EXPLORING EUROPEAN ART MUSIC
IN THE HEART OF HISTORIC ITALY
November-December 2025
An Italian Feast of Music, Art & Architecture
But I, in abandoned forests am alone,
The ardour of two beautiful eyes is my torment;
As my Fate wills it, now I weep, now I sing.
—Claudio Monteverdi, 17th Century Italian Composer
European Art Music includes Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic and Modern styles, all the main genres of what we popularly call “classical music.” Since the eighth century AD, this phenomenon has been the music created by and for literate Europeans and North Americans.
So much of this musical heritage was rediscovered by historical musicologists during the 19th century. These manuscripts had lain forgotten in palace libraries and monastic archives. They have now returned to the concert hall, the conservatory, our radio stations, and home sound systems. They are part of our modern soundscape.
Many of these historical genres were first invented and perfected in Italy, before export (like Madrigals and Opera) and when they were not, German speaking composers like Mozart would create operas in Italian.
And so, Italy has become a living workshop/museum of European art music, cultivated, and preserved by local, regional, and national authorities, conservatories, concert halls and schools of music. Join us for this Italian musical feast!
SHORT ITINERARY
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Day 1, November 30, 2025: Arrival in Rome.
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Day 2, December 1, 2025: Ancient Rome.
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Day 3, December 2, 2025: Catholic Rome.
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Day 4, December 3, 2025: Rome and Florence.
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Day 5, December 4, 2025: Florence.
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Day 6, December 5, 2025: Florence and Venice.
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Day 7, December 6, 2025: Venice.
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Day 8, December 7, 2025: Venice.
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Day 9, December 8, 2025: Departure.
INITIAL ITINERARY - NOV. 30 to DEC. 8, 2025
DAY ONE - NOVEMBER 30, 2025
ARRIVAL IN ROME
Upon arrival at the hotel, you can have dinner at a local restaurant (dinner is included here). When our meals are not fixed, we will give you suggestions for all the sites where you choose your own meals, as both tastes and budgets differ.
We can then board a mini-coach and explore Rome under the moonlight with a local guide. You will stroll around the Eternal City during its less crowded hours, and marvel at the awe-inspiring buildings and piazzas.
Overnight: Rome
Included meals: Dinner at a local restaurant
DAY TWO - DECEMBER 1, 2025
ANCIENT ROME
We will then walk around the Roman Forum through the less-travelled entrance by Trajan's Column and immerse ourselves in the ruins of this ancient city. We will walk over and visit the ancient church of Santa Maria Antiqua, built in the fifth century with its Byzantine frescoes.
After lunch at leisure, we will explore San Pietro in Vincoli, a minor basilica in Rome, yet world famous for the astounding Michelangelo’s statue of Moses. Freud visited here and drafted a thoughtful essay on the meaning of this paradoxical sculpture.
From there we will walk over to visit the Pantheon, one of the oldest standing buildings from Roman times. 18th century British historian Edward Gibbon wrote this about the Pantheon:
A small number of temples were protected by the fears, the venality, the taste, or the prudence of the civil and ecclesiastical governors. The temple of the Celestial Venus at Carthage, whose sacred precincts formed a circumference of two miles, was judiciously converted into a Christian church; and a similar consecration has preserved inviolate the majestic dome of the Pantheon at Rome.
After all that walking, you will not lose your appetite if you stroll over to Giolitti’s for the best gelato in the city of Rome. At the end of the visit, private transfer to the hotel. Evening is set aside to absorb the day’s sights and linger over dinner.
Evening Podcast: The Music of Ancient Rome, to be heard in the quiet of your hotel room.
Overnight: Rome
Included meals: Breakfast at the hotel
Start the day with brilliant Italian coffee. Then after breakfast, you meet your local bilingual (English/Italian) guide and start the day by walking around the Colosseum (external visit only), a timeless testament to ancient Roman engineering, where gladiators fought to the death (and were treated like the rock stars of their time!).
DAY THREE - DECEMBER 2, 2025
CATHOLIC ROME
We will travel to Vatican City and visit the Vatican Museums (there are many).
