Italy Travel Arts Guide - Guide for Italy Cruise Shore Excursions and Italy Tours

The following is a city-by-city guide to some of Italy's art exhibitions happening January, February March Winter and Spring 2011. If you are on an Italy tour, Italy cruise or traveling in Italy you may want to add one of these Italy art exhibits to your Italy travel itinerary or Italy shore excursion.

ALBA - Fondazione Ferrero: Giorgio Morandi, The Essence of Landscape; 70 works; until January 16.

BARLETTA - Palazza Marra: Giuseppe De Nittis, 43 engravings; until January 16.

FLORENCE - Palazzo Vecchio: For The Love of God, Damien Hirst's famous diamond-encrusted skull in only third outing since creation in 2007; until May 1.

- Palazzo Strozzi: 'Bronzino, Painter and Poet at the Medici Court'; 90 works in world's first monographic show; to January 23.

- Palazzo Pitti: Vinum Nostrum. The Art, Science and Myths of Wine in Civilisation; from prehistoric winegrowing to Dionysus cult, Etruscan, Roman use; show features oldest surviving wine container, on loan from Georgia; until April 30.

GENOA - Palazzo Ducale: 'Mediterranean, From Courbet to Monet and Matisse'; 80 mostly Impressionist works including Renoir, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Munch; until May 1.

MILAN - Palazzo Reale: 'Salvador Dali', The Dream Draws Near'; 50 works, until January 30.

- Museo Poldi Pezzoli: Sandro Botticelli, all of his works in Lombardy museums brought together for first time; until February 28.

PADUA - Palazzo Zabarella: "From Canova to Modigliani, the Face of the 19th Century"; 100 portraits and sculptures; until February 27.

PASSARIANO (UDINE) - Villa Manin: 'Edvard Munch and the Spirit of the North'; 122 works; until March 6.

REGGIO EMILIA - city centre: 150 huge Italian flags marking 150th anniversary of Italian unity; until June 2.

RIMINI - Castel Sismondo: The Marvellous Years: Impressionism; 100 works from international museums including Monet and Pissarro, Sisley and Degas, Bazille and Renoir, Cezanne and Guillaumin, Morisot and Fantin-Latour, Gauguin and Van Gogh; until March 27.

- same venue: Caravaggio's first religious painting, The Ecstasy of St Francis, back in Italy for first time in 25 years from Wadsworth Museum, Hartford, as well as several contemporaries; until March 27.

ROME - Scuderie del Quirinale: '1861: The Painters of the Risorgimento', war scenes, Garibaldi's Red Shirts, leaders' portraits; to January 16.

- Vittoriano: 'Vincent Van Gogh, Timeless Landscape, Modern City'; 110 masterpieces in first major Rome show in 22 years; until January 30.

- Musei Capitolini: Leonardo da Vinci's Portrait of a Musician (1490), loaned by Milan's Biblioteca Ambrosiana for first time ever; until February 27.

- Museo Fondazione Roma: Rome and the Ancient World, more than 140 paintings, sculptures, other works including loans from Prado, Louvre, Hermitage, Victoria and Albert Museum showing how classical works fired the imagination of 18th-century Rome; until March 6.

- Palazzo Venezia: The Two Empires, The Eagle and the Dragon; more than 400 works on Roman (up to Trajan) and Chinese (Qin and Han) empires, spanning second century BC to fourth century AD; marks Year of Chinese Culture in Italy and is paired with other exhibit at Roman Forum; until February 6.

- Palazzo delle Esposizioni: The City of the Gods, 450 artefacts from ancient Mexican site of Teotihuacan (2nd-century BC to 5th-century AD), once the largest city in pre-Columbian Americas; until February 27.

- Galleria Borghese: Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Other Renaissance; 45 works from major international museums; until February 13.

- Chiostro del Bramante: Greats from the Veneto, 15th- 18th Century; Bellini, Lotto, Titian, Veronese, Tiepolo, Canaletto; 80 works from Accademia Carrara in Bergamo; until January 30.

SAN MARINO - Palazzo Sums: 25 Impressionist works including Monet, Cezanne and Renoir; until March 27, in tandem with Rimini show.

TRIESTE - Castello di Miramare: Giorgio De Chirico, 70 paintings and 20 sketches; until February 27.

TURIN - Palazzo Reale, Palazzo Chiablese, Castello di Racconigi: "Vittorio Emanuele II: The Gentleman King"; new documents, pictures on life of Italy's first post-unification king; until March 13.

