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Day 1: Arrive Brussels

Arrival transfer for participants travelling on the ASA ‘designated’ flight

Welcome Drinks

Optional Orientation walk

If you are taking ASA’s ‘designated’ flight, you will arrive at Brussels Airport in the early afternoon and after clearing customs will transfer by private coach to our hotel. If you are not arriving by this flight, please make your own way to our hotel. Following some time at leisure there will be a welcome meeting followed by an optional short orientation walk to the Grand Place in which good restaurants will be pointed out to you. (Overnight Brussels)

Day 2: Brussels

Meals: Breakfast, Dinner

The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium: Musée d’Art ancien (Museum of Old Masters)

The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium: Musée Magritte

Orientation tour of the Grand Place: Church of Our Lady of Sablon, Justice Palace, Coudenberg, Cathedral of St Michael and St Gudula, St Catherine, St John the Baptist, exterior of the Town Hall, the Bourse (stock exchange), Galerie Royales Saint-Hubert

Welcome Evening Meal

This morning we celebrate the wonderful world of Brussels’ Royal art collections. We walk or take public transport to the Royal Museum of Fine Arts and begin in the old masters’ section exploring the vibrant artistic traditions of south Flanders. Artists represented include Rogier van der Weyden, Petrus Christus, Dirk Bouts, Hans Memling, Hieronymus Bosch, Lucas Cranach, Gerard David and Pieter Bruegel the Elder, whose Fall of the Rebel Angels and The Census at Bethlehem are collection highlights. We also encounter Hieronymus Bosch’s lovely Crucifixion with a Donor and one of the most important works of the 15th century, the Master of Flémalle’s Annunciation. We explore the exquisite forms of these extraordinarily detailed works, their sophisticated symbolism hidden beneath the representation of everyday things, and the immense wealth of the society that produced them. Other later masters to be seen include Flemish Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck and Jacques Jordaens, and works from the Dutch, French Italian and Spanish schools including masterpieces by Rembrandt, Vouet, Claude, Ribera and Tiepolo.

After a coffee break we move to the museum dedicated to Brussels’ most famous modern artist, the Surrealist painter René Magritte. The Musée René Magritte, displaying some 200 original paintings, drawing and sculptures mostly donated by his wife Georgette and by his principal collector, Irene Hamoir Scutenaire, is the world’s largest collection of his work. We explore all phases of Magritte’s oeuvre, especially that in which incongruous, fantastic subject matter is presented in a style of crisp realism.

After lunchtime at leisure we spend the afternoon on a walking tour of the Grand Place, centre of Brussels life, and nearby monuments. We see, for example, Brussels’ great Gothic Town Hall. The oldest part of the present Town Hall is its east wing (1402 to 1420). A second wing (1444) was added when craft guilds were admitted into the traditionally patrician city government and the building needed extensions. By 1455 the high tower was added, dominating the building and its precinct. It rises to lavishly pinnacled octagonal openwork and atop its spire stands a gilt metal statue of the archangel Michael, patron saint of Brussels. The façade below is decorated with numerous reproductions of original statues representing nobles, saints, and allegorical figures. The Town Hall interior burnt during a French bombardment in 1695 but was soon rebuilt, and the addition of two rear wings transformed the L-shaped building into its present configuration. The Gothic interior was restored in 1868 in the style of Viollet-le-Duc. We remember the court of the Archduke Albert and Archduchess Isabella, which welcomed refugee English Catholic composer Peter Philips and who patronised Rubens and Frans Pourbus.

We also visit the church of Our Lady of Sablon Church, Justice Palace, Coudenberg, Cathedral of St Michael and St Gudula, the churches of St Catherine and St John the Baptist, the Bourse (stock exchange) and the Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert. This arcade is one of the earliest in Europe. Its twin façades were probably modeled on the façades of the Uffizi, Florence. This evening there will be a welcome evening meal at a local restaurant. (Overnight Brussels)

Day 3: Brussels

Meals: Breakfast

Musée Victor Horta

Art Nouveau Walking tour including interior visit to the Hotel Solvay and Ciamberlani House (by special arrangements)

Musée Fin-de-Siècle

Musée David et Alice van Buuren

Evening concert (program to be confirmed in 2016)

Brussels was the cradle of Art Nouveau that spread across the world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. John Julius Norwich has described its Belgian inventor and most famous exponent, Victor Horta, as ‘undoubtedly the key European Art Nouveau architect.’ Horta, for example, inspired Hector Guimard, France’s exponent of Art Nouveau, who applied Horta’s whiplash design in his work for the Paris Métro.

