Gay Italy History and Art Tour

Our trip starts with a walking tour in the center of the city, learning about the city’s key role in the Renaissance and the role of homosexual love in the Renaissance. Our afternoon ends with a visit to the Galleria dell’Accademia, where we see Michelangelo’s ‘slaves’ and the international symbol of male beauty, his David.  This evening, we start our exploration of Italian cuisine with a welcome dinner, a glorious meal of Florentine specialties, centered on the most famous bistecca alla Fiorentina, and Chianti wine.

Our hotel for 2 nights:  KRAFT HOTEL
An elegant and comfortable hotel in a quiet spot just at the edge of historic center, with a beautiful rooftop terrace and pool, with great views of the city.

Today, we visit two of Florence’s amazing museums, where we will discover the whole history of Florentine Renaissance art, from Donatello to Cellini. We start the morning at the Bargello, where we see several key male nude sculptures from the Renaissance, including Donatello’s David—the first freestanding male nude after ancient times; we then plunge into the Uffizi, the greatest of all collections of Renaissance painting. Bursting with masterpieces, the Uffizi is also a storehouse of homoerotic art by masters as varied as Botticelli, Caravaggio, and Bazzi (known to contemporaries as ‘II Sodoma’-Mr Sodom!). The afternoon and evening are  yours to explore this charming city, its museums, its wonderful fashion boutiques and artisan shops, and its charming restaurants.

This morning we take the express train to Naples, passing through the hills of central Italy. On arrival, we have the first of our Neapolitan meals-pizza in the city that invented it! We spend our afternoon visiting the great Naples Archaeological Museum, where we see the amazing collection of frescoes and statues that were excavated in Pompeii and other nearby sites. The Museum also has some fabulous homoerotic pieces, including the joint statues of Harmodios and Aristogeiton, the male-male couple who were revered as the founders of the Athenian democracy; also, there is the fascinating Gabinetto Segreto, the collection of erotic art that until the 1960s was only open to “people of mature age and respectable morals” meaning adult men, of course! Evening free.

Our hotel for 3 nights:  NH Panorama.  Right in the middle of Naples—it gets a 100/100 score for walkability—the Panorama is a pleasant hotel with fabulous views of the city and the bay, especially the bay view from the breakfast room!

This morning, we drive south to Paestum, which, like many southern Italian cities, was in ancient times part of Magna Graecia (greater Greece) and today is home to some of the best-preserved Greek temples in the world. We visit the temples and the museum, which contains one of the greatest homoerotic images in ancient art: a wall-painting of a symposium, where, among other party games, a man courts a youth in the ancient Greek style. Lunch today is in a lovely restaurant overlooking the temples of Paestum.  We are in the heart of the world’s mozzarella production and will get to enjoy it. For the afternoon, we return from Greek culture to Roman culture and visit Pompeii, the ancient city at the foot of Mt. Vesuvius, buried by the volcanic explosion of 79 AD and rediscovered in the 18th century. This is the place where archaeology was invented and is still the world’s greatest archaeological site-a place unlike any other, where you can see right into the private lives of ancient people. Sexuality will, of course, be our special theme: Pompeii is rich in the history of the erotic, and full of many surprises, especially in the main bordello! The evening is yours to relax in Naples.

This morning, we take the hydrofoil out to Capri, the pearl of the Mediterranean. We spend the day exploring the island, famous for its beauty and for the rich and famous who have played there-and in particular for their same-sex relationships. After a boat ride around the island, we go up to the village of Anacapri, where we learn about the Emperor Tiberius and the orgies he supposedly held on the island as well as Capri’s gay culture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the island was the site of a gay scandal that rocked the German empire. After a superb lunch comprising several dishes named for Capri, Caprese salad, Caprese cake (the best chocolate cake anywhere) etc, we visit the famous Villa San Michele, home of a fascinating 19th century figure, the great cholera doctor Axel Munthe. Munthe was straight-in fact, he was the lover of the queen of Sweden-but he was definitely an ally. In fact, his villa is the one place on the tour where Oscar Wilde stayed the night: Munthe discovered that Wilde and his lover “Bosie” Douglas had been kicked out of the island’s main hotel (as so often happened after Wilde’s imprisonment) and invited them to stay at the Villa. We spend some time in the garden, which recently won a prize as Italy’s most beautiful (the views alone would win it!) before taking the ferry back to Naples for a free evening.

