches are not allowed into historic centres. Many of the historical buildings visited are sprawling and vast. Some days involve a lot of driving; average distance per day: 71 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
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Combine this tour with: Pompeii & Herculaneum, 24–29 September 2018 (p.138); Lucca, 24–30 September 2018 (p.124); Walking in Eastern Sicily, 8–15 October 2018 (p.145).
E U R O P E : ITALY What else is included in the price? See page 8. 1 1 4
For a more detailed description, please contact us or visit www.martinrandall.com Day 1. Fly at c. 3.00pm (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Bologna. Drive to Ravenna, where all four nights are spent.
25–29 April 2018 (me 834) 5 days • £1,560 Lecturer: Dr Luca Leoncini 10–14 October 2018 (mf 235) 5 days • £1,560 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.
Day 2: Ravenna. National Museum, Orthodox baptistry, S. Apollinare Nuovo, Mausoleum of Galla Placidia (private visit), S. Vitale. Day 3: Ravenna. Cathedral Museum, Cooperativa Mosaicista (by appointment; subject to confirmation), Mausoleum of Theodoric. Free afternoon. Day 4: Urbino. Palazzo Ducale including the picture collection with works by Piero della Francesca, Raphael and Titian, Oratory of St John.
In Ravenna, some of the greatest buildings of late antiquity with the finest Byzantine mosaics.
Day 5: Classe, Rimini. In Classe, S. Apollinare; in Rimini, the Tempio Malatestiano. Drive to Bologna airport for a late-afternoon flight arriving Heathrow at c. 8.15pm.
In Urbino the Ducal Palace, the greatest secular building of the Early Renaissance.
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Private evening visit to San Vitale, Ravenna’s finest church, and the adjacent Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, to see the magnificent mosaics.
Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,560 or £1,330 without flights. Single occupancy: £1,770 or £1,540 without flights.
Why combine them? Both are somewhat out of the way, yet near to each other. First run almost 30 years ago and still a firm favourite.
Included meals: 3 dinners with wine.
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 the late antique and 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.
Illustration: Urbino, reproduction of an early-18th-century copper engraving.
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Accommodation. Palazzo Bezzi, Ravenna (palazzobezzi.it): new 4-star superior hotel, located on the edge of the historic centre of town. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking, some uphill and over cobbles, and standing. The coach cannot be used within town centres. Average coach travel per day: 65 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. In April combine this tour with: Western Spain: Extremadura & Toledo, 16–24 April 2018 (p.178); Seven Churches & a Synagogue, 25 April 2018 (contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com). Or in October, with: Gastronomic Crete, 30 September–8 October 2018 (p.95); Art in the Po Valley, 30 September– 7 October 2018 (p.113); Gastronomic Spain, 15–22 October 2018 (p.173); Civilisations of Sicily, 15–27 October 2018 (p.141).
Dark Age Brilliance Late Antique and Pre-Romanesque 14–21 October 2018 (mf 216) 8 days • £2,270 Lecturer: Dr Ffiona Gilmore Eaves A journey through north-east Italy to Croatia, via Ravenna, Torcello and Cividale. Private evening visit to San Vitale, Ravenna’s finest church, and the adjacent Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, to see the magnificent mosaics. 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.
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 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. Stay 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 the 8th-century work which has survived 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. The afternoon is free in Cividale. 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
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 and take a water taxi to 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. Fly from Venice to London Gatwick, arriving at c. 6.30pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,270 or £2,090 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,380 or £2,200 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 5 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Palazzo Bezzi, Ravenna (palazzobezzi.it): new 4-star hotel on the edge of the historic centre. Hotel Roma, Cividale (hotelroma-cividale.it): simple, functional and friendly 3-star, located in the centre. How strenuous? There is lot of walking in town centres, and a lot of standing. Some days involve a lot of driving; average distance per day: 76 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Siena & San Gimignano, 10–14 October 2018 (p.123); Piero della Francesca, 22–28 October 2018 (p.116). Illustration: Ravenna, S. Apollinare Nuovo, watercolour by W.W. Collins, publ. 1911.
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Day 3: Ravenna, Classe. In the morning see the outstanding National Museum, with excellent Byzantine ivory carvings. Drive 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.
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.
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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 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 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.
Piero della Francesca A pilgrimage from Umbria to Milan 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. See pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies.
Masolino. Travel by first class rail to Milan for the first of two nights. Day 6: Milan. In Milan the Poldi-Pezzoli Museum and the Pinacoteca di Brera contain paintings by Piero. Visit the Renaissance church of S. Maria delle Grazie; the refectory houses Leonardo’s Last Supper. Day 7: Milan. The morning is free. Fly from Milan Linate to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 4.45pm.
22–28 October 2018 (mf 278) 7 days • £2,510 Lecturer: Dr Antonia Whitley A journey to see nearly every surviving work in Italy by the Early Renaissance master. Revised and extended itinerary, with more time in Milan and Florence. Also Urbino, Monterchi, Arezzo, Sansepolcro, Perugia – among the most beautiful towns in central Italy.
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This tour is an exhilarating study of one of the best-loved and most intriguing artists of the fifteenth century. It also takes you to a select handful of some of Italy’s loveliest places and beststocked galleries, and through some of her most enchanting countryside. Though the theme is a specialised one, the tour is by no means intended only for serious students of the subject. Few art lovers are untouched by the serenity and beauty of the high-key palette of Piero’s works; even fewer would be unmoved by seeing most of his surviving works in the towns and landscapes in which he created them. Born about 1412 in the small town of Sansepolcro on the periphery of Florentine territory, Piero spent little of his life in the Tuscan capital to which most provincial artists flocked. Though he was not without influence, he had no ‘school’ or direct successors. A mathematician, his images beguile with their perfect perspective, architectonic form and monumentality. There is little documentation for his life, and he seems to have been a slow worker. Few works survive, despite the fact that he lived until the age of eighty.
What else is included in the price? See page 8. 1 1 6
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Day 1: Monterchi, Città di Castello. Fly at c. 8.45am (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Bologna. Drive to Monterchi to see Piero’s beautiful fresco The Madonna del Parto. Continue on to the hotel in Città di Castello for the first of three nights.
Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,510 or £2,390 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,890 or £2,770 without flights.
Day 2: Perugia, Sansepolcro. Perugia, the capital of Umbria, is one of Italy’s most beautiful towns. The National Gallery of Umbria in the mediaeval town hall has a polyptych with The Annunciation by Piero. There is a wealth of other monuments, including a fine merchants’ hall with frescoes by Perugino. In the afternoon visit Borgo Sansepolcro, Piero’s birthplace and home town. Visit the museum in the former town hall, where Piero’s early masterpiece, Madonna della Misericordia, a panel of St Julian, and the marvellous Resurrection fresco are housed. Walk around the town centre, passing Piero’s house and the Romanesque Gothic cathedral. Day 3: Urbino. Drive through mountains to the hilltop town of Urbino. As one of the most enlightened and creative courts of the Renaissance, it has an importance in the history of art out of all proportion to its small size. Piero possibly contributed to the design of the beautiful Ducal Palace, which houses his exquisite Flagellation of Christ and the Madonna di Senigallia. Visit S. Bernardino, where Federigo da Montefeltro was buried. Day 4: Arezzo, Florence. See Piero’s great fresco cycle, The Legend of the True Cross, executed over 20 years, at S. Francesco, Arezzo. In the cathedral see his fresco of Mary Magdalene. Continue on to Florence where one night is spent. In the late afternoon visit the Uffizi, which contains portrait panels of Federigo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, and his wife Battista Sforza. Day 5: Florence, Milan. In the morning, visit the Brancacci chapel with frescoes by Masaccio and
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Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Tiferno, Città di Castello (hoteltiferno.it): central 4-star hotel, renovated respecting the original architecture; a successful blend of old and new; helpful staff. Hotel Santa Maria Novella, Florence (hotelsantamarianovella. it): delightful 4-star hotel in a very central location. Rosa Grand Hotel, Milan (starhotels.com/en/ our-hotels/rosa-grand-milan): smart 4-star hotel excellently located directly behind the Duomo. Rooms are well appointed in a clean, modern style. How strenuous? The tour involves a lot of walking in the town centres where coach access is restricted. There is also a lot of walking over unevenly paved ground. Fitness is essential. Some days involve a lot of driving. Average distance by coach per day: 62 miles. Train travel. We travel by train from Florence to Milan because it is less harmful to the environment, quicker and more comfortable than travelling by coach. However, trains can be crowded, there is often little room for luggage, even on the Frecciarossa, and buffet cars can run out of food. You will need to be able to carry (wheel) your own luggage on and off the train and within stations. Some train stations do not have escalators or lifts and porters are not always readily available. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Dark Age Brilliance, 14–21 October 2018 (p.115); Picasso in Spain, 29 October–4 November 2018 (p.171); Music in Bologna, 1–6 November 2018 (p.112).
Illustration: Perugia, San Domenico, etching 1925.
Footpaths of Umbria Walks, art and wine between Arezzo and Assisi 7–14 May 2018 (me 854) 8 days • £2,610 Lecturer: Dr Antonia Whitley Six walks of between 5 and 7.5 km between Arezzo and Assisi through the Umbrian countryside. Enjoy the art of Piero della Francesca, Luca Signorelli and Giotto. Visit isolated hermitages, churches and cathedrals associated with St Francis.
Day 1: Citta di Castello. Fly at c. 8.30am (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,
Day 4: Le Celle, Cortona. Begin the morning’s walk from the immaculately kept Eremo Le Celle, which Francis visited in 1226. Walk from Eremo Le Celle to Cortona: 5 km, c. 2 hours. Ascent: 223m. Descent: 214m. Starting gently downhill, this walk begins 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: 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. Ascent: 316m. Descent: 602m. The 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. First of three nights in Spello. Day 6: Assisi. Morning walk from Pieve San Nicolò to Assisi: 6 km, c. 2 hours. Ascent: 281m. Descent: 462m. This is a 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: Bevagna, Montefalco. 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. Walk on country trails and lanes from Montefalco to Fabbri: 5 km, c. 1 hour. Ascent: 321m. Descent: 364m. Drive to Bevagna, the Roman Mevania, home to one of Italy’s most harmonious squares.
Day 8. Drive to Rome with a break in Montegiove en route. Fly from Rome Fiumicino to Heathrow, arriving c. 8.30pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,610 or £2,410 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,830 or £2,630 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. Hotel La Bastiglia, Spello (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. It should only be considered by those who are used to regular country walking, with uphill content. There are six moderate to strenuous walks of between 5 and 7.5 km. Strong knees and ankles are essential. Steep paths are unavoidable (both uphill and downhill) and terrain can be loose underfoot, particularly in wet weather. Average distance by coach per day: c. 60 miles. Group size: between 10 and 18 participants. Combine this tour with: Gardens & Palaces of Berlin & Potsdam, 15–20 May 2018 (p.80); Wellington in the Peninsula, 15–27 May 2018 (p.184); Gastronomic Veneto, 16–23 May 2018 (p.103).
Illustration: Assisi, Church of St Francis, watercolour by Frank Fox c. 1900.
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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 twenty-year period. After lunch walk from Monteautello to Monterchi: 5.5 km, c. 1 hour 30 minutes. Ascent: 235m. Descent: 350m. This is a gently undulating walk on farm tracks and country roads. Piero della Francesca’s beautiful Madonna del Parto has its own museum in the village.
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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.
and a small community of friars have continued to provide pilgrim accommodation since then. Walk Montecasale to La Montagna: 7.5 km, c. 2 hours. Ascent: 223m. Descent: 689m. A high-level walk on paths, tracks and exposed ground, and through woodland. 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. (At the time of writing, the Resurrection fresco was only partially visible due to restoration work, but should be visible by 2018).
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The Grand Duchy of Tuscany Art, architecture and streetscape in smaller towns and cities 19–28 April 2018 (me 830) 10 days • £2,880 Lecturer: Dr Flavio Boggi
Day 7: Siena. The largest of the hilltop towns of Tuscany, Siena is distinguished by architecture and art of exquisite elegance. The scallop-shaped piazza is one of the most beautiful urban spaces in the world; Duccio’s Maestà, housed in the cathedral museum, is the finest of all mediaeval altarpieces. The cathedral is an imposing construction of white and green marble with mediaeval and Renaissance artworks of the highest quality.
Ten-day immersion in a region which is of exceptional artistic and architectural richness. Major centres include Pisa, Lucca and Siena, but many smaller places are included.
Day 8: Certaldo, Monteriggioni. The point of visiting these little towns is not to see great art, though there are fascinating buildings and pictures, but to relish the picturesque delights of ancient, and still thriving, hilltop communities. Certaldo, birthplace of the 14th-century writer Boccaccio, has a redoubtable little governor’s palace and a small art gallery; Monteriggioni has an exceptionally intact circuit of walls and towers.
Led by Dr Flavio Boggi, an art historian specialising in mediaeval and renaissance Italian art, who has published widely on the artistic culture of Tuscany.
Day 2: Lucca. The morning walk takes in enchanting streets and major buildings, including the Romanesque cathedral of S. Martino, home of the extraordinarily beautiful Gothic tomb of Ilaria del Carretto. Walk out to the Villa Guinigi, a rare survival of a 14th-century villa and now a museum housing a choice collection of mediaeval paintings. Day 3: Pistoia, Collodi. The exceptionally attractive town of Pistoia has important art and architecture including an octagonal baptistry, a Renaissance hospital with a ceramic frieze by the della Robbia workshop and a pulpit crowded with expressive figures carved by Giovanni Pisano. In the cathedral there is a unique silver altarpiece which took 150 years to complete. Villa Garzoni at Collodi has one of the finest surviving examples of 17th-century gardens, with terraces excavated out of a steep hillside.
Day 1: San Piero a Grado. Fly at c. 11.30am (British Airways) from London Gatwick to Pisa. Isolated on the coastal plain, the Romanesque basilica of San Piero a Grado has one of the finest sets of mediaeval frescoes to be found anywhere. Continue to Lucca. Within the perfectly preserved circuit of Renaissance ramparts lies one of the loveliest stretches of urban scene in Italy. First of four nights in Lucca.
Day 6: San Gimignano. Drive to San Gimignano, which with its fourteen 13th-century, 100-ft tower houses is an amazing sight. Visit the collegiate church which contains two great cycles of trecento frescoes depicting scenes from the Old and New Testaments. The town hall also has 14th-century frescoes and houses a small art gallery. Study the development of the city in the streets, alleys and squares, and walk along a stretch of the walls.
Day 10: Prato. Prato built its wealth on clothworking. The cathedral has outstanding Renaissance sculpture and painting, notably Donatello’s pulpit with dancing putti and frescoes by Filippo Lippi. Visit also the 13th-century Hohenstaufen castle and the Museo di Palazzo Pretorio, recently reopened after restoration, housing works by Filippo and Filippini Lippi among others. Continue to Pisa for the flight to Gatwick, arriving c. 9.00pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,880 or £2,800 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,220 or £3,140 without flights. Included meals: 6 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Ilaria, Lucca (hotelilaria. com): excellently situated 4-star, within the city walls; friendly staff. Hotel Palazzo San Lorenzo, Colle Val D’Elsa (palazzosanlorenzo.it): 4-star hotel in a historic village near San Gimignano. How strenuous? There is a lot of walking, much of it on steep ground and roughly paved streets, as well as standing in churches and galleries. The tour is not suitable for anyone who has difficulties with everyday walking and stair climbing. Average distance by coach per day: 52 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with Charles Dickens, 18 April 2018 (contact us for full details or visit www. martinrandall.com); Gardens of the Riviera, 11–17 April 2018 (p.75). Illustration: Pisa, north transept of the cathedral, after a drawing by Joseph Pennell, publ. 1904. Opposite page: Tuscan landscape, etching c. 1920.
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Day 4: Pisa. In the Middle Ages Pisa was one of the most powerful maritime city-states in the Mediterranean, the rival of Venice and Genoa, deriving great wealth from its trade with the Levant. The ‘Campo dei Miracoli’ is a magnificent ensemble of cathedral, burial ground, campanile (‘Leaning Tower’) and baptistery, all of gleaming white marble. Day 5: Volterra. A wonderful drive through Tuscan hills leads to Volterra, a rugged mediaeval hilltop town with an art gallery and a Romanesque cathedral, which again has fine Renaissance sculpture. Continue to the picturesque hilltop town of Colle Val d’Elsa for the first of five nights.
Day 9: Montepulciano, Pienza. Montepulciano is distinguished among hill towns for its number of grand buildings of the 16th century, including the cathedral, though excellent works of art inside survive from its predecessor. The Tempio di S. Biagio (Antonio da Sangallo, 1518) is a major work of the High Renaissance. Pienza provides wonderful views of inimitable rolling countryside; its centre – piazza, palace, town hall, cathedral – was built in the 1460s in accordance with Renaissance principles at the behest of a local boy who made good: Pope Pius II.
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Were Florence to tumble into the Arno and disappear for ever, Tuscany would continue to be one of Europe’s most alluring destinations for the culture-seeking traveller. Such is the profusion of great art and architecture in the surrounding region. The Renaissance is brilliantly represented, with major works by leading quattrocento artists – Masaccio, Donatello, Ghiberti, Filippo Lippi, Michelozzo, Gozzoli, Ghirlandaio, Pinturicchio and others. But in terms of quantity, spectacularity and variety, the Middle Ages predominate – unsurprisingly, as the term encompasses many hundreds of years of creative ferment. Buildings of magnificence and beauty and astonishing immensity abound, while in the field of painting Siennese artists such as Duccio and the Lorenzetti brothers have no equals. Sculpture is particularly important here, with the Pisani family creating some of the greatest works of the Gothic era. The region is also famous for its landscape, which is among the most beautiful in Europe. Richly textured, consistently undulating, subtly various though invariably punctuated by the blackgreen uprights of cypress trees, the grey-green bobbles of olive trees and the gold-green striations of vineyards. Present-day Tuscany is more or less the territory put together by Duke Cosimo I, who achieved absolute power in 1537 and ruled for the next 37 years. Under him and his successors the region became one of the most significant of the second-tier states in Europe, though despite relentless canvassing of pope and emperor Cosimo failed to be awarded the status of king and had to make do with the title of Grand Duke. There are two bases for this tour, both utterly lovely and characteristic. Lucca is a small valleyfloor city of Roman origin hemmed in by hills, girded by red-brick ramparts and consisting of a succession of enchanting streets and squares. Colle di Val d’Elsa is a little country town on a hill just south of San Gimignano, overlooking the verdant valley of the Elsa River.
Florence Cradle of the Renaissance 5–11 March 2018 (me 768) 7 days • £2,390 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.
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 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.
It in e r a r y 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 see the Byzantine mosaics and Renaissance sculpture in the cathedral baptistry, and the superbly renovated cathedral museum. 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 sculpture, then continue to the Uffizi which has masterpieces by every major Florentine painter as well as international Old Masters.
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Day 4. In the morning visit S. Maria Novella, the Dominican church with many works of art (Masaccio’s Trinità, Ghirlandaio’s frescoed sanctuary). 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. 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 1 2 0
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Florence & Venice he finest art and architecture in the 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 church-cum-granary of Orsanmichele, and there is a second, selective visit to the Uffizi. Fly from Florence, arriving at London City at c. 9.15pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,390 or £2,260 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,710 or £2,580 without flights.
19–26 November 2018 (mf 346) 8 days • £2,940 Lecturer: Dr Kevin Childs Two cities which provide the best possible appreciation of Italian art and civilisation with an emphasis on the Renaissance. Viewed in succession, they provide one of the great aesthetic journeys the world has to offer. In Venice, a private visit to the Basilica di San Marco to see the transcendental splendour of the Byzantine mosaics. Off-peak dates, smaller group than usual (maximum 18 participants).
Included meals: 1 lunch, 4 dinners with wine.
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Accommodation. Hotel Santa Maria Novella (hotelsantamarianovella.it): delightful, renovated 4-star hotel in a very central location.
Day 1: Florence. Fly at c. 11.00am (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Pisa. Transfer to Florence in time for a late afternoon visit to the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi chapel which has exquisite frescoes by Benozzo Gozzoli. First of four nights in Florence.
How strenuous? The tour involves a lot of walking in the city centre; where ground can be uneven and pavements are narrow. Fitness is essential. Group size: between 8 and 18 participants. In March, combine this tour with: Naples: Art, Antiquities & Opera, 26 February–4 March 2018 (p.139); Jonathan Keates’s Venice, 12–18 March 2018 (p.100); Civilisations of Sicily, 12–24 March 2018 (p.141).
Incontri in Terra di Siena 27 July–5 August 2018 Lecturer: Professor Geoffrey Norris Full details available in January 2018 Please contact us to register your interest
Concerts take place at La Foce itself and in beautiful neighbouring towns such as Montefollonico, Pienza and Città della Pieve.
Music by Busoni, Mozart, Brahms, Rachmaninov, Schubert, Ravel, Debussy and Bach, among others. The tour will be based in the small hill town of Pienza, birthplace of Pope Pius II, humanist, historian, traveller, autobiographer and patron of architecture.
Illustration, left: Florence, Loggia dei Lanzi, etching by J. Scarlett Davis, 1834. Right: Florence, Campanile, watercolour by W.W. Collins, publ. 1911.
Day 3: Florence. A Medici morning includes S. Lorenzo, the family parish church designed by Brunelleschi, their burial chapel in the contiguous New Sacristy with Michelangelo’s largest sculptural ensemble, and Michelangelo’s Laurentian Library. See Michelangelo’s David and the ‘Slaves’ in the Accademia. Visit the vast Franciscan church of Sta. Croce, favoured burial place for leading Florentines and abundantly furnished with sculpted tombs, altarpieces and frescoes. Day 4: Florence. In the morning visit Sta. Maria Novella, the Dominican church with many works of art (Masaccio’s Trinità, Ghirlandaio’s frescoed sanctuary). See the Masaccio/Masolino fresco cycle in the Brancacci Chapel, a highly influential work of art which influenced all subsequent generations of Renaissance artists. The afternoon is devoted to the Uffizi, Italy’s most important art gallery, which has masterpieces by every major Florentine painter as well as international Old Masters. Day 5: Florence, Venice. Travel by rail to Venice (first class) for the first of three nights there. Take an introductory walk in the Piazza S. Marco and visit the incomparably beautiful Doge’s Palace with pink Gothic revetment and rich Renaissance interiors.
Day 6: Venice. The Accademia is Venice’s major art gallery, where all the Venetian painters are represented. 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. In the evening there is a private after-hours visit to the Basilica of S. Marco, an 11th-century Byzantine church enriched over the centuries with mosaics, sculpture and precious objects. Day 7: Venice. 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 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. Day 8: Venice. Cross the lagoon by motoscafo (water taxi) to the airport. Fly from Venice to London Heathrow, arriving c. 2.00pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,940 or £2,810 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,420 or £3,290 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Santa Maria Novella, Florence (hotelsantamarianovella.it): delightful 4-star hotel in a very central location. Hotel Splendid, Venice (starhotels.com): delightful, quiet 4-star hotel situated half-way between Piazza San Marco and the Rialto bridge. How strenuous? The nature of both Florence and Venice 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 and churches is also unavoidable. Group size: between 8 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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Artists will include Leif Ove Andsnes, Daishin Kashimoto, Emmanuel Pahud, Antoine Tamestit, Antonio Lysy, Christian Poltera, Lawrence Power and Nicolas Dautricourt.
Day 2: Florence. In the morning visit Piazza della Signoria, civic centre of Florence with masterpieces of public sculpture, then continue to the church-cum-granary of Orsanmichele, adorned with important Renaissance statuary. Visit the Bargello, a mediaeval palazzo housing Florence’s finest sculpture collection with works by Donatello, Verrocchio and Michelangelo. The cluster of cathedral buildings occupies the afternoon; the baptistry with its Byzantine mosaics and Renaissance sculpture, the polychromatic marble Duomo itself, capped by Brunelleschi’s massive dome, and the excellent collections in the cathedral museum.
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A summer music festival based in southern Tuscany at Villa La Foce, directed by internationally acclaimed pianist Alessio Bax.
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Florentine Palaces e ence hu anis
agnificence and eauty the privately-owned Palazzo Corsini al Parione (by special arrangement), a vast baroque palazzo with views over the Arno. See the exterior of the 16th-century Palazzo Lanfredini, with handsome sgraffiti on the façade. Visit also the chapel in the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi with exquisite frescoes by Benozzo Gozzoli, and the Palazzo Budini Gattai, designed by Renaissance architect and sculptor Bartolomeo Ammannati. Day 3. Visit the Bargello, a mediaeval palazzo housing Florence’s finest sculpture collection with works by Donatello, Verrocchio and Michelangelo. Following this visit the Palazzo Corsini al Prato (by special arrangement): begun in 1591 to designs by Bernardo Buontalenti, the palazzo was acquired in 1621 by Filippo Corsini and most of the palace and gardens date to his refurbishment. Lunch here, hosted by the owner. Also see Palazzo Marucelli Fenzi, built in the 16th century for the Castelli family by Gherardo Silvani and later enlarged by the Marucelli family. It contains paintings by Sebastiano Ricci.
7–11 November 2018 (mf 304) 5 days • £2,280 Lecturer: Dr Kevin Childs An examination of one of the most fascinating aspects of the Florentine Renaissance, the private palace. Mediaeval, Baroque, Neo-Classical and nineteenth-century examples as well. Several special arrangements to see palaces not usually open to the public.
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Renaissance Florence experienced one of the most spectacular property booms of all time. From the second half of the fourteenth to the beginning of the sixteenth century as many as 100 private palazzi were built throughout the city. The period was also one of the pivotal moments of western architecture, witnessing a design revolution that was to have an impact on the rest of Europe and the Americas for 500 years. In the preceding couple of centuries, intense clan and class rivalries required palazzi to be highly defensible structures. Like many Italian cities, Florence bristled with tower houses, of which several stubs can still be seen, and the massive Palazzo Vecchio, the town hall, retains its fortress-like aesthetic. While an intimidating monumentality remained a design feature of the Renaissance palace, decreasing lawlessness and increasing wealth fortuitously combined with new humanist concepts of ‘magnificence’ and ‘virtue’, by which the elite were required to demonstrate their greatness with ‘fitting expenditure’. Constructed on a magnificent scale, three times the height of a three-storey building today, the typical palace’s spread was equally expansive, frequently swallowing up a multitude 1 2 2
of smaller dwellings. And the design of these high-fashion mansions represented a dramatic shift in architectural language. The credit for their creation, however, remained the patron rather than the architect. A Renaissance palazzo was intended as a statement of dynastic ambition, its façade emblazoned with coats of arms, its interior trumpeting the family name in every visual detail. Fortunes were spent – and lost – keeping up with the Medici. Many palaces remained unfinished through lack of funds (neither the Gondi nor the Rucellai were complete at the time of their founder’s death); and even more – including the Pitti and the Davanzati – changed hands through financial necessity within a generation. By the end of the sixteenth century, the Florentine palazzo was being adapted to accommodate more elaborate households and lifestyles, but splendour remained their defining characteristic. Certainly no Renaissance patron would have felt embarrassed by the endeavours of his seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury successors, such as Alessandro Capponi or the Corsini family.
It in e r a r y Day 1. Fly at c. 11.15am (British Airways) from London City Airport to Florence. Visit the Palazzo Vecchio, a sturdy fortress at the civic heart of the city with outstanding interiors and lavish frescoes by Ghirlandaio in the sala dei gigli and by Bronzino in the Chapel of Eleanor of Toledo. Day 2. Visit Palazzo Davanzati, built in the second half of the 14th century in one of the oldest quarters of Florence. See Palazzo Strozzi, a late 15th-century construction of formidable proportions. In the afternoon visit
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Day 4. Begin at the Uffizi, which has masterpieces by every major Florentine painter as well as international Old Masters. Walk through the Vasari Corridor (by special arrangement) from the Uffizi to the Pitti Palace, viewing the collection of artists’ self-portraits. (At the time of going to print, the Vasari Corridor was closed due to restoration work, but should be open by November 2018). In the afternoon, visit the privately-owned Palazzo Gondi (by special arrangement), designed in 1490 by Giuliano da Sangallo, the favourite architect of Lorenzo de Medici. There are remarkable views of the city from the terrace. Dinner is at a Michelinstarred restaurant. Day 5. In the morning visit the redoubtable Palazzo Pitti, which houses several museums including the Galleria Palatina, outstanding particularly for High Renaissance and Baroque paintings. The visit includes rooms not generally open to the public. The afternoon is free. Fly to London City Airport, arriving at c. 9.00pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,280 or £2,100 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,520 or £2,340 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 3 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Santa Maria Novella (hotelsantamarianovella.it): delightful 4-star hotel in a very central location. How strenuous? The tour involves a lot of walking in the centre; the ground is sometimes uneven and pavements are narrow. Fitness is essential. Group size: between 8 and 18 participants. Combine this tour with: Music in Bologna, 1–6 November 2018 (p.112); Civilisations of Sicily, 12–24 November 2018 (p.141); Venice Revisited, 13–18 November 2018 (p.99).
Illustration: Palazzo Strozzi, copper engraving c. 1770.
Siena & San Gimignano Hilltop towns of Tuscany 10–14 October 2018 (mf 234) 5 days • £1,640 Lecturer: Dr Antonia Whitley Based in one of the most extraordinary of Italian hill towns, San Gimignano. Visits to nearby places – Volterra, San Miniato and Siena (two visits). Beautiful landscape, wonderful streetscape, outstanding mediaeval and Renaissance painting, great buildings.
Day 1: San Miniato. Fly at c. 8.45am (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Pisa. Drive to San Miniato, whose highly strategic location on both the Via Francigena and the main route between Pisa and Florence meant that it was one of the most important imperial centres in Tuscany in the 12th and 13th centuries. See here the church of S. Domenico, before driving to San Gimignano. All four nights are spent in San Gimignano. Day 2: San Gimignano. Visit the Romanesque collegiate church containing two great cycles of trecento frescoes depicting scenes from the Old and New Testaments. The town hall also has 14thcentury frescoes and houses a small art gallery. Among the Renaissance works of art seen today are frescoes by Benozzo Gozzoli and an altarpiece by Pollaiuolo in the church of S. Agostino. Study the development of the city in the streets, alleys and squares, and walk along a stretch of the walls. Day 3: Siena. Siena is the largest of hilltop towns in Tuscany (it is in fact a city), distinguished by red brick and architectural and artistic design of an exquisite elegance. The cathedral museum contains Duccio’s Maestà, largest of all mediaeval altarpieces. The 14th-century Palazzo Pubblico has frescoes by Simone Martini and the Lorenzetti brothers. Visit the cathedral, an imposing Romanesque and Gothic construction of white and green marble with outstanding Renaissance sculpture and painting including Pinturicchio’s frescoes in the Piccolomini Library and the font by Ghiberti, Donatello and Jacopo della Quercia. Day 4: Volterra, Siena. A wonderful morning drive through Tuscan hills to the episcopal seat of Volterra (which in the early Middle Ages
claimed suzerainty over San Gimignano), a rugged mediaeval hilltop town. Visit the art gallery and the Romanesque cathedral, which has fine Renaissance sculpture. Return to Siena to visit the hospital of Sta. Maria della Scala, with its exceptional collection of Renaissance frescoes. Day 5. Drive to Pisa for the flight to London Heathrow, arriving c. 2.35pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,640 or £1,520 without flights. Single occupancy: £1,800 or £1,680 without flights. Included meals: 3 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Leon Bianco, San Gimignano (leonbianco.com): 3-star hotel in the central square, with fine views. How strenuous? There is a lot of walking, some of it on uneven ground and much of it uphill. Coaches are not allowed inside the walls of any of the towns visited. Fitness is essential. Some days involve a lot of driving. Average distance by coach per day: 51 miles Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Art in the Po Valley, 30 September–7 October 2018 (p.113); Gastronomic Spain, 15–22 October 2018 (p.173); Civilisations of Sicily, 15–27 October 2018 (p.141).
Illustration: San Gimignano, watercolour by Walter Tyndale, publ. 1913.
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Towards the end of an autumn afternoon, when the last of the day trippers have departed and the shutters have clattered down on the souvenir shops, an ineffable timelessness descends. While dusk begins to obscure the hills and darken the streets, the inhabitants get on with their lives – shopping, socialising, doing business – amidst the most extraordinary streetscape in Europe. The ordinary within the quite extraordinary – that is the charm of Italy. San Gimignano is not a museum but a living country town. It is also so improbable a phenomenon, with fourteen thirteenth-century hundred-foot stone tower houses, that a day trip does not always suffice to eradicate incredulity, let alone allow the visitor to feel the austere magic of the place. Scarcely changed in appearance for six hundred years, and looking like a balding porcupine in a searingly beautiful Tuscan landscape, the town provides a microcosm of life and art in mediaeval Italy. The towers and circuit of walls were built not only in response to hostilities with neighbouring city-states but also to the incessant conflict between the swaggering, belligerent nobility and the emergent merchants and tradesmen. Nevertheless, the little city flourished. A nodal point on the main north-south road to Rome, hospices and friaries swelled to serve pilgrims, officials and traders. Wealth, pride and piety conspired to attract some of the best artistic talent to embellish the churches. But San Gimignano never recovered from the double blow of the Black Death of 1348 and submission to Florence shortly after. Extending the theme of hilltop towns, visits are made to two of the greatest: Volterra, rugged and dour, and Siena, the largest and the most beautiful of them all. Spilling across three converging hilltops, Siena contains perhaps the most extensive spread of mediaeval townscape in Europe. Culturally the city reached its peak in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. There is plenty of excellent Renaissance art here, but it is mediaeval painting for which the city is best known. Duccio, Simone Martini and the Lorenzetti brothers were among a host of brilliant artists who created the distinctive Sienese style: exquisite delicacy of design, detail and colour, and images which are godly yet humane, numinous yet naturalistic. This tour provides opportunity for a concentrated study of Siena, not only its art and architecture but also its history. Mediaeval sculpture and painting is its main subject matter because of its exceptional quality and quantity, but Renaissance and Mannerist painters such as Pinturicchio, Sodoma and Beccafumi are also surveyed.
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Lucca Sculpture and architecture in northern Tuscany 24–30 September 2018 (mf 181) 7 days • £2,180 Lecturer: Dr Antonia Whitley A leisurely exploration of one of the most beautiful and engaging of Tuscan cities. Exceptional ramparts enclosing a city rich in sculpture, painting, and Romanesque architecture. Excursions to Prato, Pistoia, Pisa and Barga. Work by renowned masters, including Filippo Lippi, Donatello and Jacopo della Quercia. Nowhere in Tuscany can claim to be undiscovered. Some places are more undiscovered than others, however, and for no good reason Lucca is one of the most underrated of ancient Tuscan cities. Many know of its exceptional attractions, but few allow themselves the opportunity of getting to know it properly. Only by staying for several nights, and by allowing time to absorb, observe and reflect can real familiarity develop – not only with its historic fabric and works of art but also with the rhythm of life of its current inhabitants. For Lucca is not a museum but an agreeable and vital lived-in city.
To the approaching visitor, Lucca immediately announces its distinctiveness and its historical importance, while at the same time secreting the true extent and glory of its built heritage. The perfectly preserved circumvallation of pink brick, ringed by the green sward of the grass glacis, is one of the most complete and formidable set of ramparts in Italy. Unlike many Tuscan cities, Lucca sits on the valley floor. This feature and the traces of the grid-like street pattern – albeit given a mediaeval inflection – betray its Roman origin. Within the walls, the city is a compelling masonry document of the Middle Ages. There is a superb collection of Romanesque churches with the distinctive feature of tiers of arcades applied to the façades. There is good sculpture, too, including the exquisite tomb of Ilaria del Carretto, and some quite exceptional (and exceptionally early) panel paintings. Looming over the dense net of narrow streets are the imposing palazzi of the mercantile elite, including some grand ones from the age of Baroque. The Romanesque theme of the tour is continued on the excursions to the nearby cities of Prato, Pistoia and Pisa, where the style has its greatest manifestation in Tuscany
‘Antonia Whitley wears her great knowledge lightly giving very well delivered and entertaining explanations of the paintings, sculptures and buildings and welcoming contributions from members of the group.’ Illustration:Lucca, cathedral of S. Martino, engraving c. 1800.
M A IN L A N D E U R O P E : ITALY What else is included in the price? See page 8. 1 2 4
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in the ensemble of cathedral, baptistery and campanile (the now not-quite-so-leaning tower) at Pisa. Likewise, mediaeval sculpture features prominently in all these places. The Renaissance is represented by some of the best loved works of the Florentine masters – by Filippo Lippi and Donatello at Prato cathedral, for example, and by the della Robbia workshop in Pistoia. There are also visits to small towns and to a country villa of the eighteenth century.
It in e r a r y Day 1. Fly at c. 12.00pm from London Gatwick to Pisa (British Airways). Visit the Romanesque basilica of S. Piero a Grado on the way to Lucca. Day 2: Lucca. Visit S. Michele in Foro and the cathedral of S. Martino, Romanesque churches with important sculptures (tomb of Ilaria del Carretto) and paintings, and the Villa Guinigi, a rare survival of a 14th-century suburban villa; now a museum with outstanding mediaeval panel paintings. In the afternoon, visit Villa Torrigiani with its 19th-century landscaped garden with a sunken garden from the 17th century.
Torre del Lago Three Puccini operas:
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Day 3: Prato. Drive inland to Prato, a city that built its wealth on cloth-working. The mediaeval cathedral has outstanding Renaissance sculpture and painting, notably Donatello’s pulpit with dancing putti and the Filippo Lippi frescoes. Visit also the Museo di Palazzo Pretorio, open after a long period of restoration, housing works by both Lippis, among others.
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Day 5: Pistoia. The exceptionally attractive town of Pistoia has important art and architecture. Buildings include the octagonal baptistry and the cathedral, both at one end of the main square, and the Renaissance hospital, Ospedale del Ceppo. Sculpture includes the pulpit in Sant’Andrea carved by Giovanni Pisano, one of the finest Gothic sculptures south of the Alps, and a unique silver altarpiece in the cathedral, the product of 150 years’ workmanship.
Day 7: Lucca. Visit the Romanesque church of S. Frediano, one of the finest in Lucca, with façade mosaics and chapel tombs sculpted by Jacopo della Quercia. The flight from Pisa arrives into London Gatwick at c. 8.00pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,180 or £2,050 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,420 or £2,290 without flights. Included meals: 4 dinners with wine.
Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: History of Medicine, 17– 23 September 2018 (p.112); The Etruscans, 17–23 September 2018 (p.133); Art in the Po Valley, 30 September–7 October 2018 (p.113); World Heritage Malta, 1–7 October 2018 (p.148); The Romans in Mediterranean Spain, 1–7 October 2018 (p. 175); Castile & León 1–10 October 2018 (p.168); Essential Andalucía, 1–11 October 2018 (p.180); The Western Balkans, 1–14 October 2018 (p.54); Palladian Villas, 2–7 October 2018 (p.105).
9–13 August 2018 (me 979) 5 days • £2,230 Lecturer: Simon Rees Includes 1st-sector tickets to three operas, performed on three successive evenings in the open-air theatre near Puccini’s home. Based in Lucca with visits to a selection of art and architecture and to places associated with Puccini. Led by Simon Rees, dramaturg for Welsh National Opera from 1989 to 2012. Near the hamlet of Torre del Lago on the shores of Lake Massaciuccoli, only a couple of miles inland from the Tuscan coast, Giacomo Puccini built himself a villa. Here he wrote most of his operas, and in later life sought refuge between the rigorous demands of the worldwide tours which fame and success had thrust upon him. Here also is the open-air theatre where, since 1955, there has been an (almost) annual festival to celebrate the local boy who brought to a culmination the most Italian of the arts, lyric theatre. In 2008 the festival celebrated the 150th anniversary of Puccini’s birth in Lucca with the inauguration of a larger and more impressive theatre on the shores of Lake Massaciuccoli. Other places associated with the composer are scattered through the hills and valleys of the hinterland including his birthplace in Lucca, the village of his ancestors and childhood holidays, churches where he worked as an organist, bars he frequented. Though Rome, China, Paris and Japan provide the settings of his best-known operas, it is salutary and strangely enlightening to sense the creative process in the context of turn-ofthe-century Tuscany. Puccini was the last Italian opera composer whose works continue to be regularly performed in opera houses throughout the world; his death marked the end of three hundred years of Italian hegemony in this branch of artistic creation. Moreover, his works are perhaps the best loved
Day 2: Lucca, Torre del Lago. Morning lecture. Visit the Romanesque church of San Michele in Foro on the site of the Roman forum, San Paolino, where Puccini played the organ, and the house where Puccini was born, including many of his precious instruments and possessions. Set off in the late afternoon for Torre del Lago and visit Puccini’s villa, which retains virtually all the original décor and many mementoes. Evening opera: Madame Butterfly (Puccini). Day 3: Lucca, Torre del Lago. Morning lecture. Among the morning visits are the cathedral of San Martino, which houses an early representation of the crucified Christ and the dazzling effigy of Ilaria del Carretto. Some free time. Evening opera: Il Trittico (Puccini). Day 4: Celle, Torre del Lago. Morning lecture. Drive to the tiny hamlet of Celle where Puccini spent much of his childhood. Evening opera: Tosca (Puccini). Day 5: Lucca. The morning is free in Lucca. Fly from Pisa, arriving at London Gatwick c. 4.45pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,230 or £2,050 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,390 or £2,210 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 3 dinners with wine. Music: tickets (1st sector) for 3 performances are included costing c. £320. Accommodation. Hotel Ilaria, Lucca (hotelilaria. com): excellently situated 4-star hotel, within the city walls, with friendly staff. How strenuous? Quite a lot of walking, much of it on roughly paved streets, and late nights (all three operas start at c. 9.15pm). Average distance by coach per day: c. 35 miles Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: The Hanseatic League, 15–22 August 2018 (p.84); Verona Opera, 17–21 August 2018 (p.104) – we are happy to assist with transport and extra nights between these two tours; please contact us.
Illustration:scene from ‘Tosca’, photograph 1904.
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How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking, much of it on roughly paved streets. There is a lot of standing in churches and galleries. Average distance by coach per day: 39 miles
Day 1. Fly at c. 11.30am (British Airways) from London Gatwick to Pisa. Drive the short distance to Lucca where all four nights are spent.
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Accommodation. Hotel Ilaria, Lucca (hotelilaria. com): an excellently situated 4-star within the city walls, with friendly staff.
Tri ico Tosca
in the whole operatic repertoire. An occasional critic may still cavil, but Puccini’s music-dramas continue to exercise their glorious power by going straight for the heart, and the tear ducts. The tour is based in Lucca, which is only fifteen miles from Torre del Lago. Within the remarkably complete and beautiful circuit of Renaissance ramparts, Lucca consists of a dense network of streets and squares with innumerable fine palaces and churches, outstanding among which are the Romanesque churches with distinctively Lucchese façades of superimposed arcades.
Day 4: Barga, Lucca. Drive up through forested hills to Barga, a delightful little town with a fine Romanesque cathedral at its summit. The afternoon in Lucca is free.
Day 6: Pisa. In the High Middle Ages Pisa was one of the most powerful maritime city-states in the Mediterranean, the rival of Venice and Genoa, deriving great wealth from its trade with the Levant. The ‘Campo dei Miracoli’ is a magnificent Romanesque ensemble of cathedral, monumental burial ground, campanile (‘Leaning Tower’) and baptistery, all of gleaming white marble. Among the major artworks here are the pulpit by Nicola Pisano (1260) and the 14th-century Triumph of Death fresco.
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Tastes of Le Marche Gastronomy, walks and hilltop towns in undiscovered Italy
17–24 September 2018 (mf 161) 8 days • £3,180 Lecturer: Marc Millon 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. Includes three country walks to work up an appetite: one on a mountain, one on the plain and one in search of truffles.
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Located on the Adriatic coast in the centre of Italy, Le Marche is one of Italy’s still-to-bediscovered 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. 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. 1 2 6
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. This tour also includes three moderately strenuous walks: on the crest of a mountain, with views inland to the Monti Sibillini and down over some of the prettiest beaches on the Adriatic; in a charming nature reserve; and a (real, not simulated) truffle hunt. The rewards are more than worth the effort, not least in helping work up appetites to enjoy Le Marche’s outstanding cuisine.
It in e r a r y Day 1: Ascoli Piceno. Fly at c. 10.45am (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Rome Fiumicino. 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
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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. 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 Conero, Castelfidardo, Recanati. Morning walk on Monte Conero, which dominates the coastline south of Ancona. Gradually descend from the Abbey of S. Pietro to Poggio, down woodland paths that open onto superb panoramic viewpoints. Length: c. 5 km, duration c. 2 hours. Ascent: 511m, descent: 733m. Continue to Portonovo, home to the pescatori dei moscioli (designated a Slow Food Presidio product). Meet the fishermen and taste 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: Urbisaglia, Colmurano. Visit the Abbey of Fiastra, one of the best-preserved Cistercian abbeys in Italy, followed by a walk in the Riserva Naturale Abbadia di Fiastra. Follow the river Fiastra
The Duchy of Urbino The Renaissance in the Marches through woodland into a gentle landscape in a valley of vine-covered hills. Length c. 6.5 km, c. 2 1/2 hours. Ascent: 341m, descent: 355m. 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.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,180 or £3,000 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,490 or £3,310 without flights. Included meals: 6 lunches, 4 dinners, with wine.
Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Courts of Northern Italy, 9–16 September 2018 (p.107); The Imperial Riviera, 10–16 September 2018 (p.106).
What else is included in the price? See page 8. Illustration: Loreto, copper engraving 1700.
Some world-class items, but for the most part the pleasures of this tour arise from the lesser treasures in remote and unspoilt communities in a kaleidoscope of breathtaking scenery. By inheritance lord of a marginal patch of mountainous territory, by profession a mercenary soldier, by scale of expenditure the most important Maecenas of his day: Federico da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, was one of the most fascinating and influential characters of Renaissance Italy. His palace at Urbino is the finest Early Renaissance courtly residence in existence, a sequence of interiors of serene beauty. He was also the paymaster for many other buildings, civil and military, throughout the duchy. Even more important for the subsequent history of civilisation than the architecture was what took place within these buildings, for his court attracted humanists, artists and young noblemen from all over Italy and beyond. Two examples: Raphael spent his first twelve years here (his father was court painter), and for centuries the manners and demeanour in the upper echelons of European society were under the influence of Urbino court life as described by Baldassare Castiglione in The Courtier. The Duchy of Urbino is located in the north of Le Marche, the Italian Marches, the name deriving from its tenth-century status as the borderlands between the Ottonian empire to the north and the papal lands to the south. Remoteness from the centre led to the emergence of local warlords, territorial fragmentation and de facto independence. The Buonconte dynasty had controlled Montefeltro for two hundred years before Federico II succeeded in 1444 at the age of 22. During his 38-year tenure he expanded his domains at the expense of his Malatesta and Sforza neighbours, but the source of his fortune was his generalship of the armies of the great powers of Italy, the Duchy of Milan, the Republic of Venice and the Kingdom of Naples, switching sides without scruple, and accepting tribute from lesser powers just to stay away. He was made a duke by the pope in 1474. His son Guidobaldo and his Delle Rovere successors continued artistic patronage though on a much reduced scale. Stagnation set in after the duchy reverted to the Church in 1631. One recurrent feature of this tour is military architecture, castles and city walls of huge variety and sometimes extraordinary beauty. There are also many fine paintings, in galleries and original settings.
It in e r a r y Day 1: San Leo. Fly at c. 8.30am (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Bologna. Drive along the Via Emilia and turn into the hills marking the northern border of the Duchy of Urbino and constituting the Montefeltro heart lands, guarded by the famously impregnable castle of San Leo.
Introductory walk in this tiny mountain town, which has a marvellously unspoilt Romanesque church and, atop a limestone cliff, one of the most dramatically sited castles in all Europe. Overnight San Leo. Day 2: Sassocorvaro, Urbino. Mountain drives lead to the castle of Sassocorvaro and another staggeringly beautiful hill road climbs to Urbino, Duke Federico’s principal residence and one of Italy’s loveliest hilltop towns. An afternoon walk takes in the outstanding International Gothic frescoes by the Salimbeni brothers, cathedral and Diocesan Museum. First of five nights in Urbino. Day 3: Mondavio, Senigallia, Fano. Two of the most extraordinary and beautiful examples of Renaissance fortifications are seen today: the multifaceted brick castle at Mondavio and, in the coastal town of Senigallia, the sedate quadrangular fort and palace within. Also in Senigallia are a Neoclassical market place and arcaded waterfront. In Fano see an altarpiece by Perugino. Day 4: Sant’Angelo in Vado, Mercatello sul Metauro, Urbania. Drop down to the Metauro river and follow the valley to the foothills of the Apennines. The small towns of Mercatello sul Metauro and Sant’Angelo in Vado retain well preserved mediaeval and Renaissance centres and paintings from the 13th to 17th centuries. Urbania is a charming town with a fortified palace built for Federico and modified for the last Duke of Urbino, whose tomb is in the town. Day 5: Urbino. Unravel the building history and examine the interior of the finest Renaissance palace in Italy, built over half a century from the 1450s for the dukes of Urbino, with the loveliest Illustration: Urbino, Ducal Palace, watercolour c. 1900.
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How strenuous? It is essential for participants to be in good physical condition and to be used to walks in the countryside with some uphill and downhill content. 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.
Trawls through the little-visited hills and valleys of the Marches, and along its coast.
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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; 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.
2–8 June 2018 (me 892) 7 days • £2,390 Lecturer: Dr Thomas-Leo True
The Duchy of Urbino continued
Roman Palazzi ro
ire to a acy the o er o
of all arcaded courtyards, serene halls of state, beautifully carved ornament and exquisite study. The art collection includes paintings by Piero della Francesca, Raphael and Titian.
Palaces changed from fort-like structures to classically inspired residences built around all’antica courtyards. Inside, they were laid out according to a ceremonial sequence of rooms linked by aligned doors that set the standard for state apartments across Europe for centuries, including at Versailles. In the Baroque period, Roman palaces acquired an unprecedented level of decorative splendour, their princely collections of antiquities and old master paintings displayed in purpose-built galleries whose frescoed ceilings proclaim the glory of the families who owned (and often still own) them. Many of these remarkable residences have survived intact, as have the suburban villas to which their owners would retire to escape the summer heat of the city centre.
Day 6: Gubbio. Gubbio is one of the most beautiful hill towns in Umbria, with a hillside piazza overlooking the lower town, formidable mediaeval palaces and the Ducal Palace, bestpreserved of Federico da Montefeltro’s residences outside Urbino. Day 7: Pesaro. A prosperous port and centre of ceramic production, Pesaro was won successively by the Malatesta, Sforza and Delle Rovere dynasties before returning to papal rule in 1631. The art gallery contains Bellini’s great Coronation of the Virgin, perhaps his masterpiece. Fly from Bologna, arriving London Heathrow at c. 8.20pm.
It in e r a r y Day 1. Fly at c. 12.45pm (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Rome Fiumicino.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,390 or £2,230 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,660 or £2,500 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch, 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Castello, San Leo (hotelristorantecastellosanleo.com): small 2-star hotel, simple but adequately comfortable, the lack of luxury more than compensated for by its location in the heart of this beautiful hill village. Hotel San Domenico, Urbino (viphotels.it): 4-star hotel converted from a monastery building and the best to be found right in the centre of the city, opposite the ducal palace.
19–24 November 2018 (mf 321) 6 days • £2,740 Lecturer: Dr Michael Douglas-Scott
How strenuous? There is a lot of walking, much of it uphill and on rough-hewn cobbles. There is also quite a lot of driving along minor hill roads. Average distance by coach per day: 63 miles.
Buildings that span the millennia, from the imperial residences of the Roman empire to princely Baroque splendour.
Group size: between 8 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Mediaeval Burgundy, 9–16 June 2018 (p.70).
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Opera in Macerata & Pesaro
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August 2018 Details available in January 2018 Please contact us to register your interest
What else is included in the price? See page 8. 1 2 8
agnificence
The home to the origin of the word palazzo is the perfect place to study its history.
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. The word palazzo in Italian now refers to any urban dwelling, modern apartment blocks included. Its origins were more august, however, going back to the ‘palatium’: the extensive residence of the Caesars on the Palatine Hill in Rome. These imperial associations were then assumed by the mediaeval popes, who called their residences at the Lateran and the Vatican ‘palaces’. The sprawling, fortified strongholds of the Roman baronial families, such as the Colonna and Corsini, also acquired this name, as did the municipal town hall on the Capitol. The popes periodically had difficulty in asserting their authority over their Roman subjects and had to leave town, but their return from Avignon after an absence for most of the fourteenth century was followed during the next two by an extraordinary period of urban renewal. During the Renaissance, popes rebuilt and decorated the Vatican to stress their links with St. Peter, claimed as the successor of Christ and the foundation of their sacred authority. Cardinals followed suit, building on a magnificent scale. Their enormous palaces became satellite courts, sometimes rivalling those of the popes themselves.
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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. Palazzo Farnese (the French embassy) is the most magnificent Renaissance palace in Rome: Michelangelo was responsible for the central balcony, cornice and second and third levels of the internal courtyard. Day 4. The Villa Ludovisi houses Caravaggio’s early ceiling painting Jupiter, Neptune and 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 16thcentury 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. 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,
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. See pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies.
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.
‘Michael Douglas-Scott was a fount of knowledge and his enthusiasm for the subject was infectious.’ P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,740 or £2,530 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,080 or £2,870 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Bernini Bristol (berninibristol.com): 5-star hotel excellently located on the Piazza Barberini.