We first visit the Musée Victor Horta, located in Horta’s private house and studio. Built between 1898 and 1901 the two buildings making up the museum exemplify Art Nouveau at its height. Their utterly exquisite, finely detailed interior decoration has largely been retained, with the mosaics, stained-glass, and wall decorations forming a harmonious and elegant whole.

We next follow an Art Nouveau and Art Deco trail through Brussels. We begin with two exceptional town houses that have recently been opened to the public. Horta designed the UNESCO-listed Solvay town house in 1894. It is a resplendent example of how he saw architecture as a total art form. The revolutionary iron structure creates a luminous space, into which light filters through from everywhere, softened by the carefully arranged coloration of the walls, the floor coverings and glasswork. Another major Art Nouveau architect, Paul Hankar, designed the Ciamberlani House that combines a stunning sgraffito façade with the same type of light-suffused open interior space as does the Musée Horta.

After lunch at leisure, we visit the Musée Fin-de-Siècle, which celebrates the important flowering of art in Belgium at the turn of the 20th century. Well-known artists represented include James Ensor, Fernand Khnoff, Victor Horta and Henry Van de Velde. You will, however, be surprised by the number of excellent artists of whom you may not have heard.

 

Late afternoon, we visit the extraordinary house bought in 1928 by the banker and art patron David van Buuren. While its exterior is typical of the so-called Amsterdam School, its interior decoration presents a feast of Art Deco by Belgian, French and Dutch designers. Van Buuren and his wife Alice Piette collected rare furniture, carpets, stained-glass windows, sculptures and masterpieces of painting from the 15th to the 19th century. Along with a historical collection including two Brueghels there are works by Fantin-Latour, Ensor, Van Gogh, Signac, Van Dongen and Ernst. Van Buuren was also the only patron of van de Woestyne, the precursor of surrealism and the house possesses 32 of his paintings. We complete our day with a concert (program to be confirmed in 2016). (Overnight Brussels)

Mons - 2 nights

Day 4: Sunday 11 September, Brussels – Seneffe – Mons

Meals: Breakfast, Lunch

Domaine du Château de Seneffe displaying one of Europe’s most beautiful collections of antique (mainly 18th century) silverware

Lunch at the Brasserie de L’Orangerie, Seneffe

Sainte-Waudru de Mons: the sculpture by Jacques Du Brœucq and the  ‘Car d’Or’

Today we drive to the picturesque town of Mons via the Château de Seneffe. Surrounded by both a magnificent restored formal garden and an English park, this typical 18th-century French country palace was designed by Belgium’s principal exponent of Neoclassicism, Laurent-Benoît Dewez. Among its treasures is one of Europe’s most beautiful collections of antique silver. Another of its delights is a small theatre that nestles in the garden. The famous architect Charles de Wailly designed this pretty Neoclassical building, the interior of which retains its  fixed scenery in the form of a trompe l’oeil gallery. After our visit of the château, we enjoy a group lunch at the Brasserie de l’Orangerie Seneffe.

In the late afternoon we visit the collegiate church of Sainte-Waudru in Mons. A special treasure of this church is the gilt carriage that carries the Shrine of Saint Waltrude through the city during the annual festival called the Ducasse de Mons or ‘Doudou’; it takes place on Trinity Sunday. UNESCO has recognized this festival as a Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity since 2005. We also observe the magnificent remnants of the jubé (choir screen) erected by Jacques du Brœucq between 1535 and 1541 but dismantled in the French Revolution. du Brœucq, trained in the Rome of Michelangelo, helped to define an entire generation of late Renaissance sculpture. (Overnight Mons)

Day 5: Mons – Dinant – Mons

Meals: Breakfast

Gardens of Annevoie

The provincial town of Dinan

Bateaux de la Meuse (Boat tour from Dinant to Freÿr Garden)

Freÿr Castle and Gardens

We spend the day in the Meuse Valley visiting two magnificent châteaux and the lovely provincial town of Dinant, and cruise the Meuse. Our first visit is to Les Jardins d’Annevoie in the Haute-Meuse, a region of forests and rivers. The gardens of Annevoie combine the splendour and majesty of the French formal style harmoniously with English romantic whimsy and Italian refinement. As we walk through these 250-year-old water gardens they will reveal their great diversity of cascades and fountains, majestic hundred-year old trees, trimmed hornbeam lanes and false grottoes.

From Annevoie we journey to the pretty, historic riverside town of Dinant, home of figures as diverse as Adolphe Sax (inventor of the saxophone) and Joachim Patenir (the ‘inventor’ of landscape painting in Western Europe). Here we will have time at leisure for lunch and to explore the village. You may wish to visit the Collegiate Church of Our Lady or the Citadel, walk across the Charles de Gaulle Bridge with its giant futuristic saxophone sculptures, or even visit the Adolphe Sax House Museum.

