Italy: Cultural tours that go beyond Rome and Florence
Our Italy cultural tours are built on the parts of the country most travellers never quite reach. Esplora has always preferred sleepy villages and evocative towns over the headline sights, which is why our Italy programme runs through Umbria’s hill towns, the trulli country of Puglia, the cave city of Matera and the Magna Graecia heritage of Calabria, rather than another lap of the Colosseum. Every tour is led by a specialist guide rather than a generalist, kept to a small group of no more than twelve, and paced to let a UNESCO hill town or a Greek temple actually sink in rather than passing in a blur from the coach window. Even Rome itself gets the same treatment: our Undiscovered Rome tour is built around what the city looks like once you step off the well-worn route between the Colosseum and the Vatican. We go where we genuinely want to go, not simply where the guidebooks say we should, and that shows in the itineraries: a farmhouse lunch here, a half-day with a local historian there, the sort of detail that only comes from a guide who already knows and loves the place.
From Undiscovered Rome to the cave city of Matera: Our Italy cultural tours
Undiscovered Rome is an eight-day Italy cultural tour that deliberately looks past the Colosseum, to the Via Appia, Tivoli’s villas, Etruscan Cerveteri and the ruins of Ostia Antica. Treasures of Umbria spends its days among Assisi, Spoleto, Gubbio, Orvieto and Urbino, hill towns of genuine architectural pedigree and more than one UNESCO listing between them. Puglia and Matera runs for ten days through Puglia’s white-domed trulli houses, the Baroque city of Lecce and Matera, whose cave dwellings have been inhabited for thousands of years. And our Calabria tour follows the region’s Magna Graecia heritage south, from the Riace Bronzes to the medieval town of Gerace, the seaside town of Tropea and the Greek temples of Paestum just across the regional border. Guests who would rather walk than ride can join Walking in Umbria, which follows the San Francesco Way through Castelluccio, Montefalco, Assisi and Spoleto at a gentler pace. Between them, these tours cover a diverse array of the Italy that most itineraries skip entirely, from Etruscan tombs to Calabria’s Greek and Byzantine past.
Small group cultural tours of Italy, tailored to you
If one of our existing Italy cultural tours is not quite right for your dates or your group, get in touch. We can add extra departures, or build a private, escorted tour of Italy around the regions and periods that interest you most, whether that is Magna Graecia’s Greek colonies, Umbria’s Franciscan hill towns or Puglia’s rural charm. Every Esplora Italy tour stays capped at twelve guests, led by a guide who already knows the region intimately, so the pace stays unhurried and the detail stays real. It is cultural travel built for people who want to properly understand a place, not simply collect a photograph of it.