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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.
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Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
Illustrations. Opposite page: garden of the Villa Borghese, watercolour by Alberto Pisa, publ. 1905. Right: detail of a ceiling painting in the Palazzo Barberini by Pietro da Cortona, 18th-century engraving.
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Gardens & Villas of Campagna Romana From formal to frivolous in spectacular settings 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. 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 at London Heathrow at c. 5.00pm. Some of the gardens can only be visited by special arrangement. It is therefore possible that the order of visits will change from that listed here.
9–14 April 2018 (me 813) 6 days • £2,390 Lecturer: Dr Katie Campbell M A IN L A N D
Renaissance villas and gardens, many accessible only by special arrangement. Take in a beguiling scenery of tufa hills and ‘Classical’ compositions. An ideal time of year to see the gardens in bloom.
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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 1 3 0
P r a c t ic a lit ie s 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 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.
Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,390 or £2,130 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,630 or £2,370 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? Quite a lot of walking, much of it on rough, uneven ground in the gardens. Average distance by coach per day: 60 miles Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
Day 1. Fly at c. 10.45am (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Rome. Drive to the countryside near Viterbo for the first of two nights.
Combine this tour with: Palladian Villas, 3–8 April 2018 (p.105); Monet & Impressionism, 15–20 April 2018 (p.66); Civilisations of Sicily, 16–28 April 2018 (p.141); Western Spain: Extremadura & Toledo, 16–24 April 2018 (p.178).
Day 2: Bagnaia, Caprarola. The Villa Lante at Bagnaia, designed by Vignola, has been universally admired since its creation: the twin casinos
Illustration: Tivoli, Villa d’Este, wood engraving c. 1880.
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Essential Rome The complete spectrum of art, architecture and antiquities 20–26 February 2018 (me 761) 7 days • £2,860 Lecturer: Dr Thomas-Leo True Major buildings, monuments and works of art, a representative selection of all periods from Ancient Rome onwards. Private visit to the Sistine Chapel, shared with participants travelling on Connoisseur’s Rome (see the following page for full details of this tour).
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 and Sta. Prassede. Day 2. 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 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 5. Drive in the morning 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. The afternoon is free. Day 6. The day 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 paintings. 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). Fly to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 4.00pm.
Dr Thomas-Leo True Specialist in Renaissance and Baroque Italian art and architecture. He received his PhD 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. See pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,860 or £2,670 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,230 or £3,040 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Residenza di Ripetta (residenzadiripetta.com): recently renovated 4-star hotel in a former 17th-century convent just south of Piazza del Popolo with spacious rooms. How strenuous? There is unavoidably a lot of walking. The historic area is vast, and vehicular access is increasingly restricted. Minibuses are used occasionally but otherwise the city is traversed on foot. Fitness is therefore essential. Average distance by coach per day: 9 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Naples: Art, Antiquities & Opera, 26 February–4 March 2018 (p.139).
Illustration: Rome, Forum, marble relief of the Ambarvalia acrifice wa erco o r er o isa . .
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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.
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Rome presents three major challenges to the cultural traveller. First, it is big. Items of major importance – many of which on their own would make any town in the world worth visiting – are generously strewn through an area that is approximately four miles in diameter. The second problem is that there are hundreds of such places in the city. The third is that these items are from such a wide span of time, well over two millennia, for much of which Rome was the pre-eminent city in its sphere – as capital of the Roman Republic and Empire, as centre of western Christianity, a role regained with consequent splendour with the triumph of the Catholic Reformation and finally, from 1871, as capital of a united Italy. Over the years Martin Randall Travel has devised many tours to Rome, but apart from at Christmas hitherto they have all attempted only a single episode or theme – Ancient, Mediaeval, Baroque; Caravaggio, Michelangelo, Raphael, music. This is our only tour that selects from the whole range of Rome’s heritage. The key has been generally to give preference to geography over chronology, proximity over theme. Meandering walks explore a particular district, picking out the most significant buildings and works of art, enjoying alluring vistas as they arise, glimpsing major and minor treasures – whatever period they belong to. It is fair to say that the itinerary includes most of the most important places and works of art in Rome. There is a lot of walking, though regular use is made of minibuses and taxis (rarely of cumbersome coaches, which are highly restricted in the city centre). Not every place seen is mentioned in the description below, and the order may differ. There is, incidentally, almost no overlap with Connoisseurs’ Rome (which is found overleaf) except for the private visit to the Sistine Chapel.
Connoisseur’s Rome With private visits including the Sistine Chapel 20–25 February 2018 (me 760) 6 days • £2,710 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.
It in e r a r y Day 1. Fly at c. 12.45pm (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Rome Fiumicino. Day 2. 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 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. Day 4. 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. 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.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,710 or £2,520 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,040 or £2,850 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 occasionally but otherwise the city is traversed on foot. Fitness is therefore essential. Average coach travel per day: 9 miles
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Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Naples: Art, Antiquities & Opera, 26 February–4 March 2018 (p.139).
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The Printing Revolution 5–12 March 2018 (me 767) 8 days • £3,830 Lecturers: Stephen Parkin & Dr Michael Douglas-Scott Very few spaces remaining Please contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com Illustration: Michelangelo’s ‘The Last Judgement’ in the Sistine Chapel, wood engraving c. 1880.
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The Etruscans Italy before Rome 17–23 September 2018 (mf 158) 7 days • £2,090 Lecturer: Dr Nigel Spivey Some of the most important and best-preserved Etruscan sites in Lazio, Tuscany and Umbria. Explores a remote part of Italy’s history, and areas of Italy’s heartland which few tourists reach. ‘The mysterious Etruscans’: for several centuries they flourished in the area between Rome and Florence, creating a federation of twelve cities and living in notorious splendour. Then, as the little village of Rome expanded into an empire-building Republic, the Etruscans succumbed, and were almost obliterated from history. Only since the nineteenth century has the extent of Etruscan civilisation been brought to light, and the Etruscans restored as ‘true ancestors’ of modern Italy. Our route is an exploration of the best archaeological sites and museums in northern Lazio, southern Tuscany and along the Tyrrhenian coast. By burying their dead with care and extravagance in cemeteries laid out with urban grandeur, the Etruscans left many clues as to their existence. We follow their trail, which leads to tombs cut from cliffs and rocks amid rich agricultural land, museums in mediaeval castles and a ‘city of the dead’ shaped in volcanic stone. Brightly-painted scenes of feasting and dancing have been revealed on subterranean walls. This is a landscape riddled with tombs (about half a million of them), but the atmosphere is far from morbid. The tour offers an opportunity to visit a series of fascinating places on an itinerary that would challenge the independent traveller, journeying through beautiful countryside via some of the most charming and under-visited towns in Lazio and Tuscany. Dr Nigel Spivey has excavated at the sites of Cerveteri and Tuscania, both visited by the group, and studied Etruscology at Rome, Cambridge and Pisa for a dissertation on Etruscan vases.
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Day 5: Orvieto. Drive inland to Orvieto, a major centre of Etruscan civilisation until it was destroyed by the Romans in 264 bc. The inscriptions above the tomb doorways in the necropolis are some of the most important in Etruria for deciphering Etruscan writings. Much of the pottery found here is displayed in the town’s two archaeological museums. Day 6: Cerveteri, Rome. In the morning drive down the coast to the unesco site at Cerveteri, a city of necropoleis ranging from the hut-like to the sumptuous, based on the homes of the city’s wealthy inhabitants. Continue to Rome to the Villa Giulia; home to many treasures found in Etruscan tombs, including the Sarcophagus of the Spouses. Overnight Rome. Day 7: Rome. Some free time. Fly from Rome, arriving at London Heathrow c. 4.45pm.
Illustration: paintings from Cerveteri, wood engraving from ‘Cities & Cemeteries of Etruria’ 1878.
Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,090 or £1,880 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,260 or £2,050 without flights. Included meals: 5 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Alla Corte delle Terme, near Viterbo (allacortedelleterme.it): charming 4-star in the countryside outside of Viterbo, all rooms are suites. Hotel Bernini Bristol, Rome (berninibristol.com): luxurious 5-star hotel at the bottom of the Via Veneto, on Piazza Barberini. How strenuous? Unavoidably there is a lot of walking on this tour, much of it over uneven ground. It is not suitable for anyone who has difficulties with everyday walking and stairclimbing, as fitness and sure-footedness are essential. Coaches cannot always park near the sites, many of which are vast. Average distance by coach per day: 65 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Courts of Northern Italy, 9–16 September 2018 (p.107); The Imperial Riviera, 10–16 September 2018 (p.106); Lucca, 24–30 September 2018 (p.124); Pompeii & Herculaneum, 24–29 September 2018 (p.138).
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Day 2: Tarquinia. The unesco site of the Necropoli dei Monterozzi, part of a once-thriving Etruscan city, has outstanding examples of painted tombs depicting everyday life and scenes of the journey to the next world. The charming but rarely visited town of Tarquinia has possibly the best Etruscan museum in Italy, housed in the splendid 15th-century Palazzo Vitelleschi. Its extensive collection of pottery, jewellery and carved sarcophagi is testament to the prosperity attained by Tarquinia over the course of the 7th and 6th centuries bc. In the afternoon visit Blera, which has examples of cube tombs dating from the 4th century bc.
Day 4: Sovana. In the archaeological park at Sovana walk along one of the Etruscan roads, flanked by towering walls of tufaceous rock, and see several noteworthy tombs, including the Tomba della Sirena, decorated with a sculpture of the mythological Scylla. Continue to picturesque Pitigliano for lunch.
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Day 1. Fly at c. 10.45am (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Rome Fiumicino. Drive to near Viterbo, where the first five nights are spent.
Day 3: Tuscania. Prosperous and powerful in Etruscan times, Tuscania is now a pretty hill town. Visit an underground funerary complex in the surrounding countryside, then see articles found here and in other tombs in the area in the archaeological museum in Tuscania. In the afternoon visit the Etruscan museum in Viterbo.
Memories of Monte Cassino Stars and scars of the Italian Campaign This is essentially an outdoor tour, with daily walks of up to two miles and moderate hills. But we will return at the end of each day to one luxurious hotel in the heart of the San Pietro battlefield; the perfect setting in which to appreciate how the ‘D Day Dodgers’ drove a stake into the heart of Nazism.
It in e r a r y Day 1: London to Naples. Fly from London Gatwick at c. 1.00pm to Naples (British Airways) and drive to the hotel at San Pietro. Drinks on the terrace and a talk on the strategic background to the Italian campaign and the landmarks of the surrounding countryside. Survey the monuments to the US 36th Texas Division to see where they grappled with the Germans. Overnight in San Pietro, where all six nights are spent. Day 2: Battle of Camino. A short drive away from the hotel lies the spectacular museum of the attack on Monte Lungo, where many of the tanks and vehicles and much of the weaponry that was used in these battles is on display. Ascend to the peak of Monte Camino from where the whole vista of the Gustav Line can be identified, with the prize of Rome in the distance. The hard fought actions by the Queen’s Regiment and the Brigade of Guards will be examined in detail. Day 3: The Battles for San Pietro. Having watched John Huston’s 1943 documentary film, ‘The Battle of San Pietro’, see for yourselves the initial attempts on the village, the armoured attack, the fighting among the buildings and the hiding places in which the civilian population sheltered. To complete the day, visit the spot where the US and Canadian Special Service Force captured the rocky heights of Monte La Difensa.
12–18 October 2018 (mf 214) 7 days • £2,280 Lecturer: Patrick Mercer obe A walking tour offering unparalleled insight into a key moment in the Italian campaign, its history and landscape.
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Explore in depth some of the most famous, least understood battlefields of the Second World War.
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Based throughout at a four-star hotel, the former headquarters of the German army in San Pietro.
Led by a foremost military historian whose father fought in the campaign.
There are many tours to Cassino, but few of them grasp how the Italian campaign of 1943-44 unhinged the strategy of Hitler and his generals right across the European theatre. Normandy and the subsequent fighting tended to dominate the news, so much so that British troops in Italy often ruefully referred to themselves as ‘D Day Dodgers’! However, this tour will show how political grit, strategic thinking and the dogged courage of the Allied forces in Italy were major factors in the downfall of the Third Reich. Similarly, much of the focus at the time centred on the monastery of Monte Cassino. Magnificently built, the medieval monastery dominated the 1 3 4
surrounding countryside: the Allies claimed that their enemies were using it for military purposes, yet the Germans’ denial couldn’t save it from being bombed to rubble. This bombardment and the monastery’s subsequent capture by Polish troops are almost legendary, yet they are only a small part of the story. In fact, fighting raged from well before the first assault on Cassino and even then, the monastery was not the key to the cracking of the Gustav Line – the defences that stretched right across the knee of the Italian boot. Few people understand that the landings at Anzio (70 miles north of Cassino) were integral to success on the Gustav Line. Even fewer realise that for nearly six months General Mark Clark’s 5th Army struggled and bled right along the banks of the Garigliano river before the German strongholds were pierced by the French Corps – whose commander had previously fought with the Germans. Explore the breathtaking hills and villages near Cassino while tasting the valour of the men who seized them. The disastrous crossings of the Gari and Rapido rivers, the assaults on Minturno, Sant Ambrogio and Damiano, as well as the fighting around the monastery, are examined in detail. But what makes this tour extraordinary, beyond the scars and remains of battle, is the lecturer’s unique style of involving participants in the decisions that the troops and commanders had to take whilst under fire.
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Day 4: The first Battle of Cassino. The day starts with the first visit to Cassino monastery to appreciate the defences from the German point of view. Descend into the valley to examine the failure to cross the Rapido River – one of the most contentious stories of the entire campaign and which caused a Congressional Inquiry. Drive south to the Garigliano to consider the British failure to cross the river before the little known triumph of the 5th and 56th Divisions’ crossings around Minturno. A visit to the Commonwealth Cemetery in Minturno ends the day. Day 5: The second and third Battles of Cassino. The impressive Polish Cemetery covers the slopes below the monastery and leads us up towards Snakeshead Ridge and the blood-soaked Point 593. From here the whole of the Allied objective of the Liri Valley is spread out below, while the arguments for and against the bombing of the monastery stand out starkly. The viscious fighting for Castle Hill and the New Zealanders’ attacks on the town of Cassino lead us to the Commonwealth Cemetery where men and women from every creed, race and regiment lie shoulder-to-shoulder. Day 6: Cassino, the final battle. Our final day takes us to the Liri Valley and the events of May 1944. Combining 5th and 8th Army’s muscle, Clark eventually cracked the Gustav Line, but not at Cassino – the French broke through well to the south, in the Aurunci mountains. We will see
Roman Italy Major monuments, daily details 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. See pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies. where this happened, where the Allied armoured finally poured across the rivers that had blocked the way and how Rome beckoned so tantalisingly. Day 7: Naples. As we drive to the airport to catch a mid-morning flight to Gatwick, the lecturer will sum-up the events of the winter and spring of 1943-44 before debating the advance on Rome and the capture of the first Axis capital. Fly Naples to Gatwick, arriving at c. 1.00pm.
‘Patrick Mercer arranged a very well designed itinerary to show the battle si es and ow of he ca ai n. He is a lively, clear communicator and has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the history in detail.’ P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,280 or £2,100 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,410 or £2,230 without flights.
8–17 October 2018 (mf 207) 10 days • £3,440 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. 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. Illustration: Rome, Pantheon, wood engraving c. 1890.
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.
It in e r a r y 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.
Included meals: 5 lunches (including some packed lunches) and 6 dinners with wine.
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Accommodation. La Terrazza Sulla Storia Hotel, San Pietro d’Infine (laterrazzasullastoria.it): an attractive, four-star hotel in restored 17th-century buildings overlooking a valley.
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How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking (up to 2 miles) each day with modest hills on some days. There is also quite a lot of standing – up to 60 minutes’ – in exposed spots. Average distance by coach per day: 28 miles. Group size: between 8 and 18 participants. Combine this tour with: Castile & León, 1–10 October 2018 (p. 168); Essential Andalucía, 1–11 October 2018 (p.180); Courts of Northern Italy, 21–28 October 2018 (p.107).
What else is included in the price? See page 8. Illustration: ‘When they call us D-Day Dodgers – which D-Day do they mean old man?’, by William John PhilpinJones ‘JON’ the cartoonist, ©IWM.
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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. See pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,440 or £3,300 without flights. Single occupancy: £4,050 or £3,910 without flights. Included meals: 2 lunches (including 1 picnic) and 6 dinners with wine. Flights: the 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 both ways from and to 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.
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.
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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.
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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. Some 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 1 3 6
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 frescoes discovered at Pompeii and Herculaneum. Fly from Naples to Gatwick, arriving c. 8.45pm.
Illustration: Rome, ceiling in the Baths of Caracalla, engraving c. 1800.
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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): 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 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. Combine this tour with: Art in the Po Valley, 30 September–7 October 2018 (p.113); The Romans in Mediterranean Spain, 1–7 October 2018 (p.175); World Heritage Malta, 1–7 October 2018 (p.148); Palladian Villas, 2–7 October 2018 (p.105); Modern Art on the Côte d’Azur, 18–24 October 2018 (p.76).
What else is included in the price? See page 8.
Gardens of the Bay of Naples ith schia
a ri and the
5–11 May 2018 (me 846) 7 days • £3,110 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.
who made their homes and gardens there over the centuries. The reasons they all came are still here, waiting to be explored.
It in e r a r y Day 1: Naples. Fly at c. 2.45pm (British Airways) from London Gatwick to Naples. First of three nights in Naples. Day 2: 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 3: 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.
Day 7: Naples. Return to Naples to 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. Fly from Naples, arriving at London Gatwick at c. 7.15pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,110 or £2,910 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,520 or £3,320 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. How strenuous? There is a lot of walking. Streets 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.
Day 5: Ravello. Travel by hydrofoil around 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.
Combine this tour with: Classical Greece, 12–21 May 2018 (p.94); Courts of Northern Italy, 13–20 May 2018 (p.107).
Day 6: Massa Lubrense, Capri. In the morning visit a family-owned lemon grove followed by
Illustration: Naples, 19th-century gouache.
Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
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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 three nights in Sorrento.
lunch on the estate. 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.
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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
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Pompeii & Herculaneum Antiquities of the Bay of Naples 9–14 April 2018 (me 807) 6 days • £2,180 Lecturer: Dr Mark Grahame 24–29 September 2018 (mf 193) 6 days • £2,180 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.
It in e r a r y Day 1. Fly at c. 3.00pm 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 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, engulfed by mud rather than ash, 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. Naples’ Archaeological Museum 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 from Naples to London Gatwick, arriving c. 9.00pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,180 or £1,960 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,450 or £2,230 without flights. Included meals: 2 lunches (including 1 picnic) and 3 dinners with wine.
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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.
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How strenuous? There is a lot of walking, 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. In April, combine this tour with: Palladian Villas, 3–8 April 2018 (p.105); Civilisations of Sicily, 16–28 April 2018 (p.141). Or in September, with: Sardinia, 15–23 September 2018 (p.147); History of Medicine, 17–23 September 2018 (p.112); The Etruscans, 17–23 September 2018 (also with Dr Nigel Spivey; p.133); Art in the Po Valley, 30 September–7 October 2018 (p.113).
Illustration: Pompeii, street of the Forum, wood engraving c. 1880 from ‘Picturesque Europe, Vol.IV’.
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Naples: Art, Antiquities & Opera With a performance at the Teatro San Carlo 26 February–4 March 2018 (me 765) 7 days • £2,540 (including a ticket to one performance) Lecturer: Dr Luca Leoncini Selects the best of the art, architecture and antiquities in Naples. Performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata at the glorious Teatro San Carlo. Excursions to Amalfi, Ravello and the palaces and gardens at Caserta.
Day 1. Fly at c. 2.30pm from London Gatwick to Naples (British Airways). Day 2: Naples. A first walk through the teeming old city centre includes the Cappella San Severo, a masterpiece of Baroque art and craft with multi-coloured marbles and virtuoso sculptures, and Santa Chiara, an austere Gothic church with a Rococo tile-encrusted cloister. The afternoon is
Day 4: Caserta. A few miles outside Naples, the royal palace at Caserta, begun 1751, is Italy’s most magnificent and accomplished emulation of Versailles. An awesome absolutist statement, the apartments are superbly decorated and furnished and it is set within parkland and gardens equally magnificent in scale. Lunch is at a private villa.
‘A feast of treasures. Hotel wonderful and excellent oca ion. ver hin firs c ass a very special experience.’ Day 5: Amalfi, Ravello. Amalfi is one of the loveliest coastal resorts in Italy, its churches, towers and arcaded houses rising above a small harbour and backed by high rugged cliffs. The Saracenic-Norman cathedral has a delightful cloister, the ‘Chiostro del Paradiso’. Ravello sits in a beautiful position in the hills above Amalfi and has a fine Romanesque cathedral. Visit the Villa Rufolo, a 13th-century palace with a cloister of Saracenic influence and an evocative garden. Day 6: Naples. High on a hill which provides stunning views over the city and the Bay of Naples, the monastery of San Martino has a church of extraordinary lavishness of art and decoration and a museum of fine and decorative arts. The afternoon is free. Day 7: Naples. Drive into the hilly suburbs to visit the palace of Capodimonte, originally a giant hunting lodge. Here is located one of Italy’s greatest art galleries, with a magnificent range of art from the Middle Ages onwards. Fly from Naples to London Gatwick, arriving at c. 9.00pm.
Accommodation. Hotel Excelsior, Naples (eurostarsexcelsior.com): 4-star hotel on the waterfront c. 15 minutes’ walk from the Royal Palace, with spectacular views of Vesuvius and the island of Capri. Rooms are all of a good size. Sea views are available on request and for a supplement. How strenuous? A large swathe of central Naples is inaccessible to traffic, certainly to coaches. Pavements are often uneven, some roads are steep, traffic can be unpredictable. Participants need to be averagely fit and able to manage everyday walking and stairclimbing without any difficulty. Average distance by coach per day: 26 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Essential Rome, 20–26 February 2018 (p.131); Connoisseur’s Rome, 20–25 February 2018 (p.132); Palermo Revealed, 20–25 February 2018 (p.143); Florence, 5–11 March 2018 (p.120).
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,540 or £2,430 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,910 or £2,800 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine. Music: one opera ticket (top category) is included costing c. £100. To be confirmed in October 2017.
What else is included in the price? See page 8. Illustration: Naples, cathedral, watercolour by W.W. Collins, publ. 1911 in ‘Cathedral Cities of Italy.’
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Day 3: Naples. Among the treasures seen on a second walk in the city centre is the cathedral of San Gennaro which has an interior of astounding richness and major paintings by Domenichino and Lanfranco. Also seen are two works by Caravaggio, his Martyrdom of St Ursula in a bank and his Seven Acts of Mercy in the chapel for which it was commissioned. Evening performance at the Teatro San Carlo, the oldest major working theatre in Europe and renowned for its acoustic despite its 3000-seat capacity: La Traviata (Verdi), Daniel Oren (conductor), Lorenzo Amato (director), Maria Mudryak/ Erika Grimaldi/ Francesca Dotto (Violetta), Vincenzo Costanzo (Alfredo), Giuseppina Bridelli (Flora), Michela Petrino (Annina), Vladimir Stoyanov (Giorgio).
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Naples is one of those rare places whose very name kindles a kaleidoscope of conflicting images. A highlight of the eighteenth-century Grand Tour, it is now all but ignored by mainstream tourism. Royal capital of the largest of the Italian kingdoms, in the twentieth century it became a byword for poverty and decline. Once it basked in a reputation for supreme beauty – ‘see Naples and die’; now it enjoys notoriety as a pit of urban ills – chaos, congestion, corruption and Camorra. Until recently there was some truth in these images of modern Naples. But the city has changed, and is one of the most heartening examples of inner-city regeneration of the last decade or so. Traffic is still chaotic, but much of the historic centre is now pedestrianised. A burst of prosperity has transformed the ancient shopping and artisan districts. Restoration of buildings and works of art has further increased the beauty of the city, and more churches and museums are more often open and accessible. Its museums display some of the finest art and antiquities to be found in Italy, and major architectural and archaeological sites are nearby. The Teatro San Carlo is one of the most important in operatic history, with many premières to its credit. One of the oldest and largest in Europe, it was built in 1737, restored after a fire in 1818, and emerged just a few years ago in all its glory from major refurbishment. In striking contrast to the urban chaos of Naples, the Amalfi Coast is the most stunningly picturesque stretch of coastline in Italy. For a while during the Middle Ages, Amalfi rivalled Venice and Pisa as a maritime power intent on dominating trade in the Mediterranean, and its art and architecture are predominantly mediaeval in flavour. Both Ravello and Amalfi are delightful little towns, their cathedrals among the most impressive in the region. Naples is a city of the south. In many ways it has more in common with Seville or Cairo than with Florence or Milan. It is a city of swaggering palaces and stupendous churches, of cacophonous street life and infectious vitality. Exciting, exhausting, energising.
spent at the National Archeological Museum, one of the world’s greatest collections of Greek and Roman antiquities. Many items come from the excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum.
Normans in the South Castles and cathedrals in Puglia, Basilicata and Campania 20–28 March 2018 (me 790) 9 days • £2,720 Lecturer: John McNeill 26 October–3 November 2018 (mf 297) 9 days • £2,720 Lecturer: Dr Richard Plant 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 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 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.
It in e r a r y in b r ie f Please contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com Day 1. Fly at c. 11.00am (Alitalia) from London City Airport to Brindisi, via Rome, and drive on to Lecce for three nights. Day 2: Squinzano, Gallipoli, Otranto. Day 3: Lecce. Day 4: Brindisi, Bitonto. Travel to Trani for four nights. Day 5: Bari, Trani. Day 6: Castel del Monte, Barletta. Day 7: Canosa, Melfi, Venosa. Day 8: Benevento, Salerno. Overnight in Seiano. Day 9: Sant’Angelo in Formis. Fly from Rome to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 7.15pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,720 or £2,500 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,030 or £2,810 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 5 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Patria Palace Hotel, Lecce (patriapalacelecce.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 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.
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Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
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In March, combine this tour with: Eastern Andalucía: Caliphs to Kings, 9–18 March 2018 (p.182); Palladian Villas, 3–8 April 2018 (p.105). Or in October, with: Venetian Palaces, 6–10 November 2018 (p.101).
What else is included in the price? See page 8. Illustration: S. Valentino, Bitonto, from ‘The Shores of the Adriatic’ by F. Hamilton-Jackson, 1906.
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Civilisations of Sicily Mediterranean crossroads: 3,000 years of creativity 12–24 March 2018 (me 775) 13 days • £4,470 Lecturer: Dr Luca Leoncini
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, and an art gallery with a painting by the 15th-century artist Antonello da Messina.
16–28 April 2018 (me 817) 13 days • £4,470 Lecturer: Christopher Newall
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.
17–29 September 2018 (mf 157) 13 days • £4,470 Lecturer: Dr Ffiona Gilmore Eaves 15–27 October 2018 (mf 248) 13 days • £4,470 Lecturer: John McNeill 12–24 November 2018 (mf 310) Exclusively for solo travellers 13 days • £4,640 Lecturer: Dr Philippa Joseph Covers all the island, showcasing the main sights and many lesser-known ones. The whole gamut – Greek, Roman, Norman, Renaissance, Baroque and nineteenth century. A full tour but carefully paced and with only three hotel changes. 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.
It in e r a r y
Day 2: Palermo. The largest and by far the 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. A morning walk through the old centre includes a visit to several oratories and outstanding Norman buildings including La Martorana with fine mosaics. Visit a private palace, by special arrangement. In the afternoon see the collection of pictures in the 15th-century Palazzo Abatellis. Day 3: Monreale, Cefalù. The small town of Monreale dominates a verdant valley southwest of Palermo. Its cathedral is one of the finest
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 four nights in Taormina. Day 8: Taormina. Free day in this extremely pretty little town, which clings to a hillside rising steeply from the sea. It has been a smart resort since the nineteenth century. The Teatro Greco (actually largely Roman) is incomparably sited with farreaching views encompassing smouldering Mount Etna, the Ionian sea and the Calabrian coast of mainland Italy. Our hotel has shaded gardens that spill down a series of terraces (a swimming pool is open from April to October, weather permitting). 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 are two of his paintings and the best surviving work by Antonello da Messina. Cross the Straits of Messina by hydrofoil to Reggio di Calabria on mainland Italy to see the Riace Bronzes, oversize male nudes associated with Phidias and Polyclitus, among the finest Greek sculpture to survive.
Illustration: Palermo, cloisters of S. Giovanni degli Eremiti, watercolour by W.W. Collins, publ. 1911.
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Day 1: Palermo. March and November: fly at c. 9.00am from London City, via Milan or Rome, to Palermo (Alitalia). In April: fly at c. 11.15am from London City, via Milan to Palermo (Alitalia). In September and October: fly at c. 2.45pm from London Gatwick to Catania, and drive across the island to Palermo (British Airways). First of six nights in Palermo.
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. At the end of an otherwise free afternoon 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.
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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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
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.
Civilisations of Sicily continued
‘Martin Randall provides a superb experience in Sicily. The hotels were ideally located with good food and comfortable, pleasant rooms. Our guides were very knowledgeable and articulate.’
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. There are special arrangements to see a magnificent private palazzo and a Byzantine chapel, and visits to the enormous monastery of St Nicola, the Baroque cathedral and the harmonious cathedral square.
Day 12: Noto, Syracuse. Rebuilt after an earthquake in 1693, the hilltown of Noto is one of the loveliest and most homogenous Baroque towns in Italy. 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. Back in Syracuse, which was the most important city in Magna Græcia, visit the 5th-century bc theatre, the largest of its type to survive, the Roman amphitheatre and the excellent museum.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s
Day 13: Syracuse. September and October: fly from Catania, arriving London Gatwick at c. 11.00pm. March, April and November: fly via Milan or Rome, arriving London Heathrow at c. 6.00pm.
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 vary in size and outlook). Des Etrangers Hotel, Syracuse (desetrangers.com): elegant 5-star hotel on the island of Ortygia. All rooms have sea views.
Day 11: Syracuse. Drive to Syracuse (Siracusa) and the island of Ortygia, the ancient heart of the city, which is densely packed with structures from ancient Greek to Stile Liberty, one of the largest areas of picturesque townscape anywhere. Two walks thread through meandering alleys, little piazze and seaside promenades. The cathedral is unique in incorporating a Doric temple of c. 480 bc; great paintings include Antonello’s Annunciation in the mediaeval Catalan-style Palazzo Bellomo and Caravaggio’s Burial of St Lucy. First of two nights in Syracuse.
Price, per person in March, April, September and October 2018. Two sharing: £4,470 or £4,250 without flights. Single occupancy: £5,080 or £4,860 without flights. Price in November 2018 (exclusively for solo travellers): £4,640 or £4,470 without flights. Included meals: 5 lunches (including one picnic) and 7 dinners with wine.
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, April and 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 Gatwick to Catania from late April to October (these flights are also subject to confirmation). Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. In March, combine this tour with: Florence, 5–11 March 2018 (p.120). In April, combine this tour with: Gardens & Villas of Campagna Romana, 9–14 April 2018 (p.130); Pompeii & Herculaneum, 9–14 April 2018 (p.138); Mediaeval Saxony, 30 April– 8 May 2018 (p.85).
M A IN L A N D
In September, combine this tour with: Courts of Northern Italy, 9–16 September 2018 (p.107); The Imperial Riviera, 10–16 September 2018 (p.106); Art in the Po Valley, 30 September–7 October 2018 (p.113); World Heritage Malta, 1–7 October 2018 (p.148).
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In October, combine this tour with: Siena & San Gimignano, 10–14 October 2018 (p.123); Ravenna & Urbino, 10–14 October 2018 (p.114); Picasso in Spain, 29 October–4 November 2018 (p.171). In November, combine this tour with: Florentine Palaces, 7–11 November 2018 (p.122).
What else is included in the price? See page 8. Illustration: Agrigento, Temple of Castor, engraving c. 1880.
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Palermo Revealed Art, archaeology, architecture and gastronomy 20–25 February 2018 (me 759) 6 days • £2,230 Lecturer: Dr Philippa Joseph A captivating city, richly encrusted with the art and architecture of many periods. 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.
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. Visit the Chiesa del Gesù, an extraordinary example of Palermitan Baroque with a profusion of marble inlay, stucco and sculpture. 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.
Day 4: 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. Day 5: Palermo. Visit the 12th-century Palace of the Normans, containing the Hall of King Roger which has outstanding mosaics (sometimes subject to last-minute closure). 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 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.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,230 or £2,030 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,470 or £2,270 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Grand Hotel Piazza Borsa, Palermo (piazzaborsa.it): central, 4-star hotel housed in an assortment of historical buildings. How strenuous? There is a lot of walking on this tour. 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 February 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: Naples: Art, Antiquities & Opera, 26 February–4 March 2018 (p.139).
Illustration: Palermo, Palatine Chapel, engraving c. 1850 after William Leitch.
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Day 3: Monreale, Palermo. Monreale dominates a verdant valley southwest of Palermo, and its cathedral is one of the finest Norman churches with the largest scheme of mosaic direction to survive from the Middle Ages. Free afternoon. Private evening visit to the Palatine Chapel.
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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 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, enlightened local government has made Palermo cleaner, safer, and altogether more enjoyable in recent years.
Gastronomic Sicily Food and wine in the west 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 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. There is a tour of Marsala in the morning, including a visit to 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, discovering their methods and tasting the oil.
22–29 October 2018 (mf 272) 8 days • £2,970 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.
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If Sicily’s history is a layer-cake of the different cultures that have colonised the island through the centuries, its food is no less complex. Citrus fruits and ices were brought there by the Arabs before the Middle Ages. Winemaking was introduced by the Phoenicians, and during the Roman era wheat turned the inland hillsides to gold. The magnificent landscape remains a key source of agricultural richness for the island: Trapani is today Europe’s most productive grapegrowing province. What Sicily offers more than any other Italian region is an unrivalled cornucopia of sun-ripened vegetables and fruits, many grown on volcanic soils for added intensity of flavour. The Sicilians cook these products in myriad, colourful ways: sweet and sour, hot and spicy, fresh and nutritious – Sicilian food is arguably more exciting than its northern counterparts. It is also a mix of old and new cultures. Pasta is handmade in unique shapes to accommodate vegetables, capers, herbs and the varied seafood that make up the healthy Sicilian diet. Dessert lovers will be rewarded with some of the most delicious sweetmeats Italy has to offer: from the hollow cannolo filled with fresh ewe’s milk ricotta to elaborately decorated cassata cakes. As the tour travels across the Western part of the island we visit small producers of artisan foods, winemakers, home cooks and chefs alike, 1 44
and do not ignore cultural sites that determine its key historical importance. Sample street food from market stalls in Palermo, the freshest seafood in the Mediterranean, and home-prepared dinners whose hospitable cooks will share their secrets with us. Walk in vineyards and olive groves, and around some of the finest archaeological sites on this ever-fascinating island. In Marsala, we’ll be the guests of one of Italy’s pioneer winemakers, who were responsible for relaunching the great wines of the south.
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. Day 8. Fly from Palermo to London City Airport, via Milan, arriving at c. 3.45pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,970 or £2,740 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,240 or £3,010 without flights.
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Included meals: 4 lunches, 5 dinners, with wine.
Day 1: Palermo. Fly at c. 9.00am from London City Airport 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.
Accommodation. Grand Hotel Piazza Borsa, Palermo (piazzaborsa.it): centrally located 4-star hotel housed in an assortment of historical buildings. Hotel Carmine, Marsala (hotelcarmine.it): small and charming 3-star hotel, with occasionally erratic service.
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 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
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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 ‘no flights’ option and to book your own flights with Easyjet or Ryanair, both of whom fly 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: Dark Age Brilliance, 14–21 October 2018 (p.115); Music in Bologna, 1–6 November 2018 (p.112). Illustration: Monreale, Benedictine cloister of the cathedral, watercolour by W.W. Collins, publ. 1911.
Walking in Eastern Sicily Crater and coast: in the footsteps of history 8–15 October 2018 (mf 212) 8 days • £2,780 Lecturer: Christopher Newall Six walks of between 3 and 8 km through immensely varied scenery, from the lava fields of Etna to salt lake flats along the coast.
the 1940s tuna was caught and tinned here. These walks have been chosen to make the most of the protected parks in Sicily, thus helping efforts to restore, waymark and maintain the paths in this remarkably unspoilt land on the edge of Europe.
to be the site of the lower part of Tauromenion’s Acropolis, the apex of the walk offers spectacular views of the town and the Ionic coast. Visit Taormina’s famed Greek-Roman theatre and the small Roman Odeon.
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Day 6: Mount Etna, Piano Provenzana. Less-visited and less-well known than the southern slopes, Etna’s northern flank nonetheless provides plenty of interest and atmosphere. Walk c. 5 km, c. 3 hours. A moderate circular walk on the lava fields from the great eruptions of 2002 with a local volcanologist allows time to appreciate what was known as Mongibello, mountain of mountains. Lunch at a rustic restaurant, before returning to Taormina.
Sicily, the Mediterranean’s largest island, is well chronicled in history and literature as one of the most fascinating destinations in Europe. Her archaeological and historical sites delight visitors, but fortunately few of them explore the hugely varied landscapes on foot. Locals rarely indulge in country walking, and shepherds met on mountain paths are aghast that people choose to walk for a holiday. Yet walking can provide the key to understanding and appreciating this intoxicating island. We have included walks that are relatively unknown and countryside that is not easily accessible, but keeping in mind the principles of travelling less and seeing more, we hope to have designed an itinerary giving a fuller flavour of what Sicily can really offer. Mount Etna, peaking as Europe’s highest active volcano at nearly 11,000 feet, and sitting within a designated regional park covering 224 square miles, demands attention but also respect. Volcanologists venture perilously close to the crater’s lip in the name of research, but for hikers there are remarkably varied and interesting paths to explore on the northern flank. The distinctive climate and volcanic soils nurture a plethora of wild flowers, with orchids flourishing in both spring and late autumn. On the lower slopes, areas that were once covered with holm oak are now cultivated for citrus fruits and for wine, intensely flavoured reds and whites that are garnering approval throughout Italy and beyond. Above these, at 6,500 feet, Europe’s southernmost beech trees are thriving, as are birch, considered an endemic species. Another thousand feet and the thorny shrub known locally as spino santo (Astragalus siculus) covers the ground, and mountain flowers such as senecio, violets and cerastium flourish. Twenty miles inland from Syracuse is the ten-square-mile Pantalica Nature Reserve, set on a plateau with gorges plunging through the limestone to the Anapo and Calcinara river valleys. It contains what is thought to be Europe’s most extensive open-air necropolis, where the earliest rock tombs can be dated to the thirteenth century bc. Later civilisations have also left their mark; the faint frescoed walls in an almost-hidden cave church have lasted remarkably well in this somewhat harsh environment. A coastal walk alongside the salt-water lagoons of the Vendicari Nature Reserve provides another category of experience. The pantani are a haven for birds, and with luck flamingos can be spotted in all seasons. Mediaeval watchtowers, an old tonnaro (tuna cannery) and a fishery punctuate this landscape, highlighting the importance of sea-faring trade in this part of Sicily. Fifteenthcentury merchants in Noto shipped carob, grain and almonds from the port of Vendicari, and until
Day 2: Vendicari Nature Reserve, Syracuse. Drive south to for a walk around the salt lagoons and nature reserve at Vendicari: 5 km, c. 1 hour 30 minutes. This is a mostly level walk along the sandy paths. Visit the Villa Romana del Tellaro, where a small but superb set of Roman mosaics depicting scenes of hunting has been beautifully restored at this former masseria. Return to Syracuse to see some of the highlights of sculpture and ceramics from Sicily’s Greek colonies in the excellent Archaeological Museum.
Day 3: Syracuse, Noto. Visit the 5th century bc Greek theatre, the stone quarries and the Roman amphitheatre in Syracuse’s Archaeological Park. There is a short walk exploring the Greek ruins at Palazzolo Acreide: 3 km, c. 1 hour 40 minutes. Continue to Noto, one of the loveliest and most harmonious Baroque towns. Day 4: Pantalica Nature Reserve. Today’s walk takes place in Pantalica: 8 km, c. 3 hours. A series of paths within this spectacular reserve follow the Anapo river bed and former railway lines, or meander high along the plateaux; water levels in the river and local conditions determine the exact length of the walk. There is a challenging downhill section. Drive north to Taormina, where the next four nights are spent. Day 5: Taormina. Morning walk to Castello Saraceno: 5 km, c. 2 hours. A moderate walk uphill on a stepped path to the Castello Saraceno then returning to the town centre. Perched on the hilltop at 400m above sea level, and thought
Day 7: Forza d’Agrò. An unspoilt village with panoramic views of the Peloritani mountains and Etna, Forza d’Agrò is the starting point for a 8 km countryside walk (c. 3 hours), reaching 547m above sea level. It follows shepherds’ tracks through olive Illustration: Tourists inspecting Mt. Etna, engraving c. 1830.
groves and terraces; some terrain is very uneven on this path and requires sure-footedness. Return to Taormina for a tasting of some Sicilian wines. Day 8: Catania. Drive along the coast to Catania, with a fine Baroque centre. Visit the cathedral and a private palazzo. Drive to Catania Airport in time for the flight to London City via Milan or Rome, arriving c. 7.15pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,780 or £2,560 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,210 or £2,990 without flights. Included meals: 3 lunches (2 of which are picnics) and 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Des Etrangers Hotel, Syracuse (desetrangers.com): elegant 5-star hotel on the island of Ortygia. All rooms have sea views. Hotel Villa Belvedere, Taormina (villabelvedere. 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 1. Fly at c. 9.00am from London City via Milan or Rome to Catania (Alitalia). Drive to Syracuse in time for dinner. First of three nights on the island of Ortygia.
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Much of archaeological interest, as well as visits to Syracuse, the greatest of western Greek cities, and to the Baroque city of Noto.
Walking in Eastern Sicily continued
it): 4-star, charming, family-run hotel, in the old town, with its own garden (rooms vary in size and outlook). How strenuous? This tour should only be considered by those who are used to country walking with some uphill content. Strong knees and ankles are essential, as are a pair of well-worn hiking boots with good ankle support. Walks have been carefully selected but some steep rises are unavoidable and terrain can be loose underfoot, particularly in wet weather. One walk has a challenging downhill section requiring surefootedness and good balance. The walk on Etna involves walking at an altitude of c. 1,800 metres above sea level for c. 5 km. There are six walks of between 3 and 8 km. Average distance by coach per day: 34 miles. Flights. We opt to travel to and from Sicily with Alitalia in October due to the unpredictability of the British Airways London Gatwick to Catania
flight schedule at this time of year. In the event that direct flights with British Airways are available at appropriate times for the itinerary, we will endeavour to make a group booking. Group size: between 10 and 18 participants. Combine this tour with: Provence & Languedoc, 27 September–6 October 2018 (p.72); Art in the Po Valley, 30 September–7 October 2018 (p.113); World Heritage Malta, 1–7 October 2018 (p.148); Mediaeval Alsace, 16–23 October 2018 (p.71); Modern Art on the Côte d’Azur, 18–24 October 2018 (p.76).
Art historian, lecturer and writer. A specialist in 19thcentury 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 pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies.
What else is included in the price? See page 8. Illustration: Syracuse, the Temple of Minerva, 18th-century copper engraving.
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Christopher Newall
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Sardinia Archaeology, architecture and art 15–23 September 2018 (mf 151) 9 days • £2,590 Lecturer: Dr Thomas-Leo True Includes the best of the island’s material culture, from Neolithic and Bronze Age, through Punic and Roman to mediaeval and Renaissance. The unique Bronze Age nuraghi are a striking feature, as are Tuscan-style Romanesque churches and 16th-century Catalan altarpieces. See the Giganti di Mont’e Prama, an extraordinary group of sculpted life-sized warriors dating to 8th century bc. Wonderful mix of sites from the south to the north following the west coast of the island.
Day 1. Fly at c. 11.30am (Alitalia) from London City Airport to Cagliari, via Milan. First of three nights in Cagliari. Day 2: Cagliari. A morning in the Cittadella dei Musei which contains works by the foremost Sardinian retable painter, Pietro Cavaro, and the archaeological museum has important finds from the Nuragic, Phoenician and Roman periods. See the Giganti di Mont’e Prama, nuragic stone figures representing warriors, boxers and archers that have been recently reconstructed from over 5,000 fragments excavated in the 1970s. In the afternoon walk up the Bastione St. Remy, an immense late 19th-century gateway to the Castello district. The cathedral has a remodelled Pisan-Romanesque façade and a sculpted pulpit from 1160. The Museo Diocesano has a 15th-century Flemish triptych. Day 3: Barumini, Tuili. The Nuraghe Su’ Nuraxi is the largest of the Bronze Age nuraghi, with an impressive central tower constructed of basalt. At nearby Tuili, the unprepossessing Chiesa di San Pietro houses an exquisite retable by the Maestro di Castelsardo (c. 1500). Return to Cagliari for a little free time. Stroll around the mediaeval ramparts or visit the several Baroque churches. Day 4: Paulilatino, Oristano. The Basilica di Santa Giusta, erected in 1135, is one of the earliest of the Tuscan Romanesque churches. The Nuraghe Santa Cristina is the most picturesque nuragic site, surrounded by olive groves and with an astounding underground shrine from the second century bc. At Oristano there is a fine collection at the archaeological museum, a 14thcentury polychrome statue by Nino Pisano in the cathedral. First of two nights in Oristano. Day 5: Tharros, San Salvatore. Tharros is a magnificently located Punic and Roman site, with fine views over the Gulf of Oristano. The nearby Byzantine Church of San Giovanni in Sinis is the
oldest of Sardinia’s churches. Visit the Church of the Saviour, which has an underground hypogeum with 4th-century frescoes depicting animals and Roman mythology. Return through the marshes of the lagoon, stopping for lunch at a fish restaurant in the town of Cabras. Day 6: Borruta, Bonorva, Torralba. San Pietro di Sorres is the most superbly situated Romanesque church in Sardinia, with typical Tuscan black and white stone banding. The church overlooks the Valle dei Nuraghi where there is a concentration of nuragic sites. Visit Nuraghe Santu Antine, the most complex nuragic site in Sardinia. The cliff necropolis of Sant’Andrea Priu was used for burial in the 2nd and 3rd centuries bc. In the main chamber are exquisite fragments of later Roman and Byzantine frescoes. Continue to Sassari for the first of three nights. Day 7: Sassari, Porto Torres. The morning is spent in Sassari, with its network of charming mediaeval streets culminating in stately 19th-century piazze. The cathedral of San Nicola has one of Italy’s most lavish Baroque façades. There is a large collection of pre-historic, Punic and Roman artefacts in the Museo Sanna, as well as excellent models of the nuraghi and tomb complexes. At Porto Torres, the Basilica di San Gavino is a monumental Romanesque structure, Sardinia’s earliest and finest, with almost thirty Roman columns flanking the nave. The Copper Age sanctuary of Monte D’Accoddi is entirely unique in the Mediterranean, reminiscent of the tombs of the Aztecs. Day 8: Alghero, Churches of the Logudoro. Alghero is a picturesque seaside town, still functioning as a commercial fishing port. A Catalan colony for nearly 400 years, the Spanish influence can be seen in the Catalan-Gothic architecture of the old town. Visit the nearby Domus de Janas site Anghelu Ruju, a fine example of the pre-nuragic hypogea found all over the island. Drive to see two examples of PisanRomanesque churches, each in a very different 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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Illustration: Cagliari, late-19th-century engraving.
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Despite being the second largest island in the Mediterranean, Sardinia’s cultural treasures remain largely undiscovered by travellers. Its extraordinary jagged coastline and clear blue seas have earned it a deserved reputation for beach tourism, with villas and resorts clinging to the cliffs along the Costa Smeralda. Yet the wealth of prehistoric sites, Punic and Roman remains and Pisan-Romanesque churches make it a fascinating destination for those prepared to forgo the luxury of the coast and explore inland. As with all the larger islands in the Mediterranean, Sardinia was plundered and settled by a succession of pirates and empire builders. However, due in large part to its rugged and impenetrable landscape, Sardinian identity was never wholly extinguished. Her Bronze Age settlements truly set it apart. Deep gorges, craggy limestone and slate mountain ranges and swathes of verdant countryside hide over 7,000 nuraghi, peculiar conical stone structures which were forts, palaces and simple domestic dwellings. Much is left to the imagination as little is known about these edifices, though digs are leading to some fascinating insights. Evidence of Phoenician power on the island can be seen at Tharros on the west coast, established in the eighth century bc in a strategic position jutting into the sea in the Gulf of Oristano. Later colonised by the Romans, the site is a remarkable example of a coastal city-state. Finds can be seen in Sardinia’s superlative collection of archeological museums, in Cagliari, Sassari and Oristano. The decline of the Roman Empire left Sardinia open to Goths, Lombards, for a short spell the Byzantines, and to the new Muslim empires of North Africa and Spain. The Pisans and Genoese in the eleventh century left an indelible mark on the island with their superb Romanesque churches in the Logudoro region, indeed some of the finest in Europe. Rule by the Kingdom of Aragón brought a Spanish dimension to the island’s culture, most evident today in the Catalan-Gothic architecture of the fishing port at Alghero and, concealed in mediaeval churches in tiny villages the length of the island, sumptuous sixteenth-century retables which rival coeval ones on the Italian mainland.
Sardinia continued
World Heritage Malta From Neolithic to now
setting in the rural landscape. Santissima Trinità di Saccargia is a splendid example, built in black basalt and white limestone in 1116. Santa Maria del Regno has a magnificent ornate retable from 1515.
1–7 October 2018 (mf 206) 7 days • £2,870 Lecturer: Juliet Rix
Day 9. Fly from Alghero to London City, via Milan, arriving c. 3.45pm.
A wonderful exploration of this fascinating, diverse island.
‘The choice of itinerary was well planned and an excellent balance of archaeological sites.’ P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,590 or £2,380 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,790 or £2,580 without flights. Included meals: 4 lunches (including one picnic) and 5 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Regina Margherita, Cagliari (hotelreginamargherita.com): refurbished 4-star hotel, externally unattractive but clean and bright, with spacious rooms. Mariano IV Palace Hotel, Oristano (hotelmarianoiv.com): the only centrally located 4-star hotel in the town, in need of refurbishment. Bedrooms are a good size if a little dated. Hotel Vittorio Emanuele, Sassari (hotelvittorioemanuele.ss.it): 3-star hotel close to the historic centre but rooms are simple, small and ill-lit. These hotels are the best in their localities, but are by no means luxurious or indeed memorable. Flights. The flights offered are indirect via Milan as there are no airlines other than Easyjet and Ryanair that offer direct flights from London to Sardinia on the days this tour runs. Low-cost airlines do not offer viable booking conditions for tour operators arranging group travel. However, participants who prefer to arrange their travel independently and fly directly can do so.
A visit to some of the world’s earliest stone temples, among a concentration of other astonishing major historic sites. Juliet Rix is author of the definitive guide to Malta (Bradt Guide: Malta & Gozo) and a highlyregarded expert on the area. Visit the rural and picturesque Gozo Island, with stunning natural features. Malta has an extraordinary seven-thousand-year history beginning with the arrival of a littleknown 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 temples were built between 3600 and 2500 bc – fine examples of megalithic architecture, constructed 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. 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
How strenuous? A lot of walking, some over rough ground at archaeological sites or over cobbled or uneven paving. Fitness and sure-footedness are essential. Some days involve a lot of driving. Average distance by coach per day: 75 miles
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Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Pompeii & Herculaneum, 24–29 September 2018 (p.138); Lucca, 24–30 September 2018 (p.124).
E U R O P E : ITALY, MALTA Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, 22 July– 4 August 2018 – see page 63. 1 48
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Mediterranean, from the Phoenicians and Romans to both sides in the Second World War. Each occupier has left its mark, whether RomanByzantine catacombs or British red letter boxes. The Knights of St John Hospitaller, commonly referred to as ‘The Knights of Malta’ have, of course, left the greatest impression. 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 twenty-first century 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.
It in e r a r y Day 1: Valletta. Fly at c. 11.00am 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. Day 2: Qrendi, Marsaxlokk, Dingli. Drive through attractive countryside to the prehistoric temples overlooking the sea, Hagar Qim and
Valletta Baroque Festival Music and art in Malta Mnajdra. After some free time for lunch in the picturesque, traditional fishing village on Marsaxlokk, see the ancient track works, Clapham Junction cart ruts in Dingli. 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 insight 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 Temples 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.
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Included meals: 2 lunches, 3 dinners, with wine.
How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking, some of it over rough ground. Valletta is relatively hilly. Average distance by coach per day: 15 miles. Group size: between 10 and 20 participants. Combine this tour with: Civilisations of Sicily, 17–29 September 2018 (p.141); Pompeii & Herculaneum, 24–29 September 2018 (p.138); Lucca, 24–30 September 2018 (p.124); Walking in Eastern Sicily, 8–15 October 2018 (p.145).
Illustration: part of the prehistoric complex at Hagar Qim, wood engraving from ‘The Illustrated London News’, 1868.
Performances by world-class musicians, including the Ghislieri Choir & Consort. Venues include one of Europe’s oldest working theatres, the Teatru Manoel (1731). Guided tours of Malta’s principal archaeological and architectural treasures.