From Dinant we take an early afternoon cruise on the Meuse to Freÿr Castle and Garden where Monsieur Bonaert, the château’s owner, will guide us on through his property.  Originally a keep given in fief by the Count of Namur to Jean de Rochefort Orjol in 1378, in 1410 it came into the hands of the Dukes of Beaufort-Spontin, who have owned it ever since. Charles V destroyed the keep in 1554 and Freÿr was eventually rebuilt as a grand summer residence. The château, which stands on a dramatic site across the Meuse from high cliffs, is surrounded by vast walled terraced gardens, in the French formal style of Le Nôtre. They include babbling fountains, 350-year-old orange trees and 6 kilometres of hedged mazes. Above the garden stands a delightful Rococo pavilion. We stroll through the garden and visit the grand Baroque interior with its wall paintings by Frans Snyders and its Louis XIV ceiling frescos; the family has preserved much of the house’s original furniture. We then return to Mons for the night. (Overnight Mons)

Bruges - 3 nights

Day 6: Mons – Ypres – Zonnebeke – Bruges

Meals: Breakfast

The Cloth Hall (Lakenhalle): medieval trading centre for cloth & wool, Ypres

Flanders Field Museum, Ypres

Ypres 1914-1918 Flanders Battlefield Tour (inc. Hill 60, Tyne Cot Cemetery, Polygon Wood)

Today we drive to Ypres where we visit the Cloth Hall housing the Flanders Field Museum, and then explore the neighbouring battlefields where Australians fought in the Great War. Medieval Ypres, like Bruges and Ghent, was a major Flemish cloth-manufacturing centre. Throughout Flanders, cloth was woven by families in their homes and then collected for export by wealthy merchants. Ypres’ huge Gothic Cloth Hall (Lakenhalle), completed in 1304, was one of the largest commercial buildings of the Middle Ages. Like so many Flemish civic buildings, it has a great tower acting as a watchtower, bell tower, and symbol of the city. The building below acted as a market and warehouse, but also accommodated the town archives, a treasury, an armory and a prison. Inside the hall we visit the Flanders Field Museum.

This afternoon we take a tour of the Flanders battlefields focusing on the role of, and memorials to Australians and New Zealanders. We visit Hill 60, Tyn Cot Cemetery and Polygon Wood. After our tour we drive to Bruges where we spend the next three nights. (Overnight Bruges)

Day 7: Bruges

Meals: Breakfast, Dinner

Morning orientation walk of Bruges incl: Gothic Town Hall, Basilica of the Holy Blood, Grote Markt and Belfry

Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk (Church of our Lady)

Canal Cruise of Bruges

Groeninge Museum

Saint John’s Hospital & the Hans Memling Museum

Time at leisure: Optional visit to the Arentshuis (Brangwyn Museum)

Group Evening Meal at a local restaurant

The small canal city of Bruges reached its apogee between the 12th and 15th centuries when it was an economic powerhouse to equal Florence and Venice. The city’s fair was established in 1200 and it burgeoned as a centre of textile manufacture. The great Burgundian duke Philip the Good (1419-67), one of the wealthiest men of his time, established his court here. In the later Middle Ages cities’ economies and cultural production were determined by the conspicuous consumption by the rich and Bruges benefited from the presence of the Burgundian court, nurturing artists like Jan van Eyck and Hans Memling. We commence with a walking tour of Bruges’ well-preserved historic core to view some of the most beautiful Gothic architecture in Europe; this area was inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2000.

We begin by visiting the city’s two town squares. The larger of the two is the Grote Markt (Large Market), the commercial hub of medieval Bruges. The second square is called the ‘Burg’, the heart of the Bruges’ administration. The masterpiece we visit in the Burg is the exquisite Gothic Town Hall (1376), one of the first monumental town halls in the Low Countries. Its façade is punctured by six large Gothic windows and displays weapons of the cities and villages that were under administrative rule from Bruges. In 48 niches are statues that replaced the originals destroyed after the French Revolution. Within, a large staircase leads to the Gothic Hall (1386-1401), decorated in 1895 with Neogothic wall paintings illustrating the most important events in the history of Bruges.

