Travel through Mount Etna’s national park on an optional drive towards Europe’s most active volcano. Observe the changing terrain around the mountain that dominates eastern Sicily’s skyline.

Etna’s volcanic activity has shaped the surrounding landscape over centuries and remains part of life in the region. This scenic excursion offers a closer perspective on the mountain seen from Taormina. It is at additional cost and bookable on tour.

• 7 Dinner (D)
• 13 Breakfast (B)

• Rome: Follow in the footsteps of gladiators for a deeper insight into life in ancient Rome when you enter the Colosseum.

• Hand sanitizer is freely available on board for you to use throughout the day.

Insight Vacations

• Business class coach with extended leg room
• Top-rated dining, from farm-to-table to local restaurants
• 4 & 5-star stays

Taste Roman specialties at a local restaurant while meeting your Travel Director and fellow travellers. This hosted dinner offers an introduction to the flavours of Lazio in the city where the journey begins.

Roman cooking draws character from straightforward ingredients and well-established traditions, from pasta dishes to seasonal produce. Sharing a meal provides a relaxed setting to hear about the places and food that shape everyday life in the capital.

Walk Rome’s backstreets with a Local Expert on a leisurely passeggiata that explores how contemporary life unfolds among ancient buildings, piazzas and palaces. The Trevi Fountain, Pantheon and Piazza Navona are among the celebrated landmarks associated with this local-style introduction.

Learn to read the city’s layers, from the Pantheon’s Roman origins to the theatrical spaces of baroque Rome. The pace leaves room to notice the smaller streets and daily rituals between its monuments.

Enter the Colosseum and hear stories of the spectacles that entertained ancient Romans. Standing within the amphitheatre, picture the crowds gathering around its arena and the scale of a public building that has endured for nearly two millennia.

Opened in the first century AD, the Colosseum was the setting for gladiatorial contests and other performances. Its surviving tiers and arches offer a tangible insight into Roman engineering, civic life and the place of entertainment in the imperial capital.

Walk Pompeii’s cobbled streets with a Local Expert, passing the remains of homes, shops and public buildings. The unusually intact street plan makes it possible to picture the routines of a Roman town rather than viewing its ruins as isolated monuments.

When Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD 79, ash buried Pompeii and preserved remarkable traces of everyday life. Your expert’s stories give context to the spaces where residents worked, gathered and lived almost 2,000 years ago.

Cross the Bay of Naples by jetfoil to Capri, watching its limestone cliffs rise above the blue Mediterranean water. On the island, reach clifftop Anacapri for views across the bay towards Mount Vesuvius.

Capri’s dramatic coastline has attracted visitors for centuries, while Anacapri offers a higher vantage point and a quieter perspective on the island. The crossing and lookout together reveal the close relationship between Capri’s sea approaches and its rugged terrain.

Discover Capri Town with a Local Expert, getting acquainted with the island’s streets and lively centre. Explore the setting that has made Capri a gathering place for visitors, with compact lanes opening towards the sea and the island’s steep limestone slopes.

The town combines a long-established local community with the cosmopolitan atmosphere for which Capri is known. Expert guidance helps distinguish its everyday character from its reputation as a fashionable Mediterranean retreat.

Visit the Gardens of Augustus as one of two included Capri experiences. From the garden terraces, look towards the Faraglioni sea stacks and see Via Krupp’s tight switchbacks tracing the cliffs below.

The gardens bring Capri’s cultivated spaces and rugged coastline into a single view. Via Krupp, laid out in the early 20th century, adds a striking human-made line to the landscape. Choose this experience for a closer look at the island’s celebrated scenery.

Taste Capri’s limoncello in the Piazzetta as one of two included island experiences. Learn why locally grown, intensely fragrant lemons are prized for the bright citrus liqueur associated with this part of southern Italy.

The tasting offers a flavour-focused alternative to visiting the Gardens of Augustus. In Capri’s central square, discover how a familiar regional drink reflects the island’s produce and the custom of lingering over a small glass in good company.

Explore Alberobello’s trulli with a Local Expert, walking streets lined with whitewashed limestone dwellings topped by conical roofs. See the distinctive forms up close and learn how the stones were stacked without mortar around domed interiors.

These traditional buildings give Alberobello its UNESCO World Heritage status and a townscape unlike anywhere else in Puglia. Expert commentary reveals the construction methods and local heritage behind houses that remain a defining feature of the region.