It in e r a r y Day 1: Valletta. Fly at c. 11.30am (Air Malta) from London Heathrow to Malta and 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. Some free time followed by dinner and an evening concert: ‘Bach & Italy’, a celebration of the international interplay in Bach’s time, performed by Concerto Köln. 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 with Ghislieri Choir & Consort: ‘Fasti Del Barocco Romano’, Handel’s Dixit Dominus, Donna che in ciel and Niccolò Jommelli’s Beatus Vir. Director: Giulio Prandi. Day 4: Gozo. Cross by ferry 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 SiciloNorman houses. Stop for lunch in the citadel to try homemade Gozitan food. Day 5: Mdina, Rabat. Mdina, Malta’s ancient capital and centre of the indigenous aristocracy.
Day 6: 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. Evening concert: ‘Chamber Music at the Zwinger Palace’ with Mahan Esfahani (harpsichord) and La Folia Barockorchester. Day 7: Valletta. Guided tours of the Manoel Theatre and the Co-Cathedral of St John, with lavish carved wall decoration, ceiling paintings, magnificent tombs and two paintings by Caravaggio. Private tour of the Casa Rocca Piccola, a 16th-century palazzo owned by the Marquis de Piro. Evening concert in Mdina Cathedral with Ghislieri Consort & Choir: ‘Fasti Del Barrocco Napoletano’. Director: Giulio Prandi. 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.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,880 or £2,680 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,260 or £3,060 without flights. Included meals: 3 lunches, 4 dinners, with wine. Music: 5 first category concert tickets are included, costing c. £280. Accommodation. Hotel Phoenicia, Valletta (phoenicianamalta.com): 5-star hotel in Valletta, recently refurbished and furnished with style. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking, some of it over rough ground and uphill. Average distance by coach per day: 12 miles. Group size: between 10 and 20 participants. Illustration: Valetta, mid-19th-century steel engraving.
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Accommodation. Hotel Phoenicia, Valletta (phoeniciamalta.com): 5-star hotel, recently refurbished. Furnished with style and character, it is situated just outside the city gates.
Baroque music in one of the most complete and compact of Baroque cities.
Visit Palazzo Falson, a 13th-century private residence and Mdina’s second oldest building. Below is the town of Rabat, with Early Christian catacombs. Evening concert with the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra: music by Grieg, Tansman, Gravina,Villa-Lobos. Conductor: Brian Schembri.
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Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,870 or £2,670 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,410 or £3,210 without flights.
13–20 January 2018 (me 742) 8 days • £2,880 (including tickets to 5 performances) Lecturer: Juliet Rix
Gardens & Landscapes of the Dutch Wave Piet Oudolf and modern garden design 8–13 September 2018 (mf 116) 6 days • £2,190 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. 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 six-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.
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book online at www.martinrandall.com
It in e r a r y Day 1: Amstelveen, Utrecht. Fly at 11.45am (British Airways) from London Heathrow Airport 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 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). Overnight in Utrecht. 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. Overnight Utrecht. Illustration: Piet Oudolf’s planting plan for the garden at Vlinderhof (with kind permission from Piet Oudolf).
Dutch Painting Art in Amsterdam, Haarlem and The Hague 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 twenty 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 Schiphol and return to Heathrow at c. 6.00pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,190 or £2,040 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,470 or £2,320 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine.
Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: St Petersburg, 14–21 September 2018 (p.158); Sardinia, 15–23 September 2018 (p.150); Classical Greece, 15–24 September 2018 (p.94).
The Rhine Valley Music Festival, 20–27 June 2018 – see page 88.
Plenty of time for the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam which reopened in 2014 as Europe’s best-displayed national gallery. 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). Option to combine this tour with The Rhine Valley Music Festival, or Walking the Rhine Valley, 20–27 June 2018 – see page 88. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is one of the world’s great museums, but it was largely closed for ten years until 2013. Planned extension and refurbishment hit a number of unexpected snags, but the new Rijksmuseum 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.
It in e r a r y Day 1. Fly at c. 12.00 midday (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Amsterdam. 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. 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 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. 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. We sometimes change the visits on this itinerary to take advantage of temporary exhibitions.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,910 or £1,770 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,210 or £2,070 without flights. Included meals: 3 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Estheréa, Amsterdam (estherea.nl): central, 4-star hotel in a historic building with colourful, comfortable rooms. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking and standing in museums. Average distance by coach per day: 23 miles. Group size: between 10 and 20 participants. Combine this tour with: Norway: Art, Architecture, Landscape, 18–26 June 2018 (p.153); Danish Castles & Gardens, 2–8 July 2018 (p.58). Illustration: Amsterdam, by Nico Jungman publ. 1904.
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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 stairclimbing. There are some long coach journeys but facilities are good. Average distance by coach per day: 75 miles.
Painting of the Dutch Golden Age – Frans Hals, Rembrandt, Vermeer and contemporaries – as well as art of other eras.
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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. Single rooms throughout are doubles for sole use.
27–30 June 2018 (me 935) 4 days • £1,910 Lecturer: Dr Sophie Oosterwijk
Art in the Netherlands s ectru o the finest 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. 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 beautiful Kröller-Müller 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.
21–27 October 2018 (mf 246) 7 days • £2,680 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.
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Also architecture and design from mediaeval to modern, and several highly picturesque historic town centres.
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The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, one of the world’s great museums, closed for major refurbishment for over ten years. It reopened in 2014, 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 1 52
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.
Day 6: Amsterdam. Return to Amsterdam. The Hermitage Museum, which celebrates the historical ties between Amsterdam and St Petersburg, has an exhibition devoted to Dutch Masters from Russian collections. 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 Schiphol and return to Heathrow at c. 4.30pm. We sometimes change the visits on this itinerary to take advantage of temporary exhibitions.
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P r a c t ic a lit ie s
Day 1: Haarlem. Fly at 12.00 midday (British Airways) from London Heathrow Airport to Amsterdam Schiphol. 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, where all six nights are spent. Timing is tight on this day, and the visit may have to be cut short if the flight is delayed.
Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,680 or £2,530 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,990 or £2,840 without flights.
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 and four Vermeers among them. The house where Rembrandt lived and worked for nearly 20 years
book online at www.martinrandall.com
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. Average distance by coach per day: 70 miles. Group size: between 10 and 20 participants. Combine this tour with: Picasso in Spain, 29 October– 4 November 2018 (p.171). Illustration: ‘A Girl Reading’, engraving c. 1880 after Vermeer.
Norway: Art, Architecture, Landscape Oslo, Bergen & the Western Fjords 18–26 June 2018 (me 909) 9 days • £3,990 Lecturer: Dr Frank Høifødt A tour which ties together the drama of the landscape with the architecture, art and design. A great tradition of Norwegian modernism with buildings by Sverre Fehn, Arne Korsmo, Snøhetta and Lund & Slaatto. Wide range of museums and galleries from the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo to the glacier museum in Mundal; Fine Arts in Bergen and the Hedmark in Hamar. Journeys of immense beauty by rail and boat are a major part of the tour. Special arrangements include visits to private villas, a ferry chartered for our group and a talk by the curator of the National Museum of Architecture.
It in e r a r y Day 1: Oslo. Fly at c. 10.15am from London Heathrow to Oslo (British Airways). Lateafternoon walk through the city (Royal Palace, University, Parliament) to the new waterfront developments by Niels Torp and others. The latest addition here is Renzo Piano’s contemporary art gallery. First of four nights in Oslo. Day 2: Oslo. Begin with the National Gallery, a small but fine collection of Norwegian art including a room dedicated to Edvard Munch. Walk to two buildings by Sverre Fehn: Gyldendal publishing house (2007) and the National Museum of Architecture (2008). Talk here by the senior curator. Continue by coach to Snøhetta’s glacial waterfront opera house (2008). End on Bygdøy – museum island – at the magnificent Viking Ship Museum. Day 3: Hamar, Oslo. Drive north to the ancient city of Hamar, beautifully sited on the shores of Lake Mjøsa. Here is Fehn’s greatest work, the Hedmark Museum and Bishop’s Palace (1967–79). See also the adjacent ruins of Hamar Cathedral, now housed in a ‘crystal palace’ by Lund & Slaatto (1998). Back in Oslo, visit the chthonic church of St Hallvard with its inverted dome and rugged brickwork – an earlier work by Lund & Slaatto. Day 4: Oslo. Residential Oslo is represented today with a visit by special arrangement to an exquisite modernist villa by Arne Korsmo: the Villa Stenersen (1938). High above the city the Holmenkollen ski jump is a new landmark (JDS, 2010) with magnificent views. Return to the centre
for some free time. Suggestions include taking the ferry to Bygdøy, home to Kon-Tiki, or visiting the Åkerhus (fortress) and Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art. Day 5: Oslo to Mundal. Spend the day travelling into the Western Fjords – a journey of considerable drama and beauty. Train at c. 8.30am train from Oslo, disembarking at Myrdal, a remote junction high above the Raundal Valley (journey time: c. 4 hours 45 minutes). Here join the famed Flåm railway, a spectacular fifty-minute descent to the shores of the Aurlandsfjord. The final leg is by boat (private charter) from Flåm to Mundal at the very end of Fjaerlandfjord. Walk to our hotel, a handsome villa built 1891 by Peter Blix. Two nights in Mundal. Day 6: Mundal, Urnes. Mundal is a pretty village tucked between glacier, mountain and water. Here, sitting as if a terminal moraine, is Fehn’s glacier museum (1991), a complex building responding to the dramatic landscape. Drive to the village of Solvorn, from where we embark to Urnes. Walk up to the stave church, among the oldest and most celebrated in Norway, with carvings dating to the 12th century. Its beautiful orchard setting is on a promontory above Lustrafjord (a branch of the Sognefjord) with views north and south. Day 7: Mundal to Bergen. The morning is free to visit Mundal’s church and Hay-on-Wye-style bookstalls, or to walk or cycle round the fjord. Lunch in the hotel before boarding the ferry to Balestrand (1 hour 30 minutes) connecting then to the boat along Sognefjord to the Atlantic and Bergen, a route taken by many a British tourist in the 19th century (c. 3 hours 45 minutes). Arrive at the hotel in Bergen c. 9.00pm. Illustration: Bergen, watercolour by N. Jungman, publ. 1905.
M A IN L A N D E U R O P E : NORWAY
For most of the twentieth century, the legend of Scandinavian art, design and architecture grew and grew; an austerely simple yet humane design effortlessly in harmony with nature. Yet somehow Norway was never part of this. Facing the North Atlantic it seemed distant, more attuned to the brilliant melancholy of Grieg, Ibsen and Munch. But that is only a part of the story, and this tour combines landscape, art and design to give a fuller sense of Norway’s extraordinary beauty and creativity. In the folds of the fjords there have always been some of the most remarkable wooden buildings and towns – and boats – in Europe, while already in the 1930s Arne Korsmo’s beautiful villa above Oslofjord showed a particular Norwegian modernism. In the last two generations, bolstered by the extraordinary, well-invested wealth of their oil reserves, the Norwegians have set about designing a society to match the beauty of their setting, and place them at the forefront of contemporary design. We begin in Oslo, which in the last few years has become one of Europe’s most civilized and elegant cities, now crowned by Snøhetta’s astonishing Opera House. Its sheltered location and wide bourgeois streets could not contrast more than with the drama of Bergen and its dense wooden Hansa Bryggen where we end. However, both cities host great collections of paintings that show the fine eye and great skill with which Norwegians have observed their milieu. As with everywhere else in Norway, water dominates. In fact the story of Norwegian design really begins with our visit to the Viking longboats and continues at the Urnes stave church which overlooks the bucolic Sognefjord two hundred miles inland. We travel there from Oslo on one of the most beautiful train journeys imaginable, and then sail across the fjord to the beguiling timber Hotel Mundal. We leave for Bergen again by boat, following the fjord to the Atlantic. It is in the tiny town of Mundal, lying in the shadow of Norway’s largest glacier, that Sverre Fehn built his ‘Bremuseum’ (glacier museum). Fehn, who died in 2009, produced an architecture of intelligence and poetry that has made him the subject of veneration unmatched since Alvar Aalto.
His Hedmark museum in Hamar, one of the most significant interpretations of an historic site in Europe, is simply extraordinary.
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Norway: Art, Architecture, Landscape continued
Day 8: Bergen. A lively port of immense charm flanked by wooded hills. Walk along the boardwalks of the Bryggen, the colourful mediaeval merchants’ quarter and home to the Hanseatic Museum. Ride the funicular train up Mount Fløyen for spectacular views. Continue to the heart of the modern city, including the museum quarter laid out from the 1920s around a lake. The Fine Arts Museum is superb for modern and Norwegian art.
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Day 9: Bergen. Free morning. Suggestions include the fish market, the Bryggen Museum or the Decorative Arts Museum. In the afternoon depart for Troldhaugen, the idyllic summer home of Edvard Grieg. See his villa and waterside studio, and also his tomb. Private recital in the concert hall here (to be confirmed). Continue to Bergen airport and fly to Heathrow arriving c. 9.30pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,990 or £3,860 without flights. Single occupancy: £4,750 or £4,620 without flights. Included meals: 3 lunches, 6 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Grand Hotel, Oslo (grand. no): 5-star hotel in the heart of the city; a short walk from the National Gallery. Hotel Mundal (hotelmundal.no): small, historic hotel on the waterfront; charming, eccentric and reminiscent of a private home; rooms vary in size. Clarion Hotel, Bergen (choicehotels.com): attractive 4-star hotel on the waterfront in the Bryggen; bedrooms are smartly furnished with rich colour schemes. 1 54
Dr Frank Høifødt Art historian, lecturer and writer. Former Associate Professor at the University of Oslo and director of the Vigeland Museum. He is an expert on Edvard Munch and was for years a curator at the Munch Museum in Oslo. He has published extensively on the artist. In 2016, he curated a Munch exhibition at Gallery F15 in Moss.
Lofoten Piano Festival July 2018 Lecturer: Dr Michael Downes Details available in November 2017 Please contact us to register your interest
See pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies.
The Lofoten Piano Festival was formed under the artistic direction of pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet in 2014. In 2018, the festival programme is curated by Betrand Chamayou.
How strenuous? This is a long tour with a lot of travelling – by coach, boat and train. You need to be fit and able to carry or wheel your own luggage. Walking is often on uneven ground and uphill. Average distance by coach per day: 32 miles.
Lying within the Arctic circle, distinctive scenery of deep fjords and dramatic mountains make up the landscape of the Lofoten archipelago. The tour includes walks led by an experienced guide.
Group size: between 12 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Mediaeval Burgundy, 9–16 June 2018 (p.70); Dutch Painting, 27–30 June 2018 (p.151); The Schubertiade – with mountain walks, 27 June–1 July 2018 (p.51).
Rock Art in Scandinavia, 24 June– 1 July 2018 – see page 186. Illustration: wood engraving c. 1880.
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The islands boast archaeological finds from the Iron and Viking Ages; the town of Vågen the first known town formation in northern Norway in the early Viking Age. Concert venues include intimate churches, the Lofoten ‘Cathedral,’ the largest wooden building north of Trondheim, and a modern concert hall in the port town of Svolvær. Performances by: Betrand Chamayou, Leif Ove Andsens, Yulianna Avdeeva, Francesco Pietmontesi, Nelson Freire, Ah Ruem Ahn, Lofoten Festival Strings, the Engegård Quartet, Maximilliam Schnaus (organ) and Marianne Beate Kielland (mezzo-soprano).
Kraków & Silesia Art, architecture and history in southern Poland 22–29 June 2018 (me 929) 8 days • £2,730 Lecturer: Dr Jana Gajdošová 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.
Day 1: London to Wrocław. Fly at c. 10.00am from London Heathrow to Kraków (British Airways). Drive to Wrocław and settle in at the hotel before an introductory lecture and dinner. 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 171m-long 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. Overnight Wrocław. 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). Overnight Wrocław. 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. Final night in Wrocław. 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 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. Overnight in Kraków. 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 and Leonardo’s Lady with an Ermine. 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
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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. 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.
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Illustration: Kraków, St Florian Gate, steel engraving c. 1850.
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Kraków & Silesia continued
Walking & Gardens in Madeira Garden of the Atlantic
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 mediaeval art and architecture, especially in Central Europe, England, Germany and Italy. See pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies.
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. Final night in Kraków. Day 8: Kraków to London. Visit the Cloth Hall, still a covered market below and with a gallery of magnificent 19th-century Polish art above. Fly to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 3.45pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,730 or £2,590 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,190 or £3,050 without flights. Included meals: 2 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.
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Combine this tour with: A Festival of Music in Prague, 13–19 June 2018 (p.56); Art in Switzerland, 16–20 June 2018 (p.188); Danish Castles & Gardens, 2–8 July 2018 (p.58).
E U R O P E : POLAND, PORTUGAL What else is included in the price? See page 8. 1 56
8–13 October 2018 (mf 211) 6 days • £2,440 Lecturer: Dr Gerald Luckhurst Four moderate walks of a maximum of four miles through Madeira’s magnificent landscapes: coastal, woodland and mountainous. A focus on both Madeira’s formal gardens and its natural flora and wildlife. Stay in Madeira’s most famous hotel. Sitting in the sub-tropical Atlantic, closer to Morocco than to Portugal, Madeira is a startling island, rising high and steep from the ocean. Consisting overwhelmingly of basalt rock, which at the formation of the Atlantic Ocean started spewing from the earth’s core around 130 million years ago, the land of Madeira itself is probably five million years old. The volcanic nature of this island produces not only steep gorges radiating from the rugged central mountains – the highest of which, Pico Ruivo, stands at 1,861 metres above sea level – but also accounts for the spectacular coastal scenery. This tour explores both settings. A hugely varied number of plants and flowers enjoy this dynamic combination of fertile soil and warm temperatures. Bananas and vines, two of Madeira’s major exports, flourish on the coastal plains and lower slopes, while lush evergreen vegetation covers the higher mountain slopes. As is standard on remote islands, there has been considerable speciation, and more than 131 plant species are endemic or unique to Madeira. Of particular interest are the laurisilva woodlands, the large house leeks, woody sow-thistles and marguerites, the beautiful shrubby Echium species and the curious Dragon tree. By exploring the terrain on foot we examine these species and their setting in greater and more rewarding detail.
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Aside from the ecological and horticultural aspects of this tour, there is also the opportunity to study the history of the island’s greatest export, Madeira wine. Although established as a Portuguese colony since Prince Henry the Navigator’s expedition landed in the early fifteenth century, it was following the marriage of Charles II to Catherine of Braganza that commerce with the British was encouraged in 1663. This marked the beginning of the wine trade, which has been significant ever since. We have organised a private tasting and visit to a winery that has been operating on the island for over two hundred years.
It in e r a r y Day 1. Fly at c. 12.30pm from London Gatwick to Funchal, (British Airways). Lecture and dinner in the hotel. First of five nights in Funchal. Day 2. Morning walk (level and easy walk along the levada, narrow in places with a descent onto the road to finish, c. 5 km) along the Levada dos Tornos. Starting in the hills above Funchal, we walk to the Blandy family estate at Palheiro for lunch and a guided visit. The extensive subtropical gardens, first acquired by John Blandy in 1885, have been continually developed by the family. Some free time to enjoy the camellias, centennial trees, the rose garden and myriad other flowers and climbers. Day 3. A guided tour of Funchal’s centre focusing on its city gardens and historic monuments. The Mercado dos Lavadores (farmers’ market) is a brilliantly vibrant showcase of the island’s produce. Visit the Gothic Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption, with its whitewashed walls and Mudéjar-inspired ceiling, and the Jesuit collegiate church. Drive to Madeira’s easternmost peninsular, Ponta do São Lourenço, for an afternoon walk (c. 6 km, with steep ascents and
descents on stepped paths; the length of the walk is subject to weather conditions) in a rugged, almost lunar landscape, home to fossils, cacti and the odd flash of flowers. Day 4. A morning visit to the Boa Vista orchid gardens which house the rarest and most unusual collection of orchids on the island. The Jardim Botânico located in the Quinta of Bom Sucesso is home to over 100 species of indigenous plants, as well as tropical and sub-tropical fruit trees and coffee trees, sugar cane and popular medicinal plants. Visit one of the island’s newest gardens, located on Ponta da Cruz, the southernmost point of Madeira. This is the warmest and sunniest spot on the island which makes for an extraordinarily colourful garden. The rest of the day is free. Day 5. In the cool hills above Funchal is the unesco Biosphere site at Ribeiro Frio, where a botanical garden and trout hatchery sit among quiet glades. Walk along the path to Balcões and back (3 km), with views of the craggy valleys below. Afternoon walk (moderate, 5.6 km, a stony path with some steep sections) to Madeira’s highest peak, Pico Ruivo, with wonderful 360° views stretching to the horizon, and a dramatic vista down to the small town of Curral das Freiras. Private evening visit to the Blandy Wine Lodge with a Madeira wine tasting. Day 6. Drive to Funchal airport for the flight to London Gatwick, arriving at c. 5.30pm. Although we have chosen the walks on this itinerary with due care and consideration, Madeira is subject to high winds which may mean that walks have to be changed or modified at short notice. We follow the advice of local walking guides.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,440 or £2,220 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,930 or £2,710 without flights. Included meals: 2 lunches, 3 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Reid’s Palace Hotel, Funchal (belmond.com): arguably the best hotel on the island, this famous 5-star luxury hotel is set in subtropical gardens overlooking the Atlantic. Rooms are elegant in décor with sea or garden views. There are three excellent restaurants to choose from. Service here is second to none. How strenuous? Walking is an integral part of this tour and if you cannot complete a 3-mile country walk with ascents and descents, do not consider booking. There are 4 walks of between 2–4 miles. These walks can be rated as easy to moderate though strong knees and ankles are essential, as are a pair of well-worn hiking boots with good ankle support. Walks have been carefully selected but some steep rises and falls are unavoidable and terrain can be loose under foot, particularly in wet weather. This tour is not suitable for people who suffer from vertigo. Please contact us if you would like to discuss the walks in further detail. Average distance by coach per day: 39 miles.
Gardens of Central Portugal April 2019 Details available in July 2018 Please contact us to register your interest Visit some of Portugals’ most enchanting palaces, botanical garden and dramatic parklands. Sintra’s lush mountainscape is the setting for Romantic country estates and modern private gardens; here meet owners, head gardeners and park directors. Walk within Bussaco’s monastic walled estate with ancient trees protected by a Papal bull. In Lisbon, visit the extensive greenhouse Estufa Fria, and the enigmatic gardens of Fronteira, with some of the best painted tiles in the country. Led by Dr Gerald Luckhurst, landscape architect and garden historian who works on the restoration of Portugal’s historic gardens, including the awardwinning Monserrate in Sintra.
Group size: between 10 and 18 participants. Combine this tour with: World Heritage Malta, 1–7 October 2018 (p.148); Dark Age Brilliance, 14–21 October 2018 (p.115); Civilisations of Sicily, 15–27 October 2018 (p.141). Illustrations. Opposite: mid-19th-century steel engraving. Below: Funchal, wood engraving c. 1870.
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Wellington in the Peninsula, 15–27 May 2018 – see page 184. 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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St Petersburg Pictures and palaces in the imperial capital 11–18 May 2018 (me 860) 8 days • £3,010 Lecturer: Dr Alexey Makhrov 14–21 September 2018 (mf 148) 8 days • £3,010 Lecturer: Dr Alexey Makhrov 28 September–5 October 2018 (mf 196) Exclusively for solo travellers 8 days • £3,170 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.
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.
It in e r a r y 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.
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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.
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Day 3. 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. 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. Day 4. A full-day excursion to two of the summer palaces about 20 miles from St Petersburg, both 1 58
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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 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. 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. A second visit to the Hermitage to concentrate on specific aspects of the collections and to pursue individual passions. 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. 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.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. 11–18 May and 14–21 September 2018. Two sharing: £3,010 or £2,790 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,380 or £3,160 without flights. Price, per person. 28 September–5 October 2018 (exclusively for solo travellers): £3,170 or £2,950 without flights. Included meals: 5 dinners with wine. Music: details of performances in St Petersburg will be sent to participants c. 1 month before the tour and tickets can be requested. Visas: see page 161. Accommodation. Hotel Angleterre (angleterrehotel.com): 5-star hotel in the 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. In May, combine this tour with: Moscow & the Golden Ring, 19–28 May 2018 (p.160). Or in mid-September, with: Pompeii & Herculaneum, 24–29 September 2018 (p.138); Lucca, 24–30 September 2018 (p.124). Or in late-September, with: Gardens & Villas of the Italian Lakes, 20–26 September 2018 (p.97). Illustration: St Petersburg, Nevsky Prospekt towards the Admirality, lithograph (detail) by André Durand c. 1840.
Moscow & St Petersburg Cultural highlights of Russia’s greatest cities 3–11 September 2018 (mf 119) 9 days • £3,780 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.
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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 exploration and time to take in significant history paintings.
Illustration: Moscow, the Kremlin, engraving c. 1830.
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) from Moscow to St Petersburg. Dinner is included in the hotel upon arrival.
Day 6. In the morning, a tour by coach, taking in the sumptuous Marble Palace (exterior), designed by Rinaldi in Baroque and Neo-Classical style, and the 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 7. Walk 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. 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. A morning excursion to Peterhof (return by hydrofoil, weather permitting), the magnificent palace on the Gulf of Finland with cascades and fountains. In the afternoon, a private backstage tour of the Mariinsky theatre before some free time. The date and time of this appointment can 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 1: London to Moscow. Fly at c. 11.00am from London Heathrow to Moscow (British Airways). There is time to settle in to the hotel before dinner. First of four nights in Moscow.
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.
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Moscow, the older of the two metropoles, is the more modern. It developed as the chief city of Muscovy from the twelfth century and became capital of the Russian Empire as it expanded in later centuries. Though abandoned by Peter the Great and his successors, it continued to grow and to some extent remained the spiritual and artistic centre of Russia. It regained its status as capital in 1918, and in the last two decades has undergone massive changes – with restoration, painting and gilding, as well as a vibrant commercial and cultural life transforming its economy and appearance, all but banishing the drabness of the Communist era. The Tretyakov Gallery and Pushkin Fine Arts Museum are not to be missed, nor are the great treasures of the Kremlin Armoury. Founded by Peter the Great in 1703, St Petersburg is perhaps the grandest city in Europe, certainly one of the most beautiful. Laid out on a virgin site, on a monumental scale, its magnificent buildings reflect all the classical styles of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; little of the fabric of the city has changed since. The Hermitage is one of the world’s greatest art museums and the largest, with an immensely rich collection of paintings, sculpture, antiquities and decorative arts filling the enormous Winter Palace of the Romanov Tsars. There are also other great galleries to see, including the Russian Museum, which houses a wonderful collection of Russian art, from icons onwards.
Moscow & St Petersburg continued
Moscow & the Golden Ring Icons and monuments of Holy Russia
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 postdoctoral work as a Research Fellow at Exeter. He now lives in Switzerland where he teaches courses on Russian art. See pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies.
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 it. 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.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,780 or £3,470 without flights. Single occupancy: £4,310 or £4,000 without flights. Included meals: 1 picnic lunch and 5 dinners with wine. Music: a private performance with The Dominant Quartet is included in the price. Details of performances in St Petersburg will be sent to participants c. 1 month before the tour and tickets can be requested. Visas: see page 161 (opposite). Accommodation. Hotel National, Moscow (national.ru): elegant, 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.
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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.
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Combine this tour with: Walking in Franconia or A Festival of Music in Franconia, 25 August–1 September 2018 (p.88); The Schubertiade, 27 August–2 September 2018 (p.50); The Hanseatic League, 12–19 September 2018 (p.84); Hungary, 12–19 September 2018 (p.96); Albania: Crossroads of Antiquity, 12–21 September 2018 (p.47).
What else is included in the price? See page 8. 1 60
19–28 May 2018 (me 878) 10 days • £3,740 Lecturer: Dr Alexey Makhrov 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. 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’.
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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. 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
‘I couldn’t praise Dr Alexey Makhrov highly enough. On top of delivering a lot of information in a clear and engaging manner, he was able to answer individual questions with ease.’ 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.
It in e r a r y 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.
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
Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,740 or £3,460 without flights. Single occupancy: £4,260 or £3,980 without flights. Included meals: 7 lunches, 8 dinners, with wine. Visas: see below. Accommodation. Hotel National: elegant, comfortable 5-star hotel in the city centre, within easy walking distance of the Kremlin. Ring Premier, Yaroslavl: 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.
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 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.
Combine this tour with: St Petersburg, 11–18 May 2018 (p.158); Ballet in Copenhagen, 31 May–4 June 2018 (p.61).
Day 8: Suzdal, Vladimir. The focus in Vladimir is 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 (frescoes by celebrated iconists Andrei Rublev and Daniil Chorny) and St Demetrius Cathedral, fabulously decorated with stone carvings. A short distance north-east, walk across water meadows to the perfectly proportioned Church of Intercession on Nerl, a masterpiece of Russian medieval architecture.
You will need to complete an online application in the two-month period before departure, and submit this, along with your passport. Since December 2014, it has been 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.
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.
R u s s ia n v is a s 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.
Visa issuing times vary from country to country but UK residents should expect to be without their passports for approximately one week.
E U R O P E : RUSSIA, SERBIA
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 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 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.
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Day 10: Moscow. Free morning. Midday transfer to Domodedovo Airport for the flight to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 6.00pm.
Illustration: Moscow, Cathedral of St Basil, wood engraving from ‘Russian Pictures’ 1889.
M A IN L A N D
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.
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.
The Western Balkans, May and October 2018 – see page 54. 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 It in e r a r y 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. 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.
18–26 May 2018 (me 873) 9 days • £2,320 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.
M A IN L A N D E U R O P E : 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. 1 62
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 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. s ra ion evo a ch rch and own ha wa erco o r . o herso e c . .
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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
Walking in Slovenia A green and historic nation 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’. Hronsek has a large 18th-century wooden church. Overnight Banská Bystrica.
3–10 September 2018 (mf 111) 8 days • £2,980 Lecturer: Professor Cathie Carmichael
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.
A small country with a fascinating history, ancient and modern.
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.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,320 or £2,110 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,490 or £2,280 without flights. Included meals: 5 dinners with wine.
Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Berry & Touraine, 28 May–5 June 2018 (p.69).
One of Europe’s smallest countries, Slovenia is distinguished by vivid and varied landscapes and its intelligent, bookish locals, who have a clear respect and love for their inheritance which is reflected in every aspect of life from recycling and housing to literature and the arts. According to seventeenth century writer Baron Valvasor, the Slovenes already were skiing on the Bloška planota to get around in winter, while saving the copious shellfish in their lakes to take to the towns. The stunning Adriatic white buildings on the coastline betray a Venetian past, best seen on the quayside in Piran. On the other side of the country in Ptuj, a town dominated by its twelfth-century castle, there is a clear Austrian legacy. Simon Clements, an English wine merchant who travelled here in 1715, described the country as ‘wonderfully cultivated’ with ‘vineyards and little churches’ and ‘pretty fair buildings on the tops and sides of the hills’. A visit to the tranquil Lake Bled, one of the loveliest spots in Europe, will confirm his opinions. Slovenia’s proximity to Austria, Hungary, Croatia and Italy give it a complex history of different cultures interacting during times of harmony and conflict. The unique Slavonic Slovene language has some archaic characteristics and is spoken by just over two million people, almost all of whom are bi- or tri-lingual in other languages. In 1991 the Slovenes left their Yugoslav past under Marshall Tito and his successors behind them, but reminders from that era can be seen in bakeries, coffee shops and Balkan grilled meats. It is home to some surprising historic gems including the First World War site of memory at Kobarid, elegant onion-domed Catholic churches and the quirky modernist architecture of Jože Plečnik in the capital, Ljubljana. Slovenia is an ideal place to appreciate on foot before tasting the local grape varieties cultivated since mediaeval times and sampling cuisine that takes its notes from the best of Central Europe.
Day 4: Vintgar Gorge, Lake Bled. Drive north for a walk in the Vintgar Gorge: 6 km, c. 2 hours 30 minutes. Ascent: 451m, descent: 447m. The walk begins by passing through small villages and countryside, with views of Bled, Triglav (Slovenia’s highest peak), and across the Alps to Austria. The narrow wooden walkway through the gorge itself makes for a stunning finish. In the afternoon admire Slovenia’s jewel, Lake Bled, from above at the 17th-century castle and travel by gondola to its picturesque island with a tiny church containing Gothic frescoes.
E U R O P E : SLOVAKIA, SLOVENIA
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.
Under-appreciated wines and varied cuisine, influenced by close neighbours.
Day 3: Ljubljana. Absorb the wide-ranging architectural styles of the capital’s historic core, vigorously reconstructed by the architect Jože Plečnik following the collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy. See fine Baroque churches, NeoRenaissance government buildings, and the enchantingly picturesque riverside with its incomparable nexus of Plečnik’s bridges. First of three nights in Ljubljana.
M A IN L A N D
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, Levoča (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. Single rooms throughout are doubles for sole use.
Five country walks with beautiful and diverse scenery: vineyards, lakes, gorges, forests and coastline.
route the pilgrim church of Our Lady of Sorrows in Jeruzalem. Return to Ptuj in the afternoon, one of Slovenia’s oldest cities, with a fine mediaeval centre and pedestrian streets. Visit the majestic castle with its excellent regional museum.
It in e r a r y Day 1: Ljubljana to Ptuj. Fly at c. 1.00pm from London Stansted to Ljubljana (EasyJet). Drive east to Ptuj for the first of two nights. Day 2: Jeruzalem, Ptuj. A morning walk on farm tracks, forest paths and country roads through the rolling hills of the Jeruzalem and Ljutomer vineyards with views to Slovenia’s four neighbouring countries: 7 km, c. 2 hours 30 minutes. Ascent: 235m, descent: 153m. Visit en
What else is included in the price? See page 8. s ra ion
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Walking in Slovenia continued
Walking to Santiago On foot for selected sections of the pilgrims’ way
Day 5: Kobarid. Travelling north-west to the Italian border, visit the town of Kobarid, home of an excellent museum examining the WW1 Battle of Caporetto in 1917. A lovely walk by the turquoise waters of the Soča river follows the Italian line of defence, and takes in the Italian cemetery commissioned by Mussolini in 1938, army trenches and a waterfall: 5 km, c. 3 hours. Ascent: 352m, descent: 360m. Day 6: Vipava Valley to the Istrian Peninsula. Tasting and lunch in Goče, an enchanting wine village in the Vipava Valley with over sixty cellars. Continue to the coast and walk from Strunjan to Piran, 5 km, c. 2 hours. Ascent: 205m, descent: 181m. This is an easy walk that begins by crossing Strunjan salt pans, established in ad 804 and an important source of income to the region in the Middle Ages. Thereafter there are fine views of the Gulf of Trieste, the Slovenian and Italian coastlines, and St George’s campanile indicates our arrival in the beautiful Venetian town of Piran. First of two nights in Piran. Day 7: Hrastovlje, Piran. Morning walk from the Romanesque Church of the Holy Trinity in Hrastovlje with exquisite frescoes depicting the danse macabre: 4 km, c. 2 hours. Ascent: 391m. Descent: 399m. This is a circular walk that climbs to the abandoned village of Zanigrad, below the karst plateau, with wonderful views. Return to Piran after lunch. Once a group of mediaeval fishing villages, this coastal town was developed by the Venetians into a centre of civilisation, producing composers such as Giuseppe Tartini and other notable figures. Day 8: Piran. Some free time to enjoy Piran before driving to Ljubljana Airport in time for the flight to London Stansted, arriving at 6.00pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,980 or £2780 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,360 or £3,160 without flights. Included meals: 5 lunches, 6 dinners, with wine.
M A IN L A N D
Accommodation. Hotel Mitra, Ptuj (hotel-mitra. si): centrally located 3-star hotel. Hotel Grand Union, Ljubljana (union-hotels.eu) the city’s oldest hotel, rated 4-star. Hotel Piran (hotel-piran. si): recently refurbished 4-star hotel with sea views.
E U R O P E : SLOVENIA, SPAIN
How strenuous? This tour should be considered only by those who are used to regular country walking with some uphill content. Strong knees and ankles are essential, as are a pair of well-worn hiking boots with good ankle support. Terrain can be loose underfoot, and slippery in wet weather. Average distance by coach per day: 82 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: The Imperial Riviera, 10–16 September 2018 (p.106); Hungary, 12–19 September 2018 (p.96).
The Imperial Riviera, 10–16 September 2018 – see page 106. 1 64
5–16 June 2018 (me 896) 12 days • £3,420 • Flights not included Lecturer: Dr Alexandra Gajewski 4–15 September 2018 (mf 102) 12 days • £3,420 • Flights not included Lecturer: Dr Alexandra Gajewski The last great pilgrimage route in Christendom which still attracts walkers; scenically wonderful with much fine architecture. Selected sections from the Pyrenees through northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela. Walking in comfort: good hotels; luggage transferred separately. Still one of the most splendid walking routes in Europe, the Camino de Santiago runs almost 500 miles across northern Spain to the supposed tomb of St James, Sant Iago. Normally, the journey takes a month on foot. We are setting out to walk the highlights in twelve days, taking in the most historically charged and beautiful sections. For earlier pilgrims, the lure was a reduction of the soul’s time in Purgatory; now the motives are more usually historical and cultural, and sometimes also deeply personal. Religious commitment is less in evidence. But for many who undertake the magnificent walk there is also a spiritual dimension. Asceticism is not a necessary ingredient. Instead of staying in bunk beds in pilgrim hostels we repose in hotels, ranging from workaday to some of Spain’s finest. Instead of carrying huge packs with all our necessities, we carry only our own day sacks while the luggage moves by road. Our coach intersects with walkers every two or three hours, allowing respite to anyone who needs to ride. We eat well, often picnicking in deep country, and try some of the fine wines grown along the route. But as with all pilgrimages this is a linear walk, involving a new hotel each night except on two rest days. We are like pilgrims, rather than tourists, visiting monuments along the route and what time and tiredness allow at the end of the day’s walking. There will be interpretative commentary by the lecturer and an introduction to the major buildings. But the experience of walking the camino is what is essentially on offer, along a route which has for centuries compelled the imagination.
It in e r a r y 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. Ascent: 397m. Descent: 606m. 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
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stone-built villages. After a picnic lunch, drive to Haro. Overnight Haro. Day 3: Nájera to Santo Domingo de la Calzada. 21 km. Ascent: 640m. Descent: 533m. 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. Day 4: Villafranca Montes de Oca to Agés. 15.8 km. Ascent: 537m. Descent: 508m. 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 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 6: Rabé de las Calzadas to Hontanas. 18.8 km. Ascent: 828m. Descent: 780m. A fine if strenuous walk, swinging 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. Day 7: Hospital de Orbigo to Astorga. 16.2 km. Ascent: 444m. Descent: 389m. 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. Ascent: 297m. Descent: 550m. 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. 18.5 km. Ascent: 1206m. Descent: 1449m. 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.
r e ce en o r wi h an o s andin o r ana er and ec rer. O r fe ow i ri s were wonderf co anions.
Day 12. Drive to Santiago Airport in time for the flight to London Gatwick (Easyjet, currently departing at 10.15am).
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Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,420. Single occupancy: £3,780. Included meals: 8 lunches (2 are picnics) and 8 dinners, with wine. Flights are not included in the cost of the tour because the most convenient flights are with Easyjet and we cannot make a booking without knowing the passenger name. Suggested flight details are provided with your Confirmation of Booking, but please contact us if you require this information sooner. 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. NH Collection León Plaza Mayor (nh-collection.com): 4-star hotel in an 18th-century converted military building in the main square. 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? We cover up to 134 km of the full 780 km route with an average of 17 km of walking per day. Participants should be used to walking cross-country, uphill and down, and be able to walk pleasurably for up to 4 hours 30 minutes at a time and for up to 5 hours 30 minutes per day. Fitness is essential. Please do not book this tour in order to get fit. Safety and comfort are our main concern and while there are opportunities to retire, the coach is intended as back-up rather than an alternative means of transport. Group size: between 8 and 18 participants. In June, combine this tour with: Norway: Art, Architecture, Landscape, 18–26 June 2018 (p.153); Art in Madrid, 19–23 June 2018 (p.176). Or in September, with: Gastronomic Galicia, 17–24 September 2018 (p.166); Tastes of Le Marche, 17–24 September 2018 (p.126); Civilisations of Sicily, 17–29 September 2018 (p.141); Walking a Royal River, 17–23 September 2018 (p.13). 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 11: Santiago. The cathedral is a Romanesque masterpiece with a magnificent carved portal. Guided tour of the cathedral roof and those who wish may attend Pilgrim’s mass at midday. The rest of the day is free.
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Day 10. Phase 1: Sarriá to Ferreiros. 13.2 km. Ascent: 710m. Descent: 499m. Phase 2: Monte del Gozo to Santiago de Compostela. 4.4 km. Ascent: 267m. Descent: 375m. 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 4.4 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.
Gastronomic Galicia Food and wine in an enchanting corner of north-west Spain 17–24 September 2018 (mf 160) 8 days • £3,310 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.
It in e r a r y 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.
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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.
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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 dramatic coastal landscapes and the charming town of Noia en route. Lunch in Finisterre takes the form of 1 66
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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-star Michelin), 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–star Michelin). Chef Javier Olleros has a ‘km -1’ philosophy, with most ingredients coming from within 15 km of the kitchen. Visit the extraordinary organic vegetable garden that supplies the restaurant, before tasting the fruits of the painstaking work that goes into caring for the garden. Day 8. Free morning in Pontevedra. Drive to Porto and fly to London Gatwick, arriving at c. 8.30pm.
Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,310 or £3,120 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,780 or £3,590 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 those who cannot eat these. 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. Combine this tour with: Walking to Santiago, 4–15 September 2018 (p.164). s ra ion an ia o a hedra wood en ravin c.
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Cave Art in Spain Atapuerca to Altamira 4–10 September 2018 (mf 103) 7 days • £2,370 Lecturer: Dr Paul Bahn Some of the most important prehistoric caves in Europe, including Altamira II, El Castillo and Tito Bustillo. An area of outstanding natural beauty with charming villages. Led by Dr Paul Bahn, Britain’s leading specialist in prehistoric art.
Day 1. Fly at c. 9.15am from London Heathrow to Madrid (Iberia Airlines). Continue by coach to Burgos. The Museum of Human Evolution is one of the biggest and most important in the world devoted to this theme, and contains a magnificent display of the major finds from the sites at Atapuerca. Overnight in Burgos. Day 2: Burgos. Atapuerca is one of the richest and most important groups of archaeological sites in the world, and yet despite the amazing quantity of discoveries so far, the surface has barely been scratched, and work will continue for decades or even centuries to come. Already Atapuerca has yielded the oldest evidence for human occupation in Europe, with early tools and
Day 3: El Castillo, El Pendo. The decorated caves of El Castillo and Las Monedas are close to each other but very different. El Castillo was decorated in many periods of the Ice Age over thousands of years, and indeed contains the oldest known cave art at present, while Las Monedas was decorated by one person at the end of the Ice Age. Both contain some masterpieces. At El Pendo the art on the back wall of the vast entrance chamber was only discovered recently. Careful cleaning of the surface revealed a whole series of beautiful animal figures. Day 4: Covalanas, Altamira. The cave of Covalanas is often voted people’s favourite, because unlike the others it is entirely pristine, with no installations of any kind, so that one visits with a hand-held lamp. It is so narrow that one’s face is literally inches from these beautiful dottedoutline figures from about 20,000 years ago. Only seven people may enter at one time. The extremely accurate facsimile of the cave of Altamira is as astonishing as the original, and enables one to have a detailed look at the many facets of this highly complex decorated ceiling. Day 5: Pindal, Tito Bustillo. Pindal contains two of the very few depictions of mammoths in northern Spain, as well as some other very fine and fascinating figures, while the cave’s spectacular coastal setting always makes it a popular site. The cave of Tito Bustillo requires a long walk past impressive stalagmites and stalactites to reach the complex decorated panel, one of the finest in all of cave art, which features the striking use of a very rare purple pigment. Day 6: Candamo, Teverga. The visitor centre at Candamo contains a facsimile of the cave itself and
other shelters of the region. The Park at Teverga is a recent development which provides a final overview of the phenomenon of Ice Age cave art, including facsimiles of panels from a variety of caves in Spain and France. Day 7: Oviedo. Some free time in Oviedo to visit the Gothic cathedral, with a fine altarpiece and tombs of the Early Asturian kings, and the remarkable Cámara Santa, the original preRomanesque church of King Alfonso II the Chaste (791–842). Take an early afternoon flight from Asturias-Oviedo airport arriving at London Heathrow at c. 3.45pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,370 or £2,230 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,620 or £2,480 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 5 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel NH Palacio de Burgos (nh-hotels.com): smart 4-star hotel in a converted palace. Rooms are comfortable and richly furnished. Parador de Santillana Gil Blas, Santillana del Mar (parador.es): 4-star parador, traditionally furnished. Eurostars Hotel de la Reconquista, Oviedo (eurostarshotels.co.uk): 5-star hotel in a converted 17th-century hospice. How strenuous? A lot of walking is involved to reach the caves, often over rough ground or up steep gradients. Inside the caves the ground is slippery underfoot; sure-footedness is essential. Average distance by coach per day: 99 miles. Group size: between 10 and 18 participants. Combine this tour with: Hungary, 12–19 September 2018 (p.96); Albania: Crossroads of Antiquity, 12–21 September 2018 (p.47).
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evidence for cannibalism, as well as the world’s earliest evidence for some kind of funerary ritual, and a massive quantity of well-preserved bones of our distant ancestors. Burgos Cathedral is one of the most beautiful in Spain, combining French and German Gothic styles, and has remarkable vaults and 16th-century choir stalls. Drive in the late afternoon to Santillana del Mar for the first of three nights.
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Visiting the Ice Age decorated caves of Europe may be a pilgrimage, in homage to the region’s artists of 30,000–10,000 years ago, or it may simply be curiosity. But while one’s interest may have been triggered by books, television or lectures, there is simply no substitute for seeing the sites themselves, some of humankind’s greatest artistic achievements in their unusual, evocative and original settings. In addition, the caves of northern Spain are in regions of outstanding beauty, famed for their seafood and cuisine. Three nights are spent in Santillana del Mar, a wellpreserved mediaeval village close to Altamira, one of the most famous and historic decorated caves, located in a striking landscape. Other caves such as Covalanas and Pindal are in settings with breathtaking views. Whatever your motivation or interest, a visit to an Ice Age cave is a tremendous privilege. After more than a century of research we still only know about 400 such sites in Eurasia, and only a small fraction of these are open to the public because of difficulties of access or conservation concerns. As such, they constitute a very limited and finite resource, and yet visitors can approach these original masterpieces extremely closely, an experience unparalleled in major art galleries. Unlike a visit to the Louvre or the Prado, in entering a cave you are seeing the images precisely where they were created; you are standing or crouching just where the artists did. In many cases the journey to the cave entrance and the route through the chambers give your experience a sense of immediacy, purity and vividness. Entering a world far removed from one of commerce, art-dealers and critics enhances a feeling of connection with the artists. There is nothing like a stalactite dripping on your head to remind you that you are in a pristine and natural setting.
Castile & León Ancient kingdoms in the heart of Spain 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 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.
1–10 October 2018 (mf 204) 10 days • £2,770 Lecturer: Gijs van Hensbergen The ancient kingdoms of Castile and León have been responsible for some of the most emblematic periods of Spanish history and are home to many of Spain’s finest cities. Architectural magnificence throughout: from Visigothic and Romanesque to the 18th century; the great Gothic cathedrals of Burgos, León Segovia and Salamanca are highlights. Another striking aspect is the wealth of brilliant sculpture, especially of the late-mediaeval and Renaissance periods.
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Walled villages, grand monasteries – including El Escorial, hilltop castles and a backdrop of vast, undulating landscape. Good food: suckling pig, slow-roast lamb and kid; good wine of the Ribera de Duero.
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It in e r a r y 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 11thcentury 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 honeycoloured hue of its stone, Salamanca is one of the most attractive cities in Spain and home to its most prestigious university. See the 16th-cent. Gothic ‘New Cathedral’ and austere Romanesque ‘Old 1 68
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 Romanesque architecture survives, including the cathedral of Byzantine influence. Drive to León, former capital of the ancient kingdom; visit the San Marcos monastery with 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. s ra ion e ovia a ran a de an defonso wa erco o r i a i on . .
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Day 9: Segovia, La Granja. Free morning; suggestions include the contemporary art museum of Esteban Vicente and the Museum of Segovia. Drive to La Granja de San Ildefonso, the palace constructed for Philip V in the early 18th century, with magnificent formal gardens. Day 10: El Escorial. This vast retreat-cum-palacecum-monastery-cum-pantheon was built from 1563 to 1584 for Philip II, successfully embodying his instructions for ‘nobility without arrogance, majesty without ostentation, severity in the whole’. Fly to London Heathrow, arriving at at c. 6.30pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,770 or £2,650 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,980 or £2,860 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 6 dinners with wine. 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 (hotelrealsegovia.com): 4-star hotel located next to the cathedral and the aqueduct. How strenuous? This is a long tour with a lot of walking in town centres, some of it on cobbled streets and uphill. Dinners tend to be at 8.30 or 9.00pm in Spain, so you might get to bed later than you would usually. Average distance by coach per day: 73 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Lucca, 24–30 September 2018 (p.124).
Bilbao to Bayonne Food, art and architecture in the Basque lands 3–10 September 2018 (mf 106) 8 days • £3,460 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. 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.
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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-Marie 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-Marie cooks alongside his daughter, Elena, voted best Female Chef in the World in 2012, and their restaurant ranks in the world’s top ten. 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.
It in e r a r y Day 1: Bilbao. Fly at c. 8.30am (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Bilbao, Calatrava’s spectacular airport. In the afternoon, visit the Fine Arts Museum. Overnight Bilbao. 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. 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
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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 (subject to confirmation). Some free time to see the elaborate historicist architecture of the 19th-century extension and Moneo’s arts centre.
8–12 May 2018 (me 855) 5 days • £2,080 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. To its inhabitants, Barcelona is not so much Spain’s second city as the capital of Catalonia, a European metropolis rather than a Spanish one. The more independence it wins, the more it flourishes. Barcelona was Iberia’s leading maritime power before the discovery of America. It is not therefore surprising that it possesses one of the most extensive and best-preserved mediaeval quarters in Europe, with some marvellous Gothic churches and palaces.
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. 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. 2.00pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,460 or £3,310 without flights. Suite supplement in Vera: £50 (per person, based on two sharing). Single occupancy: £3,750 or £3,600 without flights.
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Included meals: 6 lunches and 4 dinners (3 of which are light) with wine.
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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; some late nights are inevitable. There is a fair amount of walking, some of it uphill or on roughly paved streets. We travel by coach on every day of the tour; average distance per day: 60 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Hungary, 12–19 September 2018 (p.96); Albania: Crossroads of Antiquity, 12–21 September 2018 (p.47). 1 70
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A highlight of the tour will be the museum of Catalonian art which displays the world’s best collection of Romanesque painting. But Barcelona is also a centre of modernity. After centuries of repression exercised by Madrid, the city took the lead in Spanish industrial development, becoming a centre of art and design of European importance and nurturing such modernists as Gaudí, Nonells, Picasso and Miró. There developed around the turn of the century designs which are unique to Barcelona, having more in common with their counterparts in other great capitals than with their Spanish peers. Gaudí’s creations took the possibilities of Art Nouveau to an unparalleled extreme, and he is now one of the most popular and most influential of architects. With the establishment of democracy in the 1970s, the shackles were again removed, and Barcelona became once more a leading world centre of fashion and design and remains to this day one of the most exciting European cities to visit.
Picasso in Spain Málaga, Madrid, Barcelona It in e r a r y Day 1. Fly at 11.20am 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 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. Drive to Gaudi’s Parc Güell, the incomplete ‘garden suburb’ with sinuous ceramic-clad tiles. Visit the house he lived in for 20 years, now a museum. The Monestir de Pedralbes is a 14th-century monastery complex with exquisite cloister arcades and frescoes. Drive to the Sagrada Familia, Gaudí’s extraordinary church, still years from completion, and 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.
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Included meals: 1 lunch and 3 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Condes de Barcelona (condesdebarcelona.com): 4-star hotel, very well placed for buildings by Gaudí; rooms are modern and comfortable. How strenuous? The tour involves a lot of walking, some of it over uneven paving, where vehicular access is restricted. You will have to use the Metro. Average distance by coach per day: 7 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Courts of Northern Italy, 13–20 May 2018 (p.107). s ra ion arce ona a hedra i ho ra h c.
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Some of the world’s best galleries: eponymous museums in Málaga & Barcelona; the Reina Sofia in Madrid. Places associated with the artist: cafés, houses, churches. Travel first-class between the three cities by high-speed train. Few painters have ever dominated their century as much as Pablo Picasso. Yet within his home country during the long period of Franco’s rule there were many who dismissed Picasso’s work as the ‘manic doodles of that artist from Malaga’ and reviled them as Communist bunk. Such works as were in Spain were secreted in clandestine private collections. All that has now changed. In Barcelona, always keen to thwart Castilian orthodoxy, and the beloved city of Picasso’s anarchist youth, he was honoured in the 1960s with the opening of its Picasso museum. It continues to expand and now occupies five adjacent mediaeval palaces. In 1981, just months after a coup attempt failed to overturn the new post-Franco order, Guernica arrived in Madrid to stamp its imprimatur on a young and fragile democracy. In late 2003, his home town of Málaga opened its own Picasso museum. This tour is not just centred on museums. There is as much to learn about Cubism in the mirrored reflections of Madrid’s Café Gijón as by studying Girl with Mandolin. In the country of café culture, understanding of his life and personality can be enlarged in Málaga’s Café Chinitas, his father’s
It in e r a r y Day 1: Málaga. Fly at c. 9.15am from London Gatwick to Málaga (British Airways). The afternoon walk includes the house where Picasso was born, which houses a small collection of his belongings, and the church of his baptism. First of two nights in Málaga. Day 2: Málaga. The Carmen Thyssen museum has a fine collection of old masters and 19th-century Spanish painting. The afternoon is spent in the Picasso Museum, housed in a fine 16th-century building, where over 200 works from family members span his entire career. Day 3: Málaga, Madrid. Morning visit to the Museo de Málaga with works by Picasso before travelling by high-speed AVE train to Madrid. Lunch is served on board. In the afternoon visit ho o ra h seo aciona en ro de r e eina of a oa n or s o n ores.
