Italy 7-Day Luxury Private Tour

Welcome to Italy. Your driver meets you at Rome Fiumicino airport and brings you to your hotel in the historic center, about 45 minutes away. Nothing is planned today, so settle in and rest after the flight. If you feel like a short walk later, Piazza Navona is lovely in the early evening, when the fountains are lit and the cafés fill up. Your local team is on hand for anything you need, and your guide will be in touch to go over the coming days. A gelato on the way back is almost compulsory.

Meet your private guide after breakfast and start at the Colosseum, ideally early before the day warms up. Walk through the arena where crowds once gathered for the games, then continue into the Roman Forum and up the Palatine Hill, where the emperors built their palaces above the city. Your guide brings the ruins to life without rushing you, with plenty of shade breaks and time for photographs from the hill over the Circus Maximus. The afternoon is free. You might stroll to the Pantheon and the Trevi Fountain, or simply rest at the hotel before dinner.

This morning your guide takes you through the Vatican Museums, past the map gallery and the Raphael Rooms to the Sistine Chapel and Michelangelo’s ceiling. Then step into St. Peter’s Basilica, with its great dome and Michelangelo’s Pietà, and out into the curving colonnades of St. Peter’s Square. The museums are closed on most Sundays, so we plan this visit around your dates. Comfortable shoes help, as the museums are large. The afternoon is yours for a long lunch or a rest, and tonight dinner is included at a well-chosen Roman restaurant.

After a relaxed breakfast your driver takes you to the station for the fast train to Florence, about an hour and a half, through the green hills of Umbria and Tuscany. Another driver meets you on arrival and brings you to your hotel. Take the afternoon at your own pace. A first walk might lead past the cathedral and its striped marble bell tower to the Ponte Vecchio, where goldsmiths have kept their shops since the sixteenth century. Stay for the evening light on the Arno, then find a quiet table for dinner nearby.

Your private guide meets you after breakfast for a walk through the heart of Renaissance Florence. Start at the Galleria dell’Accademia to see Michelangelo’s David, then continue to the Duomo square and Brunelleschi’s dome. Your guide points out the details most people walk past. The Uffizi can be added if you would like more time with Botticelli and Leonardo. After a free afternoon, join a cooking class in the early evening. A local chef shows you how to make fresh pasta and a classic Tuscan dish, and you sit down to dinner together.

Today your driver takes you south into the Chianti hills, a landscape of cypress-lined lanes, olive groves and stone farmhouses. Stop at a family olive-oil farm to see how the oil is made, then sit down to an included lunch at a country restaurant with views over the hills. In the afternoon continue to Siena, about an hour from Florence, where your guide walks you through the shell-shaped Piazza del Campo and into the striped cathedral with its inlaid marble floor. There is time for a slice of panforte or a coffee in the square. You are back in Florence by early evening, with no plans except dinner.

Enjoy a last breakfast in Florence. Depending on your flight time, there may be a chance for one more coffee in a piazza or a final look at the river before your private driver takes you to Florence airport, about 20 minutes away, or to Pisa airport, about an hour and a quarter. If your flight leaves from Rome, we can arrange the fast train back instead. Your hotel can store your luggage if you have a late flight. We say goodbye there and hope you leave with Rome and Tuscany still close at hand.