Holiday Extras

Italy underwent enormous changes as the Roman Empire collapsed: the capital moved from Milan to Ravenna, the ruler (and his religion) changed from a Roman to an Ostrogoth, the Byzantines invaded. The visual arts mirrored these rapid changes, leading in time to the emergence of the accepted visual shorthand of medieval religious art, brought vividly to life via the splendours of Ravenna, Torcello, Aquileia, Grado and Pomposa.

Beautiful Mediterranean Catalonia, with its rich language, culture and cuisine (markedly different from the rest of Spain), is explored through the Roman archaeology of Tarragona, the splendour of Girona’s Arab and Jewish heritage and Barcelona’s expression of Catalan nature through the architectural legacy of Modernisme.

Leonardo da Vinci has always been regarded as the towering artist of what we call the Renaissance. To his contemporaries he was THE innovator, the most original, inventive and curious of artists. Yet few realised the huge range of his questing intelligence. Discover this ‘universal man’ during our tour to Milan, coinciding with the city’s 500th anniversary celebrations.