The tour starts at 6.00pm on Monday 11 November, at the Kimpton Gray Hotel, Chicago.

The tour finishes in the afternoon on Friday 22 November, at Pittsburgh airport.

Arrive in Chicago and meet your tour leader and fellow travellers for a welcome drink. Overnight Chicago.

The Great Fire of 1871 destroyed the entire Chicago CBD, leaving the way open for architects to design a new and modern city. The first steel-framed high-rise building rose in 1885 and the skyline today is densely packed with skyscrapers, many by renowned architects. Our walking tour this morning takes us past some of the city’s most iconic buildings. We visit the lobby of the Rookery Building, the masterpiece of Daniel Burnham and remodelled by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1905. In the afternoon we take the Chicago Architecture Foundation River Cruise to gain an overview of the city’s historic and modern architectural styles. Tonight, we have dinner in a local restaurant. Overnight Chicago (B, D)

Today we take a private coach tour of Oak Park. This Chicago suburb is where Frank Lloyd Wright lived and worked and where much of his early work can still be found. We have an interior tour of Wright’s home and studio, which Wright used as his architecture laboratory for his early designs, as well as Unity Temple, one of his most celebrated designs. We then view the numerous examples of Prairie Style architecture in the surrounding neighbourhood. In the afternoon, we drive west to Plano to visit Farnsworth House, the masterpiece of Modernist residential architecture by Mies van der Rohe, set in a beautiful landscape beside the Fox River. Overnight Chicago (B)

We begin our day with a walk through Millennium Park. Originally occupied by railyards and parking lots, the area was redeveloped into a public space featuring an outdoor concert venue, gardens, restaurants and some spectacular art installations. From here we make our way to the highly-regarded Art Institute of Chicago, boasting a fine collection of both European and American painting and over 60 ‘decorated rooms’ – accurately reconstructed furnished interiors from a broad range of times and places. After a private guided tour, there is time to explore the collection independently and a break for lunch. In the afternoon we travel by coach for a private interior visit of Robie House. Our trip takes us through the ‘White City’ – the site of the 1893 World’s Fair. Overnight Chicago (B)

We farewell Chicago and travel north to Racine, Wisconsin to visit the SC Johnson Wax Administration Building and Research Tower, a landmark in commercial office architecture. We continue on to Milwaukee to visit the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church, Wright’s modernist interpretation of Byzantine architecture, and to take in some of the history and architecture of the city. Overnight Milwaukee (B)

This morning we visit the Milwaukee Art Museum to see the Prairie School Archives and later to tour one of Wright’s American System-Built homes. We then travel west for a private visit to Jacobs House I, considered the first ‘Usonian’ home, part of Wright’s ideal of a new world architecture free of previous conventions. We arrive in Madison, Wisconsin, our base for two nights and enjoy dinner in a local restaurant. Overnight Madison (B, D)

This remote site in rural Wisconsin was the architect’s home from 1911, and is of central importance to understanding Wright. Taliesin was twice burned down and rebuilt. It was also the scene of the horrific 1914 axe murder of Wright’s lover, her children and several employees. A complex of buildings, combining Prairie Style and oriental influences, it was here that Wright designed Fallingwater, the Guggenheim Museum and other key works. We tour the entire Estate including Hillside School, Tan-y-Deri, the house, the grounds and the studio with drinks on Wright’s private balcony and lunch in the Wright designed Riverview Terrace Café. In the afternoon we visit the Unitarian Meeting House, designed by Wright and now recognised as one of the most innovative examples of church architecture, before visiting the Monona Terrace Convention Center, designed by Wright but only constructed in 1997. The evening is at leisure. Overnight Madison (B, L)

This morning we take a flight from Madison to Buffalo, New York. Located on the shores of Lake Erie, Buffalo rose to prominence in the early nineteenth century, when the Erie Canal was completed, connecting Chicago and the Mid-West with the Hudson River, New York and the world beyond. After New York City, Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state. It has many significant buildings, including Louis B. Sullivan’s Guaranty Building and Daniel Burnham’s Ellicott Square building. This afternoon we tour some of these sites and dine in a local restaurant. Overnight Buffalo (B, D)

Between 1903 and 1908, Frank Lloyd Wright built a number of fine examples of his Prairie Style houses in Buffalo, and we survey these today along with the Darwin D. Martin House. Most of the houses were built for executives of the Larkin Soap Factory and are located in the Parkside East Historic District, a neighbourhood laid out by renowned American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted in 1876. (Olmstead is also largely responsible for New York’s Central Park.) This afternoon we relax at Niagara Falls, one of America’s foremost natural wonders. Overnight Buffalo (B)

We travel along the shores of Lake Erie to visit Graycliff, the summer home built by Wright for Darwin Martin, which is undergoing extensive renovation. We continue onto Pittsburgh this morning, a city whose name is synonymous with the coal and steel industry. The city’s wealth contributed to its rich cultural heritage and few patrons were as generous as Andrew Carnegie, a Pittsburgh-based industrialist who made his fortune out of steel and endowed many of the city’s cultural institutions. In the afternoon we tour some of the city’s historical and architectural highlights. Overnight Pittsburgh (B)

We depart Pittsburgh early today and make our way to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, where we enjoy a private interior tour of the house. Completed in 1939, its dramatic setting over a river and revolutionary modernist architecture made the house instantly famous. Built for the wealthy Kaufmann family, who made their fortune in retail, Fallingwater was a private retreat until the early 1960’s, when the house and several hundred acres of land around it were entrusted to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. Continuing to nearby Polymath Park, there is the opportunity to visit a group of houses designed by Wright to harmonise with the American way of life in the 1950s. Overnight Pittsburgh (B, L)

Before departing Pittsburgh today, we visit the Andy Warhol Museum. The sometimes-controversial artist was a Pittsburgh native, and the recently-opened museum contains a broad sampling of his oeuvre. We then head to Pittsburgh airport where our tour ends allowing for convenient flight connections home to Australia. (B)

Hotels have been selected principally for their central location.

• Chicago, Kimpton Gray Hotel (4 nights)

• Milwaukee, The Pfister Hotel (1 night)

• Madison Wisconsin, The Edgewater Hotel (2 nights)

• Buffalo, Westin Buffalo (2 nights)

• Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, Omni William Penn Hotel (2 nights)