Festive Tuscany

Day 1 | Thursday 3 December
Arrive Florence
By early December, Tuscany’s historic towns have taken on their seasonal character – Christmas lights strung across the piazzas, warming the winter evenings. Our tour begins this afternoon at Florence Airport, where we board a private coach and head north-west to Lucca, a walled medieval city dressed for the season. After checking in, we gather for introductions over a welcome drink before sitting down to dinner at a nearby restaurant. Overnight Lucca (D)

Day 2 | Friday 4 December
Lucca
Set within its magnificent 16th-century Renaissance ramparts, Lucca is among Tuscany’s most beautifully preserved medieval cities. In the later Middle Ages it became one of the region’s most prosperous communes, its wealth generated by the silk trade and powerful banking families who left their mark in a dense collection of Romanesque churches, towers and palaces. Known today as the ‘City of a Hundred Churches’, Lucca preserves its Roman street plan beneath later layers of building, and this morning we explore its compact centre on foot. Beginning at San Michele in Foro – built on the site of the ancient forum – we continue through a sequence of churches that define the Tuscan Romanesque tradition. At the cathedral of San Martino, we see the Volto Santo, Lucca’s revered crucifix, and Jacopo della Quercia’s tomb of Ilaria del Carretto, carved for the wife of the city’s 15th-century ruler Paolo Guinigi. After a break for lunch, we visit Palazzo Pfanner, a 17th-century residence built for a prosperous silk merchant. Its richly decorated Baroque interiors reflect the taste and wealth of Lucca’s commercial elite, while the formal Italian garden – laid out with terraces, statues and lemon trees – forms one of the city’s most elegant historic settings.On returning to the hotel, the evening is at leisure to enjoy Lucca’s festive atmosphere as the city illuminates after dark.  Overnight Lucca (B)

Day 3 | Saturday 5 December
Pisa
Once one of Italy’s great maritime republics, Pisa rose to prominence from the 11th century, its strategic position at the mouth of the Arno generating the wealth that built its extraordinary sacred complex. Beautiful at any time of year, the city takes on a particular allure in December, draped in Christmas lights and festive decoration – and this morning we arrive by train to explore its historic centre. Our tour will focus on the aptly named Campo dei Miracoli (The Square of Miracles), whose sacred complex – the Duomo, Baptistery,  leaning campanile and the Campo Santo cemetery – makes it one of the most spectacular piazzas in Italy. Exploring the cemetery also reveals how fundamental its ancient Roman sarcophagi and other sculptural antiquities were to the birth of Renaissance art. Following our tour, there is time to wander through Pisa’s Christmas markets – classic wooden stalls fragrant with roasting chestnuts and spiced wine, offering handmade gifts and local festive fare. Later we return to Lucca, with time to freshen up before dinner at one of the city’s well-known traditional restaurants. Overnight Lucca (B, D)

Day 4 | Sunday 6 December
Certaldo Alto
Lucca’s long cultural history is inseparable from Giacomo Puccini – one of Italy’s greatest operatic composers. In the weeks leading to Christmas, his music is frequently heard throughout the city, forming part of the seasonal atmosphere of churches, theatres and public spaces. After a morning talk introducing Puccini’s life and work, we make or way to the nearby Puccini Museum, housed in the composer’s birthplace, where manuscripts, photographs and personal objects illuminate his career and enduring legacy. We then depart Lucca and travel into the Tuscan countryside to Certaldo, where we ascend by funicular to the medieval hill town of Certaldo Alto. A remarkable survival, the upper town preserves a compact ensemble of brick palaces and quiet streets whose character has changed little since the Middle Ages. Lunch is enjoyed together before we explore the historic centre, often decorated with simple Advent displays and nativity scenes. We then continue to Colle Val d’Elsa, a town whose identity is defined by its topography – an ancient stone centre perched above the Elsa valley, with a lower town spreading across the plain below. We check in on arrival, with the evening at leisure. Overnight Colle Val d’Elsa (B, L)