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Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,080 or £1,830 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,400 or £2,150 without flights.
Two nights in each of the major cities: Málaga, Madrid and Barcelona.
favourite watering hole, and Barcelona’s legendary Els Quatre Gats. If Picasso was quintessentially modern he was also completely submerged in Spain’s glorious artistic past. In Barcelona we study Picasso’s feverish encounter, late in life, with Velázquez’s Las Meninas, and in Madrid we see the original. If once Picasso was seen as French, today it is essential for our understanding to see him and situate him in Spain. It was a culture he carried with him into exile, guarded fiercely, and hankered for as he grew old and isolated. Surrealist twists of mind, torn scraps of paper, lightning notations, doodles and bottle-top sculptures were endlessly fashioned as he remembered and pored over the Spain of his youth. This tour recovers Picasso’s world – the world of the strong gaze – the ‘mirada fuerte’.
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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. Take the lateafternoon flight to Heathrow, arriving at c. 7.35pm.
29 October–4 November 2018 (mf 299) 7 days • £2,270 Lecturer: Gijs van Hensbergen
Picasso in Spain continued
Classic Catalan Wines Priorat, Montsant, Penedès and The Empordà
the Prado Museum, one of the world’s greatest art galleries. The evening is spent in Picasso-related haunts. First of two nights in Madrid. Day 4: Madrid. Start the day at the National Museum of Archaeology, good on ancient Iberian civilisation and Roman Spain. In the late afternoon visit the Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, one of the greatest modern art museums and home to Picasso’s Guernica. Day 5: Barcelona. Take the train from Madrid to Barcelona with lunch on board. Visit the National Museum of Catalan Art with its extraordinary collection of romanesque church frescoes and works from late 19th-century Barcelona life art world. First of two nights in Barcelona. Day 6: Barcelona. A morning walk includes the rooftop views from the Palau Güell, the Carrer d’Avinyó, inspiration of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, and Els Quatre Gats, the bar where Picasso held his first one-man show. The afternoon is devoted to the Picasso Museum: portraits, landscape sketches, Blue Period, cubism, late oils. Day 7: Sitges. Travel to Sitges, one of the most fashionable of coast towns, and visit the housemuseum of Picasso’s friend Santiago Rusiñol, which contains works by both artists. See also the adjoining Museu Maricel with its frescoes by Sert. Drive to the airport for the flight to Gatwick, arriving 4.45pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,270 or £2,070 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,660 or £2,460 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 6 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Molina Lario, Málaga (hotelmolinalario.com): functional 4-star in the centre. NH Palacio de Tepa, Madrid (nh-hoteles. com): small and excellently located 5-star hotel. Rooms are comfortable and décor is contemporary. Hotel Condes de Barcelona (condesdebarcelona. com): 4-star hotel, in a convenient location. Rooms are modern and comfortable.
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How strenuous? This tour involves two train journeys and three hotel changes, but driving is kept to a minimum. There is inevitably a lot of standing in museums and galleries. Dinners tend to be at 8.30 or 9.00pm in Spain, so you might get to bed later than you would usually.
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Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Art in the Netherlands, 21–27 October 2018 (p.152); Courts of Northern Italy, 21–28 October 2018 (p.107); The Wines of Bordeaux, 22–28 October 2018 (p.74); Piero della Francesca, 22–28 October 2018 (p.116); Venetian Palaces, 6–10 November 2018 (p.101).
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7–12 May 2018 (me 852) 6 days • £2,510 Lecturer to be confirmed Taste charactuful wines and meet their makers, who exude passion and pride. Spend time in vibrant Barcelona as well as Catalonia’s gently undulating countryside. 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, which nevertheless were short-lived and not capable of maturing to achieve balance, finesse and complexity. But 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
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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 bring such individuality to the wines. And as characterful as the wines are the makers themselves, who exude passion and pride.
It in e r a r y Day 1: Barcelona. Fly at c. 10.50am from London Heathrow to Barcelona (British Airways), arriving in time to settle in. Lecture and wine tasting before dinner. First of two nights in Barcelona. Day 2: Alella, Calonge. 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 principally white wine, with some red. There is a small, but prestigious Cava production. Drive to lunch at a seaside restaurant renowned for its wine list before visiting Clos d’Agon in the Low Empordà. Atypical in favouring foreign grape varieties, its consultant winemaker is Peter Sisseck, who is based in Ribera del Duero. Winery visit and tasting. 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.
Gastronomic Spain Art, food and wine in Madrid and Castile 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 evening meal at the large, biodynamic estate of Mas d’en Gil on the edge of Bellmunt. Day 6: San Sadurni d’Anoia and homeward journey. The prestigious Cava house, Gramona is also a biodynamic estate carefully combining tradition with modernity. Drive to Barcelona. Return to London Heathrow by c. 7.35pm. 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.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,510 or £2,380 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,810 or £2,680 without flights. Included meals: 3 dinners, 3 lunches, with wine.
15–22 October 2018 (mf 215) 8 days • £3,270 Lecturer: Gijs van Hensbergen Exploration of food in Spanish history and art. Contrasts fine dining in Madrid with the rustic fare of Segovia and Castilian villages. Other regions (Catalonia, Galicia, Basque Country) are well represented, as are the worldrenowned wines of Rueda and Ribera de Duero. Great art at the Prado, Romanesque architecture and the Bourbon palace at La Granja. Madrid – the nation’s melting pot – is the only place to start a journey through the astonishing variety of Iberian cuisine. Every region has its supper club and its favourite bar in Madrid – its txoko, casa de cultura and home from home. But food means far more than just the pleasure of the table. It sits right at the heart of tertulia culture, with its often passionate and heated debates. From the court to the playhouse, from the nineteenth-century novels of Perez Galdos to the contemporary paintings of Miquel Barceló, food remains the protagonist. Today, Madrid Fusión the world’s largest avant-garde food symposium - drags us into the 21st century with its action
packed presentations on the future of food. And, every famous Spanish chef from the regions is now present with a satellite or a pop-up making their presence felt in a creative gastro-extravaganza. Spain’s rich and ancient food heritage is civilisation on a plate, as it holds up a mirror to its complex historical past. Dishes and flavours send out echoes of Greek, Phoenician, Roman, Visigoth and Moorish cuisine. There is the Passover fare of Sephardic Spain, the subtle Arabian sweetmeats, the austerity of Philip II, the extravagances of the Bishop, marzipan pastries and thyme flavoured honey prepared by the Carmelite nuns, pastas from Naples and the explosion in tastes derived from the new produce of the Americas. In Madrid, Maria Marte, the rising star from the Dominican Republic, has worked up from dishwasher to Michelin 2 star chef in under a decade. Leche de Tigre, ceviches, sharp citric bursts with soothing creamy undercurrents tickle the tongue and surprise us. New World ingredients like the humble potato take on a new appearance with their Peruvian ancestors, stained a deep purple, gold and black. Then there is the hugely popular street food of the religious fiestas held all over Spain, every saint’s day being associated with a different dish. s ra ion e ovia he o an a ran ran w n . .
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Accommodation. NH Gran Calderon, Barcelona (nh-collection.com): modern, stylish and friendly, city-centre hotel; locally-rated as 5-star. Hostal Sport, Falset (hotelpriorat-hostalsport.com/en) welcoming, family-run, rustic but comfortable hotel in the town centre; rated as 4-star, but because of few modern amenities in the rooms is probably more like a 3 star.
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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 necessitating travelling by 4x4 vehicles. Fitness and sure-footedness are essential. Average coach travel per day: 65 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Courts of Northern Italy, 13–20 May 2018 (p.107).
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Alabaster, devoted to high-quality Galician produce. Free afternoon; we suggest the Reina Sofía Museum, Spain’s national collection of 20thcentury art including Picasso’s Guernica. Evening cheese tasting and visit a Gintonería. Day 5: Nieva, Segovia. Drive to Nieva for a morning of wine tastings followed by light lunch in a nearby village bar. Continue to Segovia, and in the afternoon visit the cathedral, a soaring Gothic structure. Dinner at Restaurante José María, serving Segovia’s famous suckling pig. First of three nights in Segovia. Day 6: La Granja de San Ildefonso, Segovia. Walk through the formal gardens of the mountainside Bourbon palace before tasting the beans of La Granja. Show cooking and lunch at La Matita, a family-run restaurant specialising in game. Day 7: Peñafiel, Sepúlveda. Drive out into Castilian countryside where Peñafiel’s crusader castle dominates the landscape of ‘The Golden Triangle’. A vineyard visit and wine tasting are followed by a visit to a local cheese producer. Sepúlveda is one of Castile’s best preserved meseta towns with Romanesque churches and cliffhanging Jewish quarter. Typical wood-fired roast lamb lunch. Return to Segovia for some free time before a final farewell Castilian dinner.
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This tour provides a chance to see some of the dishes of the seventeenth-century table and to steal through its larders courtesy of Velázquez, Zurbarán, Luis Meléndez and Sánchez Cotán. There are tiled Valencian kitchens to see and wonderful examples of Spanish earthenware, majolica and table decorations fit for a king. The wealth and quality of Spanish food, as is to be expected, rests first and foremost on the quality of its primary produce: the acorn-fed hams of the wild Iberian pig, the truffles from Guadalajara, asparagus from Ávila, vintage sherry from Jerez, giant fava beans from La Granja, extra virgin olive oils from Catalonia, wild herbs from Soria, saffron from Teruel, goose neck barnacles from Galicia and cod cheeks from Bilbao. Madrid is the nation’s larder and the crossing point for all that is both ancient and new: caviar from Granada, artisan conserves, pickled flowers, seaweeds, the best beef in the world and all displayed in the restored nineteenth-century Mercado de San Miguel, just off Madrid’s Plaza Mayor. North of Madrid, the Sierra de Guadarrama rising to more than 3000 metres provides sanctuary for deer, wild boar, partridge, imperial eagles and wolves as the northern slopes lead us down towards the meseta plains of Castile. High mountain passes are now protected as heritage sites on the famous Cañadas Reales, the royal sheep trails that criss-cross Castile leading north to the distant Pyrenees. This is the land of the roasts, of sucking pig and milk-fed lamb, where Roman waterways and Moorish irrigation systems are lost in the maquis scrub. Monasteries and convents still sell their produce from behind the privacy of the wooden turno, a revolving hatch. ‘Ave Maria Purissima!’ your password to handpicked artichokes to be later dribbled with convent honey and marzipan treats. 1 74
The dry grandeur of the Castilian landscape left some vineyards undamaged when phylloxera hit Spain. Ossian’s vines were planted before the French Revolution and produce a stunning white verdejo – the King of Rueda – long, deep, floral and utterly delicious. The Ribera del Duero – the Golden Triangle – offers masterpieces like Pesquera, Malleolus, Pago de Carraovejas – ambassadors of the tempranillo grape - and the legendary one-off ‘Unico’ Vega Sicilia, all to be tasted and partnered with artisan cheeses, smoked chorizo and farmhouse bread. ‘Que aproveche!’
It in e r a r y Day 1. Fly at c. 11.30am from London Heathrow to Madrid. An olive oil tasting precedes a light dinner in Madrid’s Literary Quarter. First of four nights in Madrid. Day 2: Madrid. Morning walk to the Mercado de San Miguel, then visit the 18th-century Royal Palace with varied collections of art and furnishings including frescoes by Mengs, Tiepolo and Giaquinto. Lunch is at Club Allard (2-star Michelin), where chef Maria Marte shows her delicate creativity in a listed modernist building. Dinner takes the form of an evening tapas walk through old Madrid.
Day 8: Turégano. Morning visit to the ancient fortress town of Turégano, before a tasting of Vega Sicilia and other legendary great wines. Late morning departure for Madrid Airport, arrive Heathrow at c. 6.30pm
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,270 or £3,090 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,710 or £3,530 without flights. Included meals: 6 lunches, 4 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. NH Palacio de Tepa, Madrid (nh-hoteles.com): small and excellently located 5-star hotel. Rooms are comfortable and décor is contemporary. Hotel Real Segovia, Segovia (hotelrealsegovia.com): 4-star hotel located next to the cathedral and the aqueduct. How strenuous? There is a fair amount of walking on this tour, some of it uphill. Lunches tend to be lenghthy and substantial. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: The Western Balkans, 1–14 October 2018 (p.54); Siena & San Gimignano, 10–14 October 2018 (p.123); Ravenna & Urbino, 10–14 October 2018 (p.114); Mediaeval Alsace, 16–23 October 2018 (p.71); Modern Art on the Côte d’Azur, 18–24 October 2018 (p.76).
Day 3: Madrid. Morning visit to the National Museum of Archaeology, good on ancient Iberian civilisation and Roman Spain. Cooking demonstration and lunch at Barra M, dedicated to Peruvian street food. Day 4: Madrid. A visit to the Museo del Prado focuses on food depicted in Goya’s tapestry cartoons and the still lives of Sánchez Cotán, Zurbarán and Melendez. Lunch is at Restaurante
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The Romans in Mediterranean Spain Cartagena, Sagunto, Tarragona, Barcelona 1–7 October 2018 (mf 201) 7 days • £2,160 Lecturer: Professor Simon Esmonde Cleary Beautiful Mediterranean cities containing extensive Roman remains, including the earliest outside Italy. Study the wars between Rome and Carthage: Hannibal and the Scipios. Learn of the Romans and Visigoths; pagans and Christians. The lecturer is Professor Simon Esmonde Cleary, Professor of Roman Archaeology at the University of Birmingham.
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Day 2: Cartagena. Visit the hilltop sites of the Punic and Roman city, starting with the restored Roman theatre and its accompanying museum, designed by Rafael Moneo, before continuing to the Casa de la Fortuna, an aristocratic residence with beautiful murals and mosaics. In the area of the Roman forum the earlier remains of Carthaginian walls are one of the few Punic monuments in the Iberian peninsula, while excavations of the Roman forum revealed streets, a bath-house and a courtyard building, possibly religious. Day 3: Cartagena, Valencia. The Museum of Subaquatic Archaeology explores the maritime history of the Mediterranean and includes a replica of a Phoenician trading ship. The city’s Archaeological Museum has a rich collection of Carthaginian and Roman artefacts. Drive in the afternoon to Valencia (c. 4 hours including a stop). Overnight in Valencia.
Day 5: Tarragona. The Roman circus for c. 25,000 spectators formed part of a massive monumental complex on the hilltop dating to the late first century ad, part of which forms the basis for the mediaeval ‘Pretorio’. The city’s National Museum of Archaeology houses an excellent collection of mosaics, wall paintings and sculpture. Occupying an impressive site by the Mediterranean, the well-preserved Roman amphitheatre includes the remains of two churches dating to the 6th and 12th centuries. There is some free time to visit the cathedral, built on the site of the major Roman temple atop the hill.
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Day 1. Fly at c. 4.00pm from London Gatwick to Alicante (Monarch) and continue to Cartagena by coach for the first of two nights.
Day 4: Sagunto, Tarragona. Morning visit to the site of Saguntum, including the restored Roman theatre. The castle, essentially Moorish, still preserves parts of the Roman forum, while the Archaeological Museum contains one of the most important collections of Latin inscriptions in Spain and distinctive mosaics from the Late Roman Empire. Drive in the afternoon to Tarragona (c. 3 hours including a stop). On arrival, walk a section of the early Roman walls. First of three nights in Tarragona.
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In the ancient world, the Mediterranean coast of Spain was always a prized possession. But it wasn’t until it was absorbed into the Roman Empire that its economic potential was fully exploited. This was a place of mass production, dazzling wealth and, at times, brutal working conditions. In the mines, armies of slaves dug for lead, silver, copper and iron. Both land and sea were exploited for the production of grain, the vine, olive oil and fish sauce. Given the scale of Hispania’s resources, it’s no wonder Roman civilisation flourished here – and the material remains are both impressive and thickly-strewn. Ingenious engineering projects, grand public monuments and unbridled displays of private wealth are all to be seen: and it’s this inheritance that provides the backbone of our tour. Three of Hispania’s key cities are on the itinerary: Carthago Nova (modern Cartagena), Saguntum (Sagunto) and Tarraco (Tarragona). At Tarragona, for example, you can trace the circuit of walls built by Gnaeus and Publius Scipio in 218 bc, when they arrived in Spain to threaten Hannibal’s base in the Second Punic War. It’s now the oldest surviving Roman monument outside Italy. Here too is the hilltop circus (seating capacity, 25,000), which embellished the city when it was a provincial capital – as well as the amphitheatre where the Christian bishop Fructuosus was martyred in 259 ad. We also visit Barcino (Barcelona) - the setting, in 416 ad, of the marriage of the Visigothic king Athaulf to Galla Placidia, sister of the emperor Honorius. It was a deeply symbolic moment, as the western Empire began to fracture into competing ‘barbarian’ kingdoms. Together the region’s monuments and museums make a fascinating ensemble, and provide the backdrop for many dramatic stories: of the titanic struggle between Rome and Carthage; of Publius Scipio’s brilliant victory at Ilipa; of the rise of Christianity; of the strange death of the Western Empire in the fifth century ad. In many respects, the entire trajectory of Rome’s imperial history can be followed here, from triumph to collapse. Add in the region’s vibrant modern culture – and its mouth-watering cuisine – and you’ve got the makings of a memorable tour.
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Art in Madrid The great galleries
Professor Simon Esmonde Cleary Archaeologist specialising in the western Roman Empire. He studied at London University and Oxford. He is Professor of Roman Archaeology at the University of Birmingham and has conducted field-work in the UK and France. He has written books on Gaul and Spain in late antiquity, and on Roman Britain. See pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies. Day 6: around Tarragona. Visit the Colonial Forum, civic centre of Tarragona, then the Early Christian Museum and Necropolis featuring a splendid series of carved marble sarcophagi. Outside the city, the two-tier aqueduct named Pont del Diable is a feat of Roman engineering, delivering water to Tarragona. The exceptional remains of 4th-century mosaics can be seen on the dome of the Roman Villa of Centcelles. Day 7: Barcelona. Drive to Barcelona via the funerary monument of the ‘Tower of the Scipios’, and the honorific Arch of Bera, dedicated to the Emperor Augustus. The Museum of History of Barcelona contains part of Roman Barcino with its streets, sewers, laundries and wine- and fish-saucemaking factories. Walk around the Gothic quarter where the remnants of Roman walls, tombs and temples can still be seen. Fly from Barcelona to London Gatwick (Vueling), landing at c. 6.45pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,160 or £1,940 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,330 or £2,110 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine.
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Accommodation. NH Cartagena (nh-hotels. com): central 4-star hotel, part of a reliable Spanish chain. SH Hotel Inglés, Valencia (inglesboutique. com): 4-star hotel installed in an 18th-century palace in a very central location. Rooms for single occupancy have queen-size beds. Hotel Astari, Tarragona (hotelastari.com): well-run, functional 3-star hotel.
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How strenuous? There is a lot of walking on uneven ground at archeological sites; surefootedness is essential. Some long coach journeys; average distance by coach per day: 72 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Civilisations of Sicily, 17–29 September 2018 (p.141); Pompeii & Herculaneum, 24–29 September 2018 (p.138); Lucca, 24–30 September 2018 (p.124); Walking & Gardens in Madeira, 8–15 October 2018 (p.156); Walking in Eastern Sicily, 8–15 October 2018 (p.145); Roman Italy, 8–17 October 2018 (p.135).
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21–25 March 2018 (me 791) 5 days • £1,890 Lecturer: Dr Xavier Bray 19–23 June 2018 (me 910) 5 days • £1,890 Lecturer: Dr Zahira Bomford Two visits to the Prado focusing on the Spanish school and then Italian and Netherlandish schools, plus the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection and the Reina Sofía, one of the greatest modern art museums and home to Picasso’s Guernica. Lesser-known places include the Sorolla Museum, the excellent and recently renovated Archaeological Museum, Goya frescoes at San Antonio de la Florida and his designs at the Royal Tapestry Factory. Also included, the Lázaro Galdiano Museum and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, plus a walk to the arcaded Plaza Mayor and free time for temporary exhibitions. 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
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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.
It in e r a r y in b r ie f Day 1. Fly at c. 9.15am (Iberia Airlines) from London Heathrow to Madrid. Visit the Archaeological Museum. Day 2. Prado Museum, Plaza Mayor, Lázaro Galdiano Museum, Sorolla Museum. Day 3. Royal Tapestry Factory, Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection. Day 4. Church of San Antonio de la Florida, Prado Museum, free afternoon. Day 5. CaixaForum, Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. Fly to London Heathrow, arriving c. 6.30pm. Please contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,890 or £1,740 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,210 or £2,060 without flights. Included meals: 3 dinners with wine. Accommodation. NH Collection Palacio de Tepa, Madrid (nh-collection.com): small, excellently-located 5-star hotel. Rooms are comfortable and décor is contemporary. How strenuous? The tour involves a lot of walking and standing around in museums (which can be more tiring than moving around). Group size: between 9 and 19 participants. In March, combine this tour with: Eastern Andalucía: Caliphs to Kings, 9–18 March 2018 (p.182). s ra ion adrid he rado af er a drawin ose h enne .
Gastronomic Valencia Food and art in south-east Spain 23–30 April 2018 (me 832) 8 days • £3,410 Lecturer: Gijs van Hensbergen From the sea to the mountains of south-east Spain, a conspectus of Valencian cuisine. Myriad historical influences (Phoenician, Arab, Jewish) as well as current cutting-edge chefs, such as 3-star Michelin chef Quique Dacosta, make this an incredibly rich gastronomic region to explore. Based in the handsome, vibrant city of Valencia, excellent for its variety of art and architecture, and in the smaller charming seaside town of Dénia.
Day 7: Dénia. The morning is free. Take a walk before lunch along the impressive coastline of Las Rotas before continuing to Quique Dacosta’s restaurant (3-star Michelin). Dacosta combines local, seasonal produce with cutting-edge creativity and technique.
Day 4: Gandia, Dénia. Dating from the 14th century and home to the Borgias, the Palacio Ducal de Gandia displays Gothic architecture, with Renaissance and Baroque additions. Drive to Dénia for a grazing lunch at the market then watch the arrival of the fishing boats with exclusive access to the fish auction. Dinner features fideuà, a noodle dish usually cooked with seafood, and wind-dried octopus at beachside restaurant El Faralló. First of four nights in Dénia.
Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,410 or £3,230 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,690 or £3,510 without flights.
Day 5: Fontanars dels Alforins, Cocentaina. Travel inland, stopping at Fontanars dels Alforins for a wine tasting at the prestigious Casa los Frailes. Continue to Cocentaina, located between the Sierra de Mariola and Serpis river, for lunch at the family-run L’escalata restaurant (2-star Michelin). Day 6: Dénia, Parcent. A morning walk takes in the historical centre of Dénia, including the 11th-century Moorish Castle. Ascend into the mountains through orange and almond groves to Parcent for lunch, followed by a wine tasting at Bodegas Gutiérrez de la Vega, a family-run business famous for their sweet Moscatel wine.
Day 8. Drive north to Valencia for a tapas lunch at Casa Montaña. The late afternoon flight arrives into London Gatwick at c. 6.40pm.
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Included meals: 7 lunches, 3 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. SH Hotel Inglés, Valencia (inglesboutique.com): 3-star hotel installed in an 18th-century palace in a very central location next to the National Ceramics Museum. La Posada del Mar, Dénia (laposadadelmar.com): 4-star hotel located near the historic centre and overlooking the harbour. How strenuous? Coach access is restricted in historical centres and there is a fair amount of walking and standing around in museums, vineyards and at cooking demonstrations. Dinners tend to be at 8.30 or 9.00pm in Spain, so you might get to bed later than you usually would. Average distance by coach per day: 40 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
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From market to plate there is nothing fresher or more vibrant than Valencian cuisine. The legendary huertas – market gardens, orange groves, paddy fields and Mediterranean orchards – are the city’s larder. Valencian markets are some of the most beautiful in the world; the Gothic silk market is a World Heritage Site. The tour includes experiences such as a private cooking demonstration in a restaurant in Valencia, access to the fish auction at La Lonja in Dénia, and tasting unctuous goat’s milk cheeses dribbled with thyme honey in the mountains. There is hospitality at great bodegas like Casa los Frailes, source of wines served to visiting heads of state at Madrid’s Palacio Real. There are also low-key everyday experiences – a refreshing horchata, a tiger nut milk pick-you-up; an Aqua de Valencia, a fresh orange-based cocktail; and rifling the wine cellar, feasting on organic potatoes and nibbling at a perfectly burnt brandade at Casa Montaña, arguably the best bar in the world. Valencian cuisine is both ancient and new. Wind-dried octopus prepared to a 3,000-year-old Phoenician recipe is a revelation, as is the sweet luxury of almond biscuit accompanied by an ice cold Moscatel. The Moors held the Levante for 400 years and the phantom flavours live on. We feel the weight of Borgia rule and the Naples connection, and taste history with alioli-steeped fideuà – Europe’s first pasta dish? There are Baroque splendours, shimmering Valencian tiles and the hedonistic sun-drenched canvases of Joaquín Sorolla. There are back streets and museums and hideaway cafés to be explored: the Jewish call, the Almohad Arab walls, the twelfth-century Christian settlement. Dénia’s museum contains artefacts from the Romans and the Iberians, who were pressing wine 5,000 years ago. The final lunch is provided by 3-star Michelin chef Quique Dacosta, a whirlwind of inventive brilliance, theatre and caprice.
Day 3: Valencia. In the morning visit IVAM (Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno) with its superb collection of cubist sculpture by Julio González and the Museum of Fine Arts, one of the best in Spain, with works by Valencian, Spanish and Flemish masters. Paella originates from La Albufera, a freshwater lagoon nearby on the Gulf of Valencia. Taste this authentic rice dish, cooked over a wood fire. Dinner is at Restaurante Riff where Bernd Knöller serves innovative cuisine based around seasonal, local ingredients of the highest quality (1-star Michelin).
It in e r a r y Day 1: Valencia. Fly at c. 1.35pm from London Gatwick to Valencia, (British Airways). Dinner is at La Marítima, housed in the Veles e Vents building on the Marina. First of three nights in Valencia. Day 2: Valencia. First to the fine modernistastyle Mercado Central followed by a cooking demonstration and lunch in Vertical Restaurant, with views of Santiago Calatrava’s science park. In the evening visit the National Ceramics Museum, housed in its exuberantly Churrigueresque palace. 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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Western Spain: Extremadura & Toledo Roman, Mediaeval, Renaissance 16–24 April 2018 (me 826) 9 days • £2,610 Lecturer: John McNeill A journey through great Roman, Mediaeval and Renaissance cities: from Zafra to Mérida, Cáceres, Plasencia, Trujillo and Toledo. The backdrop is remote and unspoilt Extremadura, one of the most consistently beautiful regions in Europe and motherland of of the Conquistadors. Two full days in Toledo, one of Spain’s most architecturally varied and monumental cities. Extremadura means ‘beyond the Duero’, a term coined by Christians as they fought their way south against the Moors. The area they settled had been largely emptied during the early Middle Ages, and remains sparsely populated to this day, consisting of a high undulating plateau drained by the rivers Tagus and Guadiana. To the south rise the mountains of the Sierra Morena, while to the north the high sierras of the Iberian Sistema Central separate Extremadura from the southern limits of the Castilian plain.
The Roman colonisation of the area responded to these geographical circumstances by effectively creating a major city on the Tagus (Toledo) and a series of cities that punctuated the rivers to the west (Plasencia, Cáceres, Mérida, Seville). Most remarkably, the city selected by Augustus as the administrative capital of Roman Lusitania – Mérida – not only retains enough of its Roman fabric for one to be able to trace the first-century plan in the present city, but moreover several of its public buildings survive above ground. Matters changed with barbarian settlement, and the arrival of Vandals, Suevi and Visigoths was mirrored by a shift in population towards the Mediterranean, and by the shrinking of the cities. Most strikingly, the Visigoths took Toledo as their capital, and though the next wave of invaders, the Moors, preferred the old Roman provincial capital at Córdoba, the prestige that was conferred on Toledo by virtue of its early mediaeval status was profound. It is rare to find much material from this period surviving above ground, though the major survivals – Alcuéscar, the tiny Mozarabic church of Santa María de Melque and the Visigothic treasure from Guarrazar – are quite astonishing, ranking among the most compelling objects to
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remain visible from early mediaeval Spain. Notwithstanding the occasional Romanesque church, the major buildings are thirteenth century and later, and the quality and quantity of work which survives from these periods cannot fail to impress. The crucial first steps towards a fully articulated Gothic architecture were taken in the 1220s at Toledo cathedral, and its combination of a French-inspired plan and elevation with discreet Mudéjar detailing was to prove influential. However, the critical event in thirteenth-century Spain was the Christian victory at the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, and the subsequent picking off of Moorish cities to the south and west of Toledo – Cáceres in 1229, Zafra by 1236, Seville in 1248. This opened the eyes of Christian Spanish patrons to a whole new wave of Islamic art and architecture – the effects of which can be seen in the exquisite stucco and brick buildings of the second half of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, beautifully preserved in the stunning synagogues of the Barrio Judío in Toledo, and in the impetus that it gave to a whole new wave of Spanish church construction in Plasencia, Trujillo, and Cáceres. The third of the tour’s main themes is the extraordinarily inventive, almost fanciful
architecture of the later Middle Ages and Renaissance. One might see this at a number of levels, in the stepped elevations of the new cathedral at Plasencia or the brilliance and virtuosity of the tracery at Guadalupe, in the unruffled calm of Coria or the dazzling application of ceramics across the exteriors of towers at Jerez de los Caballeros. Perhaps most magically, one sees it in that improbably picturesque silhouette that greets the visitor as you approach Toledo from the south and realise, as you gaze over the river Tagus, that within that walled city is one of the greatest concentrations of fifteenth and sixteenth century palaces, churches, towers and town houses that Spain has left to offer.
It in e r a r y Day 1: Zafra. Fly at c. 11.15am (TAP Portugal) from London Heathrow to Lisbon. Drive into Spain to the small town of Zafra (c. 4 hours, stops are made en route). The towered castle where Hernán Cortés was received by the Count of Feria en route for the conquest of Mexico is now the parador. First of two nights in Zafra. Day 2: Zafra, Jerez de Los Caballeros. In Zafra begin with the two adjacent squares, the Plaza Grande and smaller Plaza Chica with the collegiate church (housing an altarpiece by Zurbarán). Lunch is in a rural restaurant. The afternoon is spent in Jerez de los Caballeros, once a Templar town, with famously ornate Baroque church towers. Day 3: Mérida, Alcuéscar, Cáceres. Augusta Emerita (Mérida) was laid out on a classic Roman rectangular grid, much of which survives, along with the 60-arch bridge over the river Guadiana, theatre, amphitheatre, fortress and temple platform. In addition, there are great collections of Roman sculpture in Rafael Moneo’s outstanding National Museum of Roman Art. The tiny and recently rediscovered early mediaeval church of Santa Lucía del Trampal, near Alcuéscar, is on the road north. First of three nights in Cáceres.
Day 6: Guadalupe, Santa María de Melque, Toledo. Scenic drive over wooded hills to the
Day 8: Toledo. Visit the interlocking cloisters of the former Dominican house of San Pedro Mártir along with a celebrated former mosque, converted into the church of Cristo de la Luz but still preserving the touching inscription informing all that it was built in the Hijra 377 (ad 999) for Ahmad Ibn Hadid. 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. The afternoon is free. Day 9: Madrid. Closed over several years for a comprehensive renovation and re-design of its display areas, Spain’s National Archaeological Museum in Madrid finally reopened in 2014. Its holdings of Roman and mediaeval work are extraordinary, and extend to the Gurrazar Treasure, a carefully assembled cache of Visigothic metalwork discovered near Toledo in 1858, most of it now in the museum and centred on a spectacular group of jewel-encrusted votive gold crowns, one of which bears the legend Recceswinth (d. 672). Drive to the airport for the afternoon flight (Iberia) which arrives at London Heathrow c. 6.00pm.
Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,610 or £2,450 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,870 or £2,710 without flights. Included meals: 2 lunches, 5 dinners, with wine. Accommodation. Parador de Zafra (parador.es): 4-star parador in the 15th-century castle. NH Palacio de Oquendo, Cáceres (nh-hotels. com): 4-star hotel in the historic centre of town. Hotel Fontecruz, Toledo (fontecruzhoteles.com): 4-star hotel in the Jewish Quarter with smart but small rooms, dinners are in good restaurants. How strenuous? There is a lot of walking in town centres, sometimes on uneven ground; surefootedness is essential. Dinners tend to be at 8.30 or 9.00pm in Spain, so you might get to bed later than you would usually. Some days involve a lot of driving; average distance per day: 78 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Western Andalucía, 3–11 April 2018 (p.183); Gastronomic Emilia-Romagna, 7–13 April 2018 (p.108); Gardens & Villas of Campagna Romana, 9–14 April 2018 (p.130); Ravenna & Urbino, 25–29 April 2018 (p.114).
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What else is included in the price? See page 8. s ra ions. ef i a e in ain e chin and dr oin c. sa e odrin on. ove To edo he Ta s and rid e of ar in wood en ravin c. .
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Day 5: Plasencia, Coria, Alcántara. Strategically situated on a bend in the river Jerte and overlooked by the Sierra de Gredos, Plasencia was refounded by Alfonso VIII towards the end of the 12th century, close to the site of Roman Dulcis Placida. Visits this morning will include the extraordinary and unfinished cathedral (part-13th-century, part-late-mediaeval), San Nicolás and the Palacio Marqués de Mirabel. Visit also the 16th-century cathedral at Coria and the breathtaking Roman bridge over the gorge of the River Tagus at Alcántara, which dates to ad 106.
Day 7: Toledo. Morning spent in Toledo’s old Jewish quarter, starting with a pair of former synagogues, Ibn Shoshan (converted to Christian use as Santa María la Blanca) a superb 13thcentury aisled synagogue that retains its original stuccowork and wooden ceiling, and El Tránsito, a more lavish galleried synagogue financed by Samuel Levi in the 1360s. Thence to San Juan de los Reyes, the breathtakingly ambitious Franciscan monastery constructed under Ferdinand and Isabella. The afternoon will unfold with the best of Toledo’s Mozarabic churches, San Román, and the incomparable and vast cathedral.
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Day 4: Trujillo. The morning is devoted to the magnificent hilltop town of Trujillo, birthplace of the conquistador, Francisco Pizarro. The irregular main square is here enclosed by conquistador mansions and overlooked by the parish church of San Martín. Climb to the surviving Moorish castle with glorious views of the surrounding countryside. The afternoon is spent in the exceptionally well-preserved historic centre of Cáceres, with visits to the 17th-century Casa de las Veletas and late mediaeval collegiate church of Santa María.
loveliest of Extremadura’s late mediaeval churches at Guadalupe, the monastery having been designed to accommodate a miracle-working image of the Virgin that developed into one of the great pilgrimage destinations of mediaeval and Renaissance Spain. Continue east via the stunning Mozarabic church of Santa María de Melque to Toledo. First of three nights in Toledo.
Essential Andalucía Spain’s southern province 1–11 October 2018 (mf 208) 11 days • £3,490 Lecturer: Dr Philippa Joseph Three nights in each of the major cities: Granada, Córdoba and Seville. Visits the Picasso Museum in Málaga, the Alhambra in Granada and the small Renaissance towns of Úbeda and Baeza. Varied itinerary covering the great Moorish sites, mediaeval, Renaissance and Baroque architecture, fine art collections and gardens. Andalucía is Spain’s most fascinating and varied region. Varied geographically: stretching southwards from the Sierra Morena to the Mediterranean, it encompasses the permanent snow of the Sierra Nevada as well as the sunscorched 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. 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. 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. 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.
It in e r a r y 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. A 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. 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.
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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.
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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. 1 80
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Granada & Córdoba with Úbeda & Baeza 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. 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. Walk through 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. Spend the afternoon at the Fine Arts Museum, the best in Spain after the Prado. Day 11. Free day in Seville. Fly from Seville to London Gatwick arriving c. 9.45pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,490 or £3,320 without flights. Single occupancy: £4,180 or £4,010 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 7 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. Hotel Alfonso XIII, Seville (hotel-alfonsoxiiiseville.com): centrally located 5-star hotel, an iconic cultural landmark commissioned by the King of Spain in 1929.
Combine this tour with: Pompeii & Herculaneum, 24–29 September 2018 (p.138); Lucca, 24–30 September 2018 (p.124); Memories of Monte Cassino, 12–18 October 2018 (p.134); Dark Age Brilliance, 14–21 October 2018 (p.115).
What else is included in the price? See page 8. s ra ion ranada o r ard of he ions in The ha ra chro o i ho ra h c. .
Visit the Picasso Museum and Carmen Thyssen collection in Málaga and the small Renaissance towns of Úbeda and Baeza. Southern Spain – savage peaks soar over passes that are snow-bound in winter, while plains below are well-watered by spring rivers, hot, harsh and arid in the summer, mellow in late autumn and winter. The cities reveal the magnitude of past achievements through the greatness of the architecture and the brilliant elaboration of decoration. Andalucía was a bountiful Roman province, in Arab times the scene of highly sophisticated Umayyad and Nasrid princedoms and a major province of the most powerful kingdom in (Christian) Europe’s sixteenth century. The artistic riches are immensely varied, though the unique distinguishing mark is the heritage from eight hundred years of rule by Muslims from North Africa and Arabia. Arab Córdoba became the capital of alAndalus and the largest city in Europe, market for all the luxuries of East and West and scene of Europe’s most splendid court until its fall to the Reconquistadors in 1236. The mosque, La Mezquita, was one of the largest anywhere, and arguably the most beautiful; Christian possession in the sixteenth century created within it a totally contrasting cathedral. Granada was the last Islamic princedom in Spain, only falling to the Christians in 1492. The concatenation of palaces and gardens of the Alhambra, with its cascading domes and gilded decoration like frozen fireworks, is one of Spain’s most enthralling sights. Although millions of tourists pour through Málaga Airport every year en route to the Costa
It in e r a r y Day 1. Fly at c. 11.00am from London Gatwick to Málaga (British Airways). Arrive in time for an introductory walk and lecture. Overnight Málaga. Days 2–7 are identical to that of Essential Andalucía (see opposite page). Day 8. Drive to Málaga via the pretty town of Antequera for the mid-afternoon flight, arriving at London Gatwick airport at c. 5.30pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,540 or £2,340 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,980 or £2,780 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 4 dinners with wine. Accommodation. Hotel Molina Lario, Málaga (hotelmolinalario.com): functional 4-star. AC Palacio de Santa Paula, Granada (marriott. com): comfortable, contemporary, comparable to a 4-star. NH Amistad, Córdoba (nh-hotels.com): 4-star hotel in an 18th-century mansion. How strenuous? There is a lot of walking, some of it uphill and some over uneven ground. Average distance by coach per day: 52 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Picasso in Spain, 29 October–4 November 2018 (p.171). s ra ion i ho ra h
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Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
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.
del Sol, comparatively few set foot in the old town. The narrow streets, palm-lined squares and seafront promenades conserve Phoenician, Roman, Moorish, Gothic, Baroque and late-ninteenthcentury monuments. Birthplace and childhood home of Pablo Picasso, the city boasts a major collection of his works, while the eponymous museum of Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza includes some excellent nineteenth-century Spanish art with Andalusian themes.
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How strenuous? This is a lengthy tour with four hotels, a lot of walking and a fair amount of coach travel. You need to be fit. Walking is often on uneven streets and uphill. Average distance by coach per day: 33 miles.
22–29 October 2018 (mf 270) 8 days • £2,540 Lecturer: Gail Turner
Eastern Andalucía: Caliphs to Kings Málaga, Granada, Úbeda, Jaen, Córdoba It in e r a r y Day 1. Fly at c. 9.45am from London City Airport to Málaga (British Airways). Visit the Carmen Thyssen museum with its fine collection of old masters and 19th-century Spanish painting. The lecturer leads a tapas walk this evening. First of two nights in Málaga. Day 2: Málaga. Begin at Picasso’s birthplace, which houses a small collection of his belongings and some ceramics. The Picasso Museum is magnificent, combining Phoenician ruins beneath a fine 16th-century palace and a collection which places emphasis on his earlier works and the women in his life. The Centre Pompidou holds some 80 works from its Parisian headquarters. There is time also to see the Renaissance Cathedral with a fine Baroque façade.
9–18 March 2018 (me 772) 10 days • £3,160 Lecturer: Gijs van Hensbergen A comprehensive study of Eastern Andalucía: time for the key sites of Granada and Córdoba, exploration of the lesser-known, including the small Renaissance town of Úbeda. Visits the Picasso Museum, Carmen Thyssen and recently opened Centre Pompidou in Málaga. Features an olive oil tasting, a private concert, flamenco and an evening visit of the Alhambra.
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The mythic Al-Andalus, ruled by Islam for more than 750 years is one of Europe’s greatest examples of the wonders of multi-cultural life. Far north, in the cold mountains of Christian Galicia and its Celt neighbours across the seas we still talk of the Dark Ages, while in Córdoba around the first Millennium the Renaissance had already begun, as the Moors and their protected dhimmi subjects, the Christians and Jews, tested out revolutionary new ideas. Six hundred years before da Vinci’s inspired doodles of his flying machine, Ibn Firnas had already flown across the hills above Córdoba’s great mosque (admittedly, breaking both legs). In the great city of Córdoba, under the Caliphate, cataract operations were common, mechanical elephants served tea, iced sherbets slaked the thirst, saffron-stained meatballs and the threecourse-meal were invented, while the intellect was teased with access to a library that boasted 400,000 books (almost the entire learning of the classical world). Ziryab, Córdoba’s ninth century tastemaker – the Terence Conran of his time – added the fifth and sixth string to the lute to give its harmony ‘soul’ and provide the guitar. ‘From Caliphs to Kings,’ visits the World Heritage protected caves of Granada’s Sacromonte to hear the gypsy wedding ritual, the Zambra. In Úbeda, Spain’s most perfect Renaissance city, 1 82
Sephardic musicians will bring to life the recently discovered tenth century Synagogue with its perfectly preserved mikvah – the ritual bath. From Málaga’s Museo de Picasso, built on 2500-year-old Phoenician remains, and the wonderful Thyssen Museum – that provides a perfect introduction to the nineteenth-century romantic traveller’s obsession with Carmen and the ‘bandoleros’ – the journey skirts around the Sierra Nevada to Granada’s legendary Alhambra. Home to the Nasrid Kings, the Alhambra’s stage-set beauty is linked by bridge to the glorious vegetable paradise of the Generalife gardens and the royal hunting grounds. Granada is a secret city where composers like Manuel de Falla and the poet Federico García Lorca evoked its beauty within the secrecy of the ‘carmen,’ orangescented walled garden. Turn the earth anywhere in Andalucía and ancient cultures come to the fore. The provincial capital of Jaen is built on a rock spur over thousands of acres of olive stands. Hannibal’s elephants crossed this landscape, as too did Caesar’s armies in pursuit of the remnants of Pompey’s battle weary troops. The tour culminates with Córdoba’s Cathedral and Great Mosque that acts as a compendium of some of the greatest carved columns and capitals from Mesopotamia and the classical world. Here we meet the wisdom of the Jewish philosopherdoctor Maimonides, the luxury and unrivalled power of the Caliph Abd ar-Rahman III and the sheer excess of his successor Al-Hakam at his palace complex of Madinat al-Zahara. Over mint teas and sweet montilla wines, served with deep fried aubergines drizzled with honey in a fourteenth-century convent, we unpick the mysteries of East Andalucía’s glorious past and its fascinating passage ‘From Caliphs to Kings.’
What else is included in the price? See page 8.
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Day 3: Granada. Drive north in the morning to Granada. Walk via the Corral del Carbón, the evocative 14th-century caravanserai and silk market, and visit the Casa de los Tiros, Granada’s wonderful ethnographic museum housed in the 16th-century palace of a converted Morisco prince. In the late afternoon visit the Cathedral and Royal Chapel, which retains Isabel of Castile’s personal collection of Flemish, Spanish and Italian paintings. First of three nights in Granada. Day 4: 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. The Carmen of the Martyrs garden was built by the Catholic monarchs in memory of the Christians that suffered under the Moorish domination. Evening performance of ‘Zambra’ Flamenco, a gypsy wedding ritual. Day 5: Granada. Morning walk through the Albayzín, the oldest quarter in town, including El Bañuelo (Arab baths) and the elegant, hispanomoresque gardens of the Instituto de Estudios Arabes. Climb up to San Nicolás from where there are fine views of the Alhambra. The Monasterio de San Jerónimo was the first to be built after the Christian conquest and contains a dazzling altar by Gil de Siloé. There is the option to see the Palacios of the Alhambra in a different light with a late evening visit. Day 6: Jaen, Úbeda. Silver deposits first attracted the Romans to settle at Jaen before it was taken by the Moors in 712. Its Renaissance cathedral was built on the site of the Great Mosque and designed by outstanding Renaissance architect, Andrés de Vandelvira. See also the 14th-century church of San Ildefonso and the Museo Provincial with a fine archeological collection. Continue to Úbeda for the first of two nights. Day 7: Úbeda. 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 while the 14th-century Casa Mudéjar houses the archeological museum. Sample some of the famed olive oils of the region at a tasting. In the evening
Western Andalucía Seville, Cádiz, Ronda visit the 10th-century Sinagoga del Agua with a private performance of Sephardic music. Day 8: Córdoba. The capital of Islamic Spain from the middle of the 8th century, it became the richest city in Europe until its capitulation to the Reconquistadors in 1236. A morning walk includes the narrow streets of the old Jewish quarter and the 14th-century synagogue. 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 16th-century cathedral. First of two nights in Córdoba. Day 9: Córdoba. Visit the Archaeological Museum, housed in a Renaissance mansion, with a fine collection of Roman and Arab pieces. The Fine Arts Museum, with Plateresque façade, houses some good Spanish paintings. Visit the Alcázar, mediaeval with earlier architectural remains (and good Roman mosaics). Drive out to the excavations of Medina Azahara, with remains of a huge and luxurious 10th-century palace complex. Day 10. Drive to Málaga via the pretty town of Antequera. Fly to London City Airport, arriving at c. 7.30pm.
i s van ens er en is i e ri ian . e s er di e wi friend and ho h f . P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,160 or £2,920 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,620 or £3,380 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 7 dinners (including a tapas walk), with wine.
Includes a fascinating mix of art, architecture, archaeology and nature. Optional walk in the Sierra de Grazalema with stunning views. Western Andalucía has a wonderful karstic landscape, with rugged sierras, fertile plains, and an abundance of freshwater mountain streams. For centuries writers and artists have tried to capture the region’s essence, described by Théophile Gautier as a paradise of dreams hidden behind the mountains of the Sierra Morena. In search of that paradise, this tour begins in Seville, the pulsating hub of the Spanish empire in the Siglo de Oro with superb Mudéjar and Renaissance palaces, fragrant, flower-filled gardens and patios, and excellent art. Fascinating archaeological collections contain vestiges of the region’s varied history and inhabitants. The port town of Cádiz, which today retains the quiet, delightful charm of its former glories, was the Phoenician’s first trading emporium in the Iberian Peninsula and, in the sixteenth century, the site of famous naval battles between Francis Drake and Martin Frobisher and the might of the Spanish fleet. Carmona, first inhabited in Palaeolithic times, was later an important Bronze age settlement and, under the Emperor Augustus, one of the most important colonia in Hispania. It boasts an impressive necropolis and a city fortress described by Julius Caesar as, ‘by far the best defended city in the Roman province’. At Itálica, we see the archaeological remains of the great Roman city founded by Scipio Africanus after his defeat of the Carthaginians, and later the birthplace of the Roman emperors Trajan and Hadrian. Travelling inland, the beautiful white villages of Arcos de la Frontera, Grazalema and Ronda were all on the frontier between Christian and Muslim Spain during the Reconquista, and today bear witness to their complex, multi-cultural heritage. Through an optional walk in the Sierra de Grazalema, we discover an area of outstanding natural beauty with rich, diverse flora and fauna.
Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
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Combine this tour with: Minoan Crete, 19–28 March 2018 (p.93); Venetian Palaces, 20–24 March 2018 (p.101); Normans in the South, 20–28 March 2018 (p.140); Art in Madrid, 21–25 March 2018 (p.176).
Day 1: Seville. Fly at c. 3.30pm from London Gatwick to Seville (British Airways) for the first of four nights.
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Day 2: Seville. Visit one of Spain’s greatest buildings, the Alcázar, built by Moorish architects for Spanish kings with courtyards, gardens and magnificent tapestries. The cathedral is one of the largest Gothic churches anywhere. Walk through the Barrio de Santa Cruz, the Jewish quarter, with flower-filled courtyards to the Casa de Pilatos, the best of the Mudéjar style palaces, with patios and azulejos. The church and hospital of the Caridad
is Seville’s most striking 17th-cent. building, with paintings by Murillo and Valdés Leal. Day 3: Carmona. Drive out to Carmona, a small town with a castle on its summit and one of Spain’s most splendid fortified gates. Visit the Roman necropolis, Moorish and Christian Alcázar, built on Roman foundations, town hall with Roman mosaics and the church of Sta Maria, its courtyard that of the mosque it replaced. Day 4: Seville, Itálica. Morning visit to Seville’s Fine Arts Museum: the best in Spain after the Prado. In the afternoon see to the Archaeological museum with sculptures, mosaics and statues from Itálica, before visiting the Roman site itself on the outskirts of the city. Day 5: Jerez de la Frontera, Cádiz. Drive south stopping at Jerez de la Frontera, centre of sherry production. Tasting at Bodegas Tradición with its own art collection. The Plaza de la Asunción is flanked by the Plateresque town hall and Mudéjar church of San Dionisio (exterior). Visit the 11th-cent. Alcázar with well-restored mosque. The historic port of Cádiz remains largely unspoilt and retains a faded charm. An early evening walk includes the cathedral and Oratorio de la Santa Cueva with Goya frescoes. First of two nights in Cádiz. s ra ion evi e
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How strenuous? There is a lot of walking, some of it uphill and some over uneven ground. Average distance by coach per day: 36 miles.
In-depth study of the key sites of Seville and Cádiz, with time for the lesser known: Carmona, Itálica, and the pueblos blancos of Arcos de la Frontera and Grazalema.
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Accommodation. Hotel Molina Lario, Málaga (hotelmolinalario.com): functional, comfortable 4-star hotel in the centre. AC Palacio de Santa Paula, Granada (marriott.com): 5-star hotel in a converted convent, close to the Royal Chapel; rooms are comfortable and contemporary. Parador de Úbeda (parador.es): 4-star parador in a Renaissance palace on the most handsome square in town; comfortable rooms, traditionally furnished. NH Amistad Córdoba (nh-hotels.com): 4-star hotel in a converted 18th-century mansion, a short walk from the mosque.
3–11 April 2018 (me 803) 9 days • £3,210 Lecturer: Dr Philippa Joseph
Western Andalucía continued
Wellington in the Peninsula From Portugal to the Pyrenees
Day 6: Cádiz. Walk through the gridplan of narrow streets to the chapel of the former women’s hospital, containing El Greco’s St Francis of Assisi, the 18th-cent. and the elliptical Oratorio de San Felipe Neri with Murillo’s Immaculate Conception. The Cádiz Museum has paintings by Zurbarán and Murillo and a fine archaeological section. Free afternoon. Day 7: Arcos de la Frontera, Ronda. Drive east to Arcos, a picturesque town which clings to the crest of a precipitous escarpment. Visit the two main churches, Sta Maria and San Pedro, both excellent Gothic structures with elaborate altarpieces. Continue to Ronda, another town with a stunning location, straddling the deep Tagus gorge and supported by the towering Puente Nueva. Visit the old town with 13th-cent. Arab baths, Moorish style gardens and a gallery dedicated to Joaquín Peinado, modernist and contemporary of Picasso. First of two nights in Ronda. Day 8: Grazalema. Drive to the beautiful Sierra de Grazalema Natural Park for an optional walk: 6.5 km, c. 3 hours 30 minutes. Ascent: 683m, descent: 944m. Beginning with some steep climbs, traverse low lying mountain vegetation and woodland on rocky paths. Rewarded with panoramas of the surrounding sierras and countryside, we zig zag downhill into the pretty white streets of Grazalema village for lunch. Non-walkers remain in Ronda and drive to Grazalema for lunch. Day 9. Drive to Málaga for the early afternoon flight to London Gatwick arriving at c. 4.00pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,210 or £2,850 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,420 or £3,060 without flights. Included meals: 2 lunches, 6 dinners, with wine.
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Accommodation. Hotel Las Casas de La Judería, Seville (lascasasdelajuderiasevilla.com): 4-star hotel in the Barrio Sta Cruz created from several contiguous buildings connected by open-air patios. Parador de Cádiz (parador.es): 4-star modern parador with comfortable rooms and sea views. Parador de Ronda (parador.es): 4-star parador in the former town hall, overlooking the Tagus gorge. The two Parador hotels insist on halfboard, so three dinners and one lunch will be in the hotel restaurants in Cádiz and Ronda.
