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These Renaissance Men reveal their artistic secrets in the world famous collections of the Uffizi Galleries, the museums of the Pitti Palace, and the Accademia (Michelangelo's David), and in churches such as Santa Maria Novella, Santa Croce, and Santa Maria delle Carmine.
Try not to strain too many mental muscles, for on the evening of day three you must head south to Siena to spend the night and prepare yourself for a completely different, late-medieval school of painting.
Brace yourself with a medieval meal at the Nuova Grotta del Gallo Nero. Spend the night in Siena.
Don't forget to pay attention to the "Before you Leave Home " box at the end of the itinerary covering all the details you need to take care of before leaving home—and be sure to read the "Foolish Assumptions" page about how these itineraries work along with more time-planning tips.Spend the morning of day four in Siena with Simone Martini and Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s masterpieces of medieval secular art in the Palazzo Pubblico, and after lunch hit the art-filled Duomo and its museum of Gothic sculptures and a lookout over the burnt-sienna cityscape.
In the evening, dine away your impending art overdose with a meal at La Torre and take a relaxing walk through the lamp-lit streets and see the beautiful Piazza del Campo by moonlight. Spend the night in Siena again.
On the morning of day five, get a good overview of the entire Sienese school with a visit to Siena’s Pinacoteca painting gallery.
Grab a sandwich for lunch so you can get on the road to drive to Sansepolcro, stopping along the way to see Piero della Francesca’s Madonna del Parto in Monterchi, one of the only pregnant Madonnas in Italian art by this ethereal early Renaissance master.
Spend the afternoon in Sansepolcro’s Museo Civico with its Piero masterpieces—which rival great works here by Signorelli and others. If you want to spend more time at the museum, stop here for the night and a wonderful homecooked meal at the Fiorentino; otherwise push on in the evening to cross into Umbria and make Perugia by nightfall. Spend the night in Perugia.
Spend all day in Perugia, the city that produced Perugino and Pinturicchio. Art lovers can spend hours in the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, the best collection anywhere of Umbrian art. Masterpieces by Perugino and his student Raphael are scattered around town as well.
Perugia’s very good restaurant crop awaits to give you time to relax and prepare yourself for Giotto the next day. Spend the night in Perugia again.
Get up early in the morning to make the short trip over to Assisi. The basilica of San Francesco here houses fresco cycles by the earliest Renaissance masters: Sienese like Simone Martini and Pietro Lorenzetti, and Florentine-school founders Cimabue and his star pupil, Giotto. Visiting the church will fill up your morning, but take a break for lunch and wander outside the walls for a countryside feast at La Stalla.
You could spend the afternoon and the night here in Assisi, or after lunch you could cross the valley back to Perugia for the afternoon and take a trip outside the walls to the painting horde in San Pietro church, have one last peek inside the Galleria Nazionale, and spend the night in Perugia again.
Head back into Tuscany to make your last stop at Cortona, hometown of Renaissance master Luca Signorelli and baroquie Pietro da Cortona.
Fra’ Angelico also spent time here, and the towns modest museums and churches all have small but choice collections of masterpieces.
If all the art has become one big blur and you need to recuperate, you are close to both the hilltowns of southern Tuscany (Montepulciano, Pienza, Montalcino, etc.) and the thermal spas at Chianciano Terme.
I'm all for planning your own trip‚ and this website is set up to help you do just that—but some people might just as well prefer to leave all the planning, logistics, transportation, lodging, and gathering of information to the professionals and simply sign up with a guided tour.
Nothing wrong with that. Just take my advice and choose a tour that emphasizes small groups over large crowds, local transport over big tour buses, and fun cultural experiences over sightseeing checklists. You'll have a better time, and probably spend less for it. Here are a few of my favorite tour companies who emphasize just that.
Lodging: Booking.com, Bedandbreakfast.com, Airbnb.com, Rentalo.com, Vrbo.com, Belvilla.com, Hostelworld.com, Hostelbookers.com, Couchsurfing.com, Homeexchange.com
Packages: SelectItaly.com, Gotoday.com, Orbitz.com, Expedia.com, Travelocity.com
Maps & guides: Amazon.com, Maps.google.com, Tuttocitta.it
A tall order for just two weeks? You bet. But there are three tricks to fitting all you can into such a short time here.
Don't forget to pay attention to the "What to do before you leave" section (next) covering all the details you need to take care of before leaving home—and be sure to read the "Foolish Assumptions" page about how these itineraries are meant to work.)
The basic itinerary above is pretty packed—a lot of early morning wake-ups, a lot of churches and museums—because there's simply so much to see and do in Italy.
By all means, feel free to prune this itinerary down to something a bit slower paced if you don’t want to spend so much time running around (say, leaving out a few hilltowns—Pienza or Orvieto—or perhaps the Cinque Terre, or maybe Pompeii). I've even gone ahead and whipped up a sane version of this itinerary that leaves out Pompeii and the Cinque Terre.
Think of this more as a blueprint to squeezing in the maximum possible. You should, above all, have fun.
I will freely admit to being as guilty as anyone of this, but: Please try not to overplan your trip to Italy. That's a two-fold plea:
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Lodging: Booking.com, Bedandbreakfast.com, Airbnb.com, Rentalo.com, Vrbo.com, Belvilla.com, Hostelworld.com, Hostelbookers.com, Couchsurfing.com, Homeexchange.com
Packages: SelectItaly.com, Gotoday.com, Orbitz.com, Expedia.com, Travelocity.com
Maps & guides: Amazon.com, Maps.google.com, Tuttocitta.it
This article was written by Reid Bramblett and was last updated in February 2013.
All information was accurate at the time.
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