Day 5 | Monday 7 December
Colle Val d’Elsa & San Gimignano
The hilltop towns of medieval Tuscany were influenced by the same forces – the need for defence, the logic of trade routes and the rivalry between communes that defined the region’s political life from the 11th century onwards. We begin today by exploring Colle Val d’Elsa on foot, moving through its upper stone town and tracing the relationship between the raised settlement and the working landscape below, with time to take in the valley views and the town’s Christmas decorations. In the afternoon we travel to San Gimignano, whose extraordinary cluster of medieval towers still rises above the surrounding countryside like a forest of stone skyscrapers. Built by rival merchant families as symbols of wealth and status, these towers form one of the most striking skylines in Tuscany. Here we visit the Duomo, whose interior is lined with medieval frescoes, before ascending the Torre Grossa for sweeping views across the town and surrounding hills. In December, the piazzas are filled with Christmas stalls and festive lights, adding a layer of seasonal warmth to this medieval town. We return to Colle Val d’Elsa in the late afternoon for an evening at leisure. Overnight Colle Val d’Elsa (B)

Day 6 | Tuesday 8 December
Siena
Siena reached the height of its power in the 13th and 14th centuries, a time when its banking families were as influential as those of Florence. During this era, renowned artists like Duccio, Simone Martini and the Lorenzetti brothers created some of the most exquisite paintings in pre-Renaissance Italy. As we set out through the Tuscan countryside this morning, we first stop at Monteriggioni – a small, fortified town built by the Sienese in the 13th century to guard their northern frontier against Florence. Its remarkably intact ring of towers and walls still crowns the hilltop, offering a vivid impression of a once fiercely contested borderland. We then continue into Siena, with the afternoon devoted to the Duomo complex – a breathtaking Gothic cathedral whose interior conceals an atmospheric frescoed crypt and a beautiful baptistery – before crossing to the Piazza del Campo, the shell-shaped square famed for the Palio, Siena’s historic bareback horse race. Today being the ‘Feast of the Immaculate Conception’ – traditionally the moment Italy’s Christmas season begins – the Campo hosts its annual Mercato nel Campo, when stalls recreate the city’s historic marketplace with Tuscan foods, crafts and seasonal specialities. One to look out for is ‘ricciarelli’, Siena’s beloved almond biscuits dusted with icing sugar to resemble snow. After time to explore the stalls and surrounding streets, we return to Colle Val d’Elsa for dinner at the hotel. Overnight Colle Val d’Elsa (B, D)

Day 8 | Thursday 10 December
Florence’s Sacred Heart
The so-called ‘sacred axis’ – the trio of buildings in Piazza San Giovanni that form the religious heart of the city – immerses us in Florence’s early history, a time when the urban centre was understood as a stage for sacred ritual. We begin the day exploring the Duomo complex: the Baptistery, the Duomo Museum and Giotto’s campanile. The museum houses an extraudinary reconstruction of the cathedral’s original 14th-century facade alongside masterpieces by Arnolfo di Cambio, Donatello and Michelangelo, while its terraces offer fabulous views over the city. In the afternoon we visit the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, the prestigious workshop and restoration laboratory where, guided by a specialist, we explore the art of pietra dura – an intricate form of inlay using precious and semi-precious stones that has adorned Florence’s buildings since the 16th century. Following our visit, the rest of the evening is at leisure. Overnight Florence (B)

Day 9 | Friday 11 December
The Great Florentine Sculptors
Florence’s medieval guilds helped define the city as much as its great families, commissioning some of its most celebrated works of art and architecture. Their patronage helped define the artistic culture of Renaissance Florence, where sculpture, painting and sacred imagery formed part of civic and religious life, particularly during the great festivals of the Christian calendar. We begin at Orsanmichele, the city’s remarkable guild church, whose exterior niches form an open-air gallery of Renaissance sculpture in bronze and marble, with works by Donatello, Ghiberti and Verrocchio among them. After lunch we continue to the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, housed in Florence’s oldest public building and home to one of the world’s great collections of Italian Renaissance sculpture, including rival interpretations of David by Donatello and Verrocchio – a fascinating juxtaposition of two masters working a generation apart. We then visit the Galleria dell’Accademia for Michelangelo’s profoundly moving Prisoners and the consummate symbol of the Florentine Renaissance, his David. The evening is at leisure to enjoy Florence’s festive atmosphere as the historic streets and piazzas glow with seasonal lights in the lead-up to Christmas. Overnight Florence (B)