VENICE - Palazzo Grimani: Hieronymous Bosch, Vision of the afterlife (1500-1503), Triptych of Saint Liberata (1505) and Triptych of the Hermits (1510); until March 20.

Click Italy tour packages for guided tours of Italy or click Italy travel packages for independent Italy travel deals.  For Mediterranean cruises to Italy ports call and for cruises from Italy click Italy cruises.

Italy Arts Guide: CIty by CIty Guide to Italy Art Exhibitions

The following is a city-by-city guide to some of Italy's art exhibitions:

BASSANO DEL GRAPPA - Museo Civico: 22 works by 16th-century master Jacopo da Ponte, show marks 500th anniversary of birth; until June 13.

BRESCIA - Museo di Santa Giulia: Inca, Origins and Mysteries of the Civilisation of Gold; 250 artefacts, until June 27.

CASTELFRANCO VENETO - Casa del Giorgione: home-town show marking 500th anniversary of Giorgione's death; 130 works by Veneto painter and other Renaissance masters including Bellini, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Titian; until April 11.

COMO - Villa Olmo: Pieter Paul Rubens, 25 works plus 40 by painters of his circle including Van Dyck, Jordaens, Thulden; until July 25:

FERRARA - Palazzo Diamanti: 20th Century Masterpieces from the Maeght Foundation; some 100 works by Matisse, Kandinsky, Chagall, Miro', Leger, Calder, Giacometti, Bonnard, Braque and others who showed their work at the gallery of Aime' Maeght in Paris; until June 2.

FORLI' - Musei di San Domenico: Flowers: Nature and Symbol from the 17th Century to Van Gogh; 100 works from international museums including Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Delacroix, Courbet, Monet, Renoir, Cezanne and Klimt; until June 20.

GENOA - Villa del Principe: Genoa's most celebrated palazzo celebrates its reopening with a show gathering 80 landscapes in the Doria Pamphilij collections including Caravaggio's Rest on the Flight into Egypt; until September 26.

MILAN - Palazzo Reale: Goya and modern masters, 184 works by Spanish great and later artists including Miro', Picasso, Bacon and Pollock; until June 27.

- Triennale: Roy Lichtenstein, 100 works from the Guggenheim, Whitney, Vienna's Moderner Kunst museums; until May 30.

- Palazzo Reale: Egon Schiele and his Viennese contemporaries; 80 works on loan from Vienna's Leopold Museum; until June 6.

NAPLES - six city museums: The Return of the Baroque, 350 works and 27 tours; until April 11.

PARMA - Three city venues show Parma University's huge archive on 20th century Italian art; Palazzo del Governatore (art, photography), Galleria San Ludovico (fashion) and Scuderie della Pilotta (architecture and design), until April 25.

PIACENZA - Fondazione Ricci Oddi: 19th-Century Tuscan Painting, Macchiaioli and beyond, 40 works; until May 2.

POMPEII - Entrance to site: exhibition on city's final day on August 24, AD 79; scale of destruction; history of digs; current risks from Vesuvius; present show until August 1 but will later be part of a permanent display introducing visitors to the site.

RAGUSA - Palazzo Garofalo: Ten Ancient Greek helmets loaned for first time ever by Pergamon Museum in Berlin, some from Olympia, flanked by five similar artefacts hauled up from Sicilian waters and normally on show in regional museums; until April 28.

ROME - Palazzo Massimo: Treasures from Morgantina; 16 ancient Greek masterpieces from southern Italian site returned by Met; until May 23.

- Musei Capitolini: The Age of Conquest: The Lure of Greek Art in Rome; masterpieces looted from Greece between the third and first centuries BC; until September 5.

- Scuderie del Quirinale: Caravaggio, 24 masterpieces from Italy and abroad including Musicians from the Met, Lute Player from the Hermitage, Amor Vincit Omnia from Berlin, Uffizi's Bacchus, David With the Goliath's Head from Borghese, Fruit Bowl from Biblioteca Ambrosiana; till June 13, first of string of events marking 400 years since his death.

- Fondazione Roma Museo: Edward Hopper, 170 works mostly from New York's Whitney Museum including The Sheridan Theatre, New York Interior, Pennsylvania Coal Town, South Carolina Morning, Summer Interior, Morning Sun, Second Story Sunlight, A Woman in the Sun and Girlie Show; until June 13.

