The Grand Tour: Art & Architecture Across Europe

Led by an expert architect guide, students follow the Grand Tour, the journey generations of art and architecture students made before them, across France, Switzerland, Italy, Vatican City, Monaco and Spain. Each city becomes a living classroom, showing how geography, politics, philosophy and creativity shaped the buildings and art that still influence the world today.

In France, Paris offers a masterclass in urban design and cultural identity. Students examine Baron Haussmann's nineteenth-century transformation of the city, where grand boulevards and harmonious façades redefined modern city planning, and study its museums, galleries and the masterpieces of the Louvre. In Provence, the Palais des Papes in Avignon, the Abbaye de Sénanque and the Roman ruins of Arles, where Vincent van Gogh painted some of his best-known works, connect heritage to landscape.

In Switzerland, Basel's Old Town and Basel Minster reveal centuries of architectural continuity, while the Museum Tinguely introduces kinetic modern art. In Lucerne, students cross the historic Chapel Bridge, and the relationship between natural landscape and structural design becomes part of the academic conversation.

Italy traces the arc of Western art. In Milan, students study the Duomo and Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper, a lesson in composition and perspective. In Venice, St Mark's Basilica and the Murano glassworks show centuries of innovation, and Rome leads from antiquity to empire, from the Colosseum and the Arch of Constantine to the civic architecture that shaped modern governance. In Vatican City, St Peter's Basilica and the work of Michelangelo and Bernini show the fusion of faith, power and artistic ambition.

After a shorter stop in Monaco on the Riviera, the trip ends in Barcelona, a World Capital of Architecture, where Antoni Gaudí's Sagrada Família shows how organic forms and structural innovation redefined architectural language.