While being overwhelmed by the number and quality of ancient, Byzantine, Medieval, Renaissance, and Classical paintings, and sculptures we will get a visual blast of the twin roots of Western art, Greco Roman aesthetics and Biblical narratives.
We will marvel at two of the world’s most spectacular masterpieces: Michelangelo’s Genesis ceiling frescoes and his Last Judgment altar fresco. Then, we will visit the stunning St. Peter’s Basilica, the most important church in all Christendom.
After lunch at leisure, we will visit the Vatican Necropolis, where the tomb of St Peter is located (pending confirmation). We will then return to the hotel and spend the rest of the day at leisure.
Evening Podcast: The Structure and Origins of Gregorian Chant (that fabulous raga like music of the traditional Catholic Church), to be heard in the quiet of your hotel room.
Overnight: Rome
Included meals: Breakfast at the hotel
DAY FOUR - DECEMBER 3, 2025
ROME AND FLORENCE
We will have breakfast at our hotel and check out. We will then take the high-speed train to Florence and see the rural landscapes north of Rome out of the windows of our coach. Upon arrival in Florence, you will drop your luggage off at the hotel and head to a local violin maker workshop to learn about the techniques used to create these fine instruments. Enjoy lunch at leisure.
In the early afternoon, we will meet our Florence-based bilingual guide and set out on a walking tour of its historic center. In Piazza della Republica we will discover the city’s beginnings as a Roman settlement. We will wander through the narrow streets, pass the fortified houses and towers that marked the medieval town, and emerge onto the open Piazza della Signoria, the political center of the city since the Middle Ages.
For those who have not been “Stendhaled” so far, we suggest an optional short visit to the Galileo Museum of Science overlooking the Arno River to be stunned by how the Medici’s were equal opportunity donors for both artists and scientists. Then, we will see the magnificent Duomo from the outside and have dinner at a local restaurant.
Evening Podcast: The Music of the Italian Renaissance. Trecento, Quattrocento and full-blown Renaissance, to be heard in the quiet of your hotel room.
Overnight: Florence
Included meals: Breakfast at the hotel, dinner at a local restaurant
DAY FIVE - DECEMBER 4, 2025
FLORENCE
We wake up in Florence. Just walking down any street of this preserved Renaissance city is an architectural delight. After coffee and breakfast, we will take a guided tour of the Galleria degli Uffizi, an art collection that stayed in the Medici family until an heir gave it to the city in the 1700s.
The Medici family were bankers and politicians when Florence was an independent city state during the Renaissance. The Medicis were patrons of the arts and sciences.
The Galleria was commissioned in 1560 by Cosimo I de’ Medici and designed by the great architect Giorgio Vasari, who was one of our first written sources on the lives of artists like Leonardo and Michaelangelo. There we will gaze upon masterpieces by maestro artists of the Renaissance, such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Giotto, Botticelli, Tiziano and Michelangelo. Here in Florence we see the ecstatic burst of humanism when ancient Greek and Roman art was linked with a revived Pagan mythology and Biblical narratives.
After some time for lunch at leisure, we will head to Giardini di Boboli in the afternoon. The Medici family established the layout of these gardens, creating the Italian garden style that would become a model for many European courts. The vast green expanse within a regular layout is a real outdoor museum, populated by Ancient and Renaissance statues. This visit gives us a taste of the private lives of the ruling elites, their love of beautiful houses and beautiful gardens. This is the visual context for a book like Boccacio’s Decameron.
At the end of the day we will stop at the nearby Abbey of San Miniato to hear Gregorian chant once again.
Evening podcast: The Rebirth of Opera in the Renaissance-Monteverdi’s Orfeo, to be heard in the quiet of your hotel room.
Overnight: Florence
Included meals: Breakfast at the hotel
DAY SIX - DECEMBER 5, 2025
FLORENCE AND VENICE
We will have breakfast in Florence and check-out. We will then take a high-speed train to Venice. Upon arrival, we will transfer to the hotel by private water taxi. Time at leisure for lunch.