- Vittoriano: From Corot to Manet, The Symphony of Nature; 170 Impressionist works including Corbet, Boudin, Pissaro, Sisley; until June 29.

- Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo: The Secret of Marble, Painted Marble From Ascoli Satriano; 11 Ancient Greek works from the ancient city of Ausculum in Apulia including griffins returned by Getty Museum in 2007; until April 18.

ROVERETO - Mart: From the Stage to the Canvas, 200 paintings depicting theatre productions by such artists as David, Delacroix, Fussli, Degas, Ingres and many others; until May 23.

SIENA - Santa Maria della Scala, Opera della Metropolitana and Pinacoteca Nazionale: 'From Jacopo della Quercia to Donatello, Early Renaissance Art in Siena'; 300 works including 20 polyptychs reconstructed for the occasion, 25 restored works, loans from around the world; until July 10.

TIVOLI - Villa Adriana: Show charting rise and fall of Hadrian's Villa; dozens of artefacts returned from collections around the world; until November 1.

TREVISO - Casa dei Carraresi: The Secrets of the Forbidden City, Matteo Ricci at the Ming Court; until May 9.

VIGEVANO - Castello Visconteo: Leonardo da Vinci's output during his time in Lombardy; 'virtual codex' on flying, botany, mathematics, weaponry, astronomy, engineering and architecture; until April 5.

Italy Travel Fall 2008 - Arts Guide

Rome, October 24, 2008 - The following is a city-by-city guide to some of Italy's top art exhibitions:

BOLOGNA - Pinacoteca Nazionale: Amico Aspertini (1474-1552), A Bizarre Artist in the Age of Durer and Raphael; until January 11.

BRESCIA - Museo di Santa Giulia: Van Gogh, Masterpieces from the Kroeller-Mueller Museum in Otterlo, Netherlands; until January 25.

CORTONA - Etruscan Academy Museum (MAEC): 30 masterpieces of Etruscan art from Russia's Hermitage museum including the only Etruscan bronze funerary urn ever found; until January 6.

FERMO - Palazzo dei Priori: leading Marche Renaissance painter Vincenzo Pagani and influences including Raphael, Carlo Crivelli; until November 9.

FLORENCE - Palazzo Strozzi: Caterina and Maria de' Medici, Women in Power; October 24-February 8.

- Galleria Palatina: Flemish Artists in Florence, 1430-1530; the likes of van Eyck, Memling and Leida compared to contemporaries Raphael, Botticelli, Castagno and Ghirlandaio; until October 26.

- Palazzo Pitti: The Medicis And Science; large collection of scientific writings and tools; until January 11.

Accademia di Belle Arti: Giovanni Fattori Past and Present, 130 works; until November 23.

- Archaeological Museum: retrospective on British sculptor Matthew Spender, who has lived in Tuscany for the last 40 years; until December 30.

GENOA - Palazzo Ducale: 'Lucio Fontana Light and Colour'; until February 15.

MAMIANO DI TRAVERSETOLO (PARMA) - Fondazione Magnani-Rocca: Giovanni Fattori, The Poetry of Truth; until November 30.

MANTUA - Ducal Palace; first major show on Jacopo Alari-Bonacorsi aka Antico, an acclaimed sculptor in Mantegna's time; bronzes of mythological figures and busts of Roman rulers loaned by the Louvre, the Met, the Victor & Albert, the Bargello and Viennese museums; from Modena's Galleria Estense, celebrated Vaso Gonzaga made for wedding of Gianfrancesco Gonzaga; until January 6.

MILAN - Palazzo Reale: Georges Seurat, Paul Seignac and the neo-Impressionists; over 100 works from major international museums; until January 25.

- same venue: Tiepolos and Canalettos from the Terruzzi Collection; until January 11.

- same venue: biggest-ever retrospective on Naive artist Antonio Ligabue; 250 works until October 26.

- Arnaldo Pomodoro Foundation: 'Great Works 1972-2008'; until March 22.

- Brera Academy and Palazzo Stelline (Credito Valtellinese): Mario Schifano 1943-1998, Selected Works; major retrospective marking 10th anniversary of artist's death, previously at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome; until February 1.

MONTECATINI TERME - ex-Terme Tamerici: Boldini Mon Amour; 180 works by Parisian School portrait painter Giovanni Boldini (1842-1931), many unseen including three portraits of secret lover Countess Rastj; until December 30.

NAPLES - Archaeological Museum: Herculaneum: Three Centuries of Discoveries; until April 2009.

