Amazing food and wine tours in Italy … Your custom tailored Italy tour of private cooking courses, wine, and olive oil tasting takes you through the sites and flavors of Italy, exploring illustrious dishes every step of the way. The enticing aroma of fresh pasta emanates from a small restaurant in an antique building. Wander a medieval town with a chef as your guide, stepping into historic cheese and butcher shops to find the perfect ingredients to use for cooking. Michelangelo’s David stares down at you from a stunning perch etched in brilliant marble and eternalized in a gallant pose. The Colosseum lights up the night with powerful arches standing as a reminder of Rome’s continuous history.
Fabulous Sardinia, a must visit for everyone. Remains of literally thousands of these stone towers scatter throughout Sardinia, most in complete ruin, but this is the best preserved and most complete. It is also the closest major one to Cagliari, and the best interpreted, with 30-minute tours and English-speaking guides. If you can see only one, see this one, which UNESCO cited as one of the best restorations anywhere in the Mediterranean. Timber found in the walls of the central tower was carbon dated to 1,500 BC, and the outer towers were built in the 11th or 12th century BC. You can go inside the tower, climbing to its upper reaches for a close-up view of the stacked dome made of dry stones without mortar. Spiral stairways inside its 1.8-meter walls connect the three stories, and as you climb through the passageways, you can appreciate the finesse of the engineering and workmanship these prehistoric people achieved. After exploring the towers and the foundations of the ancient village surrounding it, be sure to stop in the Casa Zapata Museum, in the village, where – along with other fascinating exhibits – you can see another nuraghe that has been excavated under the building. Here you get a birds-eye view of the construction from a walkway above the walls.
The Giara, located in the center-east of Sardinia, hosts a rare herd existing in Italy and in Europe of little wild horses and a park with cork oaks forests and Mediterranean maquis. This area is well known also for its archaeological monuments such as the famous Barumini nuraghe, so called “Su Nuraxi” declared Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The nuraghes are defensive towers to be found throughout the island, marked by their truncated cone shape and built with great blocks of roughly hewn stone, using the dry-stone technique. The nuraghi are defensive towers found throughout the island and are marked by their truncated cone shape; they are constructed in huge stone blocks according to the dry stone technique. Read more on MICE Italy.
Grotto di Ispinigoli, The are sparkly geological wonders to be found here, deep inside the island’s largest cave. This is also the site of the one of the most important archaeological discoveries of Nuragic and Phoenician artifacts. You can peer into the Abbisso delle Vergini (Abyss of the Virgins) or explore the eight kilometers worth of deep caves with a guide. The Mamoiada Masks Museum, The small town of Mamoiada is best known for its traditional masks, known as the ‘Mamuthones’ and the ‘Issohadores’. A visit to the Mamoida Masks Museum is the best way to learn about this fascinating aspect of Sardinian culture. If you can not be here for Carnival, celebrated from January 17 through to Mardi Gras every year, the museum is the next best thing.
The Sardinian capital Cagliari was built on seven hills. The oldest part of the city, Castello, lies on top of one of these hills, resulting in a stunning view of the Gulf of Cagliari, or Angels Gulf. Especially from Bastione San Remy, which was built in the typical local white lime-stone, you can see most other parts of Cagliari, as well as the Mediterranean Sea. When you have reached the top of Bastione San Remy, the beautiful Romanesque Cathedral of Cagliari is at walking distance, making the climb even more worthwhile.