Courts of Northern Italy - Princely art of the Renaissance

Fly at c.10.30am (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Milan Linate. Drive to Fontanellato to visit the moated 13th-century castle with frescoes by Parmigianino. Continue to Parma where the first four nights are spent.

Parma is a beautiful city; the vast Palazzo della Pilotta houses an art gallery (Correggio, Parmigianino) and an important Renaissance theatre (first proscenium arch). In the afternoon, drive to Sabbioneta, an ideal Renaissance city on an almost miniature scale, built for Vespasiano Gonzaga in the 1550s; visit the ducal palace, theatre, and one of the world’s first picture galleries.

In the morning visit the Palazzo Te, the Gonzaga summer residence and major monument of Italian Mannerism, with lavish frescoes by Giulio Romano. In the afternoon, visit Alberti’s highly influential Early Renaissance church of S. Andrea and Giulio Romano’s uncharacteristically restrained cathedral. Visit also the Palazzo Ducale, a vast rambling complex, the aggregate of 300 years of extravagant patronage by the Gonzaga dynasty (Mantegna’s frescoes in the Camera degli Sposi, Pisanello frescoes, Rubens altarpiece).

Free morning. In the afternoon, see Correggio’s sophisticated set of allegorical lunettes en grisaille surrounding a celebration of Diana as the goddess of chastity and the hunt in the Camera di S. Paolo. Also visit the splendid Romanesque cathedral with illusionistic frescoes of a tumultuous heavenly host by Correggio.

Ferrara was the centre of the city-state ruled by the d’Este dynasty, whose court was one of the most lavish and cultured in Renaissance Italy. Pass the Castello Estense, a moated 15th-century stronghold, and the cathedral. The Palazzo Schifanoia is an Este retreat with elaborate astrological frescoes. First of three nights in Ravenna.

The last capital of the western Roman Empire and subsequently capital of Ostrogothic and Byzantine Italy, Ravenna possesses the world’s most glorious concentration of Early Christian and Byzantine mosaics. Visit the Basilica of S. Apollinare Nuovo with its mosaic Procession of Martyrs. Drive to Classe, Ravenna’s port, which was once one of the largest in the Roman world; virtually all that is left is the great Basilica di S. Apollinare. In the evening, there is a private visit to the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, lined with 5th-century mosaics, and the splendid centrally planned church of S. Vitale with 6th-century mosaics of Emperor Justinian and Empress Theodora.

Drive into the hills to Urbino, the beautiful little city of the Montefeltro dynasty. See the exquisite Gothic frescoes in the Oratorio di S. Giovanni. In the afternoon, visit the Palazzo Ducale, a masterpiece of architecture which grew over 30 years into the perfect Renaissance secular environment. See the beautiful studiolo of Federico of Montefeltro and excellent picture collection here (Piero, Raphael, Titian).

The Biblioteca Malatestiana in Cesena is a perfectly preserved Renaissance library established by Malatesta Novello, and contains over 300 valuable manuscripts. In Rimini visit the outstanding Tempio Malatestiano, designed by Leon Battista Alberti for the tyrant Sigismondo Malatesta, which contains superb decoration by Agostino di Duccio and particularly fine sculptural detail. Fly from Bologna, arriving at London Heathrow at c. 6.20pm.