We take the train to Rome, where we start our visit with a walking tour through the central pedestrian area of this amazing city. We see many of the famous sights and many quiet, unknown nooks. We visit monuments such as the Pantheon, the Piazza Navona, the Trevi fountain, and the Piazza di Spagna with its famous staircase. With thousands of years of history in every street, we encounter some of the great gays of Roman history, from Hadrian, the “gayest” emperor, to Michelangelo, and Caravaggio, the artistic rebel and genius, as well as Rome’s great opera heritage. Along the way we make stops for coffee (at possibly the best cafe in Italy) and some of Rome’s famous gelato. The evening is free for your own explorations. Given that our hotel is in the absolute center of the city, there are many excellent restaurants nearby (please ask us for suggestions!)

Our hotel for 4 nights:  Albergo Santa Chiara. The Santa Chiara is a comfortable small hotel, and unbelievably central: it is right behind the Pantheon, and a couple of blocks from Piazza Navona, the Campo dei Fiori, and so on.

This morning we go underground for a sound-and-light show that will take us deeper into the ancient world, explaining the fascinating and complex history of an archaeological site, a recently discovered ancient senatorial palace just behind the Forum or Trajan. From there we climb the hill to Capitoline museum, with its magnificent collection—ranging from the famous she-wolf of Rome to Caravaggio’s strangely erotic St. John the Baptist—and its amazing view back onto the Forum (from an ancient corridor underneath the museum).  Then we go just around the corner to a charming, hidden piazza for a lunch you will never forget.  After lunch, we our first of Rome’s great art museums, the Galleria Borghese.  The Villa, a 17th century country estate built by a cardinal who was definitely somewhere on the LGBTQ+ spectrum, to give parties and house his family’s art collection, still has one of the world’s great collections, including several of Caravaggio’s homoerotic masterpieces. Evening free.

Our day begins with a drive into the countryside to Tivoli, where we visit two great villas: Emperor Hadrian’s country retreat (where, among other things, he built a temple to his lover Antinous, who was worshiped as a god after his death in the Nile), and the Villa d’Este, with its astonishing Renaissance gardens and fountains. After a lunch in a country restaurant famous for its local produce and wine, we return to Rome to visit Palazzo Massimo, the center of the city’s antiquity collections. Here we will see such masterpieces of Greco-Roman art as the Discobolus (a model of masculine form for the Greeks) and the sleeping hermaphrodite—a statue that has much to tell about the Romans’ sexual attractions—as well as the stunning garden frescos from the Villa of Empress Livia. Evening free.

This morning, we delve into the core of the ancient city—the Forum, the Palatine Hill that housed the imperial residences, and the Colosseum, famous for its ghastly gladiatorial combats. While exploring the archaeological sites, we examine the bizarre tales Roman historians relay about the emperors, in particular their complicated and lurid sex lives. Your afternoon is free for shopping, wandering, or more museums and churches.  But in the evening, we set out again, for something really special:  a chance to visit the Vatican Museums in the off-hours, when its great collection, and above all, Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, can be enjoyed without overwhelming crowds. And after our Vatican visit, we have our farewell dinner, to toast Italy’s amazing history and art and some new friendships!

Our tour ends with breakfast this morning, but let us know if we can help you for further travel arrangements, in Italy or beyond!

Professor Andrew Lear accompanies all of our tours. He is our founder; a famous scholar of same-sex love in the ancient world; and a master guide. Early in his career, Professor Lear won the Harvard Certificate of Excellence in Teaching five times, and on our tours you will see why! He really has the knack of making complex issues comprehensible—and entertaining. In most places, we are also required to have a local guide, and Professor Lear has developed a cadre of specially trained guides to work alongside him.

Professor Lear doesn’t have the time to do 10 tours a year, so our tours are not offered on an annual basis. Our general advice is: if you are interested, come on the tour!  You never know when our tours will be offered again.

Absolutely. Our tour groups consist of a mix of singles and couples, usually about 50/50. One thing we can guarantee is that no-one will be left out of any conversation or plan because they are single. On the very first tour we did, we came downstairs in the hotel and found the entire group hanging out in the hotel bar. And that is the way our groups are. They make lots of plans in the evening, and everyone is always welcome.