The Belfort, a huge tower and belfry once used to store the city statutes, dominates the adjacent Grote Markt. Most Flemish cities had a high tower that acted as a signifier of the city’s identity; its bells were vital to communicating all kinds of information to citizens. Bruges’ belfry was first built around 1240 and rebuilt after a devastating fire in 1280. The octagonal upper stage of the belfry was added between 1483 and 1487, and was once capped by a wooden spire bearing an image of Saint Michael, banner in hand and dragon underfoot. This spire was destroyed and rebuilt in 1493 and then fell victim to flames in 1741 and never rebuilt. Instead, the present Gothic openwork style was added to the rooftop in 1822. The belfry houses a municipal carillon comprising 48 bells. The city still employs a full-time carillonneur to give free concerts on a regular basis. We visit the Church of Our Lady, the interior of which is a treasure house of art. In the choir behind the high altar are the tombs of Charles the Bold, last Valois Duke of Burgundy and his daughter, Mary. Their gilt bronze full-length effigies lie on polished slabs of black stone. The most celebrated treasure of the church however, is Michelangelo’s Bruges Madonna (1504), a marble sculpture of the Virgin and Child probably meant originally for Siena Cathedral. We also visit the Basilica of the Holy Blood, which contains a vial of blood reputedly washed from the body of Christ. The relic appears to have arrived in Bruges in the 1250s and may have been loot from the Fourth Crusade. The chapel in which it is held is a masterpiece of Belgium’s leading Neogothic architect, Bethune.

We finish the morning with a short canal cruise. Until around 1600, Bruges was an important Hanseatic League port city linked to the sea by the Zwijn canal. Canals were dug to facilitate the passage of goods to this canal and thence to its commercial outpost, the harbour at Damme. Bruges’ canals were immortalized in Rodenbach’s novel Bruges-la-morte, one of the first novels to use photography as an integral part of the storytelling, and itself the inspiration for Hitchcock’s immortal Vertigo.

After lunchtime at leisure we shall visit the famous Groeninge Museum with its excellent collection of Flemish masters. A highlight of this museum is Jan Van Eyck’s stunning Madonna with Canon van der Paele (1436), one of the most important works of the Northern Renaissance.We next visit the St John’s Hospital Complex, which also includes the small Hans Memling Museum. Hans Memling  (c. 1430 –1494), who was born in Germany, worked in Bruges from 1465, and was closely associated with the Knights Hospitaller. One of this museum’s treasures is his late masterpiece, The Shrine of St. Ursula, a carved and gilded wooden reliquary containing oil on panel inserts painted by the master.

The rest of the day is at leisure. You may wish to visit the The Arents House (Arentshuis) a fine, late-18th-century townhouse houses a museum of works by Anglo-Welsh artist Frank Brangwyn, one of the leading print makers of the 20th century . Tonight we gather for a group evening meal at a local restaurant. (Overnight Bruges)

Day 8: Bruges

Meals: Breakfast

Beguinage of Bruges

Public bus excursion to Loppem Castle

Afternoon at leisure

Sint-Annakerk (Saint Anne’s Church)

Evening concert (program to be confirmed in 2016)

We begin this morning by walking to Bruges’ famous Beguinage. A beguinage or begijnhof was a medieval housing complex for women who devoted themselves to prayer and charitable works, but did not care for the constraints of a convent. A wall usually surrounded a group of houses in which the women lived. These houses could be disposed around courtyards and the precinct would include a chapel and infirmary. Most Belgian cities have these precincts, and they are all UNESCO heritage listed. Bruges’ Beguinage was founded around 1245. Most of its extant houses, grouped around a pretty garden, are from the 17th and 18th centuries. We explore the atmospheric beguinage of Bruges in the company of literary texts of the Devotio Moderna. Perhaps the most important religious movement in the Low Countries in the fifteenth century, it produced spiritual classics such as Thomas à Kempis’ Imitiation of Christ, a work treasured by figures as diverse at St Thomas More, St Ignatius of Loyola and John Wesley.

Then we take public transport a short distance to Loppem Castle (1859 – 1862) designed by the famous English architect Augustus Pugin’s son Edward and the ‘Pugin of Belgium’, Jean-Baptiste de Béthune, in 1856 for Baron Charles van Caloen. It is a masterpiece of civil Gothic Revival architecture and is remarkably well preserved, with a richly decorated and furnished interior and houses a collection of paintings, stained-glass and statuary. A romantic park with ponds and a maze surrounds the castle.

At the end of an afternoon at leisure, we visit the splendid baroque church of Saint Anne and walk by Bruges four remaining windmills. We complete our day with a concert (program to be confirmed in 2016). (Overnight Bruges)

Antwerp - 4 nights

Day 9: Bruges – Ghent – Antwerp

Meals: Breakfast

Museum of Fine Arts MSK, Ghent

St Bavo’s Cathedral, Ghent

Ghent’s Town Hall, Ghent

Design Museum Ghent

Today we drive to Antwerp via Ghent. We begin in the Museum of Fine Arts MSK, Ghent, the masterpiece of which is Hieronymus Bosch’s Christ Carrying the Cross, but which also has an interesting collection of works by James Ensor and masterpieces of the ‘Flemish Primitive’ school of the 15th and 16th centuries. At this museum we also view the restoration of part of Jan and Hubert van Eyck’s masterpiece, The Adoration of the Lamb.