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How strenuous? A long tour with a lot of walking and standing; fitness is essential. To join the walk in Grazalema you must be used to country walking with plenty of uphill and downhill content and own a well-worn pair of walking shoes. Average coach travel per day: 40 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Western Spain: Extremadura & Toledo, 16–24 April 2018 (p.178).
What else is included in the price? See page 8. 1 84
15–27 May 2018 (me 869) 13 days • £3,370 Lecturer: Patrick Mercer obe Survey of Wellington’s Iberian campaign, through Portugal, Spain and into the French Pyrenees. Key battles studied in depth, also the life of the soldier and background matters. A scenically varied journey at a beautiful time of year, through the sunny Alentejo plains, across the mountains of Extremadura, the meseta of Castile, ending in the drama of the Pyrenees. Ascribing the eventual downfall of Napoleon to a single event is a dubious historical exercise, but here goes: his own decision in 1807, when he was at the height of his power, to plug the gap in the blockade which excluded British shipping from continental Europe. The gap was Portugal, Great Britain’s long-time ally and trading partner. Marching French troops to Portugal through a hitherto submissive Spain provoked the Spanish people into bitter revolt, and Britain, seeing a relatively low-risk way of causing discomfort to France, committed troops to the Iberian Peninsula. That the British would hang on in there for six years until they swept the French over the Pyrenees and defeated them in France itself was anticipated by no one – not Napoleon, because he was used to quick and decisive victories, nor the British, because there was fierce opposition to the war in Parliament and sustained criticism of the campaign in the country. Nevertheless, the British under Wellington never lost a major battle, and, aided by Spanish guerillas, succeeded in tying down huge numbers of French troops and infecting Napoleon with his ‘Spanish ulcer’. Wellington developed a range of tactics which amounted to the elixir
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of success which had eluded Napoleon’s other opponents, and emerged as the only general of the Napoleonic Wars to rival Bonaparte himself for military genius. A master both of battlefield tactics and long-term strategy, he had an extraordinary capacity for logistical and administrative detail and for cool-headedness. And by chipping away for so long without significant reverse, he gave heart to the conquered and cowering capitals elsewhere in Europe. The War also has a significance for British history beyond its immediate achievements. The prestige of her armies had been at a low ebb after a century with few moments of glory and quite a lot of embarrassments. Indeed, England had not been considered internationally as a significant military power since the loss of French territories in the fifteenth century. The Peninsular War changed all that. Here at last was a saga of sustained success, albeit with some setbacks, and of great deeds of valour, albeit with episodes of barbarity and indiscipline. And, ultimately, there was victory, as has tended to be the case, by and large, ever since. As a group, the battlefields of the Peninsula constitute the most dramatic and illuminating of the redcoat era. They are spread across an extraordinary variety of terrain and climate, from sun-baked plains to misty mountain passes. This tour will provide vistas of breath-taking beauty, and cities and villages which have scarcely changed in two hundred years.
It in e r a r y Day 1. Fly at c. 11.55am from London Gatwick to Porto (TAP Portugal). Drive to the hotel in the forest of Buçaco, a former summer retreat for the Portuguese royal family. First of two nights in Buçaco. s ra ion The a e of i oria ne . . ad er af er a drawin
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Day 2: Buçaco. In the forest visit the museum commemorating the Battle of Buçaco, scene of Wellington’s great delaying action during his retreat to Torres Vedras. See also Craufurd’s Mill and the French view from Massena’s hill. There is an optional visit to Wellington’s command post or some free time to explore the grounds of the hotel. Overnight Buçaco. Day 3: Obidos, Roliça, Badajoz (Spain). The long drive today heads south to Obidos, the site of Wellington’s HQ before the battle of Roliça, the British Army’s first battle in the Peninsula. From the battlements of the town we see the field of Roliça exactly as the Duke did before going to the memorial to the battle in the village through which the British Army advanced. Cross the border into Spain to the frontier town of Badajoz for the first of two nights. Day 4: Badajoz, La Albuera. The ramparts of Badajoz, which provided formidable protection for the French, are still intact. The siege ended at tremendous cost with their storming by the British on the night of 6th April 1812, and the army went berserk for 72 hours afterwards. On 16th May 1811 at La Albuera, 15 miles away, was the bloodiest of the major battles; it remains one of the great unspoilt battlefields in the Peninsula. Overnight Badajoz. Day 5: Alcántara, Ciudad Rodrigo. Head north via the Roman bridge in the village of Alcántara. Cross the Sierra de Gata, dividing line between Extremadura and Castilla-León, to Ciudad Rodrigo. Tour the defences, stormed on the night of 19th January 1812. Overnight Ciudad Rodrigo.
Day 10: Vitoria. Tactically perhaps Wellington’s most brilliant battle, the Battle of Vitoria on 21 June 1813 effectively decided the outcome of the war. It also brought about, for the first time, Napoleon’s acknowledgement that the Allies had a general who was as good as any he could muster, and news of the victory precipitated the end of the truce in Central Europe and hence to the defeat of the French at Leipzig in October. Drive across the Basque Country and into the foothills of the Pyrenees. Stop at Cadoux’s bridge, scene of the desperate battle on 31st August 1813. First of three nights in Bera (Vera) de Bidasoa.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,370 or £3,250 without flights. Suite supplement in Bera: £50 (per person based on two sharing). Single occupancy: £3,790 or £3,670 without flights. Included meals: 2 lunches (including one picnic) and 9 dinners with wine.
Day 11: Battle of the Nivelle and Pyrenees. A day dedicated to two battles. Travel by cogwheel railway to the top of the Rhune mountain and from here study the Battle of the Nivelle of 10th November 1813. At Bidart see the grave of the remarkable Lt Col Lloyd, Commanding Officer of 2/84th Regiment and the church at Arcangues which still bears the marks of its defence by the Light Division. Overnight Bera.
Accommodation. Buçaco Palace, Buçaco (bussacopalace.com): comparable to a 4-star, one of the great hotels of Portugal in a turn-ofthe-century palace. Hotel Zurbarán, Badajoz (granhotelzurbaranbadajoz.com): functional 4-star in the centre of town with adequately comfortable rooms. Parador Ciudad Rodrigo, Ciudad Rodrigo (parador.es): 4-star parador installed in a 14th-century castle with splendid public areas. 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 Silken Ciudad de Vitoria, Vitoria (hoteles-silken.com): stylish 4-star hotel, a short walk from the centre of town. Hotel Churrut, Bera de Bidasoa (hotelchurrut. com): a 3-star hotel installed in an 18th-century military building; family owned and managed with seventeen spacious rooms; well-furnished and comfortable sitting areas. The majority of included dinners are in the hotels.
Day 12: Battle of the Nive. Drive to the site of Wellington’s crossing of the River Bidasoa on 7 October 1813 and the invasion of France. In the afternoon, study the last stages of the Battle of the Nive, 10–13 Dec. 1813, from the memorial at Mouguerre. See also the crucial bridge held so gallantly by the 3rd Buffs. Overnight Bera.
How strenuous? This is a long tour involving six hotels and a lot of walking, some of it across uneven, countryside terrain and uphill. Fitness and sure-footedness are essential. There is also a fair amount of standing around on site. Transfer days involve lengthy coach journeys. Average distance by coach per day: c. 100 miles.
Day 13: San Sebastián. San Sebastián was another triumphant siege for Wellington’s men, but its aftermath was almost as disgraceful as that at Badajoz. The castle ramparts give an unparalleled view of the assaults with an excellent museum that shows much of the technical site of siege work. Drive to Bilbao for the flight to London Gatwick (Vueling), arriving c. 7.20pm.
Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Footpaths of Umbria, 7–14 May 2018 (p.117); Berry & Touraine, 28 May–5 June 2018 (p.69).
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Day 6: Ciudad Rodrigo, Fuentes de Oñoro, Nave de Haver, Poço Velho (Portugal). At Ciudad Rodrigo visit the major breach through which the Light Division attacked, the memorial to Black Bob Crawford (who died leading them) and then the site of the storming by the 3rd Division. Moving through the still battle-scarred town, study the diversionary attack on the opposite walls before the site of the surrender of the French commander. On the border with Portugal lies Fuentes de Oñoro, site of a hard-fought battle in early May 1811 and Nave de Haver and Poço Velho, two of the crucial parts of the initial stages of the battle. Back in Spain, cross the meseta to the city of Salamanca for the first of three nights.
Day 9: Burgos, Vitoria. Drive to Burgos, early capital of Castile, with one of Spain’s finest Gothic cathedrals. Visit the remains of the hill-top castle, scene of Wellington’s only major setback in the Peninsula and then the outlying Hornwork which had to be taken before the main defences could be attacked. Overnight Vitoria.
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Day 7: Salamanca. The Battle of Salamanca, 22 July 1812, was one of Wellington’s greatest victories. Tour the battlefield in depth, beginning at Miranda de Azán before climbing the Greater Arapil for a grandstand view of the site. In the afternoon visit Garcihernández, scene of the great cavalry charge of the King’s German Legion. Overnight Salamanca. Day 8: Salamanca. Morning visit of the walls and remains of the three convents that were hastily converted to fortresses around San Vicente in order to protect the main bridge into the town and which had to be taken by storm. Free afternoon in Salamanca, a city architecturally endowed beyond all proportion to its size with two cathedrals, Spain’s oldest university, the most beautiful and animated main square on the Peninsula and countless convents, monasteries and palaces. Overnight Salamanca. 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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Rock Art in Scandinavia Discovering the Nordic Bronze Age in Norway and Sweden 24 June–1 July 2018 (me 932) 8 days • £3,370 Lecturer: Dr Paul Bahn Some of the most accessible but also most fascinating and important rock art panels in Europe. Alta is an area of outstanding natural beauty, experienced under the majesty of the midnight sun. A range of museums and striking unesco sites under the open skies, with time to discover Oslo’s many galleries. Some regions of Scandinavia – especially parts of Norway and Sweden – are remarkably rich in spectacular prehistoric rock art. Hundreds of rock carvings featuring ships, human beings with weapons, as well as animals such as reindeer, elk and bears can be seen, and some of the best have been coloured red in recent times, to make them easier to see and understand. Some of the world’s earliest studies of rock art took place in Scandinavia, extending as far back as the 17th century and featuring some remarkable pioneering scholars. A great deal of research continues on this corpus, which continues to grow – the striking rock art of Norway’s Alta region, included on unesco’s World Heritage list, was only discovered in 1973. The thousands of petroglyphs at Alta are above the Arctic Circle and while their
precise age is unknown, from their position in relation to the shore line, they are thought to date to between 4200 and 500 bc. In Bohuslän, southern Sweden, there are more than a thousand petroglyphs of boats, thought to date mostly to the Bronze Age, about 3000 years ago. These ubiquitous images were once interpreted as Viking battleships, but later came to be seen as cult ships linked to a fertility god. Are they real ships, symbolic ships or both? Do they represent trade and travel? Were they perhaps carved to ensure safe and fruitful voyages? Or were they symbols of the voyages of the dead?
It in e r a r y Day 1: London to Alta. Fly at c. 10.15am from London Heathrow via Oslo to Alta (Scandinavian Airlines). Arrive at the hotel in time for dinner. First of two nights in Alta. Day 2: Alta. Home to the most extensive concentration of rock art created by huntergatherers in Northern Europe, Alta has over over 6,000 carvings, and over 3,000 of them are in the area immediately around the World Heritage Rock Art Centre. The Hjemmeluft panel carvings, the oldest of which are over 7,000 years old, depict human activities and rituals, myths, legends and a great variety of animals, all closely linked with the surrounding landscape. In the afternoon, an opportunity to visit the Northern Lights Cathedral (2013) before driving
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to Sorrisniva for a boat trip along the Alta river, taking in the impressive scenery. Day 3: Alta to Oslo. In the morning explore documentation of unesco-listed carvings and paintings discovered at Kåfjord, Transfarelv, Storsteinen and Amtmannsne, as well as the unlisted finds at Isnestoften, including the ‘Pippi stone;’ the first carved rock found in Alta, and a larger discovery unearthed nearby on Langnesholmen along with remains of Late Stone Age, Early Bronze and Iron Age dwellings. Both loose rocks are now exhibited at the Alta Museum. In the afternoon fly to Oslo (Scandinavian Airlines), arriving at the hotel in time for dinner. First of two nights in Oslo. Day 4: Oslo. There is an opportunity to compare the prehistoric carved boats at Alta with those of the Vikings in Oslo’s magnificent ship museum on Bygdøy (Museum Island). Continue to the KonTiki Museum, housing vessels and maps from the 1947 expedition. The afternoon is free to discover the city’s museums, galleries and architecture. Day 5: Oslo, Østfold, Tanum. Drive from Oslo to Østfold where Bronze Age rock art, cairns, Iron Age stone circles and burial sites form an ancient trail of heritage sites. At Solberg a 28-metre tower affords views of the fertile landscape, and nearby two rock faces display carved ships. Continue to Hornes, where 22 ships are carved into granite, and the nine stone circles at Hunn. Stop for lunch in the attractive town of Frederikstad with a
Opera in Stockholm Tosca and ida well preserved old town. In the afternoon visit the carved motifs at Begby and the impressive Bjørnstad ship, the largest single rock carving in Northern Europe, before driving to Tanum, Sweden, where the final three nights are spent. Day 6: Tanum. Tanum was awarded World Heritage status in 1994 and as well as its concentrated rock art sites, the great number of prehistoric graves demonstrates that the area was heavily populated in the Bronze Age. In the morning visit the Vitlycke Museum and the nearby panel depicting ‘The Bridal Couple’ representing sacred marriage and a rare blue whale motif. In the afternoon drive to Aspeberget, an expansive site which has survived the ravages of nature for over 3,000 years with remarkable sun symbols. Continue to Litsleby, a panel dominated by the spear-god; the largest carved figure in Scandinavia. After dinner explore more of Tanum’s rock carvings by night, under torchlight. Day 7: Tanum. In the morning walk a 5.5 km route along farm roads and cattle trails, taking in a landscape shaped by human activity since the Bronze Age and passing several petroglyphs. Drive to Grebbestad for lunch, a coastal resort where 90% of Sweden’s oysters are harvested. In the afternoon, visit the Underslös Museum, an international centre for rock art documentation with an impressive archive, presented by the curator. Continue to the nearby site of Fossum, where figures wielding ceremonial weapons and rituals are depicted. Day 8: Tanum to Oslo. Drive north to Oslo, arriving at the airport with time for lunch. Fly to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 4.30pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,370 or £3,080 without flights on days 1 and 8. Single occupancy: £3,920 or £3,630 without flights on days 1 and 8. Included meals: 2 lunches, 5 dinners, with wine.
Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Vikings & Bog Bodies, 3–10 July 2018 (p.59); Danish Castles & Gardens, 2–8 July 2018 (p.58); Western Ireland, 2–8 July 2018 (p.41). s ra ion candinavian scene ear
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We include a private tour of the opera house and a walk in the historic centre with a local guide. Time is allowed for the city’s outstanding museums. Option to combine this tour with Opera in Copenhagen, 9–12 March 2018 (see page 60) – we provide a transfer between the two for a supplement (see overleaf for details). Many cities have been nicknamed the ‘Venice of the North,’ but alongside St Petersburg it is Stockholm that has the greatest claim to such a title. Spectacularly situated on the water and architecturally rich, Sweden’s capital has over the centuries boasted several opera houses, of which the oldest to have survived are the celebrated court theatres at Drottningholm and Confidencen. But the ornately gilded Operan (as it is called in Swedish) is the main opera house today and home to the Royal Swedish Opera. Its location at the heart of the city justifies that Venetian parallel — sitting on the bank of the Norrström river, it is connected via a bridge to the Royal Palace. Opened at the end of the nineteenth century, it remains a magnificent venue, grand yet intimate enough for an authentic opera experience. It witnessed the débuts of many important Swedish singers in the twentieth century, including Jussi Björling, Set Svanholm, Birgit Nilsson, Nicolai Gedda and Elisabeth Söderström. Sweden’s capital probably saw its first operas in 1652, with the arrival of an Italian opera company, and foreign troupes dominated its operatic life for the next hundred-plus years. Cultural life really took off under the reign of King Gustav III.
It in e r a r y Day 1. Fly at 10.45am from London Heathrow to Stockholm Arlanda (British Airways). Visit the Nationalmuseum, the National Museum of Fine Arts, due to reopen in 2018 after renovations. Day 2. Morning lecture on this evening’s performance, followed by a guided tour of the old town centre. Free afternoon; recommended is the spectacular display of prehistoric gold artefacts at the Museum of Antiquities and the Museum of Modern Art. Dinner before the performance at the Royal Swedish Opera: Tosca (Giacomo Puccini), Daniele Callegari (conductor), Knut Hendriksen (director), The Royal Swedish Orchestra and Choir, Emma Vetter (Floria Tosca), Jesper Taube (Mario Cavaradossi), John Lundgren (Baron Scarpia), Kristian Flor (Cesare Angelotti), Jens Persson (A Sacristan), Niklas Björling Rygert (Spoletta), John Erik Eleby (A Jailor). Day 3. Lecture on the evening’s opera. Walk to the 19th century Operan (Royal Swedish Opera) for a private guided tour. The afternoon is free before s ra ion cene fro
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E U R O P E : SWEDEN
How strenuous? A lot of walking is involved to reach the carvings and panels, often over rough ground or up steep gradients. The ground around the sites is slippery underfoot; sure-footedness is essential. In Alta the sun does not set in June so daylight is constant, and in Oslo and Tanum there are only a few hours of darkness. There is a long coach journey on the final day but five days with minimal driving. Average distance by coach per day: 46 miles.
Two performances at Stockholm’s ornate opera house: Tosca by Puccini and Verdi’s Aida.
Verdi would have been well aware of Stockholm’s Italianate opera tradition when he composed Un ballo in maschera, based on Gustav III’s assassination — in the very opera house the king had commissioned. Another masterpiece of Verdi’s maturity, Aida, is included on our itinerary, in a new production due to open shortly before our visit. Conducted by Pier Giorgio Morandi and directed by Michael Cavanagh, it stars Christina Nilsson in the title role, whose rival Amneris is sung by the renowned Katarina Dalayman. We also see the Royal Swedish Opera’s production of Puccini’s Tosca, in a period setting based on the actual venues in Rome, with the house’s dramatic soprano Emma Vetter as the titular tragedienne.
M A IN L A N D
Accommodation. Scandic Alta (scandichotels. com): 3.5-star hotel in the heart of Alta; less than 10 minutes’ drive from the Rock Art Centre. Grand Hotel, Oslo (grand.no): 5-star hotel in the heart of the city; a short walk from the National Gallery. Tanums Gestgifveri (hoteltanum.se): 3-star historic hotel and restaurant well placed for Tanum’s surrounding rock art sites.
6–9 March 2018 (me 773) 4 days • £2,010 (including tickets to 2 performances) Lecturer: Dr John Allison
Opera in Stockholm continued
Art in Switzerland Great collections, lovely towns, sublime landscapes in tranquil woodland above the city, a marvellous display of Old Masters and Impressionists. Continue to Lucerne for the first of two nights.
C o m b i n g i n g Opera in Stockholm w i t h Opera in Copenhagen
Day 2: Baden, Zurich. Drive to Baden where, in a 1900 villa, the Langmatt Foundation displays a fine collection, especially of Impressionists (including 24 Renoirs). In Zurich, visit two churches that have stained glass by Chagall and Alberto Giacometti. The Kunsthaus Zurich is Switzerland’s largest art gallery, displaying Swiss and international art from the Middle Ages to the present day.
9th March 2018. Fly from Stockholm Arlanda to Copenhagen (SAS) to join the participants of Opera in Copenhagen. Price for combining the two tours. You pay the price of Opera in Stockholm with flights and the price of Opera in Copenhagen without flights, unless of course you are arranging your own transport at either end. Plus a supplement of £50 is to contribute to the cost of the flight between Stockholm and Copenhagen (though you can of course choose to book this yourself). Please let us know, at the time of booking, if you would like us to book your transfer. an evening at the Royal Swedish Opera: Aida (Verdi), Pier Giorgio Morandi (conductor), Michael Cavanagh (director), The Royal Swedish Orchestra and Choir, Christina Nilsson (Aida), Lennart Forsén (The King of Egypt), Katarina Dalayman (Amneris), Johan Edholhm (Amonasro), Karin Andersson (A Priestess). Day 4. In the morning visit the museum of the Vasa, the royal flagship which sank on its maiden voyage in 1628. Continue by coach to the Stockholm Public Library, designed by architect Gunnar Asplund, and a wonderful example of the Swedish Grace style. Fly to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 5.00pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,010 or £1,880 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,320 or £2,190 without flights. Included meals: 3 dinners with wine. Music: tickets for two opera performances are included, costing c. £165.
M A IN L A N D
Accommodation. Grand Hôtel Stockholm (grandhotel.se): historic 5-star hotel a few ‘minutes’ walk from the opera.
E U R O P E : SWEDEN, SWITZERLAND
How strenuous? You will be expected to walk to and from the opera house. Participants need to be fit enough to manage this, the city walks 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: Opera in Copenhagen, 9–12 March 2018 (p.60).
Drottningholm & Confidencen August 2018 Full details available in November 2017 Please contact us to register your interest
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Day 3: Lucerne, Basel-Riehen, Basel. Lucerne, at the juncture of mountains, rivers and lake, has a most attractive historic centre with mediaeval, Renaissance and Baroque buildings. The Sammlung Rosengart is an excellent collection of 20th-century art, particularly strong on Picasso and Klee. Drive to Basel via Basel-Riehen where the Beyeler Foundation has a top quality collection of classic modern art in a stunning building by Renzo Piano. First of two nights in Basel.
16–20 June 2018 (me 918) 5 days • £2,130 Lecturer: Dr Alexey Makhrov Fine and varied art collections, some in the collectors’ homes or in brilliant recent buildings. Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and classic modernism figure prominently, also European Old Masters, decorative arts and Oriental art. Excursions to collections outside the city centres pass through picturesque countryside. Switzerland possesses some of the finest of the smaller art collections in Europe. There is no Louvre here and no Uffizi, but several Courtauld Institutes and Burrell Collections. More than in most countries the cultural map has been formed during the last hundred years by the devotion to art of wealthy industrialists and men of commerce. There were no kings and princes in Switzerland to lay the foundations of the present-day collections. With a long tradition of relative autonomy and self-sufficiency the cities and cantons have also played a part in creating the current magnificent public art collections. While artists who were Swiss or who lived in Switzerland are of course amply represented (including Holbein, Fuseli, Hodler, Klee and Giacometti), the whole gamut of western art is to be seen here, with the French Impressionists and Post-Impressionists particularly prominent. An added attraction is architectural: some of the collections remain in the collectors’ former homes and others have recently been re-housed in brilliant new buildings. And when aesthetic exhaustion sets in there are lakes and mountains and picturesque old cities to refresh the palate.
It in e r a r y Day 1. Fly from Heathrow to Zurich at c. 9.30am. Drive to Winterthur to visit the Oskar Reinhart Collection ‘am Römerholz’ at the collector’s home
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Day 4: Basel, Berne. All-day excursion: with its promontory setting and arcaded streets, Berne is perhaps the most attractive city in Switzerland. The purpose-built Paul Klee Centre (Renzo Piano) houses a huge collection of the artist’s works, and the Kunstmuseum has a good and varied collection of western art. Day 5: Basel. Walk via the mediaeval minster to the Kunstmuseum, an excellent collection notable for paintings by one-time resident Hans Holbein. Some free time to explore the lovely old centre, the Historical Museum (furniture, tapestries, silver), Museum of Contemporary Art or the Tinguely Museum. Fly from Basel, arriving at London Heathrow at c. 6.45pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,130 or £1,920 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,340 or £2,130 without flights. Included meals: 1 lunch and 3 dinners with wine. Accommodation: Romantik Hotel Wilden Mann, Lucerne (wilden-mann.ch): 4-star hotel dating back to the 13th century, in the heart of the historic centre. All double rooms have two single mattresses on one frame. Hotel Teufelhof, Basel (teufelhof.com): in Basel’s historic centre, this 3-star hotel is housed in two integrated, historic townhouses from the 18th century. Rooms are decorated in a minimalist style and are fitted with all mod cons. How strenuous? As you would expect this tour involves a reasonable amount of walking through town centres and standing around in galleries. Average distance by coach per day: 70 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Treasures of Moravia, 6–13 June 2018 (p.55); Walking in Southern Bohemia, 8–13 June 2018 (p.57); The Rhine Valley Music Festival, 20–27 June 2018 (p.88); Kraków & Silesia, 22–29 June 2018 (p.155).
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Gstaad Menuhin Festival Music and walking in the Swiss Alps 13–20 July 2018 (me 959) 8 days • £3,880 (including tickets to 6 performances) Lecturer: Richard Wigmore
Return to the hotel for some free time. Concert at the St Mauritius-Kirche, Saanen: Cappella Gabetta, Mario Stefano Pietrodarchi (bandoneon), Andrés Gabetta (violin): Vivaldi, ‘The Four Seasons’; Piazzolla, ‘The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires’.
cross country ski trails beside the forest up to Saanenmöser and returning along the river to the hotel. Recital in Lauenen: Kammermusikfest Gstaad, Sir András Schiff (piano), Yuuko Shiokawa (violin): Mozart, Violin Sonatas.
Performerances by Sir András Schiff (piano), Yuuko Shiokawa (violin), Gabrieli Consort under Paul McCreesh, Cappella Gabetta, Andrés Gabetta (violin), and Christophe Coin (cello).
Day 4: Schönried, Rinderberg, Hornberg. Take the panoramic rail link from Schönried to Zweisimmen and then the gondola up to Rinderberg (2,004m above sea level) for a 2½- hour walk to Hornberg (1,814m). Lunch in Hornberg before returning to Schönried via the chairlift from Horneggli. Concert at the St Nicolas-Kirche, Rougemont: Kammermusikfest Gstaad, Christophe Coin (cello): Bach, Cello Suite No.1; works by Bach with interludes from G. Kurtag.
Day 8. Fly from Geneva arriving at London Heathrow at c. 4.00pm.
Six walks in an area of outstanding natural beauty: 2–4 hours long, led by an experienced guide. Based in Schönried, a village with views across the valley, perfectly located for the walks and concerts. Five-star spa hotel with excellent facilities.
Day 6: Schönried, Chrine, Lauenensee. Drive to Gstaad to take the gondola to ascend the Wispile (1,911m) for a 3½-hour ridge walk along to Chrine (1,659m) and then down (steep in sections) to the Lauenensee (1,381m). A local bus service takes us down to Lauenen before continuing by coach back to the hotel. Recital in Gsteig: Kammermusikfest Gstaad, Danae Dörken (piano): works by Schubert, Mendelssohn and Chopin (Sonata No.2). Day 7: Schönried, Saanenmöser. Leave the hotel on foot for a 2-hour circular walk using
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,880 or £3,740 without flights. Single occupancy: £4,030 or £3,890 without flights. Included meals: 3 lunches, 4 dinners, with wine. Music: tickets (top category) for 6 performances are included costing c. £500. Accommodation. Hotel Ermitage, Schönried (ermitage.ch/en): modern 5-star hotel in traditional chalet-style buildings. How strenuous? This is a walking tour. It is only suitable for those who are used to mountain walking. Although the walks don’t present technical difficulties, they are remote and difficult to access other than by gondola or chairlift, and sometimes rise to up to 2,000m above sea level. You will need appropriate walking footwear. Average distance by coach per day: 40 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
M A IN L A N D
Gstaad is one of the world’s premier music festivals, running for seven weeks each summer and featuring artists of the highest international calibre. It was founded by the violinist Yehudi Menuhin after he settled there with his family in 1957. Following a childhood in New York City, the district of Saanenland in the Bernese Oberland seemed paradise, as it does to many of its residents and visitors. The Saanenland includes Gstaad and six other villages. Local mythology has it that the area came into existence after God had finished creation and rested his seven-fingered hand on the earth, thus creating the seven valleys in which the villages are set. Although billed as the Gstaad Festival, most of the concerts take place in the stunning baroque churches of the resort’s picturesque satellite villages. The festival also has its own resident orchestra, The Gstaad Festival Orchestra, its members drawn from the best orchestras in Switzerland and brought together for specific concerts and projects during festival time. Meetings with some of the performers will be arranged. The walking possibilities in the Saanenland are endless, providing the opportunity to explore this stunning country. Many of the ski lifts are open in the summer to provide access to the mountain tops, enabling the walker to explore the summits and enjoy the views normally only available to skiers.
Day 5: Schönried, Gsteig, Gstaad. Visit the beautifully adorned church in Gsteig before a 2½-hour walk following the river down to Gstaad. There is some free time in Gstaad before returning to the hotel. Concert at the St NicolasKirche, Rougemont: Kammermusikfest Gstaad, Chiaroscuro Quartet, Alina Ibragimova (violin): works by Bach, Beethoven (Op.18, No.2) and Schubert (‘Rosamunde’).
Although we have chosen the walks on this itinerary with due care and consideration, the Saanenland is subject to adverse weather conditions due to the high altitude which may mean that walks have to be changed or modified at short notice. We follow the advice of local walking guides.
It in e r a r y
E U R O P E : SWITZERLAND
Day 1: Schönried. Fly at c. 11.30am (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Geneva and drive 3 hours (including a refreshment break en route) to the hotel in Schönried. Day 2: Schönried, Gstaad, Saanen. A 2½-hour meadow walk to Gstaad, arriving in time for an independent lunch and some free time, before returning to the hotel by coach. Concert at St Mauritius-Kirche, Saanen: Gabrieli Consort, Paul McCreesh (director), Carolyn Sampson (soprano), Jeremy Ovenden (tenor), Andrew Foster-Williams (bass): Haydn, ‘The Seasons’. Day 3: Schönried, Sparenmoos. Walk to the gondola station in Schönried (1,220m above sea level) and ascend to the Rellerli summit (1,831m) for a 4-hour ridge walk to Sparenmoos (1,632m). s ra ion wiss o n ain andsca e i ho ra h c.
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Persia’s Great Empires Ancient and Islamic Iran I t i n e r a r y : 12-day tour Day 1. Fly c. 11.30am from London Heathrow via Istanbul to Shiraz with Turkish Airlines (a routing chosen to avoid domestic flights). Day 2: Shiraz. Arrive Shiraz Airport c. 1.45am and drive to hotel (c. 20 mins) for the first of five nights here. Visits begin at 11.30am today and include the 17th-century secluded courtyard of the Madrassa Khan, still a theological college; the 18th-century. Citadel, a quadrangular fort with cylindrical towers; and the 19th-century Pink Mosque, the sobriquet arising from the profuse revetment of Qajar tiles. Overnight Shiraz. Day 3: Persepolis. One of the most spectacular sites of the ancient world, construction of the ceremonial city of Persepolis began under Darius I in 516 bc and continued under Xerxes and successive Achaemenid kings until it was destroyed by Alexander the Great in 300-bc. Much superstructure and many standing columns survive. The sculpture is particularly impressive, especially the low-reliefs depicting the 26 nationalities of the empire. Return to Shiraz midafternoon and visit the gardens around the tomb of Hafez, the Persian poet. Overnight Shiraz. Day 4: Naqsh-i-Rustam, Pasargadae. The tombs of four Achaemenid kings were cut high up in the cliff at Naqsh-i-Rustam. Reliefs of Sassanian kings and their captive Roman emperors were added below 500 years later. On a remote plateau ringed by hills, Pasargadae was built by Cyrus the Great (d. 529 bc), the first of the Achaemenid emperors. His ziggurat-like tomb and remains of palaces survive. There follows a five-hour drive (with a refreshment break) through dramatic desert and mountain landscape, before dropping down to the ancient caravan city of Yazd (total km today: 470). First of two nights here.
Standard 12-day tour 2–13 March 2018 (me 774) 12 days/11 nights • £4,510 Lecturer: Professor Hugh Kennedy M I D D L E E A S T : IRAN
Standard 12-day tour 6–17 September 2018 (mf 113) 12 days/11 nights • £4,510 Lecturer: Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones Very few spaces remaining A selection of the most interesting cities, major buildings and archaeological sites in this vast, varied and welcoming country. Three full days to explore Isfahan; three full days in Tehran; time in Shiraz and Yazd. Suitable either for first-time visitors or for those with some familiarity already. The successive civilisations of Persia were among the most potent and creative in Asia, and have provided the West with some of our most evocative images – of distant caravanserais and immense vaulted bazaars, of poets and rose gardens, of turquoise domes and priceless carpets. The very names of the cities breathe magic: Shiraz, Persepolis, Isfahan. 1 90
But the images are no mere symbols of a distant past. Historic Persian ways of life and the monuments which sheltered and articulated them are alive in Iran today. The fabulous mosques of Isfahan, the bustle of great bazaars, immense armies of nomads on the move or the magic of classical gardens bring Persia’s civilisations vividly to life. But it was virtually hidden from foreigners for some years after the 1979 revolution. Iran underwent cataclysmic upheavals: a national uprising against one of the strongest rulers in the world, a revolution with repercussions that still reverberate to this day, and one of the most destructive wars of the twentieth century. From these trials and tragedies the Iranians have emerged changed, but they are eager to show their country to the traveller once more. Visitors to Iran can see some of the greatest sights in all Asia, such as Shah Abbas’s astonishing royal city of Isfahan, one of the great monumental cities of the world, or the silent ruins of Pasargadae and Persepolis, still much as Alexander’s destructive fury left them thousands of years ago. But equally arresting are the lesser-known aspects of Iran’s immensely rich heritage revealed by exploration of old desert cities such as Yazd and Nain, and by the great museums of Tehran.
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Day 5: Yazd. Yazd has one of the largest surviving Zoroastrian communities in Iran; two funerary ‘Towers of Silence’ rise on hillocks on the edge of the city, and there is a fire temple in the centre. Of the Islamic architecture, the 11th-century Cenotaph of the Twelve Imams is impressive (entry not guaranteed), while the Friday Mosque is spectacularly clad in 14th-century tile mosaics. See also an area of traditional vernacular architecture and the beautiful Dolat Abad Garden and pavilion. Overnight Yazd. Day 6 Meybod, Muhammadiyya, Nain. Another long drive (210km) through mountainfringed desert, with three stops. In Meybod, visit the mud-brick citadel of Sassanian (5th century ad) origin, a caravanserai and a remarkable ice house. See traditional kilim-weaving at Muhammadiyya. In Nain, the splendid early mosque, with imposing arcades and stucco reliefs, dates to the 10th and 11th centuries. Visit also the fascinating 16th-century governor’s house with its precious sgraffito decoration. Spend the first of three nights in Isfahan. Day 7: Isfahan. Shah Abass I, the greatest of the Safavid kings, chose Isfahan as his capital in 1598. He began the transformation of the city into one of the loveliest in the world. We begin with a preexisting building, the vast Friday Mosque, whose many parts incorporate most periods and styles.
To the Zayandeh River, straddled by two beautiful 17th-century bridges, and cross to the Armenian Quarter. The cathedral interior is covered in high-quality paintings of the 1660s, stylistically a fascinating western-Persian hybrid. The day finishes with a private concert of traditional Iranian music. Overnight Isfahan. Day 8: Isfahan. The immense Meydan, Imam (formerly Royal) Square, is 500m long and formed of a two-storey arcade and the façades of three architectural masterpieces: the Ali Qapu Pavilion, a palace with loggia and well-preserved interiors; the Imam Mosque, magnificent in scale and detail; and the private Shaikh Lutfollah Mosque, with a near perfect dome and unsurpassed tile work. Set in a garden a few minutes away, the exquisite Chehel Sotun pleasure pavilion has very fine 17thcentury figurative wall paintings.
‘Wonderful places, wonderful treasures to see, especially Persepolis and the glorious city of Isfahan.’ Day 9: Natanz, Kashan. An early start for the last of the long drives (483km to Tehran). At Natanz, the cobalt blue and turquoise façade of the Friday Mosque is one of the most exquisite sights in Iran. Kashan has a number of large and richly embellished 19th-century courtyard mansions; we visit Tabatabiyeh House. The Fin Garden is perhaps the most beautiful of classical Persian examples. First of three nights in Tehran. Day 10: Tehran. The Qajar period surges to a crescendo of enrichment at the Golestan Palace, which also houses fine carpets and other objets d’art. The archaeological section of the National Museum of Iran is of international importance and includes items from places visited on the tour. Return to the hotel mid-afternoon, or extend the day with another visit. Overnight Tehran.
Day 12: Tehran. Free morning. Fly to London Heathrow via Istanbul, arriving at c. 10.30pm.
The afternoon is free, with several options – carpet shop, Museum of Modern Art, Hasht Behesht Pavilion, or just relaxing in the hotel garden.
Extended 15-day tour 11–25 October 2018 (mf 213) 15 days/14 nights • £5,320 Lecturer: Professor James Allan
P r a c t ic a lit ie s
An extended version of the regular tour with additional days in Isfahan and Shiraz and an excursion to Firuzabad. More time to take in Iranian daily life and to walk through the bazaars in Shiraz and Isfahan. This version of the tour will suit those seeking more time for independent exploration.
I t i n e r a r y : 15-day tour Days 1–3 are identical to days 1–3 of the standard, 12-day itinerary – please see opposite. Day 4: Firuzabad. Full-day excursion beginning with the scenic drive past the large salt lake of Maharlu and the impressive Qaleh Dokhtar that is perched on a cliff top. Visit the large Sassanid palaces and the ancient city of Ardashir Khurreh, known as Gur. Overnight Shiraz. Day 5: Shiraz. Between long days with a lot of travelling, today has a gentle programme of sightseeing with free time in the afternoon. Set in a citrus garden, the opulently decorated Naranjastan-e Qavam was the house of a wealthy 19th-century merchant, and now houses a small archaeological museum. The Vakil Mosque and contiguous Vakil Bazaar are products of the ambitious rule of Karim Khan in the mid-18th century. Final night in Shiraz. Days 6–10 are identical to days 4–8 of the standard, 12-day itinerary – please see opposite.
What else is included in the price? See page 8. Illustrations. Opposite: Isfahan, Si-o-se Pol Bridge, watercolour by Frank Brangwyn, publ. 1926. Above right: Tehran, principal gate of the Shah’s Palace, wood engraving from ‘The Graphic’ 1885.
Day 11: Isfahan. Walk through the Seljuk Square, another vast arcaded space, pass the Shrine of Harun and the 13th-century Ali Mosque Minaret, and enter the Great Bazaar (Bazar-e Bazorg). Parts are a thousand years old, but most was rebuilt during the reign of Shah Abbas I. See the Mosque of al-Hakim before emerging into the Maydan.
Days 12–15 are identical to days 9–12 of the standard, 12-day itinerary – please see opposite.
Price, per person: 12-day tour (March and September). Two sharing: £4,510 or £4,020 without flights. Single occupancy: £5,220 or £4,730 without flights. Price, per person: 15-day tour (April and October). Two sharing: £5,320 or £4,830 without flight. Single occupancy: £6,200 or £5,710. Included meals: 9 lunches and 10 dinners (12-day tour) or 12 lunches and 13 dinners (15-day tour), soft drinks (no alcohol is served in Iran), plus meals on flights. Visas are required for most foreign nationals and we will advise on obtaining these. At the time of print, the cost of an individual tourist visa through an agency is approximately £400 for British citizens. This is not included in the tour price. Please note, most people who have travelled to Iran, Iraq, Sudan, or Syria since March 2011, or are dual nationals of these countries, will no longer qualify for entry to the United States under the Visa Waiver Program. You will instead need to apply for a visa from the nearest US Embassy or Consulate. Please visit the FCO website for further information. Accommodation. We seek to reserve rooms in the best available hotels, but it is the Iranian custom not to confirm rooms more than a few months – or weeks – in advance, and recent increase in demand has made the situation more unpredictable. How strenuous? This is quite a strenuous tour. Driving distances on two days exceed 400km, though the daily average is 100km, inter-city roads are good and coaches are comfortable and air-conditioned. While most days start at 9.00am, three start at 8.30am and one at 7.45am, but this is compensated for by five days on which the start is 9.30am or later, and some days finish at 3.00 or 4.00pm. There is quite a lot of walking, some of it over rough or badly paved ground, and surefootedness is essential. 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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M I D D L E E A S T : IRAN
Day 11: Tehran. The Carpet Museum displays major examples of historic Persian carpet art. Return to the National Museum, which also has one of the world’s greatest collections of Islamic arts, from the earliest period to the end of Qajar, all Persian. In the hills to the north, the Reza Abbasi Museum shows precious Persian miniature paintings. Final night Tehran.
Extended 15-day tour 12–26 April 2018 (me 815) 15 days/14 nights • £5,320 Lecturer: Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones Very few spaces remaining
Israel & Palestine Archaeology, architecture and art in the Holy Land a thriving, living city. The massive stones and underground tunnels of Herod’s Temple Mount are highly impressive survivals from the ancient world. In the afternoon a walk along a section of the ramparts leads to further Roman-era structures in the Ecce Homo Convent and the Bethesda Pools, and to the Crusader church of St Anne. View the seeming panorama of belfries, domes, minarets and city wall from the Mount of Olives. Overnight Jerusalem. Day 3: Jerusalem, Bethlehem. The intact 7th-century Dome of the Rock stands majestically in the vast Haram ash-sharif complex, complete with Umayyad and Mamluk buildings and the ElAqsa Mosque, all on the site of Solomon’s Temple. Drive through the ‘Separation Wall’ into occupied territory on the West Bank. On the edge of the Judaean Desert, the Herodion is a remarkable fortified palace and tomb complex built by King Herod. The 4th/6th century Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem is one of the greatest buildings of its era, and probably the oldest church in continuous use for Christian worship. Overnight Jerusalem.
6–15 March 2018 (me 766) 10 days • £4,780 Lecturer: Dr Garth Gilmour 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. 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?
M I D D L E E A S T : ISRAEL
Ancient Canaan, the bridge between Egypt, Phoenicia, Syria and Mesopotamia; land of the Patriarchs, home to the Philistines, the Jebusites and the tribes of Israel. A land where the kingdom of David triumphantly rose around 1000 bc and where the splendour of Solomon’s Temple was created. Jews, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans and Turks all made their mark; the history of the land is characterised by conquest and exile. Herod the Great (37–4 bc) was one of the greatest builders of the ancient world. Christianity brought a new wave of construction after Emperor Constantine and his mother, St Helena, in the fourth century ad consecrated the sites associated with Jesus. The final monotheistic religion to arrive was Islam when in 637 ad Caliph Omar conquered Jerusalem. Another religion, and yet another monumental building, this time the Dome of the Rock. The Crusaders instigated a further burst of building activity, planting European Romanesque and Gothic churches and castles tempered by local 1 92
techniques. Mamluks and Ottomans trampled and rebuilt, and after the First World War, with Jewish immigration accelerating, the British were left to hold the rope until the establishment of Israel in 1948. Jerusalem is the most extraordinary city in the world. Within the walls – and the complete circuit survives, the current structure is sixteenth-century – it is a vibrant, authentic Middle Eastern city, but one with sharply distinct communities and largely constructed from ancient and mediaeval masonry. Nowhere else is the historical interpretation of archaeological remains so crucial to current political debate. Israel and Palestine are extraordinary places where Biblical names on road signs demonstrate the closeness of the distant past and where history, politics and religion are impossible to separate. The tour is led by an archaeologist who uses the remains to illuminate peoples and civilisations of the past. It is not a pilgrimage tour in that buildings and sites are selected for intrinsic aesthetic or historical merit rather than religious association. The tour ranges across two countries, and in none: strictly speaking, the old walled centre of Jerusalem is neither Israel nor Palestine.
It in e r a r y Day 1. Fly at c. 2.20pm (El Al) from London Heathrow to Tel Aviv, and then drive to Jerusalem, reaching the hotel c. 11.00pm. Those not taking our flights can check in from c.2pm today. Three nights are spent here. Day 2: Jerusalem. The buildings in the Old City and around (the walled kernel has shifted over the millennia) comprise an incomparable mix of ages and cultures from the time of King David to the present day, while continuing to be
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Day 4: Jerusalem. Mainly Constantinian and Crusader, but confusingly complex, compartmentalised and embellished with later ornamentation, a proper study of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre reveals a deeply fascinating building. Among the items seen during the rest of the day are the Roman colonnaded Cardo, the largely 13th-century Armenian Cathedral, and a 17th-century synagogue. Free time is an alternative, possibly with a visit to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum. In the afternoon drive through Israel to the Dead Sea Valley, the lowest place on earth, to the oasis of Ein Gedi for the first of two nights. Day 5: Masada, Ein Gedi. Rising high above the Judaean desert, Herod’s fortified palace of Masada, last redoubt of the Jewish rebellion against Roman occupation, is one of the most impressive archaeological sites in the Levant. Spend a free afternoon in Ein Gedi to enjoy the botanical gardens or a swim in the Dead Sea. Final night in Ein Gedi. Day 6: Qumran, Jericho, Galilee. Re-enter occupied Palestinian Territories. Qumran is the site of the settlement of the Essenes, a Jewish sect, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. The palm-shaded oasis of Jericho is the world’s most low-lying town and perhaps its oldest continuously inhabited one, the Tell as-Sultan dating back 10,000 years. Nearby, Hisham’s Palace is a remarkably well preserved 8th century Umayyad palace. Continue north, re-enter Israel and spend the first of two nights in Tiberias. Day 7: Sea of Galilee, Tzefat. Visit first the archaeological site of Tell Hazor, and then ascend the Galilean highlands to the mediaeval synagogues and cobbled streets of the town of Tzefat. See the remains of the fishing village of Capernaum, Jesus’s most permanent residence and site of a 5th-century synagogue. Take a boat on the Sea of Galilee, and overnight Tiberias. Day 8: Akko, Caesarea. Akko (Acre) was the principal city of the Crusaders, though the vaulted halls surviving from that period lie below an enthralling maze of narrow streets, Ottoman
Essential Jordan The major Nabataean, Roman, Christian & Islamic sites Dr Garth Gilmour Biblical archaeologist who studied in Jerusalem, where he now lives, and at Oxford. 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. See pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies.
khans and modern souqs. Drive beside the Mount Carmel range to Caesarea, founded by Herod the Great and capital of Judaea for over 600 years. Once the largest city of the eastern Mediterranean, remains include the Herodian theatre, Byzantine residential quarters and a Crusader church. First of two nights Tel Aviv.
27 October–4 November 2018 (mf 298) 9 days • £3,920 Lecturers: Sue Rollin & Jane Streetly Outstanding monuments of several civilisations – Nabataean, Roman, Early Christian, Umayyad, and Crusader. Sue Rollin and Jane Streetly have travelled widely in the Middle East and are authorities 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 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
Day 9: Tel Aviv, Jaffa. Tel Aviv began as an English-style garden city suburb of Jaffa, sprouted a Bauhaus extension (the ‘White City’, a unesco Heritage Site) and grew remorselessly in the later 20th century. Jaffa was a port city from the time of Solomon and remains a charmingly picturesque enclave. Overnight Tel Aviv. Day 10: Jerusalem. Drive back to Jerusalem to visit the excellent Israel Museum. This incorporates, among other collections, the Shrine of the Book, which houses the Dead Sea Scrolls and the outstanding archaeological collection. Fly in the afternoon from Tel Aviv, returning to Heathrow at c. 8.50pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £4,780 or £4,410 without flights. Single occupancy: £5,720 or £5,350 without flights. Included meals: 8 lunches, 7 dinners with wine.
M I D D L E E A S T : ISRAEL, JORDAN
Visas: obtained on arrival at no extra charge for most nationalities. Accommodation. King David, Jerusalem (danhotels.com): 5-star hotel in West Jerusalem within walking distance of the Old City. Ein Gedi (ein-gedi.co.il): renovated kibbutz near the Dead Sea with comfortable cottages set among beautiful botanic gardens. U Boutique Kinneret, Tiberias (leonardo-hotels.com): a newly opened 5 star hotel by the lake in Tiberias. Intercontinental David, Tel Aviv (intercontinental.com): 5-star hotel with all expected amenities and well-appointed rooms. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking involved in the tour, some of it over rough archaeological sites. Sure-footedness is essential. Average distance by coach per day: 36 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Minoan Crete, 19–28 March 2018 (p.93). Illustration: Jerusalem, Temple Mount, mid-18th-century copper engraving.
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Essential Jordan continued
‘First class; not a moment wasted, but still enough time to draw breath; every site well chosen; two full days in Petra – perfect.’
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. Day 7: Little Petra, Dead Sea. ‘Little Petra’, a narrow gorge with three natural widenings, is seen as a commercial centre with carved façades and chambers and a fragment of naturalistic Nabataean painting. A spectacular descent through rugged and ragged 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. floor mosaics, lie scattered through the Jordanian 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.
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. 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 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 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.
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 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.
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
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
It in e r a r y 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.11.30pm. First of three nights in Amman.
M I D D L E E A S T : JORDAN
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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 ad. 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 Heathrow c. 1.00pm.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,920 or £3,350 without flights. Single occupancy: £4,590 or £4,020 without flights. Included meals: 7 lunches (including 2 picnics), 5 dinners (plus snack on arrival on day 1) with wine. 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. 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. Mövenpick Dead Sea Hotel, Sweimeh (moevenpick-hotels.com): 5-star hotel comprised of buildings scattered through lush tropical gardens; shady lounges, antique or traditional-style furnishings; there is also a spa and health centre. How strenuous? This tour is quite demanding. You must be capable of walking all day over rough sites. A good level of fitness and sure-footedness is essential, 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.
Illustrations. Previous page: Petra, the Siq, lithograph by F. Lewis c. 1850. Above: desert caravan, after a drawing c. 1910 by Frank Brangwyn.
Oman, Landscapes & Peoples Desert, coast and mountains 6–16 January 2018 (me 737) 11 days/10 nights • £5,360 Lecturer: Professor Dawn Chatty Very few spaces remaining 5–15 January 2019 Full details available in December 2017 Please contact us to register your interest Remarkable landscape, hill forts, traditional souqs, archaeological sites. The toehold of Arabia, with a diverse population reflecting its mercantile past. Accompanied by a social anthropologist long involved in the Middle East. A night in a desert camp and two nights in a new, luxury hotel in the mountains of the Jebel Akhdar. For the full itinerary in 2018, please contact us or visit www.martinrandall.com
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person in 2018. Two sharing: £5,360 or £4,730 without flights. Single occupancy: £6,240 or £5,610 without flights. Included meals: 9 lunches (including 2 picnics) and 9 dinners with wine.
Visas: required for most foreign nationals. We will arrange for these to be issued on arrival if travelling with the group, the costs of which are included in the tour price. Accommodation. Grand Hyatt, Muscat (muscat.grand.hyatt.com): ornate 5-star hotel in the diplomatic district. Alila Jabal Akhdar, Nizwa (alilahotels.com): new hotel 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/ surplaza): 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 four 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. Illustration: this could be Oman (due to the water system and architecture) but is infact Algeria, engraving c. 1875.
M I D D L E E A S T : OMAN
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 possibility of travelling to little-visited locations, relaxing in inspiring surroundings and developing understanding with new peoples is no less possible in Oman in 2018 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 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.
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Palestine, Past & Present Archaeology and culture on the West Bank 15–23 October 2018 (mf 222) 9 days • £3,980 Lecturer: Felicity Cobbing A pioneering tour that includes the major archaeological sites and the most significant historic buildings on the West Bank. There are two nights in East Jerusalem. Provides an insight into a territory much in the news but little visited in recent years.
M I D D L E E A S T : PALESTINE
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.
It in e r a r y 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 here. 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). Overnight Bethlehem. 1 96
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. Overnight Bethlehem. 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 MiddleEastern 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. Overnight Bethlehem. 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 discovered. Nabi Musa, according to Muslim tradition, is the burial place of Moses and has Mamluk, Byzantine and Ottoman parts. Overnight Jericho. 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. Free afternoon in Jerusalem. Overnight East Jerusalem.
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. See pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,980 or £3,440 without flights. Single occupancy: £4,500 or £3,960 without flights. Included meals: 8 lunches, 7 dinners, with wine. Visas: obtained on arrival at no charge for most nationalities. Accommodation. Bethlehem: hotel to be confirmed. Hotel Intercontinental, Jericho (intercontinental.com): 5-star hotel in a highrise building outside the city centre. American Colony, Jerusalem (americancolony.com): 5-star prestigious hotel in East Jerusalem. How strenuous? This is an active, primarily outdoors tour involving a lot of walking and standing. Terrain can be rough and paving uneven.e Sure-footedness and being comfortable spending much of the day on one’s feet in the heat is essential. Average distance by coach per day: c. 41 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Essential Jordan, 27 October–4 November 2018 (p.193). 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.
‘The visits to Nablus and Hebron were outstanding.’
Day 9: Jerusalem. 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. The flight arrives at London Heathrow c. 8.00pm.
Illustration: ruins in the Wadi Kelt, wood engraving c. 1880 from ‘Picturesque Palestine: Sinai & Egypt, Vol.I’.
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Israel & Palestine, 6–15 March 2018 – see page 192.
M I D D L E E A S T : PALESTINE
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Essential China A selection of the most celebrated sights in China
2–14 May 2018 (me 842) 13 days • £5,940 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).
A S I A : CHINA
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 1 98
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 roles give Shanghai a vibrancy and timbre like no other Chinese city.
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.
It in e r a r y
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 1: Beijing. The tour begins with lunch at the hotel (flights from London are not included – see ‘Practicalities’). 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
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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. 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 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 Illustration: the Great Wall, wood engraving 1864.