- Madre modern art gallery: Robert Rauschenberg, Travelling 1970-76; until January 19.

NUORO - MAN gallery: Man Ray, 300 pieces from his private collection; October 24-January 6.

PALERMO - Palazzo dei Normanni: The Fantastic World of Picasso, 66 works until March 8.

PARMA - National Gallery: 'Correggio', biggest exhibit on once-neglected artist in years; around 80 works flanked by 40 by contemporaries, plus chance to see three most important frescos up close in city churches; until January 25.

PERUGIA - Palazzo Baldeschi al Corso; From Corot to Picasso and Fattori to De Pisis, modern Italian and European art from two private collections including Monet, Van Gogh and Modigliani; until January 15.

REGGIO EMILIA - Palazzo Magnani and other venues; Matilda and the Treasure of Canossa, 200 works of Medieval art; until January 11.

ROME - Chiostro del Bramante: The Myth of Julius Caesar, first ever show focusing on him alone; 200 items from ancient times until the 20th century; until April 5.

- Vittoriano: Picasso 1917-1937, the Harlequin of Art; more than 180 works in first major Rome show on Spanish artist in 55 years; until February 8.

- Scuderie del Quirinale: Giovanni Bellini, biggest show in 50 years on artist Durer called 'the best of them all'; until January 11.

- Palazzo delle Esposizioni: Etruscans, The Ancient Metropoli of Latium; until January 9.

- Colosseum: Ruins and Rebirths, 80 works charting development of heritage protection; until February 15.

- Fondazione Memmo: Basquiat, 40 works until February 1.

- Castel Sant'Angelo: The Wolf And The Sphinx, Rome and Egypt From History To Myth; until November 9.

- Gagosian Gallery: Georg Baselitz, Remix series; until November 8.

- Museo dell'Ara Pacis: Bruno Munari, retrospective on artist and designer; until February 22.

SIENA - Piazza del Duomo and other city sites: Mario Ceroli, Forms In Movement; giant works by avant-garde sculptor; until November 7.

STRA - Villa Pisani: 70 paintings and monumental works by sculptor Mimmo Paladino, hand-picked and arranged by the artist in the historic villa's magnificent grounds; until November 2.

TIVOLI - Villa Adriana: Between Light and Darkness; Ancient Roman funerary beds including bone-decorated bed from Aquinum and one found on Rome's Esquiline Hill; until November 2.

TRENTO - Castello del Buonconsiglio; first major show on relatively unknown Renaissance sculptor Andrea Briosco aka Il Riccio; until November 2.

- same venue: Rembrandt and Masterpieces of European Graphics; until November 2.

TREVISO - Casa dei Carraresi: Canaletto, Venice and its Splendours; until April 5.

TURIN - San Paolo Foundation: Heavenly Empire, From Terracotta Army To Silk Road; imperial Chinese works from Qi, Han and Tang dynasties (3rd century BC to 11th century AD); until November 16.

VENICE - Biennale venues including Arsenale and Padiglione Italia: 11th International Architecture Exhibition from 56 countries entitled Out There: Architecture Beyond Building; 23 installations at Arsenale; experimental work of 55 international firms at the Padiglione as well as a survey of the Masters of the Experiment, five visionaries including Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid; also, Uneternal City, Thirty Years of Uninterrupted Rome, 12 designs for a possible 'new Rome'; plus 13 exhibitions around Venice by visiting countries and 24 collateral events; until November 23.

- Fondazione Cini: New Graphic Design Japan; until November 2.

- Palazzo Grassi: Italics, Italian contemporary art 1968-2008; until January 11.

VICENZA - Palazzo Barbaran: 'Palladio 500', 200 works including 30 models of Palladian architecture plus art by Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian celebrate Andrea Palladio on the 500th anniversary of his birth; until January 9, when exhibit moves to London (Royal Academy of Arts, 31 January - 13 April 2009) and on to Washington in autumn 2009.

VIGEVANO - Castello: Futurism and Modernity, mainly local artists; until December 14.

VITERBO - Rocca Albertoz Etruscan Museum: Celtic, Etruscan and other pre-Roman artefacts showing their interpretations of the night sky; show includes Celtic ceremonial brooch from Brno, Czech Republic; bronze Etruscan statuette of 'haruspex' (entrail-gazing priest); and famous 'Liver of Piacenza', a bronze model of the sheep's organ used by Etruscans to tell the future; until October 26.