Artistic endeavours

Explore some of the world’s great artistic centres with Cox & kings’ expert-led art treasures tours. Cox & Kings has launched its new Art Treasures brochure for 2009, featuring special arts tours to some of the world’s most important centres for music, art and architecture. Each tour is accompanied by an experienced lecturer who will develop the visitors’ understanding and appreciation of the destinations visited through a series of formal and informal talks.

The company’s collection of 20 Art Treasures tours covers destinations as diverse as Berlin, Bulgaria, Libya, Iran, Albania, Uzbekistan, Russia and Cambodia.

CHINA: THE THREE CAPITALS with Lars Tharp
21 March – 2 April from £3,095
The Three Capitals’ route covers major themes of Chinese history and legend, including the early Ming capital shift from Nanjing to Beijing, the epic struggles of the 19th century and China’s emergence into the 20th century. Continue to Taiwan to see the Imperial collections taken from Beijing’s Forbidden City by Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist army, now forming the core of Taipei’s National Palace Museum.

The tour will be led by historian and archaeologist Lars Tharp of the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow, previously a director and auctioneer at Sothebys who specialised in European ceramics, Chinese ceramics and Oriental works of art.

SYRIA: ANCIENT CIVILISATIONS with Chris Bradley
20 – 28 November 2009 from £1,575
This tour offers an insight into Syria’s fascinating history, which has been influenced by the many civilisations that have held sway in this region. Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, early Christians, Crusaders and Arabs have all left their mark here with temples, arcades, churches, castles and mosques.

Chris Bradley has been a professional tour guide and lecturer for 30 years specialising in the history and culture of the Middle East and North Africa. He has written guidebooks to Libya, Yemen, the Red Sea, Cairo and Jordan.

TREASURES OF HISTORIC PERSIA with Graham Greenfield
3 – 16 October 2009 from £2,425
Iran has a length of history virtually unequalled by any other country, and this tour will look at the monuments of its greatest ages. From the ruins of Persepolis to the arrival of Islam under its different rulers and the Qajars of the 19th century: all left buildings and arts of great beauty.

Graham Greenfield studied Architecture and then Fine Art, and has works in the Tate Gallery and regional museums. He has travelled extensively in the Middle East and Central Asia and lectures at the Tate, the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Royal Academy of Arts.

HALLE & HANDEL with Daniel Snowman
8 – 12 June 2009 from £1,125
2009 marks the 250th anniversary of the death of George Frederic Handel, the most celebrated composer of Italian opera of his day. Handel is also known for writing the most famous of all oratorios, Messiah (1741), and occasional pieces such as Water Music (1717) and Music for the Royal Fireworks (1749). This tour celebrates the great composer with a visit to his place of birth, Halle. The annual Handel festival will take on special significance in 2009 and the tour will include two festival concerts.

Daniel Snowman is a writer, lecturer and broadcaster whose books include close up portraits of the Amadeus Quartet and Placido Domingo, and a study of the cultural impact of the ‘Hitler Emigres’. His book on the social and cultural history of opera will be published in autumn 2009.

A VIENNESE CHRISTMAS with Elizabeth Gordon
21 – 27 December 2009 from £1,995
Vienna is a perfect place to celebrate Christmas, and this tour combines the most important sites of the city with day excursions to the Alps, the Vienna Woods and along the Danube Valley. Vienna is home to sumptuous Baroque palaces such as Schönbrunn, the Belvedere and Palais Schwarzenberg as well as elegant and innovatory Secessionist buildings of Art Nouveau.

Elizabeth Gordon lectures in Art History in both the UK and the US and has accompanied many art and music tours in Europe.

ATHENS & ISTANBUL: THE GLORY OF BYZANTIUM with Eileen Rubery
18 – 25 May 2009 from £2,275
This tour explores the religious and secular aspects of Byzantine art, also considering how earlier classical heritage influenced Byzantium, which itself then influenced Islamic culture. See museums crammed with jewellery, icons, silk, mosaics and manuscripts; monasteries decorated with golden mosaic narrative cycles and images of Christ and the Virgin Mary, and the stunning church of Hagia Sofia in Istanbul.

Dr Eileen Rubery researches and lectures on Early Christian and Byzantine art and is a part time tutor at Cambridge and Oxford Universities Institute of Continuing Education.

BERLIN: THE FALL OF THE WALL with Sir Christopher Mallaby
7 – 11 November from £1,245
The fall of the Berlin Wall on 9th November 1989 will always be remembered as a symbol for the end of the cold war. Exactly 20 years later, this tour includes many of the sights associated with this historic event, and includes opportunities to visit many of the city’s great museums.

Christopher Mallaby was a British diplomat from 1959 to 1996. He worked at the British Embassy in Moscow and Bonn, as well as the British Mission in West Berlin, and was the British Ambassador to Germany at the time the wall came down.

For more information, log on to Coxandkings.co.uk.