Enjoy a farm-to-table dinner near Alberobello, featuring traditional Apulian recipes prepared with seasonal produce. The meal places the region’s ingredients at the centre of the experience rather than treating dinner as a routine stop.

Puglia’s food traditions draw on its agricultural landscape of olive groves and small farms. Taste dishes rooted in that setting, with flavours that express the connection between local harvests, home-style cooking and the communities of southern Italy.

Explore Matera’s Sassi with a Local Expert, moving through a maze of rock-hewn dwellings, churches, stairways and arches. The cave districts reveal how generations adapted the steep terrain into a closely connected urban landscape.

Home to thousands of residents into the 20th century, the Sassi are now part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Their weathered stone setting has also appeared on screen, including in The Passion of the Christ, but its lived history is the focus of this visit.

Meet an advocate for the Wonder Grottole Project and explore the village’s historic centre. Hear how the initiative works to revive abandoned spaces and sustain traditional ways of life, then enjoy an aperitif with local snacks.

Grottole’s population decline has left parts of its old town quiet. This MAKE TRAVEL MATTER® Experience connects a walk through its streets with the people working to preserve village culture; your visit supports a project aligned with sustainable cities and communities.

Visit Taormina’s ancient theater with a Local Expert and take in its elevated setting above Sicily’s Ionian coast. From the weathered stone seating and arches, look towards the sea and the distant rise of Mount Etna.

Founded in the Greek period and later adapted by the Romans, the theater brings together performance history and an exceptional natural backdrop. Expert insight helps explain how its ancient builders used the hillside and scenery to shape the audience’s experience.

Explore the Valley of the Temples with a Local Expert near Agrigento. See the remarkably preserved Temple of Concordia and the clifftop Temple of Juno, with broad views across the Sicilian landscape.

These monumental ruins recall the wealth and ambition of ancient Akragas, a major Greek city in Sicily. Walking among the columns gives a sense of the scale of its sacred precinct and the lasting influence of Greek culture on the island.

Walk Palermo’s old city with a historian and visit the Palatine Chapel inside the Palace of the Normans. Its glittering 12th-century mosaics cover an interior that gives little hint of its splendour from outside.

Continue to Palermo Cathedral, whose changing architectural styles reflect centuries of adaptation. Together, the sites reveal the city’s layered heritage and the cultural influences that shaped Sicily during and beyond the Norman period.

Share a Sicilian dinner with local wine at a Palermo restaurant, joined by your fellow travellers and Travel Director. Discover rustic dishes and flavours that offer a fitting introduction to the island’s dining customs.

Sicilian cooking reflects the produce of the Mediterranean and a long history of cultural exchange. Around the table, savour the regional character of the meal while enjoying the convivial atmosphere of a shared evening in the island’s capital.

Cruise the Amalfi Coast and visit Positano on an optional outing from Capri. See the coastline from the water, where steep cliffs and settlements meet the Tyrrhenian Sea, and spend time in one of its best-known seaside towns.

Positano’s buildings climb the hillside above the shore, creating a distinctive view from the boat and from within the town. This experience is at additional cost and bookable on tour.

Explore Ostuni with a Local Expert, walking winding cobbled streets among the whitewashed buildings of this hilltop Puglian town. Take time to notice its closely packed architecture and the turns and passages of its historic centre.

Known for its luminous white facades, Ostuni has a street pattern that evokes the atmosphere of a Mediterranean medina. This guided exploration is at additional cost and bookable on tour.

Discover cliffside Polignano a Mare with a Local Expert, strolling through its historic centre and taking in views over the Adriatic. The town’s buildings stand above a coast of limestone cliffs and blue water.

Polignano is also the hometown of singer Domenico Modugno, associated with the song Volare. This outing brings together coastal scenery and a connection to Italian popular culture. It is at additional cost and bookable on tour.

Explore Syracuse on an optional excursion to one of Sicily’s most historically significant cities. Its long Greek, Roman and later history offers a different perspective on the island’s cultural heritage.

Founded as a Greek settlement on Sicily’s southeastern coast, Syracuse became a major city of the ancient Mediterranean. The tour itinerary does not specify which landmarks this outing visits, so the exact programme should be confirmed on tour. It is at additional cost and bookable on tour.