Rick: In Florence,
the home of Michelangelo
and Botticelli,
all our groups take a Renaissance Walk
through the city center,
as well as
a tour of the Uffizi
and Accademia galleries.
You’ll appreciate the passion and
expertise of your guide when it
comes to understanding the art and
history in a place like Florence.
Trina: I love teaching people
the art and history of Europe.
Arnaud: I love to
teach history and art.
I think all of us are willing
to teach in a relaxed way.
Robbie: This tour has done an
excellent job explaining the art,
and the history, and the architecture
of all the places we’ve been to.
It can be daunting when traveling
in Europe because it’s everywhere.
If you don’t know what to look
for, you feel
like you’re missing
out the whole time.
Kate: Obviously,
if you come to Europe,
you’re going to see
quite a bit of art.
Whether you appreciate
art or you don’t,
coming over here, you will certainly
walk away with a great appreciation
for the European art when you leave.
Linda: I think the
guides made a great job
of making the art
accessible to people.
They were able to put it in
perspective and also show
the interesting parts about
the important paintings.
Ben: This was lost,
completely, during
the Barbarian Invasions,
and it wasn’t uncovered
until 1506 when
a farmer dug it up in his fields--
Bob: It was just not dry,
“This is this, and this is
the movement in this,” and so
forth, it was, it came to life.
Ben: On most tours,
we’re going to spend
some time in museums or going into
churches, and just having a chance to
see wonderful works of art in situ.
When we’re here in
front of the actual
sculpture or the
painting, it’s a good
opportunity to, certainly, deal with
the numbers and the raw
facts, but also to try
to draw some connections
between them,
from country to country,
from era to era,
and try to give the tools that people
can take with them, wherever they go.
Kate: I think that was, at least,
my third time to the Louvre,
and this was by far the
most significant experience.
This time, we had a local
guide that took us through
to various pieces and
pointed out what we were
looking for, what period it came from,
why it’s significant,
why we would
even want to study this.
Robbie: You get really just
the best of everything without
having to spend a whole day
there and not knowing what
you’re taking in,
so it’s been awesome
because you really know
you’re appreciating
the best of what there is.
Karin Kibby: They’re in the church.
It’s during the moment
of transubstantiation
when the host and the
wine turn into the blood
and the body of Christ,
and the killers take
out their daggers and
start to stab away.
Giuliano falls
immediately to the floor.
Lorenzo’s friends were able to
crowd around him and keep him safe.
Chris: I think the tours really
do make history accessible.
In the US,
I don’t think we get a very
good perspective of history at all.
When you come to Europe,
first of all, you
get to see it firsthand,
which is great.
Arnaud: Europe and
France, and in my case, is
old, it’s over 2,000
years of history,
and you cannot explain
anything that we see
outside without having
to go through history.
Ben: When we go down
to Rome where we stay,
we’re actually staying
across the street
from the largest of the
Roman bath complexes
that could have
accommodated 3,000 people.
Chris: They’re really bringing
out the links between things.
We started out in Paris, and Ben
was already talking about,
“When we get to Rome, you’re going to
see how this all ties together.”
Ben: At first,
they may seem far removed from our
present day, but then just
draw the connections between
past and present,
I think everybody can latch on to
that and everybody can
understand that quite clearly.
Those sorts of moments where you do
understand that the
past and the present
really do coexist in many
cases, I think
that is a great way
to teach the history.