Absolutely. The average age of our guests is in the 60s, and we often have guests in their 80s.

If you are worried about this, please contact us to discuss. This tour involves a fair amount of walking, in museums, city centers (which in Italy are pedestrian zones), and archaeological sites (which may of course have uneven ground). However, we have had many guests with difficulty walking or climbing stairs, and we generally manage to accommodate them, with a little flexibility on all sides.

Absolutely. Just let us know in advance, and we will handle it.

Our tours cover all kinds of LGBTQ+ history and art.  The cultural material on some of our tours (especially in Italy and Greece) is more about gay male issues—but this is not true on other tours, for example, in England or Germany, where we cover a wide spectrum of LGBTQ+ material.  Our groups are also very welcoming. We have had a great variety of guests in our groups (incuding even a few allies!) and they have been very much part “one of the family.”

We don’t believe so. Of course we don’t know everything that goes on, but our impression is that our tours are GREAT for making friends instead. Note:  we include tours of gay nightlife in a few cities (Berlin and Tokyo so far), but in any case, we provide information about gay bars, saunas, etc.  And we know what many of our guests go, often with others from the tour group.

Our hotels are gay friendly, absolutely.  In Europe and Japan, our hotels are generally carefully chosen 4 star hotels. As a rule, we choose hotels for modern comfort, historic charm, and central location. In India and Nepal, we use almost exclusively 5 star hotels (except for one restored palace).

We are big foodies, and the meals on our tours are generally very good. In fact, we have often been told we could sell our tours as gourmet experiences. We are particularly concerned to include local specialties and regional cuisines.

We include breakfast every day and on European tours generally one other substantial meal (though occasionally none or two).  Since our tours often include activities both morning and afternoon, we tend to include lunch.  And we tend to leave you free in the evening, except for the first and last evenings on the tour, when we have welcome and farewell dinners—though of course sometimes we include an extra dinner.  This tour includes breakfast every day, 7 lunches, and 2 dinners–all gourmet.

Our tours are not 100% all-inclusive, although pretty close.  We include all hotel accommodation during the tour, transportation as per the itinerary, all admissions, and guiding. We include breakfast every day and on European tours generally one other substantial meal (though occasionally none or two).  Note:  we are NOT in the business of “upselling” our guests. There are very few optionals on our tours—and they are only things we really believe that some guests may not want to do (e.g. helicopter trips).

 We generally leave the group free in the evenings, and when we are in a major city, we include a free afternoon, for shopping, more museums etc.

Our tours are based on a very high level of knowledge about LGBTQ+ history and art, and indeed about history and art in general.  As a result, we include many places that are interesting and/or important but not well-known.  Some of these, like the bar where Oliver plays cards with the locals while Elio watches him in Call Me By Your Name, may be closed to the public or difficult to access; others, like the penis temple of Nagoya, are simply not on the beaten tourist path.

 Italy is actually very gay-friendly.  It has got a bad reputation in recent years, because it does not have gay marriage.  But Italy was not homophobic in the way the US and UK were in previous eras, so while it has not caught up with the rest of Europe on gay rights, it was and is a safe and friendly country for LGBTQ+ travelers.

YES.  A tour is a big investment, so you need insurance in case you are forced to cancel too late for a refund.  This doesn’t happen often, but it has happened a few times in the 13 year life of this company, and the travel insurance companies have been very helpful.  But note:  you also need travel insurance in case of medical emergency.  Your US insurance probably does not cover you abroad, and as we all know, you never know when something will come up.  A friend of mine fell on a trip a few years ago and ended up being medivaced from Tunisia to Germany and ultimately back to the US.  This would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, but luckily, he had good travel insurance, and it was covered 100%.  Note:  You can buy travel insurance from our ticketing platform, WeTravel, but that that is not obligatory.  You should get an insurance policy, but it does not need to be from WeTravel.

Our cancellation policy is flexible.  Before the full-payment deadline, we will return any of your deposit that hasn’t been put down in deposits—which generally means we can return 100%.  After the full-payment deadline, it is critical (again) that you have travel insurance, as travel insurance will refund your trip in an emergency more completely than we can.  We can assure you that it works, because we have seen it work several times:  a few guests have had to cancel at the last minute, have been completely reimbursed by their insurance, and in most cases have taken the same tour with us the next time it was offered.

Yes, we can make a payment plan according to your needs.