Day 10 | Saturday 12 December
The Rise of the Medici
No family shaped Florence more than the Medici. Rising from wealthy bankers in the 14th century to patrons of extraordinary influence, they embodied the ambitions of the Renaissance city and funded much of what makes Florence exceptional today. We begin our day at the Convent of San Marco, rebuilt at Medici expense in the 15th century and now home to a rare collection of early Renaissance art, including Fra Angelico’s sacred frescoes of the Annunciation and Adoration of the Magi, whose tender nativity scenes resonate especially during the Christmas season. After a break nearby at La Menagère – a Florentine homewares shop founded in 1896 and now an atmospheric café – we continue to the Palazzo Medici Riccardi, the family’s first great residence. In the Chapel of the Magi, Benozzo Gozzoli’s frescoes depict the splendid Epiphany procession once sponsored by the Medici – a festival closely tied to Florence’s Christmas season – with the family casting themselves among the Three Kings, their faces woven into the fresco’s gilded pageantry. In the afternoon we continue to the Medici Chapels within the San Lorenzo complex, one of the largest churches in Florence, where extraordinary funerary monuments bring together Michelangelo’s powerful allegorical sculptures and richly detailed stone inlays. We return to the hotel with time at leisure before gathering for dinner at a much-loved Florentine trattoria. Overnight Florence (B, D)

Day 11 | Sunday 13 December
Court Life at Palazzo Pitti
The Pitti Palace represents the final, grandest expression of Medici ambition in Florence. Built in the mid-15th century and acquired in 1549 by Eleonora da Toledo – wife of Grand Duke Cosimo I – it served as the official residence of the Tuscan Grand Dukes and later the Italian royal family, its collections growing over three centuries into one of the most significant in Europe. We spend the morning exploring the palace’s state apartments and picture galleries, whose holdings include major works by Caravaggio, Raphael, Rubens and Titian. Weather permitting, we then walk through the Boboli Gardens, laid out for the Medici in the 16th century, where terraces, fountains and sculpture are arranged to frame views across the city. A visit to the quieter Bardini Gardens nearby provides us with a different perspective – more intimate, with long views across Florence and the surrounding hills. Later in the day we return to the hotel on foot, crossing the Ponte Vecchio where jewellers’ windows glitter with seasonal displays and lights strung across the bridge reflect in the Arno below, before continuing through streets dressed in their Christmas finest. Overnight Florence (B)

Day 12 | Monday 14 December
Power and Faith
Florence’s identity was shaped not only by its great families but also by the civic and religious institutions through which power was exercised and contested. The Palazzo Vecchio has served as the seat of Florentine government since the late 13th century, its tower and rusticated facade defining the Piazza della Signoria – a space that functioned as the city’s principal stage for political life and remains one of the world’s great open-air sculpture galleries, with works by Donatello, Cellini and Giambologna set among the square’s monuments. We explore the palace and piazza this morning before pausing for lunch together. In the afternoon we continue to the Franciscan Basilica of Santa Croce – for centuries Florence’s principal civic church, a place where Giotto, Brunelleschi and Donatello all left their mark, and where Michelangelo, Machiavelli and Galileo are buried. The afternoon closes with the Pazzi Chapel, one of Brunelleschi’s most refined works – a fitting high point before we step back into the piazza, where the Santa Croce Christmas market is in full swing, its festive stalls spreading across one of Florence’s grandest squares with seasonal foods, Tuscan sweets and handmade crafts gathered beneath the basilica’s facade. Overnight Florence (B, L)

Day 13 | Tuesday 15 December
The Uffizi Gallery
The Galleria degli Uffizi holds one of the most important collections of Western painting in existence, assembled over three centuries by the Medici and Lorraine Grand Dukes with a combination of connoisseurship and strategic acquisition. Arranged chronologically, the collection traces the development of Italian painting from Cimabue and Giotto through the full flowering of the Renaissance – Botticelli’s Birth of Venus and Primavera, Leonardo’s Annunciation, Michelangelo’s Tondo Doni, and major works by Raphael, Titian and Caravaggio among them – setting each work in its broader cultural and historical context. At this time of year, the collection takes on an additional resonance. Among its masterpieces are some of the greatest Renaissance depictions of the Nativity and the Adoration of the Magi – themes long favoured by Florence’s patrons and closely bound to the Christmas season. None is more resplendent than Gentile da Fabriano’s Adoration of the Magi, its surface alive with gold leaf, exotic processions and courtly splendour, painted in 1423 for one of the city’s most powerful families. After a relaxed morning, we gather for a guided visit to explore this celebrated sequence of masterpieces, and in the evening, we come together for a farewell dinner at one of the city’s finest restaurants. Overnight Florence (B, D)

Day 14 | Wednesday 16 December
Depart Florence
Our tour ends after breakfast this morning. Individual transfers to Florence airport will be arranged by Academy Travel. (B)