Following some time at leisure for lunch we visit this wonderful 24-panel altarpiece in St Bavo’s Church in the centre of Ghent. The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb was begun by Hubert van Eyck (c. 1390 – 1426) and completed after his death by Jan van Eyck in 1432. Commissioned for the chapel in which it remains today by a wealthy alderman in 1420, the painting is arguably the greatest work of the Northern Renaissance. It is a triumph of the use of thin oil glazes to bathe scenes in a rich luminous atmosphere and in the naturalism that represented a giant step forward from the rigid style of Gothic religious art. You will be spellbound by this vast, intricate masterpiece. St Bavo’s other treasures include Rubens’s recently restored Conversion of St. Bavo (1623) and the magnificent funerary monument of Bishop Anton Triest by François and Hieronymus II du Quesnoy. The Romanesque crypt holds a wealth of religious antiquities, vestments, sculptures, and paintings.

We next take a guided tour of Ghent Town Hall. One of the grandest buildings in the city, the Town Hall was built in the late Gothic style and added to in the Renaissance style. Its sumptuous interiors in both styles reflect the vast wealth of the city and its citizens’ civic pride. St Nicholas’ church is the next monument we visit, a masterpiece of the Scheldt Gothic style. It was built in the 13th century near the city’s bustling Wheat Market and was popular with the guilds that were located nearby. They decorated chapels in the church.

We continue with a visit to Ghent’s Design Museum, featuring 20th century and contemporary exhibits. Behind an 18th century façade we enter an ultramodern space full of Art Nouveau, Art Deco as well as ultra-modern furniture and home wares. In the late afternoon we drive to Antwerp where we spend the next four nights. (Overnight Antwerp)

Day 10: Antwerp – Mechelen – Lier –Antwerp

Meals: Breakfast

The Royal Manufacturers De Wit, Tongerlo Refuge, Mechelen (by special appointment)

Royal Carillon School Mechelen

St Rumbold’s Cathedral, Mechelen

St John’s Church, Mechelen

Municipal Museum Wuyts-Van Campen & Baron Caroly, Lier

This morning we drive to Mechelen, seat of an important medieval archbishopric. Abbots from surrounding monasteries built sumptuous houses here like the Tongerlo Refuge (1484) in which to reside whilst attending the archbishop. We first take a private guided tour of The Royal Manufacturers De Wit, the world’s leading restorer of antique tapestries, including the exhibition halls and a workshop.

Next, we have a short tour of the Royal Carillon School of Mechelen. The carilloneur’s art has been a point of reference in musical life in the Low Countries for centuries, and was the subject of Rodenbach’s atmospheric novel, The bells of Bruges, a story of fateful and obsessive love that plays out against Rodenbach’s evocation of the still canals of the city.  Following time at leisure for lunch, we next visit St Rumbold Cathedral, which dominates Mechelen’s central Grote Markt. This grand cathedral has Anthony van Dyck’s Crucifixion and other fine artworks and stained-glass but is famous for its gigantic 15th-century tower that has an impressive 49-bell carillon.

Nearby we visit St John’s Church and its famous Peter Paul Rubens’ triptych Adoration of the Magi. We also admire the recently discovered 14th-century wall paintings depicting St Christopher and St George.

We return to Antwerp via Lier, a small medieval town. Lier municipal museum is currently displaying a magnificent collection of Brueghels on loan from the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp.  (Overnight Antwerp)

Day 11: Antwerp

Meals: Breakfast, Dinner

Orientation walk of historic Antwerp including the Grote Markt

Rockox House – The Golden Cabinet. Royal Museum at The Rockox House

Rubens House

Museum Mayer van den Bergh

Museum aan de Stroom (MAS), Antwerp (Exterior)

Group Evening Meal at a local restaurant

We begin this morning with a short orientation walking tour of Antwerp. We walk from the medieval fortress, Het Steen, largely rebuilt by the Habsburg Emperor Charles V, and the riverbank (Scheldt) through the  Vlaeykensgang (alley near city hall), the Grote Markt (market square) to the 17th-century Rockox House, home of the great humanist and mayor of Antwerp, Nicolaas Rockox (1560-1640). Rockox was a prolific art collector and patron and friend of masters including Peter Paul Rubens. The interior of this lovely town house is a treasure trove of masterpieces by artists such as the Brueghels, Rubens, Van Dyck and Jordaens, with 16th– and 17th-century furniture and artefacts. With the combined collection of Nicolaas Rockox and Antwerp Museum of Fine Arts (closed for renovation till the end of 2016), the house has been transformed into a ‘Golden Cabinet’ to give an idea of how a rich Antwerp art collection of the Golden Century must have appeared. The beautiful courtyard garden has recently been refurbished.