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 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.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s
MONGOLIA Jinshanling
Price, per person. Two sharing: £5,940. Single occupancy: £6,910.
Beijing
Included meals: 10 lunches, 7 dinners, with wine. Flights from London to Beijing and Shanghai to London 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 and inform us of the details. The cost of a World Traveller (economy) seat at the time of going to press is c. £700 and will be available to book towards the end of May 2017. Visas are required for most foreign nationals, and are not included in the tour price. We will advise on the process. 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 five-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.
Xi’an
Luoyang
China Shanghai Hangzhou
c. 400km
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. Uneven ground and irregular paving are standard. There are some long coach journeys during which facilities are limited and may be of poor quality. Average distance by coach per day: 48 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Ceramics in China, 15–26 May 2018 (p.202).
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.
A S I A : CHINA
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 Neoclassical 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 the direct flight at 11.00am from Shanghai to London, arriving at c. 4.30pm (c. 12 ½ hours).
What else is included in the price? See page 8. Illustration: 20th-century Chinese woodcut.
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Ming & Qing Civilisation The art, architecture and history of the culminating dynasties
19–30 September 2018 (mf 164) 12 days • £6,340 International flights not included Lecturer: Dr Jamie Greenbaum Focuses on the five centuries when China reached its greatest extent, greatest unity and longest periods of peace.
A S I A : CHINA
Ruling from 1368 to 1911, the Ming and Qing dynasties bequeathed the most spectacular imperial buildings in China. Porcelain, painting and garden design reached a peak of perfection; this tour sees many of the best surviving examples of all the arts. Under the two last imperial dynasties, which together spanned 543 years, China reached her peak of territorial extent, political power, of riches, of peace. Most of the country’s greatest surviving historic architecture dates to this period – 1368 to 1911 – and much of that precious and beautiful heritage is seen on this tour. Imperial patronage produced palaces, tombs and temples, consolidating the steady evolution of standard designs to reach immutable perfection. Integral to the architecture is ornamentation of exquisitely carved stone and wood, often gaily painted, and brightly glazed ceramics. Painting of the era achieved its classic, ineffable form, but it is for porcelain that Ming is popularly a byword for perfection, and deservedly, yet under the 2 0 0
eighteenth-century Qing emperors porcelain also reached sublime heights of beauty. Some of the finest examples from the imperial kilns are seen on this tour. The classical Chinese garden – an art form as highly esteemed by contemporaries as any other – also took shape here in the sixteenth century, and, astoundingly, a dozen or so excellent examples survive in something approaching their original state in Suzhou. The tour begins at Suzhou, an appropriate place to recover from the flight and ease into this astonishing country. Though a rapidly growing industrial hub (a third of the world’s silk is produced here), the extensive historic centre retains its pre-modern scale and texture with two- or three-storey buildings of whitewashed walls, grey tiles and upturned eaves – whether old or new. Ancient canals still thread between narrow streets which are lined with camphor trees. Suzhou was home to the four founding fathers of the Ming and Qing tradition of painting, and it is no coincidence that garden design is so prominent here. Nanjing was the base of the Ming clan before they conquered the Yuan dynasty of Mongol emperors in 1368, and the city became capital of a reunited China. The first Ming emperor, Hongwu, rebuilt the walls; 20 miles long and 40 feet high, for size they have never been surpassed. But his successor, Emperor Yongle, moved the capital to Beijing in 1403. The palace he built there, the Forbidden City, has, against the odds, survived numerous vicissitudes and is one of the world’s
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most extensive and fascinating royal residences. The last hundred years of Qing rule was a period of decline, of humiliation by foreign aggressors and of internal dissension. Glory sank into misrule and tragedy – and most of the twentieth century can be similarly characterised. In these circumstances it is perhaps surprising that much of aesthetic worth or delicacy survived at all, but plenty does, certainly enough to demonstrate that the era of the Ming and Qing dynasties constituted one of the great civilisations in world history.
It in e r a r y Day 1: Shanghai to Suzhou. The tour begins with lunch at a Shanghai hotel (flights from London are not included – see ‘Practicalities’). After lunch, drive to Suzhou (2½ hours). With its low-rise buildings and camphor trees flanking streets and canals, the historic centre is an endearing place to begin after the journey. Upon arrival there is a walk and a visit to one of the oldest surviving gardens. First of three nights in Suzhou. Day 2: Suzhou. Clustered in a corner of the city are a 12th-cent. bridge, a 5th-cent. pagoda and a sophisticated Ming era gateway in the ramparts which allows admission by water or by land. The Master of the Nets Garden is a masterpiece featuring all essential elements in garden design. Designed by the Chinese-American architect I.M. Pei and opened in 2006, the Suzhou Museum
blends beautifully with the historic architecture and contains a choice collection of porcelain, painting and other arts. Day 3: Luzhi, Suzhou. There is a morning excursion to Luzhi, a well-preserved and atmospheric ‘water town’ with Ming and Qing residences and numerous bridges across the narrow canals. In Suzhou, a short boat ride leads to the Humble Administrator’s Garden, largest and best known of the Ming gardens here, with carefully composed vistas of water, rocks, plants and pavilions. Day 4: Suzhou, Nanjing. Suzhou remains a centre of silk production; witness it first hand at a silk factory. By train (luggage is sent separately) to Nanjing, capital of China under the first three Ming emperors (and again 1912–49). Much of the centre is of a manageable scale and plane trees line the busy streets. The tomb complex of the first Ming emperor, on a wooded hill just outside the walls, constitutes a summation of past traditions and set the pattern for subsequent imperial burials. Overnight Nanjing. Day 5: Nanjing, Beijing. Twenty miles long, the city wall built by the first Ming emperor became the longest in the world; much remains, and the Zhonghua barbican is a formidable structure with three courtyards. Nanjing Museum, largely newly built, is one of the best in China, with the complete range of arts – bronzes, jades, porcelain, textiles, painting and furniture. Fly at c. 5.00pm (China Eastern) to Beijing, to which Emperor Yongle removed in 1403 and which became the capital of all subsequent Ming and Qing regimes. First of four nights in Beijing.
Day 7: Beijing and environs. The Ming Tombs 30 miles outside the city are the final resting place of 13 of the 16 Ming emperors. After a 7-km Sacred Way flanked by stone-carved animals and officials, the tomb of Yongle (died 1424) consists of a succession of courts with ceremonial gateways, a great hall and a man-made hill concealing the tomb itself. Returning to Beijing, visit the Summer Palace, an extensive compound of ceremonial halls, temples and walkways around Kunming Lake, repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt in the late 19th cent. Day 8: Beijing. Set in a tranquil park, the buildings of the Temple of Heaven are among the highest achievements of Ming designers. Further Ming buildings guard the south of Tiananmen Square, a vast space which is the location of National Museum. This has superb collections of early Chinese artefacts, Zhou bronzes and the whole range of porcelain from Song to Qing.
Day 10: Chengde. The imperial villa begun by Emperor Kangxi in 1703, essentially Manchurian, consists of single-storey timber buildings around courtyards in a 590-hectare park. There are several 18th-cent. Buddhist temples in Chengde. Puning Si is still an active Buddhist monastery; the many buildings of Putuozongcheng Temple rise to a multi-storey block which is a replica of Lhasa’s Potala Palace, formidable externally, with gaily painted galleried courtyards inside. Day 11: Chengde, Qingdongling. Some free time in Chengde before visiting Qingdongling, the Eastern Tombs, burial place in a remote rural setting of five of the ten Qing emperors and the largest tomb complex in China. The Sacred Way has the full panoply of archways, bridges and sculpted guardian figures; one tomb has underground chambers with beautifully carved white marble walls. Spend the night in Beijing.
MONGOLIA Chengde Qingdongling
Jinshanling Beijing
China
Nanjing Suzhou
Luzhi Shanghai
c. 400km
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. Uneven ground and irregular paving are standard and the tour involves a lot of standing around on site and in museums. There are some long coach journeys during which facilities are limited and may be of poor quality. Average distance by coach per day: 58 miles Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
Day 12: 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).
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £6,340. Single occupancy: £7,370. Included meals: 8 lunches, 8 dinners, with wine. Flights from London to Shanghai and Beijing to London 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 and inform us of the details. The cost of a World Traveller (economy) seat at the time of going to press is c. £700 and will be available to book towards the beginning of November 2017. Visas are required for most foreign nationals, and not included in the tour price. We will advise on the process. Accommodation: Scholar’s Hotel, Suzhou (pingjiangpalace.com): well-equipped hotel, quiet and centrally located. Mandarin Garden Hotel, Nanjing: large hotel located in a vibrant part of the city centre, comfortable but dated. Waldorf Astoria Hotel, Beijing (hilton.com): recently opened, 5-star luxury hotel in the city centre. Yun Shan Hotel, Chengde (cdyunshan.com): the best hotel in town but the décor is dated and service can be brusque.
A S I A : CHINA
Day 6: Beijing. The Imperial Palace is as impressive and enthralling as one expects (though no longer justifying the epithet, The Forbidden City). Its origins lie with Kublai Khan, but its current form is Ming and Qing. It is a vast rectangular compound surrounded by a formidable wall and a moat with innumerable courts and pavilions, 800 buildings in total. Despite the depredations of the last 150 years, it survives remarkably well, and has quite outstanding collections of arts and precious artefacts.
Day 9: Beijing, Jinshanling. Free morning in Beijing. Leave at c. 12.45pm and drive out to a particularly spectacular stretch of the Great Wall at Jinshanling which was rebuilt during the Ming Dynasty and regularly saw action. Walk along a section where it climbs, descends and winds over the steep-sided hills. Surrounded by mountains, Chengde was the summer resort of the Qing emperors and is consequently the location of some of the greatest 18th-cent. architecture in China. First of two nights in Chengde.
Illustrations. Opposite page: Beijing, Summer Palace, steel engraving c. 1840. This page: after a drawing by Mortimer Menpes, publ. 1909.
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Ceramics in China Collections, kiln sites and trade routes in China and Taiwan transporting its wares along the Yangtze and the Grand Canal, while other river and laborious overland routes were established to fulfil orders from Persia and later from foreign merchants in Java, Macao and Shanghai. To this day Jingdezhen continues as a major centre for ceramic production with a happy co-existence of ancient traditions and modern processes. The journey from Jingdezhen to Hangzhou passes the dramatic Mt. Huangshan and ancient villages nestling in landscapes first revealed to Europeans in depictions on vases and tea services. The Southern Song capital of Hangzhou is the southern terminus of China’s – and one of the world’s – greatest civil engineering achievements, the Grand Canal. Begun in ad 612 it ran northwest to Beijing via Luoyang. Across the straits in Taipei, capital of Taiwan, the fabled imperial treasures are on display at the National Palace Museum. Amassed over centuries by the emperor-collectors of the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, it is the world’s finest collection of Chinese art. In 1949, as the war between Nationalist and Communist forces neared its conclusion, Chiang Kai-shek ordered that the collection be shipped to Taiwan to prevent the treasure falling into the hands of the victorious Communists. There it remains, a collection so large that the NPM rotates 3000 of its exhibits every three months. For the devotee of Chinese porcelain this tour provides a unique opportunity to study some of the finest examples in the context of its manufacture, trade, cultural framework and proximate landscapes. For the merely interested, it is likely to bequeath a lifelong capacity to delight in one of the world’s most intensely beautiful artforms.
It in e r a r y 15–26 May 2018 (me 872) 12 days • £4,790 International flights not included Lecturer: Dr Lars Tharp A S I A : CHINA
A celebration of Chinese porcelain, a sweep through China’s material culture and landscapes. Includes the world’s greatest collection of Chinese art, the National Palace Museum in Taiwan. A day’s excursion to Mt. Huangshan (Yellow Mountain) immortalised in Chinese painting and poetry. Three nights in historic Jingdezhen, porcelain capital of the world. Chinese porcelain has been called the first globally traded luxury. For centuries its magical whiteness and translucency, its vibrant blues and later its gorgeous colour painting held princes and aesthetes in its spell. It was not until a whole millennium after its emergence in China that the secret of its manufacture was discovered in Europe in the early eighteenth century. In ad 1004 the reigning Song emperor conferred his name upon the porcelain-making city of Chang-Nan, later known as Jingdezhen. It supplied the imperial household in Beijing, 2 0 2
Day 1: Shanghai. The tour begins with lunch at the hotel (flights from London are not included – see ‘Practicalities’). A relatively young city by Chinese standards, Shanghai is now the nation’s largest and most dynamic. There is an afternoon walk along the Bund, the imposing and well preserved riverside stretch of Art Deco and Neoclassical buildings from the period when Shanghai was one of the world’s greatest financial centres. First of two nights in Shanghai. Day 2: Shanghai. The world-class Shanghai Museum is home to an extensive collection of masterpieces of Chinese arts from the Neolithic period to the Qing dynasty. The fabulous ceramics galleries offer a superb narrative foundation for the days ahead. There is time for independent exploration of the museum’s superb bronze, painting, jade and furniture collections. The 16thcentury Yu Garden is visited in the afternoon, an excellent example of classical garden design.
once secret resource of kaolin clay and china stone, which, when processed in the water-powered mills, formed the potters’ basic material. Traditional manufacture is demonstrated at the Ancient Kiln Complex. The new, impressive China Ceramics Museum excellently displays pottery and porcelain from various periods and kiln sites. Day 6: Jingdezhen to Huangshan. In the morning, visit a ceramic research institute (subject to special permission) before driving to Huangshan (c. 2½ hours) for two nights. Day 7: Huangshan. Conditions permitting, there is a full-day excursion by coach and cable car to the peaks of Mt. Huangshan (Yellow Mountain). Jutting granite and ancient pines, often shrouded by clouds, have long inspired Chinese art and literature and consequently the world’s imaginings of oriental landscape. (If Mt. Huangshan cannot be visited, there will be alternative visits to traditional villages in the foothills.) Day 8: Huangshan to Hangzhou. Drive through the southern tip of Anhui province, dominated by the spectacular mountain scenery, stopping for lunch in a traditional village in Shexian County (formerly Huizhou). Reach Hangzhou in time for supper. First of two nights in Hangzhou. Day 9: Hangzhou. The scenic tranquillity of the city’s West Lake has been immortalised by countless poets and painters over the centuries. See the excavated imperial dragon-kiln site of Guan wares, one of China’s most treasured wares. Visit the Grand Canal Museum before crossing over the historic waterway into the neighbouring traditional village area. Day 10: Hangzhou to Taipei. Fly at c. 9.30am (Air China) from Hangzhou to Taipei. After lunch visit the Confucius Temple, the only such temple in Taiwan with southern Fujian-style ceramic adornments. First of two nights in Taipei. Day 11: Taipei. Spend a full day at the National Palace Museum for a detailed study of its comprehensive ceramics collection. There is also time for independent exploration of the other, equally impressive, collections in the museum. Day 12: Taipei. The tour ends after breakfast. There is a transfer to the airport in time for the flight at 10.50am from Taipei to Hong Kong, arriving at c. 12.30pm (c. 1 ½ hours).
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £4,790. Single occupancy: £5,460. Included meals: 11 lunches, 7 dinners, with wine.
Day 3: Jingdezhen. Fly (Shenzhen Airlines) to Jingdezhen. In the afternoon visit the studios of working potters Felicity Aylieff and Takeshi Yasuda (by special arrangement). There is time to explore Tao Xi Chuan, a recently restored former ceramic production site. Overnight Jingdezhen.
Flights from London to Shanghai and Taipei to London 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 and inform us of the details. The cost of a World Traveller (economy) seat at the time of going to press is c. £800 and will be available to book towards the beginning of June 2017.
Days 4 & 5: Jingdezhen. Two days are spent in and around Jingdezhen. In these hills around lay the
Visas: required for most foreign nationals, and not included in the tour price.
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Sacred China City palaces, mountain temples and desert grottoes MONGOLIA
China
Shanghai Jingdezhen
Hangzhou Huangshan
Taipei c. 400km
Accommodation. Yangtze Boutique Hotel, Shanghai (theyangtzehotel.com): 4-star, Art Deco hotel ideally situated close to the Shanghai Museum. Taoxichuan Traders Hotel, Jingdezhen: 4-star hotel opened in 2016 in one of the very recently and sensitively restored buildings on a former ceramic production site. Crowne Plaza, Huangshan (crowneplaza.com): large international 4-star hotel on the outside of the city. 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). Landis Hotel, Taipei (taipei.landishotelsresorts.com): centrally located, 4-star, Art Deco-style hotel. 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. Uneven ground and irregular paving are standard and the tour involves a lot of standing around in museums. There are two long coach journeys during which facilities are limited and may be of poor quality. Average distance by coach per day: 49 miles
September 2019 Full details available in December 2017 Please contact us to register your interest 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. Visit the Mogao Caves, the most fascinating repository of Buddhist art in China.
Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
Several unesco World Heritage Sites including the temple and cemetery of Qufu, birthplace of Confucius, and the Yungang Grottoes in Datong.
Combine this tour with: Essential China, 2–14 May 2018 (p.198).
Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism – the ‘three teachings’, are all represented.
Ceramics historian and frequent broadcaster, including 30 years on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow and two notable films on Chinese ceramics. 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. See pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies.
Illustration: ‘The Oriental potter’s wheel and kiln’, engraving for a Chinese window design by W.B. Scott (1811–90).
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. 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
Illustration: Beijing, Confucius Temple, wood engraving from ‘Le Tour du Monde’, 1864.
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A S I A : CHINA
Dr Lars Tharp
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.
Sacred India Ancient religious art and architecture 5–18 March 2018 (me 777) 14 days • £5,930 International flights not included Lecturer: Asoka Pugal
carvings of Vishnu. In the afternoon, visit the eastern and southern groups of temples. Day 7: Khajuraho 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 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.
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.
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‘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 Kashi, the City of Light (otherwise known as Benares and Varanasi), 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.
It in e r a r y Day 1: Delhi. The tour begins in Delhi with a lecture and lunch in the hotel restaurant at c.12 noon. (flights from London are not included – see ‘Practicalities’. Your room is available from Illustration: architectural details at Ellora, mid-19th-century steel engraving by H. Gugeler.
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Day 8: Orchha to Bhopal. Drive to Jhansi and take an express train (3½ hours) to Bhopal in the morning. Arrive at the hotel c. 3.00pm. Some free time. First of two nights in Bhopal.
2.00pm the previous day.) In the afternoon, visit the towering 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 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. Day 4: Varanasi. An 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. Final night in Varanasi. 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
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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 to Mumbai. In the morning, fly 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. A private visit led by the curator explores the city’s distinctive communities and their respective religious practices. Overnight Mumbai. Day 11: Mumbai, Aurangabad. 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 threeheaded Shiva, is said to represent the three aspects of the deity and considered a masterpiece of Gupta art. After lunch, fly to Aurangabad. First of three nights in Aurangabad. Day 12: 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 cent. 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. First of two nights in Aurangabad. Day 13: Ellora. 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. Day 14: Mumbai. Fly early in the morning to Mumbai where the tour ends.
Indian Summer Delhi, Amritsar, Chandigarh, Shimla P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £5,930. Single occupancy: £6,880. Included meals: 11 lunches (including 2 packed lunches) and 10 dinners with wine. Flights from London to Delhi and Mumbai to London are not included in the price of the tour. We will send the recommended flight options with your confirmation of booking and ask that you make your own flight reservation. The cost of a World Traveller (economy) seat with British Airways at the time of going to press is c. £500.
13–24 March 2018 (me 780) 12 days • £4,970 International flights not included Lecturer: Raaja Bhasin 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.
Visas: required for most foreign nationals, and not included in the tour price. We will advise on the process.
Shimla, the grandest hill station, the buildings a hotch-potch of bastardised European styles. Reached by the famous mountain ‘toy train’.
Accommodation. The Taj Mahal, Delhi (tajhotels. com): modern, comfortable hotel situated in the heart of Lutyens’s Delhi; attractive garden and swimming pool. The Taj Gateway Ganges, Varanasi (tajhotels.com): large, functional yet comfortable 4-star hotel with contemporary touches to the recently renovated rooms; located close to the centre but removed from the bustle in its 40 acres of garden, with a pool. The Lalit Temple, Khajuraho (thelalit.com): modern hotel within walking distance of the main site, surrounded by a well-tended garden; 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 swimming pool. Bedrooms vary but all are comfortable and well equipped. The Taj Mahal Palace, Mumbai (tajhotels.com): an iconic landmark and a masterpiece of Indo-Saracenic architecture, comfortable, centrally located and with excellent service. The Taj Residency, Aurangabad (tajhotels.com): pleasant hotel set amid well-tended gardens; rooms are comfortable, with private balconies.
Chandigarh, the modern ideal city built by Le Corbusier. 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’.
Illustration: Shimla, steel engraving 1845.
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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 3 miles per hour for at least half an hour, and undertake a walk at a more leisurely pace for an hour or two unaided. Uneven ground and irregular paving are standard. Sure-footedness is essential to board the river boats. Unruly traffic and the busy streets of larger cities require vigilance. There are some fairly steep ascents to hilltop forts and temples and numerous steps in Ajanta and Ellora. There are 2 coach journeys over 2 hours during which facilities are limited and may be of poor quality. Most sites have some shade but the Indian sun is strong, even in the cooler seasons. Average distance by coach per day: 38 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
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‘I love India, this was my seventh trip there… the itinerary was perfect.’
The border with Pakistan is close to Amritsar, and with belligerence which is almost histrionic, 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.
Mutiny in 1920. The Central Jail (1849) is where the executions took place. The pretty hill station of Kasauli has some interesting 19th-century buildings such as Christ Church. Afternoon drive to Chandigarh. Overnight Chandigarh. Day 11: Chandigarh to Delhi. In the morning, fly to Delhi. 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.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person in 2018. Two sharing: £4,970. Single occupancy: £5,960. Price, per person in 2019. Two sharing: £5,360. Single occupancy: £6,370.
It in e r a r y Day 1: Delhi. Rooms are available at the hotel from 2.00pm on the day before the tour begins (12 March in 2017; 4 March in 2018), allowing for an early check-in. 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 NeoGothic spire with elements of Indian design. First of two nights in Delhi. 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 Shoosmith (1930), has been called one of the great buildings of the 20th century.
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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. Fly from Delhi to Amritsar in the afternoon. First of two nights here. 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 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’ 2 0 6
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 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. 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. Time for independent exploration in the afternoon. Day 10: Kasauli, Chandigarh. Drive to Kasauli via Dagshai, scene of the Connaught Rangers’
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Included meals in 2018: 8 lunches (including 1 packed) and 8 dinners with wine; in 2019: 9 lunches (including 1 packed) and 8 dinners. Flights from London to Delhi are not included in the price of the tour. We will send the recommended flight options when they come into range (by April 2018 for the 2019 departure) and ask that you make your own flight reservation. Visas: required for most foreign nationals, and not included in the tour price. We will advise on the process. 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 Swarna, Amritsar (tajhotels.com): 5-star contemporary hotel opened in January 2017 in the centre of Amritsar. Taj Chandigarh, Chandigarh (tajhotels.com): modern 5-star hotel with elegantly furnished and 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? 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. Uneven ground and irregular paving are standard. There are some steep walks. Unruly traffic and the busy streets of larger cities require some vigilance. There is a long train journey during which facilities are limited and may be of poor quality. Most sites have some shade but the Indian sun is strong, even in the cooler seasons. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
Illustration: Amritsar, The Porcelain Dome, watercolour by Mortimer Menpes, publ. 1912.
Gastronomic Kerala Traders, spices and churches of the Malabar Coast 18–27 February 2018 (me 756) 10 days • £4,940 International flights not included Lecturer: Dr Elizabeth Collingham Surveys the history and distinctive culture of the region through its cuisine: Jewish, Muslim and Christian. Includes 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.
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.
It in e r a r y Day 1: Cochin. The tour begins with lunch in the hotel restaurant at c. 12.30pm (flights from London are not included – see ‘Practicalities’. Your room is available from 2.00pm the previous day). 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. Afternoon at leisure. 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 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 and is the venue for a Kathakali dance performance. Day 4: Cochin, Munnar. Drive through the coconut palms and spice plantations of the lowand 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. The Tamil lunch in the estate’s bungalow 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. Day 7: Kumily to Kumarakom. Drive to a planter’s home for a privately hosted British-influenced lunch. Afternoon drive to the backwaters, a network of lakes, lagoons and canals with a 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 the final cooking demonstration, lunch is sadhya, a Keralan banquet consisting of a variety of vegetarian dishes and traditionally served on a banana leaf. Return to the hotel by boat. 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 pepper eventually came to dominate Indian cookery, ousting black pepper from its position as
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Textile Arts of India Courtly and private collections of North West India
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 two 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 can be arranged for your onward journey.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £4,940. Single occupancy: £6,200. Included meals: 8 lunches, 7 dinners, with wine. Flights from London to Cochin are not included in the price of the tour. We will send the recommended flight options with your confirmation of booking and ask that you make your own flight reservation. Visas: required for most foreign nationals, and not included in the tour price. We will advise on the process. Accommodation. Brunton Boatyard Hotel, Cochin (cghearth.com): sea-front property, ideally located within the heritage area of Fort Cochin. Windermere Estate, Munnar (windermeremunnar.com): family-run property offering 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 lake-side settings.
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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. You may be on your feet for lengthy stretches of time. Uneven ground and irregular paving are standard. Sure-footedness is essential for boarding and disembarking the boats; jetties may be slippery. Walks in the tea and spice plantations are over uneven ground and there are some uphill climbs. There are two coach journeys of 4 hours or more where facilities may be limited. Average distance by coach per day: 35 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. In 2018, combine this tour with: Textile Arts of India, 3–16 February 2018 (see right).
What else is included in the price? See page 8. 2 0 8
3–16 February 2018 (ee 755) 14 nights • £6,470 International flights not included Lecturer: Rosemary Crill 9–22 February 2019 (ef 419) 14 days • £6,980 International flights not included Lecturer: Rosemary Crill In conjunction 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. Led by Rosemary Crill, former Senior Curator of Indian art at the Victoria & Albert museum. 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
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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. The Textile Arts of India tour for HALI Magazine 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. Illustration: Ceremonial hanging, Gujarat, c.1450–1500 (c) TAPI Collection, India.
extraordinary Umaid Bhawan Palace, residence of the Maharaja Gaj Singh II. First of two nights in Jodhpur. Day 4: Jodhpur. Morning 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 mid-15th 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). 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. 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. The afternoon is at leisure. Overnight Jaipur. 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.
It in e r a r y in 2 0 1 9 For the itinerary in 2018, please contact us or visit www.martinrandall.com
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 for its wide range of exhibits. Overnight Delhi. 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. Dinner at the
Day 8: Jaipur, Ahmedabad. Fly from Jaipur to Ahmedabad in the morning (IndiGo). Visit a local collector’s textile collection; particularly strong are the pichhwais (textiles for Krishna shrines) and gold-embroidery. 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. A private dinner is held at the Hutheesing Haveli with a viewing of the family collection of Umang Hutheesing, ‘aesthete-at-large and patron of the arts’. Overnight Ahmedabad. 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 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
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; the curator of textiles takes us behind the scenes. Overnight Mumbai. Day 14: Mumbai. Tour ends. Car transfers to Mumbai Airport can be arranged.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s in 2 0 1 9 Price, per person. Two sharing: £6,980. Single occupancy: £8,390. Included meals: 9 lunches (including 2 packed) and 10 dinners. Flights to Delhi and from Mumbai are not included in the price of the tour. We will send the recommended flight options from London when they come into range (by March 2018) and ask that you make your own flight reservation. Visas: required for most foreign nationals, and not included in the tour price. We will advise all participants on the process. 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 architectural 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): a comfortable 4-star hotel. Taj Mahal Palace, Mumbai (tajhotels.com): centrally located, iconic landmark. Impeccible service. 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 3 miles per hour for at least half an hour, and undertake a walk at a more leisurely pace for an hour or two unaided. Uneven ground and irregular paving are standard. There are a few fairly steep ascents to hilltop forts. There are two 4-hour coach journeys, and two train journeys of 6 and 4 hours, during which facilities are limited and may be of poor quality. Most sites have some shade but the Indian sun is strong, even in the cooler seasons. Average distance by coach per day: 32 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Essential India, 23 February–8 March 2019 (p.210).
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Day 1: Delhi. Rooms are available at the hotel from 2.00pm on 8th February, allowing for an early check-in. The tour begins in Delhi, 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 some rarely-seen pieces including Mughal lampas-weaves. First of two nights in Delhi.
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. Overnight Jaipur.
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.
Essential India Hindu temples, Rajput palaces and Mughal tombs 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 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.
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.
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Day 1: Delhi. Rooms are available from 2.00pm on 22nd February, allowing for early check-in. 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 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 2 1 0
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‘A splendid assortment of places, experiences, people, avo rs of ndia. fine overview on firs ri .
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(Aarti), a ritual going back to the Vedic Age. First of two nights in Varanasi.
Price, per person. Two sharing: £5,780. Single occupancy: £6,940.
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.
Included meals: 11 lunches and 9 dinners. Flights: from London to Delhi are not included in the price of the tour. We will send the recommended flight options when they come into range (by April 2018) and ask that you make your own flight reservation. Visas: required for most British nationals, and not included in the tour price. We will advise all participants of the process.
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 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 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.
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 several TV documentaries. In 2001, he joined the Board of Studies in Ancient History and Archaeology at the University of Madras. See pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies. 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.
What else is included in the price? See page 8.
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. You may be on your feet for lengthy stretches of time. Uneven ground and irregular paving are standard. There are three 3-hour long coach journeys where facilities are limited. There are some fairly steep ascents to forts and palaces. Steps to temples and palaces can be steep and slippery. Unruly traffic and the busy streets of Delhi also require vigilance. Average distance by coach per day: 45 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Textile Arts of India, 9–22 February 2019 (p.208).
Illustrations. Left: Agra, the Taj Mahal, watercolour by Donald Maxwell (1877–1936). Above: detail from a building in Varanasi, wood engraving c. 1880.
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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.
Asoka Pugal
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.
The Indian Mutiny Delhi, Meerut, Lucknow, Gwalior, Agra 24 October–5 November 2018 (mf 279) 13 days • £4,860 International flights not included Lecturer: Patrick Mercer obe A study of the single most important and controversial set of events in the history of the British in India, a turning point for the Subcontinent and also for Victorian Britain. A tour of intense interest for military, imperial and Indian history. Special arrangements for exclusive access. The First War of Indian Independence or an ill-planned and illegitimate rebellion? The deaththroes of a traditional society slipping beneath the waves of progress or an historic advance towards the emancipation of peoples oppressed by colonialism? The Indian Mutiny, to use the name given by the British upon its outbreak in 1857, has been subject to many interpretations. This tour aims to present a clear-sighted understanding of
the events and their meaning, and a moving study of conflict and reconciliation. In 1857 the Bengal Army, one of the Honourable East India Company’s locally raised armies, turned on its British officers, murdered them and their families or drove them away, and attempted to establish their own authority in Delhi. Newly issued cartridges greased with pig and cow fat, thus alienating both Muslims and Hindus, though rapidly withdrawn, may have precipitated the Mutiny; that it spread so rapidly and enjoyed widespread support reveals deep underlying discontent. Challenged by westernisation, Indian society, rarely at peace with itself anyway, was becoming disorientated and disenchanted. There followed the most serious challenge to Queen Victoria’s authority of her entire reign. The rebellion sucked in thousands of loyal native troops as well as British regiments – some of them fresh from the Crimea – and plunged the Empire into chaos. The battles were bitter, the destruction enormous and the whole episode complicated by unprecedented inter-tribal and religious violence that looked to the outsider like civil war.
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The imperial forces displayed extraordinary endurance and skill, but there were atrocities on both sides as well as acts of great gallantry. Many of Victoria’s military heroes made their names in the Mutiny as the press reported every move of rebels and loyal troops alike. The horror of Wheeler’s Entrenchment at Cawnpore, the dogged defence of the Residency at Lucknow and the storming of the Kashmiri Gate at Delhi still echo through the years. There are remarkable traces of military engagement surviving in places, and memorials and monuments commemorate the events. Fortuitously, the rebellion spread across some of the most beautiful parts of the country, and the tour provides an excellent overview of Indian landscapes, culture and architecture. We also follow the path of the most glamorous of rebels, the warrior queen Rani Lakshmibai, from her own Kingdom of Jhansi to the remote and spectacular fortress of Gwalior. She caused the entire Central India Field Force to be pitted against her and only with her death was the fire of unrest finally dampened down.
‘Involved a judicious selection of the many possible places en route without being over-taxing.’ It in e r a r y Day 1: Old Delhi, the heart of the uprising. (International flights are not included – see ‘Practicalities.’) Nothing is planned before a pre-lunch talk. In May 1857 rebellious sepoys flocked to Delhi to establish it as the capital of their newly freed nation. The Mutiny Memorial commemorating those killed in action is a NeoGothic spire with elements of Indian design, built in the local sandstone in 1863. First of three nights in Old Delhi. (Rooms are available from 2.00pm on 23rd October, allowing for early check-in.) Day 2: Meerut, the start of the Mutiny. Inspired by an incident near Calcutta, on Sunday 10th May sepoys in the garrison at Meerut began an open revolt. From here the virus spread. Visit St John’s garrison church and the cemetery with graves of that day’s victims. Lunch at a private home. Day 3: Old Delhi. By early September the besiegers were strong enough to attack and after a week’s vicious fighting Delhi once more came under British control. Visit the sites of some of the battles, including the much-shelled Kashmiri Gate and the British magazine. Walk the route of General Nicholson’s advance (he died while storming the Lahore Gate). Visit the imposing Red Fort, entering via the Lahore Gate where King Bahadur Shah Zafar reluctantly accommodated the Meerut sepoys. Day 4: Old and New Delhi. The beautiful garden tomb of Humayun, an important example of Mughal architecture, was where Zafar was eventually captured. The Mutiny eventually led to the birth of the Raj. Its new capital was established in 1911 and designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and Sir Herbert Baker, integrating some Mughal, Hindu and Buddhist elements into the monumental classical buildings of the Viceroy’s House and the Secretariats. Fly to Lucknow; first of three nights at Lucknow.
Day 6: Lucknow, where the Mutiny ebbed and flowed. The battered Residency at Lucknow: a monument to the fortunes of war. In July 1857 a tiny garrison of British and Indian troops was besieged here until, in September, Sir Henry Havelock forced his way through and, in turn, was assailed. In November Sir Colin Campbell drove the mutineers aside and evacuated the defenders. In March 1858 he returned and finally recaptured the city. See Havelock’s Memorial and the battle-scarred Alambagh Palace, alternately occupied by the rebels and the British. Sikandar Bagh, a pleasure garden of the nawabs, served as a sepoy stronghold.
Day 8: 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 multi-chambered Jehangir Mahal with lapis lazuli tiles and ornate gateways. The Lakshmi Temple contains 19th-cent. frescoes depicting the defence of Jhansi Fort. Most of the afternoon is free. Overnight Orchha. Day 9: Jhansi, scene of massacre and duplicity. The debate still rages over whether Rani Lakshmibai, Queen of Jhansi, knew that the tiny European garrison to whom she guaranteed safe passage were going to be attacked. However their murder led the British to send troops to crush her. Walk along the concentric walls of Shankar Fort where the Rani battled hard against her British opponents in March 1858 before avoiding capture on horseback and riding to Gwalior, a route we travel by coach. Overnight Gwalior. Day 10: Gwalior, the Mutiny’s dénouement. Situated on a hill, the formidable fort at Gwalior is lavishly embellished with cupolas and blue tiles; inside are superb 9th- and 11th-cent. temples. Here Rani Lakshmibai held strong with fellow rebel Tatya Tope, until, leading a cavalry patrol, she was surprised at Kotah-ki-Serai in June 1858 (where fortifications are still visible) and killed while the British closed in on the fort from east and west simultaneously. Tatya’s forces disintegrated as the citadel fell – the last battle of the uprising. Overnight Gwalior. Day 11: Agra, a decisive engagement. Drive from Gwalior to Agra, a route marked by the dramatic ravines of the Chambal River. Lunch is at a former royal residence at Dholpur. In August 1857 Col. Greathead marched with 3,000 men from Delhi to Agra to recapture the besieged city. The mutineers had been reinforced after Delhi’s fall, but the successful assault prevented the sepoys from linking their forces from central India with those from the rest of Bengal. Overnight Agra. Day 12: Agra to Delhi. Rise early to visit the Taj Mahal in the first light of the day. There is a visit to the magnificent Fort. Permanent reminders of the events of 1857 scar this formidable defensive structure – a cannon ball mark on the Sheesh Mahal (Mirror Palace) and the somewhat incongruous but poignant tomb of Col. John Russell, Lieutenant Governor of the Northwest Provinces, who died here in 1857. Drive to Delhi. Overnight near the airport.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £4,860. Single occupancy: £5,710. Included meals: 11 lunches (including 2 packed lunches) and 8 dinners. Flights from London to Delhi are not included in the price of the tour. We will send the recommended flight options when they come into range (by December 2017) and ask that you make your own flight reservation. Visas: required for most foreign nationals, and not included in the tour price. We will advise all participants of the process. Accommodation. Oberoi Maidens, Old Delhi (maidenshotel.com): dating to the early 1900s, the Maidens retains colonial charm and is ideally located in the heart of the old city with an attractive garden. Vivanta by Taj, Lucknow (vivantabytaj.com): very comfortable 4-star with spacious public areas and rooms with all modern amenities, surrounded by an extensive garden. Amar Mahal, Orchha (amarmahal.com): though the rooms are adequately equipped and have air conditioning, this 4-star is the most basic of the hotels on this tour. It is located very near the main sites and has a garden. Taj Usha Kiran Palace, Gwalior (tajhotels.com): charming 4-star hotel, formerly a private palace, set in 9 acres of land. Rooms combine traditional decor with modern features and are large, light and bright. Trident, Agra (tridenthotels.com): a comfortable, well-run, modern 4-star close to the main sites with a spacious garden. The Leela Ambience, Gurgaon (theleela.com): ideally located near the international airport, this modern 5-star hotel has comfortable rooms. 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. Uneven ground and irregular paving are standard. There are some fairly steep ascents to hilltop forts and temples. Unruly traffic and the busy streets of larger cities require some vigilance. There are some long coach journeys during which facilities are limited and may be of poor quality. Most sites have some shade but the Indian sun is strong, even in the cooler seasons. Average distance by coach per day: 43 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Kingdoms of the Deccan, 10–22 November 2018 (p.214).
Day 13: Delhi. Car transfers to Delhi airport can be arranged for your onward journey.
Illustration: ‘The Storming of Delhi – the Cashmere Gate’, wood engraving from ‘The Illustrated London News’, 1857.
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Day 5: Kanpur (Cawnpore), betrayal and horror. The garrison commander at Cawnpore, Gen. Wheeler, was besieged by his own native troops in a hastily constructed fort known as Wheeler’s Entrenchment. A visit to this barren, walled area and All Soul’s Memorial Church evokes the dreadful conditions endured by soldiers, civilians, women and children until the rebel leader called a ceasefire. Visit Satichaura Ghat on the Ganges, where Europeans and loyal Indians were permitted to board boats but were promptly fired upon in one of the worst scenes in the Mutiny.
Day 7: Lucknow. There is a special visit to La Martinière Boys’ School, a flamboyant hybrid building of 1796. The principal, masters and boys of the college successfully defended the perimeter of the grounds in 1857. Dilkusha Hunting Lodge still stands nearby despite shelling during the siege. Havelock died here. Much of the day is spent travelling to Orchha for the first of two nights here.
Kingdoms of the Deccan Art and architecture, sixth to eighteenth centuries 10–22 November 2018 (mf 307) 13 days • £4,870 International flights not included Lecturer: Asoka Pugal Islamic architecture in the four cities of the Bahmani sultanate founded in the 14th and 15th centuries (Gulbarga, Bidar, Bijapur, Golconda). Hindu architecture of the Chalukyas from the 6th to the 12th centuries (Badami, Aihole, Pattadakal). Hyderabad was one of India’s largest princedoms and retains a rich artistic heritage. Hampi was capital of the leading Hindu power from the 14th to 16th centuries, a most beautiful and fascinating centre. The Deccan plateau has distinctive, dramatic, rocky landscapes that are at their best in November, after the monsoon season. Vijayanagara, the City of Victory, was founded in 1336 and its eponymous empire ruled the Deccan until its defeat by the Islamic forces at the battle of Talikota in 1565. This political entity is often regarded by historians as the last Hindu power of the region. It marks the transition between the early Hindu kingdoms, such as the Chalukyas who ruled from the sixth century to the twelfth, and the Muslim sultanates which succeeded them and continued to rule until Independence in 1947. The Chalukyas’ architectural tradition developed from the early rock-cut caves at Aihole and Badami to the free-standing structural Hindu temples in Pattadakal. This evolution is clearly confined to sacred architecture. By contrast, the Vijayanagara empire, while further developing and standardising the sacred architecture of Hinduism, also developed an imperial idiom, mixing sacred and vernacular elements and gradually integrating Islamic elements borrowed from the emerging sultanates.
From the fourteenth century onwards, the Deccan saw a sequence of four Islamic sultanates, each with its own capital. In 1347, Ala-ud-Din Bahman founded his capital in Gulbarga after declaring his independence from the Delhi sultans. The capital was later shifted to Bidar in 1425. Bijapur and Golconda later gained importance following the demise of Bidar. The foundation of every new capital gave impetus to the local building traditions. Unlike in north India where most Islamic centres were built on existing Hindu cities, the Deccan sultanates built their capitals anew and a distinct Islamic architecture developed. A feature of the tour is time spent visiting places where very few tourists venture. This involves some long coach journeys and two overnight stays in fairly simple accommodation, but the reward is the thrill of deserted citadels with their superb palaces and mosques and impressive fortifications.
It in e r a r y Day 1: Hyderabad. (International flights are not included – see ‘Practicalities.’) Nothing is planned until a pre-lunch talk. In the afternoon walk in Lal Bazaar, the centre of the historical city; see the Char Minar, the monumental gateway to the new 16th-century palace complex. First of three nights in Hyderabad. (Rooms are available at the hotel from 2.00pm on the 9th November, allowing for an early check-in.) Day 2: Golconda. Now within Hyderabad, Golconda was the first Islamic settlement in the area. The citadel of the Qutb Shahis, protected by three concentric walls built 1512–1687, is an excellent example of the Bahmani military architecture. Nearby are grand royal tombs, with bulbous domes and elaborate stucco, and the Badshahi Ashurkhana is a very fine example of the Shia architectural tradition. Lunch today is in the former Nizam’s palace.
Day 3: Hyderabad. Today’s visits focus on Hyderabad after it was annexed by the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb in 1687 and subsequently ruled by the Nizam. The Chaumahalla Palace was completed in 1750 and comprises four mansions set around a garden. The Durbar Hall (public meeting space) with its Belgian crystal chandeliers is an indication of the Nizam’s wealth and taste for things European. The day ends with a visit to a private collection of Indian paintings and textiles. Day 4: Bidar. A four-hour drive to Bidar, the capital of the Bahmani Sultanate from 1425 until its annexation to the kingdom of Bijapur in 1619. Of particular interest are the 16-pillared mosque and the Rangeen Mahal, the Palace of Colours, so called because of the wall tiles and mother-of-pearl inlays. Following a visit to the Royal Tombs at Ashtur, continue to Gulbarga. Overnight Gulbarga. Day 5: Gulbarga, Bijapur. The small town of Gulbarga is of major historical importance. The first Bahmani capital in the Deccan, it was founded in 1347 before being abandoned in 1424 in favour of Bidar. The Jama Masjid (Friday Mosque), similar to the Cordoba Mezquita in form and dimensions, is unique in south India as it is fully covered and has no minarets; one theory claims it was built as a palace. Drive to Bijapur, arriving in time to visit the Gol Gumbaz, a monumental domed tomb, before sunset. Overnight Bijapur. Day 6: Bijapur, Badami. In the morning there is a walk through the old town to see the many historic buildings. The walk continues around the city walls and gates. The Ibrahim Rauza tomb complex consists of two intricately carved twin buildings finished in 1626, the tomb of Ibrahim Adil Shah II and the mosque. In the afternoon we leave the Islamic region and drive to the centre of the former Hindu Chalukya kingdom. First of three nights in Badami.
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Day 7: Aihole, Pattadakal. Numerous Jain and Hindu temples are scattered around the village of Aihole, a clear sign of its religious significance from the 6th to the 12th centuries. The sculptures of the Durga temple are among the finest of the Chalukya period. The World Heritage Site of Pattadakal nearby is celebrated for embodying the last stage of Chalukyan architecture, 8th–9th centuries. This is a unique site where the three distinct styles of Indian religious architecture are found in close proximity. Day 8: Badami. The capital of the early Chalukyas from the 6th to the 8th centuries, Badami has superb examples of early sacred architecture, both rock-cut and free-standing. Moreover, the sculptural programme of the cave temples provides a fascinating insight into the Hindu iconographic development of this period. Day 9: Badami. Free morning in Badami, now a charming small town beside a lake overlooked by rugged red sandstone cliffs. The afternoon is dedicated to the drive through remote and rural countryside to Hospet, our base to visit the World Heritage Site of Hampi. First of three nights here. Day 10: Hospet, Hampi. The ruins of the Vijayanagara capital, 1336–1565, lie in a remarkable landscape strewn with granite
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Art in Japan Art, craft, architecture and design boulders and spread along the Tunghabhadra river. The extensive site is organised around two main areas, the Sacred Centre with its concentration of temples and shrines, and the Royal Centre. The Sacred Centre is close to the river and includes the Virupaksha Temple in the middle of the village and Hemakuta Hill with its numerous shrines and commanding views of the area. Day 11: Hampi. Following a visit to the Vitthala temple, today’s visits focus on the Royal Centre and its secular buildings. Most striking is the Lotus Mahal in the Zenana enclosure with its cusped arches and pyramidal towers, a superb example of the syncretic architecture of Vijayanagara. Day 12: Hospet, Hubli. Drive to Hubli airport for an afternoon flight to Bangalore. Overnight Bangalore. Day 13: Bangalore. The hotel is at the airport. No car transfers are required.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £4,870. Single occupancy: £5,420. Included meals: 12 lunches and 12 dinners. Visas: required for most foreign nationals, and not included in the price of the tour. We will advise all participants of the process.
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 is that you ought to be able to walk briskly at about 3 miles per hour for at least half an hour, and undertake a walk at a more leisurely pace for 1–2 hours unaided. Uneven ground and irregular paving are standard. Unruly traffic and busy streets in larger cities require some vigilance. There are fairly steep ascents to hilltop forts and temples and long coach journeys during which facilities are limited and may be of poor quality. Most sites have some shade but the Indian sun is strong, even in cooler seasons. Average coach travel per day: 56 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: The Indian Mutiny, 24 October–5 November 2018 (p.212). Illustration: Bidar, the Royal Tombs, steel engraving c. 1850.
Outstanding museum buildings by Tadao Ando, I.M. Pei and other leading architects.
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.
Also other aspects of Japanese culture, past and present, including gastronomy and gardens.
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Very few spaces remaining Please contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com 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.
Japan has one of the richest and most continuously active art traditions in Asia, perhaps anywhere. Some of the earliest known ceramics have been 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 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
Price per person. Two sharing: £6,080. Single occupancy: £7,070. Included meals: 8 lunches, 7 dinners, with wine. Flights from London to Tokyo and Tokyo to London are not included in the price of the tour. We will send the recommended flight options to all participants when it is possible to book them. Accommodation. Royal Park Shiodome, Tokyo (rph-the.co.jp/shiodome): 4-star hotel in the redeveloped district of Shiodome with well-appointed but small rooms. Celestine Kyoto Gion, Kyoto (celestinehotels.jp): 4-star hotel opening in 2017 in central Kyoto. Benesse House Hotel, Naoshima (benesse-artsite.jp): comfortable, modern hotel designed by Tadao Ando (subject to confirmation). How strenuous? A good level of fitness is essential. The tour involves a lot of standing in museums. Average distance by coach per day: c. 59 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Illustration: ‘Makino Heinei gets blown away in the storm’, an illustration from ‘Ancient Tales & Folklore of Japan’ by R. Gordon Smith, 1908.
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Accommodation. Some of the hotels are less than luxurious, but all are adequately clean and comfortable and all rooms have en suite bathrooms. Taj Krishna, Hyderabad (tajhotels. com): grand, comfortable 5-star hotel, modern if a little dated. Heritage Inn, Gulbarga (hotelheritageinngulbarga.com): simple though the best in town for service; rooms are clean with en suite facilities. Madhuvan International, Bijapur: basic but friendly, similar to Gulbarga. Badami Court, Badami (hotelbadamicourt. com): pleasant, with willing service; has a garden and small pool. Heritage Resort, Hampi (heritageresorthampi.com): the newest and best in town, 6 km from Vijayanagara World Heritage Site. Taj, Bangalore (tajhotels.com): conveniently located luxury hotel with all modern amenities.
15–26 October 2018 (mf 247) 12 days • £6,080 International flights not included Lecturer: Dr Monika Hinkel
Japanese Gardens Tokyo, Kyoto, Hikone, Nara and Kanazawa
25 October–5 November 2018 (mf 290) 12 days • £5,760 International flights not included Lecturer: Yoko Kawaguchi A study of the evolution of Japanese gardens through the centuries at the time of striking autumn colours.
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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. Japanese gardens possess an aura of timelessness, against which background the cycle of the seasons unfolds its pageantry. Throughout the 1,600-year-old 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 2 1 6
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 natural landscapes. Verdant mountains sloping down to the sea; waterfalls and streamlets; rugged shores and shingle beaches; an evervarying 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
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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.
It in e r a r y Day 1: Tokyo. The tour begins in Tokyo with lunch in the hotel (flights from London are not included – see ‘Practicalities’). In the afternoon, 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. Take the bullet train to Kyoto (luggage by road). In the afternoon, drive to the picturesque Arashiyama district west of the city, where the famed Togetsukyo Bridge crosses the Katsura River. 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.
Day 4: Kyoto. Ryoan-ji’s walled stone garden, with its fifteen boulders, is one of Japan’s most abstract gardens. Nearby, the garden of Kinkakuji (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 sub-temples 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 5: Nara. A full-day excursion to Nara, first capital of Japan (ad 710–794) and modelled on the Tang capital of Chang’an (Xi’an) in China. The 12th-century 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. The nearby Isuien garden incorporates a borrowed vista of the surrounding hills. Day 6: 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. Entsu-ji, in Kyoto’s northern hills, borrows a vista by incorporating nearby Mt Hiei. The superb garden at Chishaku-in resembles an unfolding landscape scroll painting, and Entoku-in is a flamboyant 17th-century garden in the lively Gion district. 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.
Day 9: Kanazawa. Kenrokuen, 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. The rest of the day is free. Day 10: Kanazawa, Tokyo. The Nagamachi area has many surviving samurai houses, among them is Nomura House with a superb domestic garden. Visit Gyokusen-en for a tea ceremony (by special arrangement). There is free time in the Higashi geisha district with charming latticed wooden houses and centre for gold leaf, before boarding the bullet train to Tokyo (luggage by road). First of two nights in Tokyo.
Day 12: Tokyo. The tour ends after breakfast. There is a transfer to the airport in time for the direct flight at 12.55pm from Tokyo Narita to London, arriving at c. 5.30pm (c. 12 ½ hours).
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Sea of Japan
Kanazawa
Japan
Tokyo
Hikone Kyoto Nara c. 200km
Price, per person. Two sharing: £5,760. Single occupancy: £6,940. Included meals: 8 lunches, 7 dinners, with wine. Flights from London to Tokyo and Tokyo to London are not included in the price of the tour. We will send the recommended flight options with your confirmation of booking and ask that you make your own flight reservation. Accommodation. New Otani, Tokyo (newotani. co.jp): 5-star hotel in the centre of Tokyo. It has a historical garden dating from the 17th century. Celestine Kyoto Gion, Kyoto (celestinehotels. jp): 4-star hotel opened in 2017 in central Kyoto. Tokyu Hotel, Kanazawa (tokyuhotelsjapan.com): excellently located 4-star, walking distance of the city’s former samurai district.
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. Books include Butterfly’s Sisters: The Geisha in Western Culture, Japanese Zen Gardens and Authentic Japanese Gardens. See pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies.
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 in gardens. Average distance by coach per day: c. 44 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Illustrations. Left: tea garden at Nagasaki, wood engraving c. 1880. Above: Mount Fuji, wood emgraving from ‘Le Tour du Monde’, 1866.
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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.
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.
Myanmar: Ancient to Modern History and landscape between Yangon, Bagan, Mandalay, Inle Lake 1–12 February 2018 (me 752) 12 days • £5,570 Lecturer: Dr John Clarke February 2019 Full details available in January 2018 Please contact us to register your interest 24 October–4 November 2019 Full details available in January 2018 Please contact us to register your interest Includes Myanmar’s most celebrated places as well as many less-visited sites. More time than most tours in Mandalay, Myanmar’s cultural capital, and Yangon. Stay in luxurious hotels that perfectly 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 on to 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,
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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 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.
This carefully designed and original itinerary is not the usual tourist trail. Even though most of the items included are seen by most tourists, we usually handle the visit differently.
It in e r a r y Day 1: London to Yangon. Fly at c. 11.50am from London Heathrow to Yangon via Bangkok (Thai Airways) where there is a two-hour stop. Those not taking our group flight from London can check in at the Yangon hotel from 2.00pm.
