Siena, Volterra & San Gimignano

Treasures of Tuscany

Join us on an off-season tour of the magnificent city of Siena, as well as the neighbouring, Tuscan hilltop towns of San Gimignano and Volterra. November's quieter atmosphere, with fewer visitors and the soft light of late autumn, is a lovely time for a tour in Tuscany which so inspired its artists who tried to capture its beauty in their works of art. Based in Siena, one of the most important artistic centres in Europe during the 13^th and 14^th centuries, when its painters overshadowed even their Florentine counterparts, we explore the celebrated, as well as lesser-known monuments gaining an understanding of how the city and its institutions contributed to the development of the Renaissance.

We also venture northwest to Volterra, where Etruscan foundations underpin a remarkably intact medieval townscape, complete with Roman theatre ruins and Renaissance palazzi. Our journey concludes in San Gimignano whose surviving tower houses offer rare insight into the competitive urban architecture of 13th-century Tuscan merchant families. Each destination reveals distinct layers of Italian civilization: Etruscan origins, Roman consolidation, medieval commune development, and Renaissance artistic flowering.