Renaissance art

In 1509 Raphael began the School of Athens in the Vatican, a few rooms from where Michelangelo was still at work on the Sistine ceiling. A private visit on our Rome tours takes in both, at dawn or in the evening, in near silence.

Few periods have changed art so decisively. In the 15th century Florentine artists mastered linear perspective and the van Eycks in Flanders perfected painting in oil, laying foundations on which European art rested for five hundred years. Much of the art we see remains in the rooms, chapels and churches for which it was made, and many of our itineraries are designed around this: in Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp, where the van Eycks, Memling and Rubens painted some of their greatest works; in the hill towns of Le Marche, among altarpieces by Crivelli and Lotto; and in Umbria, from a single base in Perugia within easy reach of Assisi, Orvieto, Spoleto and Gubbio. Our experts give you time in front of each work, and the context to see it as its first viewers did.