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. Day 9: Pindaya, Inle Lake. Fly at c.8.50am from Mandalay to Heho (Air KBZ). A beautiful drive leads to Pindaya cave where some 6,000 Buddha images are arranged among stalagmites. After lunch, continue to Inle Lake, which we reach by motorised canoe. First of two nights on Inle Lake.
Day 2: Yangon. Reach the hotel c. 11.30am (time difference from the UK is 6½ hours). The rest of the day is free until an afternoon visit to Shwedagon Pagoda. This dreamlike structure, in existence by the 11th century, rises 325 feet into the air and is covered with over 50 tonnes of gold leaf. First of two nights in Yangon.
Day 10: Inle Lake. The day is spent on the lake, travelling by motorised canoe. A five-day market circulates around the lake where farmers from the surrounding Shan mountains and fishermen congregate to sell their wares. Phaung Daw U 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 3: Yangon. This morning’s walk provides a survey of the colonial core of Yangon’s (formerly Rangoon’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 11: Yangon. Fly at c. 11.10am from Heho to Yangon (Air KBZ). After lunch there is free time for a return visit to Shwedagon Pagoda or Bogyoke Market (formerly Scott’s Market). In the evening there is a private viewing and dinner at Deitta Gallery. Located in a colonial building in downtown Yangon, this not-for-profit organisation supports independent documentary projects focusing on the social landscape of Myanmar. Overnight in Yangon.
Day 4: Bagan. Fly from Yangon to Bagan at c. 8.50am (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 (Irrawaddy) 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.
Day 12: Yangon. After a 1½ hour stop in Bangkok, the flight arrives at London Heathrow at c. 7.35pm.
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 these shrines and reveals how nat culture is deeply ingrained. In the afternoon there is free time to revisit the pagodas and temples of Bagan.
Day 7: Amarapura, Sagaing. Amarapura Mahagandayon Kyaung is an important teaching monastery home to some 1300 monks and novices. Walk across U Bein’s teak bridge, built in 1850 from teak reclaimed from Inwa palace. In the afternoon, continue to Sagaing Hill. U Min Thonze has 45 Buddha images, one for each stage of his life, as well as offering views over Mandalay city. Day 8: Mandalay. This morning focuses on Mandalay’s royal centre. Shwenandaw Kyaung, or the Golden Palace Monastery, was orginally part of King Mindon’s palace. It was dismantled and moved to its current location by his son,
Price, per person. Two sharing: £5,570 or £5,060 without flights. Single occupancy: £6,820 or £6,310 without flights. Included meals: 8 lunches, 8 dinners, with wine. Visas are required for most foreign nationals, and not included in the tour price. We will advise on the process. Accommodation. Belmond Governor’s Residence, Yangon (belmond.com): A 5-star coverted colonial-style 1920s mansion in the embassy quarter. Bagan Thiripyitsaya Sanctuary Resort, Bagan (thiripyitsaya-resort.com): a luxury resort located on the Ayeyarwady River, walking distance from the pagodas. Hotel by the Red Canal, Mandalay (hotelredcanal.com): boutique hotel in the centre of Mandalay. Sanctum Inle Resort, Inle Lake (sanctum-inle-resort.com): luxury resort in the backwaters of Inle lake. 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.
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 in 2017 at the V&A. See pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies.
A S I A : MYANMAR
Day 6: Mandalay. Fly at c. 10.30am to Mandalay (Air KBZ). After lunch take a leisurely boat ride along the Ayeyarwady to Mingun. It was here that King Bodawpaya began constructing a mammoth pagoda; should it have been finished it would have stood 150 metres high. The bell accompanying the pagoda was the heaviest functioning bell in the world at several times in history. Dinner takes the form of a barbeque on a sandbank. First of three nights in Mandalay.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s
What else is included in the price? See page 8. Illustrations. Opposite: temple architecture, lithograph c. 1850. Above: Yangon, shrine of the Shwedagon Pagoda, watercolour by R. Talbot Kelly, publ. 1909.
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Samarkand & Silk Road Cities with Khiva, Bukhara, Tashkent and Shakhrisabz farmsteads with their awnings of vines would hold few surprises for Tolstoy. It is not unusual to see women in traditional costume, brightly coloured ankle-length dresses, and also some of the older men. In the wake of economic liberalisation since independence, streets and courtyards are draped with the dazzling hues of carpets and textiles; the glories of the Silk Road in its heyday are not hard to imagine.
It in e r a r y 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. Land at c. 8.30am. Hotel rooms in Tashkent are at your disposal for the morning. Afternoon drive around the city centre, a modern city with wide avenues, spacious parks and glistening new government buildings. Among the places seen are the Hazret Imam complex, a group of mosques and madrassas (seminaries) from the 16th to the 20th centuries and Independence Square, home to government buildings and the Monument of Independence. Overnight Tashkent.
15–25 May 2018 (me 841) 11 days/10 nights • £3,490 Lecturer: Dr Peter Webb 4–14 September 2018 (mf 101) 11 days/10 nights • £3,490 Lecturer: Professor James Allan 2–12 October 2018 (mf 202) Exclusively for solo travellers 11 days/10 nights • £3,570 Lecturer: Professor Charles Melville A S I A : UZBEKISTAN
The best of Uzbekistan and some of the most glorious sights in the Islamic world. Magnificent mosques and madrassas, acres of wonderful wall tiles, intact streetscapes, memorable landscapes. Visits remote, difficult to access and remarkably unspoilt places. 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 induced: 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 2 2 0
as hostile as the tribesmen and petty tyrants who inhabited its desert and mountain fastnesses; and of a post-Soviet penumbra of Stans of suspect politics and allegiances. The four 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. It lies at the very centre of Central Asia. One of only two double landlocked nations in the world, it has a capital that is 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. This is as the crow flies; extremes of topography and climate – as well as banditry – slowed or terminated the progress of many travellers. A slave-trading oasis khanate, Khiva was, and remains, the smallest of the four cities. It 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. Samarkand has the largest and most resplendently caparisoned historic buildings of all. There are also visits to Shakhrisabz, which has breathtaking remains of Timur’s palace, and to Tashkent, the spacious modern capital with good museums and galleries. 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. Modernity has made relatively unobtrusive inroads and the whitewashed villages and
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Day 3: Tashkent to Samarkand. High-speed train from Tashkent to Samarkand (duration: 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 4: Shakhrisabz. Cross the Hisor Mountains (by car; coaches are not permitted), a dramatic 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. Day 5: 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. Optional excursions to a silk weaving workshop and a tour of Samarkand’s Russian architecture. Day 6: from Samarkand to Bukhara. A 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. Day 7: 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
‘What a happy time we had. I met some very nice people, saw some amazing things that I never thought I would see, and can only thank Martin Randall for a very well planned trip.’ 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 8: Bukhara. The perfectly preserved 10thcentury Samani Mausoleum displays exquisite brickwork. From here walk through the park to the Bolo Hauz Mosque with a particularly 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 with the option to visit Chor Bakr, a memorial complex built over the burial place of Abu-Bakr, a descendant of the prophet Mohammed. Day 9: from Bukhara to Khiva. The 280-mile 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 two nights in Khiva. Day 10: 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. Second of two nights in Khiva/overnight in Tashkent (this is dependent on domestic flight schedules).
Illustrations. Opposite page: Khiva, Grand Minaret, wood engraving c. 1880. Right: Uzbek tile decoration.
Price, per person in May and September 2018. Two sharing: £3,490, or £2,870 without international and domestic flights. Single occupancy: £3,760, or £3,140 without international and domestic flights. Price in October 2018 (exclusively for solo travellers): £3,570, or £2,950 without international and domestic flights. Included meals: 10 lunches, 9 dinners, with wine. Internal flight: the flight between Urgench and Tashkent is not included in our ‘without flights’ price. We can book this on your behalf quoting the price at the time, or you can choose to book this independently. If the latter, we recommend you book as soon as possible as if this flight is sold out, it will not be possible for you to join the group. Please also note that the flight schedule between Urgench and Tashkent can vary and is not confirmed until c. 6 months before the tour departs. The hotel stay on day 10 will either be 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. Accommodation. Hotels on this tour are 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. Madrassa Mukhammad Hotel, Khiva: converted madrassa, impressively restored, each room a former student’s cell opening onto the courtyard. 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. City Hotel, Samarkand: small, friendly hotel, refurbished in
2016 or Hotel Sultan, Samarkand: also small and recently refurbished, with rooftop terrace. 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 56 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. In September, combine this tour with: Classical Greece, 15–24 September 2018 (p.94). Or in October with: Civilisations of Sicily, 15–27 October 2018 (p.141).
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.
Professor Charles Melville Professor of Persian History at Cambridge. He studied Arabic and Persian at Cambridge and Islamic History at SOAS. His main area of expertise is the history of Iran in the Mongol and Safavid periods. He is also Director of the Cambridge Shahnama Project and has travelled extensively in Iran and Central Asia.
Dr Peter Webb Arabist and historian, specialising in early and mediaeval 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. See pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies.
K A Z A K H S TA N
Urgench
Uzbekistan
K Y R G Y Z S TA N
Khiva
Tashkent
Bukhara
T U R K M E N I S TA N
Samarkand Shahrisabz
TA J I K I S TA N
c. 200 km
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A S I A : UZBEKISTAN
Day 11: from Khiva to London. Drive a short distance to Urgench before a morning internal flight to Tashkent. Morning visits include the Fine Arts Museum with collections from pre-Islamic sculpture to 20th-century painting and the Chorsu Bazaar. The 4.00pm flight from Tashkent arrives at Heathrow c. 8.00pm.
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The Making of Argentina A creative history from the Atlantic to the Andes 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 Neo-Classical 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 to be announced in February 2018). 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.
25 October–7 November 2018 (mf 296) 14 days • £7,180 Lecturer: Chris Moss A comprehensive overview of history, politics, art, architecture, gastronomy, and music. See spectacular scenery and geology in the Calchaquí Valleys. Delicious high-altitude wines of Bodega Colomé and Cafayate. A private tango show in Café Tortoni.
A M E R I C A S : 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 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? 2 2 2
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.
It in e r a r y Day 1. Fly at c. 10.15pm (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Buenos Aires. Those not taking our flights from London may check in 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,
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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 at midday from Buenos Aires to Córdoba (1½ hours, LATAM). Visit 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 (1½ hours, Aérolineas Argentinas). 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. Day 9: Calchaquí Valleys, Cachi, Molinos. Drive by minibus through the dramatic and constantly changing scenery of the Calchaquí Valleys (c. 4½ hours). 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
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.
Guatemala, Honduras, Belize Lands of the Maya
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. 4½ hours). Return to Salta for a flight to Buenos Aires (2 hours, LATAM) and a final dinner in the capital. Day 13: Buenos Aires. Fly from Buenos Aires Ezeiza airport at c. 2.15pm. Day 14. Land at London Heathrow at c. 6.30am.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £7,180 or £6,270 without international flights. Single occupancy: £7,990 or £7,080 without international flights. Included meals: 8 lunches, 9 dinners, with wine. Music: we hope to be able to secure tickets to a performance at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. Programme details and tickets to be released in February 2018.
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 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. Illustration: wood engraving c. 1880.
A M E R I C A S : BELIZE, GUATEMALA, HONDURAS
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 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.
3–16 February 2019 (mf 420) 14 days • £5,930 Lecturer: David Drew
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 2531 metres above sea level. Average distance by coach per day: 63 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.
Lands of the Maya, 5–21 March 2018 – see page 225. Illustration: Buenos Aires, wood engraving c. 1880.
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Guatelama, Honduras, Belize continued
Altun Ha
Lamanai
Belize City
Petén
MEXICO
San Ignacio Tikal Topoxte Xunantunich Yaxhá Cahal Pech Caracol Dolores
Belize
Rio Dulce Mariscos
Quirigua Copán
c. 100 km
Guatemala City Antigua Guatemala
Honduras
It in e r a r y 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.
A M E R I C A S : BELIZE, GUATEMALA, HONDURAS
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.
can be followed in the hieroglyphs. Progressive clearance 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-metre-high 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. The afternoon is free to enjoy this remote jungle location, to spot birds and possibly crocodiles. Day 13. Drive to Belize City and fly at c. 1.00pm (Delta), via Atlanta, travelling overnight. Day 14. Arrive London Heathrow at c.8.30am.
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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 (including 2 picnics) and 11 dinners with wine. Visa. British citizens should apply for a visa waiver (ESTA) for travel via the USA. We will advise. 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 and 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.
Baroque Music in Bolivia April 2020 Full details available in September 2018 Please contact us to register your interest Attend the bi-annual International Music Festival of American Renaissance & Baroque Music held in Bolivia’s north-eastern Chiquitos region. Continuing a strong musical tradition established by Jesuit missions in the eighteenth century, concerts take place in some of South America’s most stunning colonial churches in incredibly remote countryside.
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 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
P r a c t ic a lit ie s
Programmes often feature some of the vast array of music by Jesuit composers that was discovered in the churches during restoration in the 1970s and performers include the finest exponents of the genre from the Americas and beyond.
What else is included in the price? See page 8.
book online at www.martinrandall.com
This tour will be accompanied by a musicologist, but will also feature other parts of the country such as the lovely colonial city of Sucre, Potosí, the town at the heart of the 16th-century silver rush, and the Inca sites of Lake Titicaca.
Lands of the Maya Maya civilisation ancient and modern in Mexico and Guatemala 5–21 March 2018 (me 770) 17 days • £6,120 Lecturer: Professor Norman Hammond
Illustration: Palenque, engraving c. 1850.
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.
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.
It in e r a r y Day 1: Cancún. Fly at c. 10.45am from London Gatwick direct to Cancún with British Airways, arriving in time for a light dinner. Those not taking our flights can check in from 4.00pm today. Overnight 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. First of two nights in Mérida. Day 3: Mérida. Morning 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 new Museum of the Maya World contains c. 500 artefacts including sculpture, jewellery and ceramics. Free afternoon. Day 4: Uxmal, Campeche. Uxmal arose towards the end of lowland Maya civilisation but was abandoned around ad 900. Here are some of the most beautiful of Maya buildings, 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. The night is spent in the charming colonial city of Campeche, with historic defences. Day 5: Edzná, Palenque. Little visited Edzná has the longest building in the Maya world and an impressive 5-storey pyramid. Drive south to Palenque (c. 8 hours including stops) for the first of three 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. The small site of Bonampak has remarkably well-preserved murals with graphic scenes of royal rituals, a savage battle and sacrifice of the captives. Day 8. Most of the day is occupied with driving from Mexico into Guatemala (c. 7 hours), the destination being the small town of Flores on the shores of Lake Petén Itzá. Stop here for refreshments before continuing to the hotel. 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 excursion to Chichicastenango, with its centuries-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. 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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A M E R I C A S : MEXICO
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. 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
Lands of the Maya continued
Peru: the Andean Heartland Pre-Columbian to present day
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. 10.30am. Please note this tour departs from London Gatwick and returns to Heathrow.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £6,120 or £5,540 without flights on days 1 and 16. Single occupancy: £6,700 or £6,120 without flights on days 1 and 16. Included meals: 10 lunches (including 1 picnic) and 14 dinners with wine. Accommodation. All hotels are locally rated as 4 or 5 star. JW Marriott, Cancún (marriott.co.uk/ cancun): modern, comfortable, resort hotel. Hotel Gran Real Yucatán, Mérida (granrealyucatan. com): modern hotel in a converted 19th-century house, centrally located. Hotel Plaza Campeche, Campeche (hotelplazacampeche.com): functional and comfortable hotel in a colonial building. Hotel Villa Mercedes, Palenque (hotelesvillamercedes. com): well-maintained hotel near the site. Hotel Villa Maya, Flores (villasdeguatemala.com): lowrise bungalows next to a lake and surrounded by jungle. 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.
A M E R I C A S : MEXICO, PERU
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, 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.
6–21 September 2018 (mf 107) 16 days • £6,930 International flights not included Lecturer: Dr David Beresford-Jones A thorough exploration of pre-Columbian civilisations in Peru: Chachapoya, Moche, Chimú, Inca. Stay on site at Machu Picchu and visit at quieter times. Lesser-visited sites of northern Peru are included, including remote Kuelap, only recently made more accessible by cable car. See spectacular Andean scenery; 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. 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 legacy of the Chachapoya or Cloud Warriors in the Amazonian Andes and the vestiges of Moche and Chimor on the northern coast. 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.
What else is included in the price? See page 8. Illustration: Ollantaytambo, wood engraving c. 1880.
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book online at www.martinrandall.com
It in e r a r y 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 pre-Inca ceramics. Continue to the National Museum of Archaeology, Anthropology and History with its collections of artefacts from Chavín, Nasca, Moche and Chimú cultures. Day 3: Lima, Cocachimba. Fly north to Jaen (LATAM Airlines) and continue by coach to Cocachimba in the Amazonas region (c. 4 hours) with a packed lunch. Stay near Chachapoyas for three nights. Day 4: Kuelap, Chachapoyas. Drive and take a cable car amid jungle-clad mountains to Kuelap, occupied by the Chachapoya culture from 600 ad and sitting at 3000m above sea level. With 20m-high city walls and more than four hundred circular houses it is the largest stone structure in South America. Day 5: Leymebamba, Cocachimba. Visit the Centro Mallqui, a museum which displays more than 200 Chachapoya-Inca mummies and their burial offerings. It also houses the largest number of khipus in Peru. Day 6: Chiclayo. A long but extremely scenic drive to Chiclayo (c. 9 hours) with a packed lunch. Overnight Chiclayo. Day 7: Lambayeque, Trujillo. Visit the impressive museum dedicated to the ornaments and treasures discovered in the royal tombs of the Temple of Sipán (200–600 ad). Continuing south, El Brujo is 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. First of two nights in Trujillo. Day 8: Trujillo. The Huaca de la Luna and Huaca del Sol are 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 9: 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 10: 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
‘David was fantastic! He was knowledgeable, friendly and patient. His love of the country was evident and his knowledge of its current state really added to the enjoyment of the trip.’
times, and on to the marvellous concentric circular agricultural terraces of Moray.
Day 12: 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. Day 13: Machu Picchu, Cuzco. Free morning to return to Machu Picchu, perhaps at first light, before returning to Cuzco by rail and road. First of two nights in Cuzco. Day 14: Cuzco. The Korikancha, the most sacred precinct and centre of the Inca Empire today beneath the Dominican Monastery, still preserves
Day 15: Cuzco, Lima. The morning is free for independent exploration. Suggestions include the pre-Columbian art museum, or an optional walk through the city with the lecturer to view the many remains of its Inca palaces, fine Colonial churches and bustling markets. In the evening fly back to Lima. Overnight Lima. 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.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £6,930. Single occupancy: £8,290. Included meals: 13 dinners and 10 lunches with wine; 3 packed lunches with water. 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) 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. Accommodation. Hilton Miraflores, Lima (hilton.com): comfortable 5-star hotel in the Miraflores district. Casa Hacienda Achamaqui, Chachapoyas (achamaqui.pe): colonial style lodge, equivalent to a 3-star, with beautiful views of the mountains and river. Casa Andina Select, Chiclayo (casa-andina.com) modern and functional 4-star hotel. Hotel Libertador Trujillo (libertador.com.pe): 5-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): 5-star, the only hotel at the entrance to the site. Palacio del Inka, Cuzco (starwoodhotels.com): 5-star hotel in a converted palace with attentive service. How strenuous? This is a long tour with some lengthy drives. There is a substantial amount of walking on the rough ground of archaeological sites, uphill and down so a good level of fitness is essential. Much of the tour is spent at high altitude (max. 3399m above sea level) which can exacerbate fatigue. Additional insurance may be required and anyone with heart or respiratory problems should seek advice from their doctor. Average distance by coach per day: 62 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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A M E R I C A S : PERU
Day 11: Pisac, Ollantaytambo. Visit the terraces and buildings of an Inca royal estate at Pisac. Lunch is at an hacienda of one of the valley’s oldest families, with its interesting private collection of art and antiques. 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.
the finest examples of mortar-less Inca stonework with its trapezoidal doors and windows. The Inca Museum contains some 10,000 artefacts while Cuzco Cathedral has paintings of the colonial period. 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 Ring in San Francisco ‘Theatrically dazzling, thought-provoking, powerful’ It in e r a r y The included visits may change once details of the special events supporting the Ring performances from San Francisco Opera House are available. Day 1. The tour begins with dinner at the hotel at c. 7.30pm (flights from London are not included – see ‘Practicalities’). Day 2. Morning lecture on the music, followed by a guided tour of the financial district with a local architectural historian. Some free time followed by dinner. 7.30pm, San Francisco Opera House: Das Rheingold: Donald Runnicles (conductor), Greer Grimsley (Wotan), Brian Mulligan (Donner), James Egglestone (Froh), Stefan Margita (Loge), Jamie Barton (Fricka), Ronnita Miller (Erda), Stacey Tappan (Woglinde), Lauren McNeese (Wellgunde), Renée Tatum (Flosshilde), Falk Struckmann (Alberich), David Cangelosi (Mime), Andrea Silvestrelli (Fasolt), Raymond Aceto (Hunding). Day 3. Morning lecture followed by a visit to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), now housed in a striking building designed by Mario Botta. It has good temporary exhibitions, and was reopened in 2016 following an expansion designed in partnership with Snøhetta. Some time before this evening’s performance at 7.00pm: Die Walküre: Donald Runnicles (conductor), Greer Grimsley (Wotan), Jamie Barton (Fricka), Brandon Jovanovich (Siegmund), Karita Mattila (Sieglinde), Raymond Aceto (Hunding), Evelyn Herlitzius (Brünnhilde), Anna-Louise Cole (Gerhilde), Olivia Cranwell (Ortlinde), Jamie Barton (Waltraute).
25 June–2 July 2018 (me 930) 8 days • £5880 • Flights not included (including tickets to all 4 performances) Lecturer: Barry Millington ‘Thoughtful, arresting and visually spectacular’ Chicago Tribune on Francesca Zambello’s Ring in San Francisco.
A M E R I C A S : USA
Zambello’s Ring returns as strongly cast as ever with Evelyn Herlitzius as Brünnhilde, Greer Grimsley as Wotan, Karita Mattila as Sieglinde, Brandon Jovanovich as Siegmund and the leading Wagnerian Donald Runnicles on the podium. Top-category seats (‘Grand Tier Premium’) to all four performances. Opportunity to attend events organised by the San Francisco Opera House supporting the Ring performances. It is perhaps no coincidence that Wagner began work on his vast tetralogy The Ring of the Nibelung – a project that was to occupy him for the next quarter of a century – in precisely the same year, 1848, as the Californian Gold Rush. That is a piquant point reflected in Francesca Zambello’s ‘American Ring’, in which the dwarf Alberich is characterised as a Californian miner in baggy overalls panning for gold. Other striking images include the ocean-liner gangplank to Valhalla for the gods and motorway arches out of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. But Zambello’s conception also picks up another important theme latent in the work, with women shown as active rather than passive agents (Sieglinde helps 2 2 8
to pull the sword out of the tree, Brünnhilde lays herself down for her long sleep). In the climactic Immolation Scene, Brünnhilde (aided only by Gutrune), the Rhinemaidens and the Gibichung women, are represented as more caring, nurturing forces for good than the men who had caused the catastrophe. As Zambello herself puts it: ‘The great themes of the Ring – nature, power and corruption – resound through America’s past and haunt our present.’ Described by one critic as ‘theatrically dazzling’, and by the Washington Post as ‘strong and moving, thought-provoking and powerful’, Zambello’s Ring returns to San Francisco after a triumphant outing in Washington, with a strong cast led by the Brünnhilde of Evelyn Herlitzius, one of the outstanding Wagner sopranos of our age, with the highly praised Siegfried of Daniel Brenna and the experienced Wotan of Greer Grimsley. With the luxury casting of Karita Mattila as Sieglinde, not to mention Falk Struckmann as Alberich, Brandon Jovanovich as Siegmund, James Egglestone as Froh, and Jamie Barton as Fricka and Waltraute, this promises to be a musical feast. The conductor is the music director of San Francisco Opera, Donald Runnicles, highly acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic for his thrilling interpretations of Wagner. With the performances arranged over six days, there is plenty of time to see San Francisco and to attend events supporting the Ring performances. Refined and grand, the city enjoys a rich cultural life, with excellent art galleries and museums and some of the best-preserved Victorian architecture in the world.
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Day 4. Morning walk with a local architectural historian ending at City Hall. The Asian Art Museum has been installed in the former public library, a project undertaken by architect Gae Aulenti. The collection is the finest in the USA. Day 5. Morning lecture. The day is free until the evening opera. Suggestions include the Immigration Museum in the Old Customs House. 6.30pm: Siegfried, Donald Runnicles (conductor), Daniel Brenna (Siegfried), Evelyn Herlitzius (Brünnhilde), Ronnita Miller (Erda), David Cangelosi (Mime), Greer Grimsley (Wotan), Falk Struckmann (Alberich), Raymond Aceto (Fafner), Stacey Tappan (Forest bird). Day 6. On the other side of the peninsula amid Monterey pines and cypresses sits the pristine colonnaded building of the Palace of the Legion of Honor. Here French art, particularly Rodin sculpture, is prominent. Spend the afternoon in the Golden Gate Park, a centre of cultural and botanical beauty. Visit Herzog & de Meuron’s landmark De Young Museum (2005): built from recycled redwood, eucalyptus and copper, the oxidising exterior is progressively blending with its environment. It houses a collection of American Art from the pre-Columbian era to the present day. Opposite is Renzo Piano’s ‘green museum’, his extension to the California Academy of Sciences (2009). Day 7. Morning lecture. Afternoon performance. 1.00pm: Götterdämmerung: Donald Runnicles (conductor), Daniel Brenna (Siegfried), Brian Mulligan (Gunther), Falk Struckmann (Alberich),
New Orleans to Natchitoches History and architecture, food and jazz 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. See pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies. Andrea Silvestrelli (Hagen), Evelyn Herlitzius (Brünnhilde), Melissa Citro (Gutrune), Jamie Barton (Waltraute), Stacey Tappan (Woglinde), Lauren McNeese (Wellgunde), Renée Tatum (Flosshilde), Ronnita Miller (First Norn). Day 8: Stanford. Free morning. Early afternoon departure for Stanford University to see the campus and Anderson Collection and Cantor Center for Visual Arts. Continue to San Francisco airport in time for the recommended direct flight to London, arriving at Heathrow the next day at c.2.00pm (c. 10½ hours).
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £5,880. Single occupancy: £6,640. Included meals: 1 lunch and 6 dinners with wine. Music: top-category tickets (‘Grand Tier Premium’) for all 4 performances are included, costing c. £1,770.
April 2019 Full details available in Spring 2018 Please contact us to register your interest A journey through Louisiana and its extraordinary history, architecture, food and music. Stay in New Orleans before venturing to Baton Rouge, Lafayette and north to sweet, historic Natchitoches on the Cane River. Colonial architecture of the French and Spanish, Art Deco and the 20th century are all represented, and, of course, a variety of plantation houses including Houmas House, our exuberant base for the final two nights. Jazz is an ever-present backdrop, and our tour coincides with Jazz Fest. Dominated by New Orleans and the Mississippi River, an exploration of Louisiana reveals a rich, diverse history and culture. Named by French settlers after King Louis XIV, the state has 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 French-Canadian Cajuns, remained distinct and preserved their ways and language, while others melded into a unique Louisiana culture. New Orleans captures the energy of this vibrant mix in the jazz that is heard from every street, day and night, but especially during the festivities of Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest. Houses are painted in various hues and flamboyant graves in the city’s cemeteries celebrate colourful lives. Even the devastation of Hurricane Katrina inspired a
creative response to re-building, and a new City Park filled with art and sculpture is a vibrant memorial to survival. The city owed its riches to the trade that flowed down the Mississippi, through the port of New Orleans. The slaves who worked the cotton fields in the north and the sugar plantations in the south were traded in New Orleans, the largest slave market in North America. Here, wealthy sugar barons built lavish town houses from where to conduct business and to entertain, while their estates along the river grew from modest plantation houses to vast mansions, a sharp contrast to the slave huts scattered far from sight. In Natchitoches, the first French settlement in the state, 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 which are still on the site. Surrounded by pecan orchards and with a river running beside its historic main street, Natchitoches retains a slow-paced way of life, captured in the play Steel Magnolias. The unconventional politics of 1930s Louisiana is 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 shot in the marble corridors of his Art Deco State Capitol. Illustration: Houmas House, Louisiana, photograph 1938, US Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington-DC.
Flights from and to London to San Francisco 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 and inform us of the details.
A M E R I C A S : USA
Visas: British citizens can enter the USA without a visa by applying for a visa waiver online. 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. Accommodation. Palace Hotel (sfpalace.com): elegant 5-star hotel, located within walking distance of Union Square, Embarcadero and Yerba Buena Gardens and a 30-minute coach drive from the Opera House. Rooms are classically furnished, of a good size and excellent standard. 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.
Illustration: Valkyries, engraving 1883 by A. Becker.
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East Coast Galleries From Boston to Washington DC 9–22 May 2018 (me 858) 13 nights • £6,890 Lecturer: Mary Lynn Riley Every major art gallery from New England to Washington DC, providing an astonishingly rich artistic experience. 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.
It in e r a r y Day 1. Fly at c. 11.15am from London Heathrow to Boston (British Airways), arriving at c. 1.45pm (time in the air: c. 7 hours). Visit Trinity Church, opposite the hotel. First of three nights in Boston. Day 2: Boston. Founded in 1630, Boston is an historic city with a long-standing reputation for culture and learning. Now a centre of the high-tech revolution, sleek glass towers co-habit with districts of narrow cobbled streets and brick houses and an important set of monuments from the colonial and revolutionary era. The Museum of Fine Arts has a fabulous collection, particular strengths being the Barbizon School, American art, Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. An afternoon walking tour of historic Boston. Day 3: Cambridge, Boston. Separated from Boston by the Charles River, Cambridge is the
home of Harvard University. Visit the University Art Museums, which include the long-established Fogg Museum, outstanding particularly for early Italian paintings and Impressionists, and the Busch-Reisinger Museum of German and Nordic painting. Back in Boston, visit the Isabella Stewart Gardner Collection, a sumptuous Renaissancestyle mansion crammed with magnificent works of art and furnishings. Day 4: North Adams, Williamstown. Drive through very attractive New England countryside to the Berkshires in the west of Massachusetts. Housed on a vast 19th-century factory campus in North Adams, MASS MoCA is the largest centre for contemporary art in the USA. Williamstown is a small university town with the Sterling and Francine Clark Institute, a wonderfully rich and varied collection outstanding for Post-Impressionist paintings, beautifully displayed in a mansion, and a brand new building designed by Tadao Ando, opened in 2014. Overnight Williamstown. Day 5: Hartford, New Haven. En route to New York visit the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, America’s oldest public art museum, founded in 1842. In New Haven, the Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art, the largest and most comprehensive display of British art outside the United Kingdom. Continue to New York City arriving early evening. First of four nights here. Day 6: New York. Visit the Guggenheim Collection in the famous spiral building (Frank Lloyd Wright), with primarily modern paintings. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) houses some of the greatest paintings of the 20th century in its beautifully enlarged Manhattan home. First of three nights in New York.
Day 7: New York. Walk through Central Park to the Metropolitan Museum, undoubtedly the number one art museum in America, embracing the whole gamut of artistic production from around the world. Magnificent benefactions and inspired curatorship have provided many great works of art and a superb standard of display, particularly the galleries devoted to the Impressionists, Tiepolo, and to English Decorative Arts. See also the Frick Collection, the salubrious Fifth Avenue mansion with a small but brilliant collection of great paintings. Day 8: New York. A morning architectural walk with a local lecturer looking at the Art Deco monuments of midtown Manhattan. In the afternoon drive to The Cloisters set in a delightfully tranquil part of north Manhattan overlooking the Hudson river. A branch of the Met, devoted to art of the Middle Ages and incorporating arcades from five cloisters and other salvaged architecture, it is a marvellous home for sculpture, metalwork, tapestries, stained glass, manuscripts and panel paintings. Day 9: Philadelphia. Drive to Philadelphia. As historically the nation’s most important art school, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts has accumulated a fine collection of American art. The Philadelphia Museum of Art, the 3rd-largest museum in the country, has a wide-ranging collection, including a 12th-century cloister, a Robert Adam interior from Berkeley Square and excellent Impressionists. First of two nights in Philadelphia. Day 10: Philadelphia. The Barnes Foundation, one of the world’s largest private collections of Impressionists and Post-Impressionists housed in a new, state-of-the-art gallery in the heart of Philadelphia’s arts district. Some free time in the city: explore the Independence National Historical Park or visit the Rodin Museum, which has the largest collection of his sculpture outside Paris.
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Day 11: Baltimore, Washington. Continue to the seaport of Baltimore. The Walters Art Gallery is an extraordinary and eclectic collection ranging from ancient Egypt to Art Nouveau, with a Raphael, mediaeval stained glass and historic jewellery among other outstanding items. The Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland’s largest art museum, houses the Cone Collection, a group of 500 works by Matisse, and an impressive sculpture garden. Drive to Washington for the first of two nights. Day 12: Washington. A capital conceived and built on a truly grand scale. At its heart lies the Mall, a two-mile-long park with many monuments and museums. Foremost among them is the National Gallery of Art, with a major collection representing the whole spectrum of western painting; the East Wing (architect: I.M. Pei) contains modern works. Other visits include the Phillips Collection, America’s first museum of modern art, and the Freer Gallery, part of the Smithsonian Institution, with a fine Asian collection and Whistler’s Peacock Room. Day 13: Washington. A free day for independent visits. Optional visit to the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Further suggestions include the White House, the US Capitol or another of Washington’s many 2 3 0
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Galleries of the American Midwest From Chicago to Detroit museums: the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery (art from southeast Asia) or the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (20th-century painting and sculpture), all branches of the Smithsonian Institution. Drive to Washington Dulles Airport for the flight to London departing at c. 10.30pm. Day 14. Arrive Heathrow at c. 11.00am.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £6,890 or £6,310 without flights. Single occupancy: £8,100 or £7,520 without flights. Included meals: 8 dinners with wine. Visas: British citizens can enter the USA without a visa by applying for a visa waiver online. 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. Additional arrangements. We can request flight upgrades, extra nights in the hotel and delay your return flight. Please let us know if you would like us to make these additional arrangements and we will obtain a quote. There is an amendment fee for making these changes. Music: there may be performances in New York. Details will be available nearer the time. Accommodation. Fairmont Copley Plaza, Boston (fairmont.com/copley-plaza-boston/): elegant hotel near Boston Common. The Orchards, Williamstown (orchardshotel.com): small hotel with a courtyard garden, a retreat from the city scene. The Lucerne, New York (thelucernehotel. com): smart boutique hotel close to Central Park. Sheraton Society Hill, Philadelphia (sheratonphiladelphiasocietyhill.com): functional but comfortable hotel near the Independence National Historical Park. Sofitel Lafayette Square, Washington (sofitel.com): modern hotel, well located for the major monuments.
Group size: between 12 and 22 participants.
West Coast Architecture 3–14 September 2018 (mf 105) 11 nights • £5,970 Lecturer: Professor Harry Charrington Very few spaces remaining Please contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com
Illustration: Mid-town New York, after a watercolour 1929.
A journey to some of the greatest art galleries in the US, through Illinois, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio and Michigan. Begin in Chicago with the world-renowned Art Institute and end in Detroit, a city undergoing huge regeneration. In between see the outstanding collections at St Louis, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Oberlin and Toledo. Impressionism and Post-Impressionism are very well represented, along with American art, Old Masters and modern and contemporary sculpture. The architecture of Finnish émigré Eliel Saarinen, and his son Eero, is a subtheme throughout, culminating in the incredible campus at Cranbrook. Led by art historian, Gijs van Hensbergen, an expert on American collections and collectors. The Midwest may be a byword for cultural annihilation but it’s a lazy stereotype. American states such as Illinois and Michigan are powerhouses of manufacturing, mining and agriculture, yet they also harbour a civic pride and commitment to self-improvement that have resulted in world-class art collections, exhibited in buildings and settings that are often astonishing in their own right. And between the major urban centres are lesser-known, often delightfully surprising pockets of cultural distinction in Missouri, Ohio and Indiana. The Chicago Art Institute is one of the finest art museums in the world (in the US, second only to the Met in New York), notable for its Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces as well as works by Abstract Expressionists such as Rothko and de Kooning. We enjoy two visits, part-guided and part-independent, as well as exploring the stupendous architectural environment that surrounds it in ‘The Loop’ (our hotel is right there).
Ground-breaking buildings are a consistent theme of the tour, as we take in Eero Saarinen’s Gateway Arch, which soars over the Mississippi in St Louis, and enjoy private visits to another Saarinen commission, the Miller House in Columbus, and to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Smith House on beautiful Cranbrook campus outside Detroit. ‘Motor City’ was running on empty - it filed for municipal bankruptcy in 2013 - but is undergoing a regeneration that we witness on a locally guided walk through the Art Deco skyscrapers of the downtown area. Detroit’s Institute of Arts has always been a beacon of excellence and remains one of America’s finest galleries, featuring among many exceptional works a Van Gogh self-portrait and Diego Rivera’s vast Detroit Industry mural. The latter is contextualised by a visit to the Ford automobile plant, birthplace of the Model T. But it’s the more unsung treasures of the Midwestern hinterlands that really add a patina to the tour – the Glass Pavilion in Toledo, showcasing more than 5,000 works of art in glass; the mediaeval collection in the incredible Cleveland Museum of Art; the exquisite Allen Memorial Art Museum outside Cleveland (one of the finest university collections in the US); the Max Beckmanns and Gerhard Richters in St Louis; and the Japanese Edo period paintings in Indianapolis. After twelve nights and five states the notion that the Midwest is an empty canvas is dispelled by the artistic richness of this particular slice of America.
It in e r a r y Day 1. Fly at c. 11.15am from London Heathrow to Chicago (direct, British Airways), arriving at c. 1.45pm (time in the air: c. 7 hours 30 minutes). Drive to the hotel in ‘The Loop’, a short walk from the Art Institute. Time to settle in before dinner. First of two nights in Chicago.
Illustration: Georges Seurat. ‘A Sunday on La Grande Jatte’ – 1884, 1884/86. Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection. The Art Institute of Chicago.
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How strenuous? You should be prepared to walk. Within Washington and New York we reach some museums on foot – up to 20 minutes or more – though taxis can be used. Within the museums, there will be a lot of walking and standing around. Average distance by coach per day: 49 miles.
6–18 June 2018 (me 897) 12 nights • £5,980 Lecturer: Gijs van Hensbergen
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collection is wonderfully rich and varied, with modern European art at its core. It is also home to the world’s largest collection of Max Beckmann paintings. Overnight St Louis. Day 5: Indianapolis IN. Morning drive to Indianapolis (255 miles). The Museum of Art is one of the oldest collections in the US and is in a beautiful setting on a leafy campus north of the city. We explore the highlights: Gauguin and the Pont-Aven school, Japanese Edo-period paintings, and contemporary art including an installation by James Turrell. Free time to see the gardens and sculpture park. Overnight Indianapolis. Day 6: Columbus IN, Cincinnati OH. Drive to Columbus for a private visit of the Miller House. Commissioned in 1953 by industrialist, philanthropist and architectural patron, J Irwin Miller, this is a perfect example of a complete modernist house. Architecture by Eero Saarinen, interior design by Alexander Girard and landscape design by Dan Kiley all remain remarkably intact. Continue to Cincinnati to the Contemporary Arts Center, a stunning new build by Zaha Hadid which opened in 2016. Our hotel is next door. Overnight Cincinnati.
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Day 2: Chicago IL. The day is largely dedicated to the Art Institute, 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 PostImpressionist masterpieces, as well as a wonderful display of American paintings. Renzo Piano’s Modern Wing houses the Institute’s remarkable collection of 20th-and-21st-century art. Guided tours of selected galleries are interspersed with independent time. The adjacent Millennium Park has noteworthy installations by Anish Kapoor and Jaume Plensa. Overnight Chicago. Day 3: Chicago, St Louis MO. An architectural walk through ‘The Loop’ to see skyscrapers and monuments of the Chicago School as well as some of the public art more recently installed. Return to the Art Institute for a further tour or some independent time. Continue to the airport for the late-afternoon flight to St Louis. First of two nights in St Louis. Day 4: St Louis. Walk through the Citygarden (works by Fernand Léger, Richard Serra, Aristide Maillol) to the landmark Gateway Arch. Designed by Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen, and inaugurated in 1965, it soars over the Mississippi and the city. The Pulitzer Arts Foundation is in a sleek Tadao Ando building and is renowned for its high-calibre exhibitions. There are just three permanent works, two of which were commissioned specifically for this space: Serra’s Joe and Ellsworth Kelly’s Blue Black. Continue to the St Louis Art Museum, built in the heart of Forest Park for the 1904 World’s Fair. The 2 3 2
Day 7: Cincinnati, Columbus OH, Cleveland OH. Founded in 1881, the Cincinnati Art Museum is long-established with a wide-ranging collection. Impressionists feature strongly and there are notable Fauvist and Cubist works, as well as an entire wing devoted to local artists and decorative arts. En route to Cleveland (240 miles), stop at the Columbus Museum of Art, which has a fine collection of modern European and American painting, including early Cubist works by Picasso and Juan Gris. First of two nights in Cleveland. Day 8: Cleveland. On the shores of Lake Erie, Cleveland’s manufacturing centre is being revitalised in the 21st century. The city’s art museum is testament to this with a programme of massive expansion, including a magnificent light-filled atrium by Rafael Viñoly. There are many treasures here, particularly in European and American painting from the 19th and 20th centuries, and in the world-class holding of Asian art. The mediaeval and Renaissance galleries in the original museum building are beautifully displayed. Free time here or to walk to the Museum of Contemporary Art, a reflective, geometric form in the heart of the university circle. Day 9: Oberlin, Toledo OH, Detroit MI. A short drive out of Cleveland to the Allen Memorial Art Museum, one of the finest university collections in the US, housed on the edge of the charming Oberlin college campus. This small but eclectic collection contains important holdings of 16th and 17th century Dutch and Flemish paintings. Continue to Toledo. The city’s glass-manufacturing heritage is reflected in the elegant, Japanese-designed Glass Pavilion, home to a superb collection of over 5,000 works of art in glass. The main museum includes European painting from the Renaissance to Impressionism, with notable works by Rubens, Rembrandt, David and El Greco. There is a strong American Art and Modern collection and a fascinating display of Japanese Netsuke. Continue to Detroit. First of three nights here.
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Day 10: Detroit. Morning walk looking at the Art Deco monuments of downtown. Continue to the Detroit Art Institute, one of the finest collections in the US. Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry fresco and an expansive collection of American art are among the highlights here but there are many gems: a Van Gogh self-portrait, Bruegel’s The Wedding Dance and a fine collection of German Expressionist works. Overnight Detroit. Day 11: Cranbrook. The day is dedicated to the enchanting campus of Cranbrook, one of the leading graduate art schools in the US. Here Eliel Saarinen taught and his son Eero studied. Visits include Saarinen’s Art Deco house, the Art Museum, and special access to works from some of the 20th century’s leading artists and designers, all of whom had connections to Cranbrook. End with a private tour of the Smith House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in Usonian style for two teachers in Detroit. Overnight Detroit. Day 12: Detroit. Visit the Ford Piquette Avenue Plant, Henry Ford’s factory and the birthplace of the Model T. Drive to the airport for the flight to Chicago departing at c. 3.15pm, connect to the overnight flight to London departing c. 6.00pm. Day 13. Arrive London Heathrow at c. 7.45am.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £5,980 or £5,130 without flights on days 1 and 12. Single occupancy: £6,800 or £5,950 without flights on days 1 and 12. Included meals: 1 lunch and 7 dinners with wine. Visas: British citizens can enter the USA without a visa by applying for a visa waiver online. We will advise. 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. Accommodation. The Alise, Chicago (staypineapple.com): boutique hotel in the landmark Reliance Building; good location in ‘The Loop’ within walking distance of the Chicago Institute of Art. The Ritz-Carlton, St Louis (ritzcarlton.com/St_Louis): elegant 5-star in classical style with three restaurants, a martini bar, cigar club, and gym. All rooms have a balcony. Le Meridien, Indianapolis (lemeridienindianapolis.com): 4-star boutique hotel in the heart of downtown that has undergone complete renovation. 21c Museum Hotel, Cincinnati (21cmuseumhotels.com/cincinnati): 4-star hotel, nextdoor to the Contemporary Arts Center designed by Zaha Hadid; facilities include a restaurant and a rooftop bar with views of downtown. Renaissance Cleveland Hotel (marriott.co.uk): dating to 1918 with grand public areas; adequately comfortable rooms. Westin Book Cadillac, Detroit (bookcadillacwestin.com): Landmark 4-star hotel built in 1924 in downtown; three restaurants, bar and indoor pool. How strenuous? A long tour with frequent hotel changes, a lot of coach travel and standing around in museums. Fitness and stamina are essential. Average distance by coach per day: 89 miles. Group size: between 12 and 22 participants. Illustration: Chicago, wood engraving c. 1880.
Frank Lloyd Wright and the Chicago School 30 June–11 July 2018 (me 940) 11 nights • £5,670 Lecturer: Tom Abbott 22 September–3 October 2018 (mf 175) 11 nights • £5,670 Lecturer: Tom Abbott 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’
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. See pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies.
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
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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. 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.
It in e r a r y Day 1: Pittsburgh. Fly at c. 9.45am (British Airways) from London Heathrow, via New York J.F.K., to Pittsburgh, arriving c. 5.00pm (total flying time c. 8½ hours). 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.
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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. 2 3 4
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 was completed in 1997). Visit the Unitarian Meeting House (1946), distinguished by its soaring copper roof and glass-prowed sanctuary. Drive to the excellent Milwaukee Art Museum to see the Prairie School Archives, with free time for the collection of European and 20thcent. American art. End the day with a visit to one of Wright’s American System-Built homes (1916). Overnight Milwaukee. 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 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 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.
‘There is no other tour on the market which gives so much. It is obvious that an enormous amount of planning went into putting this superb tour together. I thank you with all my heart.’ P r a c t ic a lit ie s Price, per person. Two sharing: £5,670 or £5,000 without flights on days 1 and 11. Single occupancy: £6,510 or £5,840 without flights on days 1 and 11. Included meals: 1 café lunch and 7 dinners with wine. Visas: British citizens can enter the USA without a visa by applying for a visa waiver online. We will advise. 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. 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 (formerly Hotel Burnham), 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.
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 (currently closed for restoration until the end of 2017). 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.
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What else is included in the price? See page 8.
Art in Texas Outstanding collections in city and desert 20 February–3 March 2019 (mf 424) 10 nights • £6,090 Lecturer: Gijs van Hensbergen 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 prettified San Antonio; to end in Dallas, the home of hospitality and a terrific arts scene. 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 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.
It in e r a r y Day 1: London to Houston. 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. Illustration: Houston, mid-20th-century.
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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. See pages 237–244 for all lecturer biographies. 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. Overnight Dallas.
Day 2: Houston. The morning is spent 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. Overnight Houston. 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. Overnight Houston.
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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. 2 3 6
Some free time to visit Marfa’s excellent bookstore and main street. Overnight Marfa. 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 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. Overnight 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 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. Overnight Dallas. 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
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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. 4.45pm. Day 12. The flight arrives at London Heathrow at c. 7.30am.
P r a c t ic a lit ie s 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: 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. Accommodation. Hotel Zaza, Houston (hotelzaza.com/#houston): contemporary hotel next door to the Fine Arts Museum. Hotel El Paisano, Marfa (hotelpaisano.com): built in 1930 in colonial style and the focal point of town. Omni Mokara Hotel & Spa, San Antonio (omnihotels.com): comfortable hotel well located on the River Walk. Hotel Crescent Court, Dallas (crescentcourt.com): comfortable and spacious, in Uptown 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. Music. There may be an opportunity to attend an opera, concert or play in Dallas. Programmes will be sent nearer the time. Group size: between 12 and 22 participants. Photograph: Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Audrey Jones Beck Building, exterior. Photo: ©Robb Williamson, courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Our lecturers
Photographs. Top row, left–right: Tom Abbott; Robert Adelson; Louisa Allen, John Allison; Paul Atterbury; Helena Attlee; Patrick Bade; Paul Bahn; Richard Bassett. Second row, left–right: Lydia Bauman; Hugh Belsey; Gail Bent; David Beresford-Jones; Raaja Bhasin; Steven Blake; Tim Blanning; Flavio Boggi; Zahira Bomford.
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.
Dr Paul Bahn. Archaeologist and Britain’s foremost specialist in prehistoric art. He led the team which discovered Britain’s only known Ice Age cave art at Creswell in 2003 and his books include Prehistoric Rock Art, Journey Through the Ice Age and Images of the Ice Age.
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 and Documents, 1785-1959.
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, and has written for various publications. Books include Flavours of Greece and Meze: Small Bites, Big Flavors from the Greek Table.
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.
Richard Bassett. Journalist and historian. He was a foreign correspondent for the Times throughout the 1980s and early 90s, covering central and eastern Europe. His books include Austrians: Tales from the Vienna Woods, Hitler’s Spy Chief: The Wilhelm Canaris Mystery, Balkan Hours and A History of the Habsburg Army.
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 the impact these can have on well-being and engaging communities. Dr John Allison.Writer and music critic. He is Editor of Opera magazine, 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.
Helena Attlee. Writer and lecturer with an expert knowledge of Italian gardens. Among her books are Italian Gardens: A Cultural History and most recently The Land Where Lemons Grow. She was Writer in Residence at the University of Worcester from 2009–2012 and is a Consultant Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund. Patrick Bade. Historian, writer and broadcaster. He studied at UCL and the Courtauld and was senior lecturer at Christies 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.
Hugh Belsey mbe. Art historian, curator and lecturer. For 23 years he curated Gainsborough’s House in Sudbury and in 2004 was awarded the MBE. He is currently writing a catalogue of Thomas Gainsborough’s works for Yale University Press. He studied at Manchester and Birmingham. Gail Bent. Expert on British architectural history and historic interiors. She studied at Toronto and Leeds Universities 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, Pre-Colombian textiles and the synthesis of archaeology and historical linguistics, particularly in the Andes. Raaja Bhasin. Author, historian and journalist. He has published several 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.
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 books are The Culture of Power & the Power of Culture and The Triumph of Music in the Modern World. His most recent is Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, awarded the British Academy Medal 2016. Dr Flavio Boggi. Art historian specialising in mediaeval and Renaissance Italian art. He trained both in Scotland and Italy and is now head of the department of Art History at University College Cork, Ireland. He has published on the artistic culture of Tuscany and has co-written two books on Lippo di Dalmasio. Monica Bohm-Duchen. Writer, curator and lecturer specialising in 20th-century art. Studied Art History 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, appears in the anthology War & Art in 2017. Dr Zahira Bomford. Senior Conservator of Paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. 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 the National Trust and has published extensively on Spanish art. Dr Xavier Bray. Art historian specialising in Spain 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 and Sculpture 1600–1700 (National Gallery), Murillo & Justino de Neve: The Art of Friendship (Dulwich) and Goya: The Portraits (National Gallery). Dr Steven Brindle. Read History at Oxford and worked for English Heritage for 27 years. He was also involved in the post-fire restoration of Windsor Castle, 1993–97. Publications include Brunel, the Man who built the World. His history of Windsor Castle for the Royal Collection is soon to be published. 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 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.
Lydia Bauman. Art historian, artist, and lecturer at the National Gallery. Lydia 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.
Dr Steven Blake. Historian and lecturer, specialising in the history of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, and mediaeval architecture. He worked for 30 years at Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum and has served on many society councils in the West Country. He is a Fellow of the Museums Association and Society of Antiquaries.
Our lecturers continued
Top row, left–right: Xavier Bray; Steven Brindle; Dominic Brookshaw; John Bryan; John Butt; Katie Campbell; Sophie Campbell; Jon Cannon; Cathie Carmichael. Second row, left–right: Harry Charrington Dawn Chatty; Kevin Childs; Felicity Cobbing; Elizabeth Collingham; Ian Colvin; Peter Cormack; Gordon Corrigan; Imogen Corrigan.
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.
Professor Dominic Brookshaw. Associate Professor of Persian Literature and Senior Research Fellow at Oxford University. He holds a DPhil in pre-modern Persian poetry and a BA in Arabic with Persian from Oxford. His latest book is Ruse & Wit: The Humorous in Arabic, Persian & Turkish Narrative. He has travelled widely in the Middle East, as well as south-west and central Asia.
Terry Charman. Leading authority on Churchill, the Battle of Britain, the Blitz and VE and VJ Days, and frequent lecturer and broadcaster. Former Senior Historian at the Imperial War Museum, historical advisor for TV and radio, cocommentator for the BBCs VE and VJ coverage, and member of the IWM Academic Advisory Panel for the 1939–1945 gallery.
Professor John Bryan. Professor of Music at the University of Huddersfield, member of the Rose Consort of Viols, and founder of the North East Early Music Forum. Artistic adviser to York Early Music Festival and contributor on BBC Radio 3. His book Early English Viols: Instruments, Makers & Music was published by Routledge in 2016.
‘The lecturer was, as MRT lecturers always are, excellent; informed, interesting and a good talker. I thoroughly enjoyed hearing an approach and argument quite different from my own, and learned a great deal.’
Professor John Butt obe. Lecturer, writer and musician, specialising in historical performance. Professor of Music at Glasgow University, Director of the Dunedin Consort, Principal Artist with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and guest conductor for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Stavanger Symphony Orchestra. 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.