During the afternoon we will explore how early 21st century Italians are mastering and reinterpreting the Italian classical music tradition at the Conservatory of Venice. This institution is housed in the monumental Palazzo Pisani, the largest patrician palace in Venice, located in the heart of the city, and a short distance from St. Mark's Square. Embellished with frescoes, statues, marble decorations, stucco, and friezes,
it is divided into two inner courtyards separated by airy loggias and large halls on several floors.
The tour covers the history of the palace, the Pisani family and their affiliation with Freemasonry, a mysterious pan European, 18th century phenomenon of the middle and upper classes (Mozart was a Freemason as was George Washington), the history of the conservatory, and a visit to its Music Museum which has the highest panoramic view of Venice from the top of the Palace Terrace. At the end of the tour enjoy a private concert.
Evening podcast: The Italian Baroque, to be heard in the quiet of your hotel room.
Overnight: Venice
Included meals: Breakfast at the hotel
DAY SEVEN - DECEMBER 6, 2025
VENICE
Our morning will be leisurely (shopping anyone?) In the early afternoon, we will focus on food. We will explore the gourmet side of Venice at one of its bacari, traditional inns popular with locals, to taste cicchetti - or small bites - with a glass of local wine: deep-fried mozzarella cheese, gorgonzola, calamari, artichoke hearts, crostini (small, toasted bread with a topping).
Then, we will set out on a special tour around the area of the city that was the home of the celebrated musician Antonio Vivaldi starting with the parish church where the Venetian composer of the Four Seasons was baptized.
After that we will enjoy an inside visit to St Mark’s Basilica, where Vivaldi’s father used to work as a violinist (pending confirmation). One can only marvel at the amazing Medieval golden mosaics and treasures, some of them taken from Byzantium in the 12th century when Venice conquered Constantinople!
We will end the tour at one of the most renowned landmarks in the history of music: La Fenice Opera House.
Evening Podcast: Italian Opera Conquers German Composers-Handel to Mozart and Beethoven (Fidelio was eventually translated from German to English to…Italian!), to be heard in the quiet of your hotel room.
Overnight: Venice
Included meals: Breakfast at the hotel, lunch at a local bacaro
DAY EIGHT - DECEMBER 7, 2025
VENICE
After breakfast, visit the Jewish Ghetto of Venice, the most ancient in Europe. The Jews of Renaissance Italy although religiously distinct, participated in the wider cultural explosion and produced world class composers of art music in Italian and Hebrew that are still played today.
Enjoy your afternoon at leisure. Farewell dinner at a local restaurant tonight.
Evening Podcast: Song of Solomon - The Remarkable Life of the Italian Jewish Composer Salomone Rossi, to be heard in the quiet of your hotel room.
Overnight: Venice
Included meals: Breakfast at the hotel, dinner at a local restaurant
DAY NINE - DECEMBER 8, 2025
DEPARTURE
Breakfast and check-out. Reach the airport by private water taxi or public transport. If you want to book private transport with us, that is an additional cost which we can arrange for you before arrival.
Included meals: Breakfast at the hotel
PROGRAM RATE
$10,500 CAD per person.
This trip will be limited to a maximum of 10 travellers.
INCLUSIONS
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Escorted sightseeing and entrance fees for all included visits
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Enrichment program including specially arranged and private visits
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Eight nights hotel accommodations at 4-star properties in superior or classic rooms
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All road transportation in private luxury Mercedes VITO (or equivalent) mini-vans or comfortable mini-coaches with English-speaking driver and water available at all times
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Premium Class Frecciarossa high-speed train tickets from Rome to Florence from Florence to Venice
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Meals as indicated in the itinerary with bottled water, coffee/tea, house wine/beer at dinners and most lunches, welcome and farewell receptions
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Airport/hotel group transfers for all participants traveling on trip start/end dates
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Full-time English-speaking Italian Tour Director
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ALL gratuities for full-time tour director, local guides and drivers
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Taxes, service charges, baggage handling
NOT INCLUDED
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International airfare
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Meals not specified
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Alcoholic beverages other than wine/beer at lunch and dinner
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Personal items and expenses
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Airport transfers if arriving/departing on alternative days
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Trip insurance
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any item NOT mentioned in Inclusions