Following time at leisure for lunch we visit the house and studio that Rubens built for himself. Rubens was not only an extremely popular painter, but also a great humanist and a diplomat. Extremely wealthy, he built this palatial house, living here and working in his adjacent studio. He entertained Europe’s aristocracy and royalty in the house and displayed his impressive art collection in a beautiful art room. We visit the house, the workshop and Rubens’ charming garden.

The Museum Mayer van den Bergh was one of the first museums in the world to be built around a single collection. Its collection focus on Pieter Brueghel I including the Mad Meg (Duller Griet) oil on panel and Twelve Proverbs on wooden plates.

We finish the day with a group evening meal at a local restaurant. On our way, we see the impressive exterior of Museum aan de Stroom (MAS), an extraordinary ultramodern tower composed of great blocks separated by undulating glass walls, designed by the acclaimed Rotterdam firm Neutelings-Riedijk Architecten. (Overnight Antwerp)

Day 12: Antwerp

Meals: Breakfast

The Beguinage of Antwerp

Coach tour of Antwerp including the Central Station and Art Nouveau’s Zurenborg district

Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedral (Cathedral of Our Lady)

Time at leisure

Evening concert (program to be confirmed in 2016)

We spend the first part of this morning strolling through the beautiful, secluded Antwerp Beguinage. The Antwerp Beguinage was founded in 1234, but its extant buildings were constructed in the 16th century. Exquisite small brick houses, many with picturesque gables, line the small alleyways of this quiet precinct. Antwerp is not only famous for its early architecture but also a treasure house of Art Nouveau and contemporary architecture.

We follow our visit to the Beguinage with a tour of the city focusing upon architecture since the late 19th century. We begin at the Central Railway Station, the grandest railway station in Belgium. The work of Louis Delacenserie, it is a major example of the kind of architectural eclectism typical in the last decades of the 19th and the first decades of the 20th century. We also stroll down the Cogels-Osylei in the Zurenborg district, the site of wonderful houses built in styles including Art Nouveau, Neogothic, and Greek Revival. We have coffee in an Art Nouveau café.

Following time at leisure for lunch we conclude our program today with a visit to the Cathedral of Our Lady. Four of Rubens’s most important paintings, including the Raising of the Cross and his Descent from the Cross, belong to this vast seven-nave Gothic cathedral, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Besides the art of Rubens, the cathedral played host to musicians including Johannes Ockeghem, the enigmatic master of the mid-Renaissance, and John Bull, a keyboard composer from England who may have fled his home country because of Catholic persecution in the Elizabethan age. The cathedral has a 123-metre steeple that took 169 years (1352-1521) to complete. We complete our day with a concert (program to be confirmed in 2016).  (Overnight Antwerp)

Delft - 2 nights

Day 13: Antwerp – The Hague – Delft

Meals: Breakfast

Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerpen

Mauritshuis, The Hague

Our first visit for the day is to the Plantin-Moretus Museum, a stately town house with period rooms that chronicles 300 years of the process of printing. French printer, Christopher Plantin established his famous printing and publishing house in Antwerp in 1555. His successors, the Moretus family, maintained the Officina Plantiniana until the 19th century. The museum displays typographic material, a library, paintings including a Rubens and an impressive graphic collection. It also owns the world’s oldest extant printing press (c.1600). The Print Room holds prints and drawings by Antwerp masters from the 16th century to the present. It is the only museum in the world to be UNESCO world heritage listed.

This afternoon we depart Antwerp for Delft via The Hague to visit one of Europe’s finest art collections in the recently renovated Mauritshuis. This includes a Rembrandt Self Portrait and his famous Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp (1632), Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring (c. 1665) and his View of Delft (1660 – 1661), Frans Hals’ Laughing Boy (1625), and Hans Holbein the Younger’s Portrait of Robert Cheeseman (1533). (Overnight Delft)

Day 14: Delft – Rotterdam – Delft

Walking tour of Rotterdam’s cutting edge architecture

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Time at leisure in Delft

This morning we depart for sightseeing in Rotterdam, a city that is famous for its modern architecture and dramatic skyline dominated by the ultra-modern Erasmus Bridge over the River Maas. On a walking tour we see cutting-edge buildings by Renzo Piano, Piet Blom, and Rem Koolhaas. We encounter the life-size green light-emitting matrix at Toren op Zuid (South Tower), the hypermodern New Luxor Theatre and Montevideo, the tallest residential tower in the Netherlands. The city is home to many architectural and design firms, some of which are among the most progressive in the world, having designed famous buildings and bridges in many other major cities.