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Sophie Campbell. Travel writer for the past 25 years, Sophie has written for the Telegraph, Times, Guardian and Condé Nast Traveller. She also 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 teaches at Bristol University 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 book, The Secret Language of Sacred Spaces. Professor Cathie Carmichael. Professor of European History at the University of East Anglia. She studied at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia in the 1980s before independence. Her books include Slovenia & the Slovenes, Language & Nationalism in Europe, Genocide before the Holocaust and Bosnia e Erzegovina, Alba e tramonto del secolo breve. 2 3 8
Professor Harry Charrington. Architect and Head 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 award-winning Alvar Aalto: the Mark of the Hand and contributions to Artek & the Aaltos: Creating a Modern World. 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. Dr Kevin Childs. Writer and lecturer on culture and the arts with a focus on the Italian Renaissance. He obtained his PhD 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 in 2017 at the V&A. 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. Dr R. T. Cobianchi. Art historian and researcher specializing 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.
book online at www.martinrandall.com
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. Peter Cormack. Art historian and curator. He is the Honorary Curator of William Morris’s Oxfordshire home, Kelmscott Manor, and was formerly Keeper of the William Morris Gallery, London. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and VicePresident and Honorary Fellow of the British Society of Master Glass-Painters. Major Gordon Corrigan mbe. Military historian and former officer of the Royal Gurkha Rifles. The latest 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 mediaeval 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. Rosemary Crill. Recently retired as Senior Curator for South Asia at the V&A Museum, where she is now an Honorary Senior Research Fellow. She has published widely on Indian textiles and paintings. Books include Indian Embroidery, Indian Ikat Textiles and The Fabric of India, which accompanied the major exhibition of the same name at the V&A. 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.
Top row, left–right: Rosemary Crill Misha Donat, Michael Douglas-Scott; Michael Downes; David Ellwood; Simon Esmonde Cleary; Richard Evans; Karen Exell; Andrew Farrington. Second row, left–right: Margrethe Floryan Frances Fowle; Lucia Gahlin; Jana Gajdošová; Garth Gilmour; Mark Grahame; Sheila Hale; Michael Hall; Norman Hammond.
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, and CD booklets for many labels. Currently he is working on a new edition of the Beethoven piano sonatas being published by Bärenreiter.
Dr Karen Exell. Studied at Oxford University and St Andrews and obtained a PhD from Durham. She is Honorary Senior Research Associate at UCL Qatar, and a consultant at Qatar Museums. She has published several works on the cultural heritage of the Arabian Peninsula, including a monograph, Modernity & the Museum in the Arabian Peninsula.
Dr Ffiona Gilmore Eaves. Read Archaeology at Cambridge and obtained her PhD from Nottingham. Her special interest is in the Adriatic and she is the co-author of Retrieving the Record: A Century of Archaeology at Porec. She has lectured extensively in adult education, especially for the WEA, and for various extra-mural departments.
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 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 Garth Gilmour. Biblical archaeologist who studied in Jerusalem, where he now lives, and at Oxford. 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 Margrethe Floryan. Art historian and curator with a PhD in garden history. She studied at the University of Aarhus and the École du Louvre and is author of Great European Gardens: An Atlas of Historic Plans. She has published extensively on art, architecture and landscape design. Honorary member of the Danish Horticultural Society.
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 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.
‘Janet was encyclopaedic on the history and architecture of the region... she was articulate and interesting and very well organised. 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.
Professor Simon Esmonde Cleary. Archaeologist specialising in the western Roman Empire. He studied at London University and Oxford. He is Professor of Roman Archaeology at the University of Birmingham and has conducted field-work in the UK and France. He has written books on Gaul and Spain in late antiquity, and on Roman Britain. 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, in 2016, The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815–1914 – a volume in the Penguin History of Europe, recently issued in paperback.
Lucia Gahlin. Teaches Egyptology for the University of Exeter, and is a Research Associate at UCL’s Institute of Archaeology. She works closely with the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology and has excavated at Amarna in Egypt. Her publications include Egypt: Gods, Myths & Religion. Dr Jana Gajdosova. 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 mediaeval art and architecture, especially in Central Europe, England, Germany and Italy. Dr Alexandra Gajewski. Architectural historian and lecturer specialising in the mediaeval. She obtained her PhD from the Courtauld and has lectured there and at Birkbeck. She is currently in Madrid researching ‘The Roles of Women as Makers of Medieval Art and Architecture’.
Sheila Hale. Writer and lecturer with a focus on the Italian Renaissance. Among her books are Titian: His Life & the Golden Age of Venice and Verona: An Architectural History. She has contributed to numerous newspapers in the UK and US including the New York Times and London Review of Books. Michael Hall. Historian and writer on British architecture and design. He has been architectural editor of Country Life and his books include The Victorian Country House, Waddesdon Manor: The Biography of a Rothschild House and, most recently, George Frederick Bodley & the Later Gothic Revival in Britain & America. Professor Norman Hammond. Leading expert on Maya civilization. He is a Senior Fellow at Cambridge University and Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at Boston University. His many books include Ancient Maya Civilization, Nohmul: a Prehistoric Maya Community in Belize and Cuello: an early Maya community in Belize. He is also Archaeology Correspondent for the Times.
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Professor David Ellwood. Historian, writer and lecturer. He taught history at the University of Bologna for 34 years, and a course on America and Europe at the Hopkins Bologna Center from 1989 onwards. He lives in Turin.
Dr Frances Fowle. Senior Curator of French Art at the Scottish National Gallery, Reader in History of Art at the University of Edinburgh and Senior Trustee of the Burrell Collection. She has curated many exhibitions including Inspiring Impressionism: Daubigny, Monet, Van Gogh (2016). Her publications include Soil & Stone: Impressionism, Urbanism Environment.
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 20th-century political figure Qu Qiubai.
Our lecturers continued
Top row, left–right: Gijs van Hensbergen; Monika Hinkel; Frank Høifødt; Caroline Holmes; Owen Hopkins; Maurice Howard; Luke Jennings; Stephen Johnson; James Johnston. Second row, left–right: David Jones; Philippa Joseph; Shona Kallestrup; Yoko Kawaguchi; Jonathan Keates; Hugh Kennedy; Nicholas Kenyon; Rose Kerr; Helen King.
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.
Luke Jennings. Author and the dance critic for The Observer. He trained at the Rambert School and worked for ten years as a dancer and choreographer before turning to writing. With Deborah Bull, he wrote The Faber Guide to Ballet and as a journalist he has written for Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and Time, and various British titles.
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.
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.
Stephen Johnson. Writer, broadcaster and composer. He was for 15 years presenter of BBC Radio 3’s Discovering Music. 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 Behemoth Dances was premièred by the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra in 2016.
Professor Hugh Kennedy. Professor of Arabic at SOAS. He studied at the Middle East Centre for Arab Studies in Beirut, and read Arabic and Persian at Cambridge. He is author of The Early Abbasid Caliphate, The Prophet & the Age of the Caliphates, Crusader Castles and Muslim Spain & Portugal.
Dr Frank Høifødt. Art historian, lecturer and writer. Former Associate Professor at the University of Oslo and director of the Vigeland Museum. He is an expert on Edvard Munch and was for years a curator at the Munch Museum in Oslo. He has published extensively on the artist. In 2016, he curated a Munch exhibition at Gallery F15 in Moss.
James Johnstone. Organist and Professor of early keyboards at Guildhall School of Music & Drama and at Trinity Laban. 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.
Caroline Holmes. Garden historian, autor and consultant. Lectures for Cambridge University’s ICE, The Arts Society and RHS. Her eleven books include Water Lilies & Bory Latour Marliac, and The Genius behind Monet’s Water Lilies. She has been a consultant for the Royal Opera House’s New Production Campus for the Performing Arts and Notre-Dame-de-Calais.
David Jones. Furniture historian specialising in English and Scottish furniture and Thomas Chippendale. He has taught at the University of St Andrews and the Smithsonian Institution. He advises on several collections including Hopetoun House, Dumfries House, and Paxton House, and uses these collections for teaching on site.
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Owen Hopkins. Writer, historian and curator. Senior Curator of Exhibitions and Education at Sir John Soane’s Museum, and former Architecture 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. Professor Maurice Howard. Professor Emeritus of Art History at the University of Sussex. Books include The Building of Elizabethan & Jacobean England. He has worked for the V&A and the National Portrait Gallery, is President of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain and former President of the Society of Antiquaries of London. Peter Howell. Classics Lecturer at the University of London. He has a particular interest in 19th century architectural history, and has published mainly on church architecture. He has been member of the Victorian Society for 55 years, and its Chairman for six years. He has an honorary doctorate for the University of Uppsala. 2 40
Dr Philippa Joseph. Independent lecturer and researcher, and reviews editor for History Today. For 20 years, she published journals and books for learned societies in the humanities. Her research looks at societies in Andalucía and Sicily where Christian, Jewish, and Muslim cultures flourished, each building on a Classical past. Dr Shona Kallestrup. Art historian specialising in Scandinavia and Central and Eastern Europe. She obtained an MA from the Warburg Institute, and an MA and PhD from the University of St Andrews, where she now teaches. She has worked at the Universities of Copenhagen, Aberdeen and Edinburgh. Her most recent research focuses on artistic interaction between Scandinavia and Romania in the early 20th century. 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. Books include Butterfly’s Sisters: The Geisha in Western Culture, Japanese Zen Gardens and Authentic Japanese Gardens.
book online at www.martinrandall.com
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 The Observer, music editor of The Listener and editor of Early Music. He is author of the Faber Pocket Guides to Bach and Mozart; he edited Authenticity & Early Music and The City of London: A Companion Guide. Dr Rose Kerr. Honorary Associate of the Needham Research Institute in Cambridge, having retired as 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. Professor Helen King. Professor Emerita of Classical Studies at The Open University and Visiting Professor at the Peninsula Medical and Dental School (Exeter and Plymouth), and at the University of Vienna. Her publications include Greek & Roman Medicine and The One-Sex Body on Trial: The Classical & Early Modern Evidence. Caroline Knight. Architectural historian specialising in 16th- to 18th-century British architectural and social history. She studied History and History of Art at London University, followed by an MA at the Courtauld Institute. She lectures frequently at the V&A, and for The Arts Society. She has published academic articles, contributed to various books, and wrote London’s Country Houses. Dr Konstanze Knittler. Art historian and lecturer specialising in 19th- and 20th-century Chinese art and ceramics. She studied in Vienna and at Sotheby’s Institute of Art. She obtained her PhD at the University of Glasgow. She lectures at Sotheby’s Institute and has run short courses on Asian art.
Top row, left–right: Caroline Knight; Konstanze Knittler; Anthony Lambert; Helen Langdon; Richard Langham Smith; Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones; Gerald Luckhurst; Giles MacDonagh; Alexey Makhrov. Second row, left–right: Andrew Martin; John McNeill; Charles Melville; Patrick Mercer; Jeffrey Miller; Barry Millington; Marc Millon; Anna-Maria Misra; David Mitchinson.
Dr Jarl Kremeier. Art historian specialising in 17th- to 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 almost 30 years. His books include Victorian & Edwardian Country House Life. He writes regularly for the Historic Houses Association magazine. He has written numerous 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. Professor Richard Langham Smith. Music historian, broadcaster and writer specialising in early music and 19th/20th-century French music. He is Research Professor at the Royal College of Music. In 1993 he was admitted as a Chevalier to the ‘Ordre des arts et des lettres’ for services to French Music, and was awarded an FRCM in 2016.
Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones. Chair of Ancient History at the University of Cardiff and specialist in the history and culture of ancient Iran, the Near East and Ancient Greece. Books include Ctesias’ History of Persia, Creating a Hellenistic World and King & Court in Ancient Persia. He has contributed to TV and BBC radio documentaries and is a reviewer for the Times and Times Higher Education. 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. His books include: The Gardens of Madeira, The Gardens of the National Palace of Queluz and Sintra: A Landscape with Villas. Giles MacDonagh. Historian and author. His publications include monographs on Berlin and Prussia, biographies of Frederick the Great and the last Kaiser, and a best-selling book on post-war Germany, After the Reich. He is currently preparing
a study of Angela Merkel’s Germany. He has also worked as a journalist, translator and teacher, and is an expert on food and wine. 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 postdoctoral work as a Research Fellow at Exeter. He now lives in Switzerland where he teaches courses on Russian art. Andrew Martin. Journalist, novelist, historian and author of Underground Overground: A Passenger’s History of the Tube. During the 1990s he was ‘Tube Talk’ columnist for the Evening Standard. His latest novel is Soot. John McNeill. Architectural historian and a specialist in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. He lectures for Oxford University’s Department of Continuing Education and is Honorary Secretary of the British Archaeological Association, for whom he has edited collections of essays on mediaeval Anjou, King’s Lynn and the Fens, Cloisters, and Romanesque and the Mediterranean. Professor Charles Melville. Professor of Persian History at Cambridge. He studied Arabic and Persian at Cambridge and Islamic History at SOAS. His main area of expertise is the history of Iran in the Mongol and Safavid periods. He is also Director of the Cambridge Shahnama Project and has travelled extensively in Iran and Central Asia. 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. Dr Jeffrey Miller. Art historian specialising in architecture of the Middle Ages. He teaches at the University of Cambridge and The Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL). He holds an MA from the Courtauld and a PhD from Columbia University. His research features in Decorated Revisited: English Architectural Style in Context, 1250–1400. 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 food scene of the West Country. 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. Lecturer 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 Channel 4 series An Indian Affair. David Mitchinson. Former Head of Collections and Exhibitions at the Henry Moore Foundation. He has curated exhibitions of, and written extensively on Moore’s life and work including Henry Moore: Unpublished Drawings, Celebrating Moore and Henry Moore: Prints & Portfolios. Dr Andrew Moore. Writer and curator, and a specialist in the study of country houses and their art collections. He co-authored a reassessment of Sir Robert Walpole’s art collection at Houghton Hall in 2013. Formerly Keeper of Art at Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery. Dr Marc Morris. Historian and broadcaster specialising in the Middle Ages. He studied and taught at the universities of London and Oxford. He presented the highly acclaimed TV series Castle. Books include The Norman Conquest, A Great & Terrible King: Edward I & the Forging of Britain and King John: Treachery, Tyranny & the Road to Magna Carta. 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 Louis Nelson. Specialist in American colonial architecture and the architectures and landscapes of the early modern Atlantic world. He is Professor of Architectural History at the University of Virginia. The majority of his work focuses on the early American South, the Greater Caribbean, and the Atlantic rim. 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 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 Luca Leoncini. Art historian specialising in 15th-century Italian painting. His degree and PhD were from Rome University followed by research at the Warburg Institute in London. He has contributed to the Macmillan Dictionary of Art and has written on Mantegna and Renaissance drawings.
‘Harry Charrington was outstanding – clear and interesting, friendly and approachable.’
Our lecturers continued
Top row, left–right: Andrew Moore; Marc Morris; Chris Moss; Louis Nelson; Fabrizio Nevola; Christopher Newall; Charles Nicholl; Geoffrey Norris; Cathy Oakes. Second row, left–right: Alan Ogden; Sophie Oosterwijk; Muiris O’Sullivan; Ian Page; Stephen Parkin; Amanda Patton; Sarah Pearson; Carolyn Perry; Richard Plant.
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he has published widely including Siena: Constructing the Renaissance City. He obtained his PhD at the Courtauld.
Leicester, Manchester and St Andrews, and lectures at Cambridge. She is also co-editor of the journal Church Monuments.
Education Programme at the British Museum. She is also Chair of The British Foundation for the Study of Arabia.
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 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.
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.
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.
Ian Page. Conductor and Artistic Director of Classical Opera, who appear regularly at Wigmore Hall, Cadogan Hall, the Barbican and Sadler’s Wells. He recently embarked on a new project to record all the Mozart operas and has been a professor at the Royal College of Music in London since 1993.
Sarah Nichols. Writer and lecturer specialising in decorative arts. She works for the Attingham Trust for the Study of Historic House and is involved in the Decorative Arts Society and the York Georgian Society among others. She has written and lectured on topics ranging from 18th-century furniture to contemporary ceramics and glass.
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.
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.
Amanda Patton. Landscape and garden designer, writer and broadcaster specialising in the 20thcentury garden. 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 Chelsea and Hampton Court flower shows.
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, and she has curated and written for BFI Southbank and the British Council.
Dr Cathy Oakes fsa. Associate Professor in Art History at Oxford, with a focus on the mediaeval. She has also worked in the Education Department at the V&A, and ran the art history programme for the Department for Continuing Education at Bristol. She has published on French and English Romanesque and English Early Modern.
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 several TV documentaries. In 2001, he joined the Board of Studies in Ancient History and Archaeology at the University of Madras.
Alan Ogden. Travel writer and historian. His books include Fortresses of Faith: The Kirchenburgen of Transylvania, Revelations of Byzantium: The Monasteries & Painted Churches of N.E. Moldavia and Moons & Aurochs: Romanian journeys. He has written four histories of the Special Operations Executive covering Eastern Europe, Italy, Greece and the Far East.
Dr Alan Peatfield. Archaeologist specialising in the Minoan Bronze Age Civilisation of Crete. He obtained his PhD from University College London. From 1984–90 he was Knossos Curator for the British School at Athens and has lectured at University College Dublin since 1991. He has excavated on Crete and he writes on Minoan religion and ancient Greek combat.
Andreas Puth. Art and architectural historian who studied at the University of Freiburg and the Courtauld. He has lectured at UCL, Birkbeck and the Courtauld on medieval and early modern architecture and imagery. He has been a fellow at the Research Centre on the History and Culture of East Central Europe affiliated to Leipzig University.
Dr Sophie Oosterwijk. Researcher and lecturer with degrees in Art History, Mediaeval 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
Carolyn Perry. Lecturer and museum consultant. Taught Ancient History and Mythology in the Department of Mediterranean Studies at Queen Mary College, University of London and has excavated in Italy. Established the Arab World
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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. Gavin Plumley. Writer, broadcaster and lecturer, specialising in the culture of Central Europe during the last years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He is English-language commissioning editor for the Salzburg Festival and studied music at Oxford. He has also lectured at the National Gallery, the British Museum and Wigmore Hall.
Professor Peter Wynne Rees cbe. City Planning Officer for the City of London 1985–2014 and a founder member/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,
Top row, left–right: Fred Plotkin; Jane Pritchard; Asoka Pugal; Peter Wynne Rees; Simon Rees; Mary Lynn Riley; Juliet Rix; Barnaby Rogerson; Sue Rollin. Second row, left–right: Timon Screech; Janet Sinclair; József Sisa; Guus Sluiter; Jan Smaczny; Roderick Smith; Antony Spawforth; Andrew Spooner; Gavin Stamp.
and was awarded the CBE in 2015 for services to architecture and town planning. Simon Rees. Writer of programme articles and surtitles for many British opera companies, and reviewer for Opera, Opera Now, Musical Opinion, Early Music Today, Bachtrack and a range of other publications. A novelist, poet and librettist; he was dramaturg at Welsh National Opera from 1989–2012. 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. Juliet Rix. Award–winning journalist, writer and broadcaster with a particular interest 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 who studied at the University of Sydney. She was lecturer in Balkan history and politics at University College Dublin, and expert witness for the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee on Kosovo and Montenegro. Books include Realm of the Black Mountain: A History of Montenegro and (ed. with David Madden and Othon Anastasakis) Balkan Legacies of the Great War: The Past is Never Dead.
Sue Rollin. Archaeologist, interpreter and lecturer, widely travelled in the Middle East. Her linguistic repertoire includes ancient NearEastern and several modern European languages. She lectures for the Art 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. Professor Andrew Sanders. Lecturer and author specialising in 19th-century literature and culture. He is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Durham and Past President of the Dickens Fellowship. Books include The Short Oxford History of English Literature and English Cathedrals. He has written five books on Dickens, including Charles Dickens’s London.
Dr Paul Sanders. Associate Professor at NEOMA Business School (Reims, France). He obtained his PhD from Cambridge University and he is fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He specialises in the German occupation, his published works including The British Channel Islands under German Occupation 1940–1945.
Roderick Smith mw. Wine expert with specialist knowledge of regions in France and Italy. He has worked in senior roles for leading companies including Seagram and Mentzendorff, and was awarded the Master of Wine in 2006. He now lives on the Côte d’Azur where he runs a wine academy and judges wine competitions worldwide.
Professor Timon Screech. Professor of History of Art at SOAS, University of London. He is an expert on the art and culture of the Edo period, including its international dimension, and has published widely on the subject. His books include Sex & the Floating World and Obtaining Images.
Professor Antony Spawforth. Historian, broadcaster, lecturer and writer 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. He is Emeritus Professor of Ancient History at Newcastle University.
Dr Diane Silverthorne. Art historian specialising in late-19th and 20th-century art, design and architecture. She completed her PhD at the Royal College of Art and now lectures at Birkbeck, University of London. She has contributed chapters to Music & Modernism c. 1849–1950 and The Oxford Critical & Cultural History of Modernist Magazines V3, Europe 1880–1940. Janet Sinclair. Art historian, curator and lecturer. She studied at the Courtauld and the Barber Institute, Birmingham. She has held senior management posts at several heritage sites and is currently Collections Manager at Petworth for the National Trust. She is a panel member of the Sustainable Communities Fund in the South Downs National Park. Dr József Sisa. Art historian specialising in the 19th century. He is Head of Department at the Research Institute for Art History at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest. A native Hungarian with fluent English, he lectures in the UK, across Europe and the USA and co-edited The Architecture of Historic Hungary. 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 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 19th-century Ireland and Bach’s B-minor Mass. He studied at the University of Oxford and the Charles University, Prague.
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. Professor Gavin Stamp. Architectural historian with an interest in 19th- and 20th-century British architecture. He has published on Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson, the Gilbert Scott dynasty and Sir Edwin Lutyens. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland and RIBA, and Honorary Professor at Glasgow and Cambridge Universities. Dr Susan Steer. Art historian and lecturer specialising in Venice. Her PhD focused on Venetian Renaissance altarpieces, followed by work as 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 20 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 until recently worked as Archaeological Project Officer for Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums.
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Barnaby Rogerson. Writer and 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.
‘The lecturer was very committed to her subject, endlessly informative and passionate.’
Our lecturers continued
Professor Richard Stokes. Professor of Lieder at the Royal Academy of Music. He has written books on English, French, German and Spanish song, including The Book of Lieder and The Penguin Book of English Song: Seven Centuries of Poetry from Chaucer to Auden. In 2012 he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for services to German culture. Jane Streetly. Co-author of Blue Guide: Jordan and Istanbul: A Traveller’s Guide. She grew up in Trinidad, studied French and Spanish at university and now works as 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. Neil Taylor. A 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 publications include Bradt Guides to Estonia, Tallinn and Baltic Cities and A Footprints Guide to Berlin.
‘Michael has a wonderful way of bringing to life centuries old sights. Never boring or dull, but always witty and on point.’
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Dr Lars Tharp. Ceramics historian and frequent broadcaster, including 30 years on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow and two notable films on Chinese ceramics. 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. Dr Thomas-Leo True. Specialist in Renaissance and Baroque Italian art and architecture. He received his PhD 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. Gail Turner. Art historian, lecturer and artist with a special interest in Spanish history and art. She read Modern History at Oxford and completed her MA 2 44
Top row, left–right: Susan Steer; Graeme Stobbs; Richard Stokes; Jane Streetly; Neil Taylor; Lars Tharp; Giles Tillotson; Thomas-Leo True; Gail Turner. Second row, left–right: David Vickers; Stephen Walsh; Bert Watteeuw; Peter Webb; Lucy Whitaker; Antonia Whitley; Richard Wigmore; Neil Younger; Ulrike Ziegler.
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 with a particular interest in the 18th–20th centuries in Britain and Europe. He is 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. Emeritus Professor Stephen Walsh. Writer on music. Author of a major biography of Stravinsky, and of Musorgsky & his Circle. His biographical study of Debussy will be published in 2018. Former deputy music critic for The Observer and contributor to other broadsheet newspapers. He is an Emeritus Professor of Cardiff University, where he taught from 1976–2013. Bert Watteeuw. Curator of research collections at the Antwerp Rubenianum. He has worked at the Department of Art History at the University of Leuven, and collaborated on exhibitions including Anthony van Dyck (Frick Collection) and Peter Paul Rubens (Rubenshuis). He is currently conceptualising a new visitor centre for the Rubens House, due to open in 2019. Dr Peter Webb. Arabist and historian, specialising in early and mediaeval 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 and curator of the exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery in Buckingham Palace (19 May–12 November 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.
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Caroline Wickham-Jones. Archaeologist who lives and works in Orkney. Her research focuses on early hunter-gatherers. After an active fieldwork career she lectured for the University of Aberdeen, and now works as a consultant. She is the author of many publications including three guidebooks on the archaeology and history of Orkney. Dr Gareth Williams. Curator at the British Museum and Honorary Reader at UCL. Senior Researcher for the research project entitled The Viking Phenomenon and Academic Advisor to the Jorvik Viking Centre. He curated Vikings: Life & Legend at the British Museum. He has published extensively on Anglo-Saxon and Viking history and archaeology. Richard Wigmore. Music writer, lecturer and broadcaster for BBC Radio 3. He writes for BBC Music and Gramophone and 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 mediaeval 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-mediaeval period. Dr Neil Younger. Lecturer in History at the Open University, and has previously 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 mediaeval art and architecture. She studied at the University of Regensburg and King’s College Aberdeen. Her PhD focused on art exhibitions and the cultural politics of post-war Germany. She lectures for various cultural institutions and organises her own study days and trips in Germany and Austria.
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Martin Randall Travel Ltd Voysey House Barley Mow Passage London W4 4GF, United Kingdom
Martin Randall Australasia PO Box 1024 Indooroopilly QLD 4068, Australia
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Booking details
Before booking, please refer to the FCO website to ensure you are happy with the travel advice for the places you are going to www.fco.gov.uk
Making a booking 1. Booking option
2. Definite booking
3. Our confirmation
We recommend that you contact us first to make a booking option 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, you can make a definite booking straight away at www.martinrandall.com
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.
Upon receipt of the booking form and deposit we shall send you confirmation of your booking. After this your deposit is non-returnable 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 cancel your participation on a tour, there would be a charge which varies according to the period of notice you give. Up to 57 days before the tour the deposit only is forfeited. Thereafter a percentage of the total cost of the tour will be due:
Financial protection. 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 flightinclusive 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.
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, often going 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 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.
Insurance. It is a requirement of booking that you have adequate holiday insurance. Cover for medical treatment, repatriation, loss of property and cancellation charges must be included. If you are making your own flight/travel arrangements, please ensure you have insurance in place that protects you in the unlikely event of Martin Randall Travel cancelling the tour. Experience tells us that free travel insurance offered by some credit card companies is not reliable in the event of a claim. Passports and visas. British citizens must have valid passports for all tours outside the United Kingdom. For most 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, and obtain them if they are.
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If you cancel your booking in a double or twin room or cabin but are travelling with a companion who chooses to continue to participate on the tour, the companion will be liable to pay the stipulated single supplement. We take as the day of cancellation that on which we receive your written confirmation of cancellation. If we cancel the tour. We might decide to cancel a tour if at any time up to eight weeks before there were insufficient bookings for it to be viable. We would refund everything you had paid to us. We may also cancel a tour if hostilities, civil unrest, natural disaster or other circumstances amounting to force majeure affect the region to which the tour was due to go. Safety and security. If the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office advises against travel to places visited on a tour, we would cancel the tour or adjust the itinerary to avoid the risky area. In the event of cancellation before the tour commenced we would give you a full refund. 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. Seatbelts. Our tours and festivals subscribe to the health and safety legislation of the destination. In some parts of the world the law concerning seatbelts differs to the UK. 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 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 acceptable we would give a full refund. 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.
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. 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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B O O K IN G D E T A IL S & C O N D IT IO N S
Eligibility. We reserve the right to refuse to accept a booking without necessarily giving a reason. You need to be in good health, free of infectious or contagious illness, and have a level of fitness which would not spoil other participants’ enjoyment of the holiday by either infecting them or slowing them down. To this end we ask you to take the fitness tests described on page 9. By signing the booking form you are stating that you have met these requirements. If during the tour it transpires you are not able to cope adequately, or are ill, you may be asked to opt out of certain visits, or be invited to leave the tour altogether. This would be at your own expense.
between 56 and 29 days: between 28 and 15 days: between 14 days and 3 days: within 48 hours:
Tours by date
JANUARY 2018 6–16 Oman, Landscapes & Peoples (me 737) Professor Dawn Chatty ...............................195 13–20 Valletta Baroque Festival (me 742) Juliet Rix .......................................................149 23
Islamic Art in London (le 746) Professor James Allan .................................. 38
25
The Italian Renaissance (le 747) Dr Michael Douglas-Scott ............................38
26–28 CHAMBER MUSIC RETREAT The Schubert Ensemble (me 749) .............35 27
Spanish Art in London (le 748) Dr Xavier Bray ..............................................38
27– 1 Mozart in Salzburg (me 750) Richard Wigmore ..........................................48 29
Impressionism in London (le 745) Dr Diane Silverthorne ..................................38
FEBRUARY 2018 1–12 Myanmar: Ancient to Modern (me 752) Dr John Clarke.............................................218 3–16 Textile Arts of India (ee 755) Rosemary Crill.............................................208 6
Great Railway Termini (le 753) Professor Gavin Stamp..................................38
7
Seven Churches & a Synagogue (le 764) Peter Howell ...................................................38
8
Ancient Greece (le 751) Antony Spawforth........................................ 38
14
The Genius of Titian (le 754) Sheila Hale ................................................... 38
16–18 Archaeology at The Castle (me 757) Jonathan Tubbs; Gareth Williams ..............36
T O U R S B Y D A T E
16–18 Opera in Cardiff (me 758) Simon Rees .....................................................45 18–27 Gastronomic Kerala (me 756) Dr Elizabeth Collingham ............................207 20–25 Connoisseur’s Rome (me 760) Dr Michael Douglas-Scott ..........................132 20–25 Palermo Revealed (me 759) Dr Philippa Joseph ......................................143 20–26 Essential Rome (me 761) Dr Thomas-Leo True ..................................131 22
Caravaggio & Rembrandt (le 763) Dr Helen Langdon.........................................38
26– 4 Naples: Art, Antiquities & Opera (me 765) Dr Luca Leoncini.........................................139
5–12 The Printing Revolution (me 767) Stephen Parkin & Dr Michael Douglas-Scott ..........................132 5–18 Sacred India (me 777) Asoka Pugal .................................................204 5–21 Lands of the Maya (me 770) Professor Norman Hammond ....................225 6– 9
Opera in Stockholm (me 773) Dr John Allison ............................................187
6–15 Israel & Palestine (me 766) Dr Garth Gilmour .......................................192 9
Ancient Egypt at the British Museum (le 769) Lucia Gahlin...................................38
9–11 CHAMBER MUSIC RETREAT The Mandelring Quartet (me 771) Richard Wigmore ..........................................35 9–12 Opera in Copenhagen (me 776) Dr John Allison ..............................................60 9–18 Eastern Andalucía: Caliphs to Kings (me 772) Gijs van Hensbergen...................182 12–18 Jonathan Keates’s Venice (me 778) Jonathan Keates ...........................................100 12–24 Civilisations of Sicily (me 775) Dr Luca Leoncini ........................................141 13
Handel in London (le 779) Richard Wigmore ..........................................38
13–24 Indian Summer (me 780) Raaja Bhasin ...............................................205 15
The Italian Renaissance (le 783) Dr Michael Douglas-Scott ............................38
16–20 Opera in Vienna (me 784) Barry Millington ...........................................48 19–28 Minoan Crete (me 787) Dr Alan Peatfield...........................................93 20–24 Venetian Palaces (me 789) Dr Michael Douglas-Scott ..........................101 20–28 Normans in the South (me 790) John McNeill ................................................140 21–25 Art in Madrid (me 791) Dr Xavier Bray ............................................176 21–25 Beauty & the Abyss: Viennese Modernism (me 792) Gavin Plumley ..............................49 26
Paintings of the Passion (le 796) Dr Antonia Whitley ......................................38
27
CHARLES I: KING & COLLECTOR (le 798) Per Rumberg, Leanda de Lisle & Desmond Shawe-Taylor .......................... 38
MARCH 2018
27–31 Music & Ballet in Paris (me 799) Dr Michael Downes ......................................67
2–13 Persia’s Great Empires (me 774) Professor Hugh Kennedy.............................190
27– 1 Barenboim in Berlin (me 800) Barry Millington ...........................................83
5–11 Florence (me 768) Dr Antonia Whitley ....................................120
28
Paintings of the Passion (le 797) Dr Antonia Whitley ......................................38
Illustrations. Above: A Russian monastery, 20th-century etching. Above right: Prague, lesser town and castle.
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book online at www.martinrandall.com
APRIL 2018 3– 8
Palladian Villas (me 804) Dr Michael Douglas-Scott ..........................105
3–11 Western Andalucía (me 803) Dr Philippa Joseph ......................................183 5–11 Modern Art on the Côte d’Azur (me 806) Mary Lynn Riley ............................................76 7–13 Gastronomic Emilia-Romagna (me 805) Marc Millon & Dr R. T. Cobianchi ...........108 9–14 Gardens & Villas of Campagna Romana (me 813) Dr Katie Campbell ......................130 9–14 Pompeii & Herculaneum (me 807) Dr Mark Grahame ......................................138 10
The Ever-Changing City Skyline (le 809) Professor Peter Wynne Rees cbe ..................38
10–16 The Ring in Leipzig (me 812) Dr John Allison & Tom Abbott ....................86 11
London’s Underground Railway (le 821) Andrew Martin .............................................38
11–17 Gardens of the Riviera (me 810) Caroline Holmes ............................................75 11–20 Albania: Crossroads of Antiquity (me 820) Carolyn Perry ................................................47 12–26 Persia’s Great Empires (me 815) Professor James Allan..................................191 13–15 CHAMBER MUSIC RETREAT The Chilingirian Quartet (me 811) Richard Wigmore ..........................................35 13–15 Royal Churches (me 814) Jon Cannon ....................................................26 15–20 Monet & Impressionism (me 816) Dr Frances Fowle ...........................................66 16–24 Western Spain: Extremadura & Toledo (me 826) John McNeill................................178 16–28 Civilisations of Sicily (me 817) Christopher Newall .....................................141 18–26 The Cathedrals of England (me 828) Jon Cannon ....................................................24 19–25 Gardens & Villas of the Italian Lakes (me 829) Steven Desmond ...........................97 19–28 The Grand Duchy of Tuscany (me 830) Dr Flavio Boggi ...........................................119 23–29 Romans in the Rhône Valley (me 833) Professor Simon Esmonde Cleary ................73 23–30 Gastronomic Valencia (me 832) Gijs van Hensbergen ..................................177 24–28 Modern Art in Sussex (me 836) Monica Bohm-Duchen .................................29 25
Seven Churches & a Synagogue (le 837) Professor Gavin Stamp..................................38
25–29 Ravenna & Urbino (me 834) Dr Luca Leoncini.........................................114 26
The London Backstreet Walk (le 831) Sophie Campbell ............................................38
Tours by date
Caravaggio & Rembrandt (le 838) Dr Helen Langdon.........................................38
19–28 Moscow & the Golden Ring (me 878) Dr Alexey Makhrov ....................................160
19
The London Backstreet Walk (le 921) Dr Geoffrey Tyack .........................................38
30– 8 Mediaeval Saxony (me 840) Dr Ulrike Ziegler ...........................................85
20–24 Occupation in the Channel Islands (me 874) Dr Paul Sanders ............................46
19
London Gardens Walk (le 912) Louisa Allen ...................................................38
MAY 2018
21–24 MUSIC IN THE COTSWOLDS (me 876) .............................20
19–23 Art in Madrid (me 910) Dr Zahira Bomford .....................................176
2–14 Essential China (me 842) Dr Rose Kerr ................................................198
25
Arts & Crafts (le 877) Dr Paul Atterbury ....................................... 38
20–27 THE RHINE VALLEY MUSIC FESTIVAL (me 920) ......................88
CHAMBER MUSIC RETREAT The Phoenix Piano Trio (me 844) .............35
27–30 Châteaux of the Loire (me 886) Steven Desmond ............................................67
20–27 Walking the Rhine Valley (me 919) Richard Wigmore ..........................................88
5–11 Gardens of the Bay of Naples (me 846) Steven Desmond ..........................................137
28– 5 Berry & Touraine (me 887) John McNeill ..................................................69
21–25 Copenhagen Modern (me 928) Professor Harry Charrington .......................61
6–12 Genoa & Turin (me 851) Dr Luca Leoncini...........................................98
29
The Tudors (le 853) Dr Neil Younger.............................................38
22–29 Kraków & Silesia (me 929) Dr Jana Gajdošová ......................................155
7–12 Classic Catalan Wines (me 852) ..............172
31– 4 Ballet in Copenhagen (me 890) Jane Pritchard mbe .......................................61
24– 1 Rock Art in Scandinavia (me 932) Dr Paul Bahn ...............................................186
27
4– 6
7–14 Footpaths of Umbria (me 854) Dr Antonia Whitley ....................................117 7–20 The Western Balkans (me 845) Elizabeth Roberts ..........................................54
JUNE 2018
25–29 Mediaeval Middle England (me 931) John McNeill ..................................................27
2– 8
8–12 Barcelona (me 855) Gijs van Hensbergen ...................................170
The Duchy of Urbino (me 892) Dr Thomas-Leo True ..................................127
25– 2 The Ring in San Francisco (me 930) Barry Millington .........................................228
2– 9
8–13 Tudor Power in South & West (me 856) Professor Maurice Howard ...........................32
The Venetian Terra Ferma (me 893) Dr Michael Douglas-Scott ..........................102
27–30 Dutch Painting (me 935) Dr Sophie Oosterwijk..................................151
4– 6
CHAMBER MUSIC RETREAT The Elias String Quartet (me 895) Richard Wigmore ..........................................35
27– 1 The Schubertiade – with mountain walks (me 939) Richard Wigmore ..........................51
5
Seven Churches & a Synagogue (le 899) Peter Howell ...................................................38
5– 9
Chippendale in Yorkshire (me 894) David Jones ....................................................21
9–22 East Coast Galleries (me 858) Mary Lynn Riley ..........................................230 11–18 St Petersburg (me 860) Dr Alexey Makhrov .....................................158 12
The London Squares Walk (le 857) Martin Randall..............................................38
12–21 Classical Greece (me 862) Professor Antony Spawforth .........................94
5–16 Walking to Santiago (me 896) Dr Alexandra Gajewski ..............................164
28– 6 Great Houses of the East (me 936) Dr Andrew Moore .........................................11 30–11 Frank Lloyd Wright (me 940) Tom Abbott ..................................................233
JULY 2018
6–13 Treasures of Moravia (me 900) Dr Jarl Kremeier ............................................55
Castles, Campaigns, Conquest (me 942) Dr Marc Morris .............................................44
2– 8
14–20 Walking Hadrian’s Wall (me 865) Graeme Stobbs ...............................................22
6–14 Northumbria (me 898) Christopher Newall .......................................23
Danish Castles & Gardens (me 944) Dr Margrethe Floryan ..................................58
2– 8
14–21 Walking in the Cotswolds (me 866) Dr Steven Blake .............................................17
6–18 Galleries of the American Midwest (me 897) Gijs van Hensbergen...................231
Gastronomic West Country (me 943) Marc Millon ...................................................17
2– 8
15–20 Gardens & Palaces of Berlin & Potsdam ..... (me 875) Steven Desmond ...........................80
7–11 The Leipzig Bach Festival (me 901) Dr David Vickers...........................................86
Western Ireland (me 941) Professor Muiris O’Sullivan ..........................41
3
15–22 Great Houses of the South West (me 870) Anthony Lambert ..........................................10
8–13 Walking in Southern Bohemia (me 904) Dr Jana Gajdošová ........................................57
The Ever-Changing City Skyline (le 945) Professor Peter Wynne Rees cbe ..................38
15–25 Samarkand & Silk Road Cities (me 841) Dr Peter Webb .............................................220
9–16
15–27 Wellington in the Peninsula (me 869) Patrick Mercer obe .................................... 184
13–19 A FESTIVAL OF MUSIC IN PRAGUE (me 905) ................................56
The London Backstreet Walk (le 859) Barnaby Rogerson .........................................38
15–21 Crown & Cromwell (me 906) Patrick Mercer obe .......................................33
16–22 The House of Hanover (me 868) Dr Jarl Kremeier ............................................79
15–26 Ceramics in China (me 872) Dr Lars Tharp ..............................................202
16–23 Gastronomic Veneto (me 871) Marc Millon & Dr R. T. Cobianchi ...........103
16–20 Art in Switzerland (me 918) Dr Alexey Makhrov .....................................188
18–24 Savouring Lombardy (me 867) Fred Plotkin .................................................109
18–23 Walking to Derbyshire Houses (me 908) Dr Paul Atterbury .........................................15
18–26 Journey through Slovakia (me 873) Dr Jana Gajdošová ......................................162
18–26 Norway: Art, Architecture, Landscape (me 909) Dr Frank Høifødt ........................153
13–20 Courts of Northern Italy (me 864) Dr Michael Douglas-Scott ..........................107
16
Mediaeval Burgundy (me 902) John McNeill ..................................................70
3–10 Vikings & Bog Bodies (me 946) Dr Gareth Williams ......................................59 9–14 ‘A Terrible Beauty’ (me 953) Patrick Mercer obe .......................................40 9–15 French Gothic (me 955) Dr Matthew Woodworth ..............................65 10
LONDON CHORAL DAY (le 957)..........39
10–14 Country House Opera ................................20 13–20 Gstaad Menuhin Festival (me 959) Richard Wigmore ........................................189 16–21 Gardens of Cheshire & Shropshire (me 916) Amanda Patton ............................19 17–21 Verona Opera (me 960) Dr Luca Leoncini.........................................104 19–23 The Beaune Music Festival .........................70 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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T O U R S B Y D A T E
2– 6
Tours by date
Combining tours Suggestions for tours to combine are found at the end of most tour descriptions in this brochure. Please contact us for advice on travel and accommodation between tours, or for further recommended combinations. 19–28 The Ring in Munich (me 961) Barry Millington & Tom Abbott ..................91 22– 4 Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania (me 965) Neil Taylor......................................................63 23–31 The Georgians in Scotland (me 966) Gail Bent ........................................................42 25
The London Backstreet Walk (le 967) Barnaby Rogerson ........................................38
27– 5 Incontri in Terra di Siena .........................121 28– 3 Orkney: 5000 years of culture (me 969) Caroline Wickham-Jones ..............................43 Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival ..............64 Lofoten Piano Festival ..............................154 Shakespeare & His World...........................33
AUGUST 2018 6–11 The Industrial Revolution (me 975) Dr Paul Atterbury .........................................30 6–14 Estonia (me 976) Neil Taylor......................................................62 8–16 Baroque & Rococo (me 977) Tom Abbott ....................................................92 9–13 Torre del Lago (me 979) Simon Rees ...................................................125 13–20 The Victorian Achievement (me 980) Dr Paul Atterbury .........................................31
T O U R S B Y D A T E
13–17 Frederick the Great (me 978) Professor Tim Blanning.................................82 14–18 Royal Residences (me 981) Anthony Lambert ..........................................14 15–22 The Hanseatic League (me 983) Andreas Puth .................................................84 16–20 Verona Opera (me 982) Dr Michael Douglas-Scott ..........................104 20–25 King Ludwig II (me 985) Tom Abbott ....................................................89 22
London Gardens Walk (le 986) Louisa Allen ...................................................38
25– 1 A FESTIVAL OF MUSIC IN FRANCONIA (me 990) ........................88 25– 1 Walking in Franconia (me 989) Richard Wigmore ..........................................88 27– 2 The Schubertiade (me 999) Misha Donat ..................................................50 Drottningholm & Confidencen ..............188 Opera in Macerata & Pesaro ....................128 2 50
SEPTEMBER 2018 1– 5
Munich’s Masterpieces (mf 114) Patrick Bade...................................................90
3
The Tudors (lf 118) Dr Neil Younger.............................................38
3–10 Bilbao to Bayonne (mf 106) Gijs van Hensbergen ...................................169 3–10 Walking in Slovenia (mf 111) Professor Cathie Carmichael ......................163 3–11
Moscow & St Petersburg (mf 119) Dr Alexey Makhrov .....................................159
3–14 West Coast Architecture (mf 105) Professor Harry Charrington .....................231 4–10 Cave Art in Spain (mf 103) Dr Paul Bahn...............................................167 4–14 Samarkand & Silk Road Cities (mf 101) Professor James Allan..................................220 4–15 Walking to Santiago (mf 102) Dr Alexandra Gajewski ..............................164 5–9
Flemish Painting (mf 112) Dr Sophie Oosterwijk....................................52
17–23 History of Medicine (mf 159) Prof. Helen King & Dr Luca Leoncini .......112 17–23 Walking a Royal River (mf 156) Dr Paul Atterbury .........................................13 17–24 Gastronomic Galicia (mf 160) Gijs van Hensbergen ...................................166 17–24 Tastes of Le Marche (mf 161) Marc Millon ................................................126 17–29 Civilisations of Sicily (mf 157) Dr Ffiona Gilmore Eaves ............................141 19–30 Ming & Qing Civilisation (mf 164) Dr Jamie Greenbaum ..................................200 20–24 Arts & Crafts in the Cotswolds (mf 163) Janet Sinclair ..................................................18 20–26 Gardens & Villas of the Italian Lakes (mf 170) Steven Desmond............................97 20–28 Berlin, Potsdam, Dresden (mf 167) Dr Jarl Kremeier ............................................81 22– 3 Frank Lloyd Wright (mf 175) Tom Abbott ..................................................233 24–28 THE DIVINE OFFICE (mf 180) ...............20
6–17 Persia’s Great Empires (mf 113) Professor James Allan..................................191
24–29 Pompeii & Herculaneum (mf 193) Dr Nigel Spivey ............................................138
6–21 Peru: the Andean Heartland (mf 107) Dr David Beresford-Jones ...........................226
24–30 Lucca (mf 181) Dr Antonia Whitley ....................................124
7–10 Poets & The Somme (mf 115) Andrew Spooner ............................................68
24–30 Walking to Cornish Houses (mf 162) Dr Paul Atterbury .........................................16
8–13 Gardens & Landscapes of the Dutch Wave (mf 116) Amanda Patton...........................150
27– 6 Provence & Languedoc (mf 186) Dr Alexandra Gajewski ................................72
8–15 Franconia (mf 108) Dr Jarl Kremeier ............................................87
28– 5 St Petersburg (mf 196) Dr Alexey Makhrov .....................................158
8–17 Georgia Uncovered (mf 117) Ian Colvin ......................................................77
30– 7 Art in the Po Valley (mf 199) John McNeill ................................................113
9–16 Courts of Northern Italy (mf 109) Professor Fabrizio Nevola ...........................107
30– 8 Gastronomic Crete (mf 198) Rosemary Barron .........................................95
10–16 The Imperial Riviera (mf 124) Richard Bassett ............................................106
OCTOBER 2018
10–16 Walking Hadrian’s Wall (mf 110) Graeme Stobbs ...............................................22 12–19 The Hanseatic League (mf 165) Andreas Puth .................................................84 12–19 Hungary (mf 141) Dr József Sisa .................................................96 12–21 Albania: Crossroads of Antiquity (mf 125) Carolyn Perry ................................................47 14–21 St Petersburg (mf 148) Dr Alexey Makhrov .....................................158 15–23 Sardinia (mf 151) Dr Thomas-Leo True ..................................147
1– 7
The Romans in Mediterranean Spain (mf 201) Professor Simon Esmonde Cleary ..............175
1– 7
World Heritage Malta (mf 206) Juliet Rix .......................................................148
1–10 Castile & León (mf 204) Gijs van Hensbergen ...................................168 1–11 Essential Andalucía (mf 208) Dr Philippa Joseph ......................................180 1–14 The Western Balkans (mf 210) Elizabeth Roberts ..........................................54 2– 7
15–24 Classical Greece (mf 150) Dr Andrew Farrington..................................94
Palladian Villas (mf 205) Dr Sarah Pearson ........................................105
2–12
16–22 Early Railways: The North (mf 155) Anthony Lambert ..........................................28
Samarkand & Silk Road Cities (mf 202) Professor Charles Melville...........................220
4– 7
Rubens & Baroque (mf 218) Bert Watteeuw ...............................................53
17–23 The Etruscans (mf 158) Dr Nigel Spivey ............................................133
book online at www.martinrandall.com
Tours by date
8–13 Walking & Gardens in Madeira (mf 211) Dr Gerald Luckhurst ...................................156
14–21 Dark Age Brilliance (mf 216) Dr Ffiona Gilmore Eaves ............................115
8–15 Walking in Eastern Sicily (mf 212) Christopher Newall .....................................145
15–22 Gastronomic Spain (mf 215) Gijs van Hensbergen ...................................173
8–17 Roman Italy (mf 207) Dr Mark Grahame ......................................135
15–26 Art in Japan (mf 247) Dr Monika Hinkel .......................................215
10–14 Ravenna & Urbino (mf 235) Dr Luca Leoncini.........................................114
15–23 Palestine, Past & Present (mf 222) Felicity Cobbing ...........................................196
10–14 Siena & San Gimignano (mf 234) Dr Antonia Whitley ....................................123
15–27 Civilisations of Sicily (mf 248) John McNeill ................................................141
11–25 Persia’s Great Empires (mf 213) Professor James Allan..................................191 12–18 Memories of Monte Cassino (mf 214) Patrick Mercer obe .................................... 134
16–23 Mediaeval Alsace (mf 250) Dr Alexandra Gajewski ................................71 18–24 Modern Art on the Côte d’Azur (mf 252) Monica Bohm-Duchen .................................76 21–27 Art in the Netherlands (mf 246) Dr Guus Sluiter ...........................................152 21–28 Courts of Northern Italy (mf 268) Dr Michael Douglas-Scott ..........................107 22–28 Piero della Francesca (mf 278) Dr Antonia Whitley ....................................116 22–28 The Wines of Bordeaux (mf 269) Roderick Smith MW .....................................74 22–29 Gastronomic Sicily (mf 272) Marc Millon .................................................144 22–29 Granada & Córdoba (mf 270) Gail Turner ..................................................181 24–31 Parma & Bologna (mf 295) Dr Kevin Childs ...........................................110 24– 1 The Cathedrals of England (mf 282) Jon Cannon ....................................................24 24– 5 The Indian Mutiny (mf 279) Patrick Mercer obe .................................... 212 25– 5 Japanese Gardens (mf 290) Yoko Kawaguchi ..........................................216 25– 7 The Making of Argentina (mf 296) Chris Moss ...................................................222 26– 3 Normans in the South (mf 297) Dr Richard Plant .........................................140 27– 4 Essential Jordan (mf 298) Sue Rollin & Jane Streetly ...........................193 28–31 Historic Musical Instruments (mf 292) Professor Robert Adelson ............................111 29– 4 Picasso in Spain (mf 299) Gijs van Hensbergen ...................................171 Paintings in Paris .........................................67
NOVEMBER 2018 1– 6
MUSIC IN BOLOGNA (mf 301) ............112
6–10 Venetian Palaces (mf 303) Dr Michael Douglas-Scott ..........................101 7–11 Florentine Palaces (mf 304) Dr Kevin Childs ...........................................122 10–22 Kingdoms of the Deccan (mf 307) Asoka Pugal .................................................214
12–24 Civilisations of Sicily (mf 310) Dr Philippa Joseph ......................................141 13–18 Venice Revisited (mf 345) Dr Susan Steer ...............................................99 19–24 Roman Palazzi (mf 321) Dr Michael Douglas-Scott ..........................128 19–26 Florence & Venice (mf 346) Dr Kevin Childs ...........................................121
DECEMBER 2018 We will run six or seven tours over Christmas and New Year. Details will be available in Spring 2018. Please contact us to register your interest.
JANUARY 2019 5–15 Oman, Landscapes & Peoples .................195
FEBRUARY 2019 3–16 Guatemala, Honduras, Belize (mf 420) David Drew .................................................223 9–22 Textile Arts of India (ef 419) Rosemary Crill.............................................208 20– 3 Art in Texas (mf 424) Gijs van Hensbergen ...................................235 23– 8 Essential India (mf 429) Asoka Pugal .................................................210 Myanmar: Ancient to Modern ...............218
MARCH 2019 5–16 Indian Summer (mf 444) Raaja Bhasin ...............................................205
APRIL 2019 Gardens of Central Portugal ..................157 New Orleans to Natchitoches ..................229
SEPTEMBER 2019 Sacred China ..............................................203
OCTOBER 2019 24– 4 Myanmar: Ancient to Modern ................218
APRIL 2020 Baroque Music in Bolivia .........................224
JULY 2020 21–27 Oberammergau ............................................90
AUGUST 2020 17–24 Oberammergau ............................................90 Further titles and dates for 2019 and 2020 will be announced in due course. Illustrations. Top left: Munich, lithograph c. 1850 after Prout. Left: lithograph c. 1850. Top right: Stockholm, wood engraving c. 1880.
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Illustration: Nagano, Zenko-ji temple, Japanese woodblock. The vast majority of illustrations in this brochure are from the MRT collection.
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
2018: 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
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Telephone 1300 55 95 95 New Zealand 0800 877 622 Fax +61 (0)7 3371 8288 anz@martinrandall.com.au
Telephone 1 800 988 6168 usa@martinrandall.com
2018 second edition