In Rotterdam we also visit the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, which hosts a superb collection of masterpieces by artists from Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Brueghel the Elder and Dürer, Rubens, Rembrandt and Titian, to van Gogh, Kandinsky and Magritte. We return to Delft in the mid-afternoon for some time at leisure to enjoy this lovely city. (Overnight Delft) B

Amsterdam - 3 nights

Day 15: Delft – Utrecht – Vechtstreek –Amsterdam

Meals: Breakfast

St Martin’s Cathedral & St Willibrord Church

Rietveld Schröder House – UNESCO landmark of 20th-century architecture

Cruise along the Vecht River, Vechtstreek

Today we drive to Amsterdam via Utrecht and its surrounding countryside, where medieval lords and merchants built castles and estates. From the 8th century, Utrecht was the focal point of Catholicism in the Netherlands, and although it joined the Calvinist Dutch Republic, it retained many of its Catholic values. We visit the 13th-century Cathedral of St Martin, a magnificent French Gothic building and the largest cathedral in the Netherlands; and St Willibrord Church, a Neogothic church featuring stained-glass, beautiful woodcarvings and lavishly painted walls and ceilings. We also walk through courtyards, the Dom Square, narrow alleyways, canals and wharves of this famous city.

Following our visit to the Cathedral of St Martin we explore one of the masterpieces of the early 20th century, the Rietveld Schröder House (1924), inscribed as a UNESCO landmark of 20th-century architecture and truly a high point of the De Stijl movement. Its clean, rectilinear lines, picked out by primary colours, will remind you of a Piet Mondrian painting.

In the afternoon we take a cruise along the Vecht River in the Vechtstreek region between the villages of Oud Zuijlen and Nieuwersleuis. The river banks are dotted with beautiful castles and lovely country houses from the ‘Golden Age’ that reflect the immense wealth generated by 17th-century Dutch maritime trade. (Overnight Amsterdam)

Day 16: Amsterdam

Van Gogh Museum

Canal tour of Amsterdam

Rembrandt’s House

Museum Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder (Our Lord in the Attic) and church organ performance (by special arrangement)

Rembrandt’s House

Evening concert (program to be confirmed in 2016)

This morning we visit the Van Gogh Museum. Its permanent collection includes more than 200 paintings, drawings and letters by van Gogh and provides an intimate documentation of the artist’s life and artistic development. Besides the work of Van Gogh, the museum has a rich collection of other 19th-century art, including Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces.

We follow our visit to the museum with a canal cruise, the best way to appreciate Amsterdam’s lovely canal houses with their large windows and distinctive gables that were to influence residences across Europe. These houses are glimpsed through the foliage of trees that line the canals. Some scholars believe that it was the tree-lined canal-side thoroughfares of Amsterdam that gave the French the idea of tree-lined boulevards.

We visit a grand residence, Rembrandt’s house, where the artist lived, worked and entertained patrons between 1639 and 1658. At the height of his success Rembrandt became an avid collector, but was forced to sell his extraordinary collection, which even included a Japanese suit of armour, when he lost popularity. The house now contains carefully researched items, giving a powerful sense of what it would have been like when the artist lived there. It has one of the world’s largest collections of his etchings, some of which are on display.

We then visit a very distinctive Amsterdam museum, the Museum of Our Dear Lord in the Attic (Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder). The attic of this bourgeois house conceals a secret Catholic church, built in 1663, when Catholics lost their right to open worship. We enjoy here a unique performance on the recently restored pipe organ. The refurbished rooms of this house museum convey an excellent impression of a typical 17th-century Dutch bourgeois interior like those depicted in paintings of interior and genre scenes. The rooms have heavy Dutch furniture, table clocks, paintings and religious artifacts, and there are two kitchens with Delft tiles, Holland’s answer to imported Chinese porcelain.

We complete our day with a concert (program to be confirmed in 2016). (Overnight Amsterdam) B

Day 17: Amsterdam – Apeldoorn – Otterlo – Amsterdam

Meals: Breakfast, Lunch

Kröller-Müller Museum & the Hoge Veluwe National Park

Palace & Gardens of the Palace Het Loo

This morning we drive to the Hoge Veluwe National Park. Here we tour the collection and sculpture garden of the Kröller-Müller Museum. Located amid the scenic woodland of the Hoge Veluwe, the Kröller-Müller Museum sits beautifully in its garden and surrounding woods. The museum collection focuses upon an extensive range of 275 works by Vincent van Gogh, including such famous works as his early Potato Eaters and his The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum (1888). You will also see works by Seurat, Redon, Braque, Picasso, Gris and Mondrian. The museum is surrounded by one of the largest sculpture gardens in Europe, with works by Marta Pan, Barbara Hepworth, Rodin, Jacques Lipchitz, Marino Marini, Moore and many others. Afterwards, we enjoy a light lunch and a visit of Palace Het Loo, a beautifully restored palace constructed by King William III at the end of the 17th century. It is surrounded by a lovely formal garden, a fine feature of which is a large group of impressive fountains. After exploring the palace and fountains we return to Amsterdam where the evening is at leisure.  (Overnight Amsterdam)

Day 18: Amsterdam

Meals: Breakfast, Dinner

The Rijksmuseum

Afternoon at leisure

Farewell Evening Meal

Today we explore the newly renovated Rijksmuseum, considered one of the most important museums in the world. The focus of our visit is, of course, the Dutch 17th century. We explore the huge Rembrandt collection, including such revolutionary works as The Night Watch, as well as masterpieces by Vermeer like The Milkmaid and View of Houses in Delft and Frans Hals portraits such as the so-called Merry Drinker. This collection also includes Jan Havicksz. Steen’s (ca. 1625-1679) genre scenes and the world’s greatest collection of Dutch landscapes, including masterly works by Jacob Isaacksz van Ruysdael (c. 1668 – c. 1670) and Salomon van Ruysdael, which were of fundamental importance to the development of English landscape and seascape artists like J.M.W. Turner and John Constable.

Your last afternoon in Amsterdam is at leisure. You may wish to visit the Stedelijk Museum. Amsterdam’s answer to MoMA or the Pompidou Centre, this museum of modern and contemporary art re-opened in 2012 after an eight-year renovation and extension. It has a particularly important collection of De Stijl paintings including those of Mondrian. This evening we gather for a farewell meal at a local restaurant. (Overnight Amsterdam)

Day 19: Depart Amsterdam

Meals: Breakfast

Airport transfer for participants travelling on the ASA ‘designated’ flight

Our tour finishes in Amsterdam. Those travelling on the ASA ‘designated’  flight will be transferred to Amsterdam Airport Schiphol for their flight home to Australia. If you have not taken these flights, ASA staff can help you with personal onward travel.

Day 1 Berlin

Arrive at any time. Guten Abend, and welcome to Berlin. Before getting too cozy at your hostel, grab some drinks and get to know your CEO and fellow travellers at a trendy local bar.

We highly recommend booking pre-tour accommodations in Berlin to experience all that this amazing city has to offer. There's lots to explore! Please speak to a G Adventures representative about booking accommodations in Berlin before Day 1 of this itinerary.

Day 2 Berlin

Enjoy free time to explore historic monuments, such as the Berlin Wall, Brandenburg Gate and the Checkpoint Charlie Museum. Experience Berlin's famous nightlife.

Day 3 Berlin/Amsterdam

Hop on a train and cross into the Netherlands.

Day 4 Amsterdam

Take an included bike tour around Amsterdam, then enjoy a free afternoon to explore.

Begin the day with bicycle tour of Amsterdam's city centre. Opt for a tour through the canals, hit up a museum, or wander through the Red Light District. As the day ends, head into a cozy bruin café or “eetcafé” (to the Dutch what pubs are to the British and Irish), local spots where friends gather to catch up over a beer or glass of house wine.

Day 5 Amsterdam/Bruges

Enjoy an orientation walk and free time to explore picturesque Bruges. Opt to visit a local chocolate shop or indulge in a Belgian waffle. Try a local brew on your Big Night Out with the group. Sante!

Jump on a bus from Amsterdam and head into Belgium, for a visit to the small medieval trading town of Bruges. Bruges is one of the best-preserved medieval cities in Europe and has remained practically unchanged since its heyday. Once inside the city walls, the town closes in around you with street after street of historic houses and a canal always nearby.

Day 6 Bruges/Paris

Hop on a bus to Paris. Tour ends on arrival.

This tour is expected to end at 6:30pm upon arrival in Paris. Please note that suggested arrival times might be impacted by traffic and unforeseen delays. Passengers should plan any onward travel after 10pm on this day. Please speak to a G Adventures representative about booking post-tour accommodation in Paris. Please note that you may be booked in a multi-share, same sex-dorm room for this night.