Beyond Chocolate and Windmills: Cultural Treasures of the Low Countries

Highlights

• Join John Weretka to explore the art, architecture and music of Belgium and The Netherlands from the economic powerhouse of medieval Flanders through Holland’s golden age to masterly Art Nouveau and contemporary architecture in Brussels and Antwerp.
• Explore the great Gothic Town Halls, churches and merchant palaces of Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp.
• View masterpieces by Northern Renaissance painters such as Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Hans Memling, Hieronymus Bosch, Lucas Cranach, and Pieter Bruegel the Elder in some of Europe’s greatest museums.
• Feast your eyes on hundreds of masterpieces like van Eyck’s Adoration of the Lamb, a host of Brueghels, Rembrandt’s The Nightwatch, and Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, View of Delft and The Milkmaid.
• Visit the ‘Golden Cabinet. The Royal Museum at The Rockox House’ combined collection of Nicolaas Rockox, burgomaster of Antwerp and patron, and Antwerp Museum of Fine Arts including works by Jan Brueghel I, Peter Brueghel II, Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony Van Dyck, Jacques Jordaens, Jan Van Eyck and Hans Memling.
• See the work of the most significant sculptor in Belgium during the Renaissance, Jacques du Broeucq, trained in the Rome of Michelangelo, in Mons.
• Trace the career of Belgium’s great Surrealist artist, René Magritte, in his Brussels museum.
• Explore music through the ages in The Netherlands and Belgium, where a call to arms in a performance of Auber’s opera La muette de Portici spread to the streets igniting the independence movement.
• Take special Art Nouveau tours of Brussels and Antwerp, visiting seminal masterpieces by architects like Victor Horta and Paul Hankar.
• Visit the Neoclassical Château de Seneffe, designed by Dewez, with its remarkable silver collection and the Neogothic Château de Loppem, designed by the ‘Pugin of Belgium’, Bethune.
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What's this trip about?

Join music and art historian John Weretka for a journey from Brussels to Amsterdam, through history, art, architecture, music and design from the 14th century to the present. We enjoy music performances in historic settings and visit the world’s oldest and only carillon school in Mechelen. We encounter majestic Flemish Gothic architecture in Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp, Baroque merchant palaces in Amsterdam and Art Nouveau in Victor Horta’s Brussels. In public galleries such as Amsterdam’s newly restored Rijksmuseum and private collections such as Brussels’ Musée David et Alice van Buuren we view masterpieces by van Eyck, Bosch, Rubens, Rembrandt, Vermeer, van Gogh and Magritte. We begin in Brussels’ magnificent Grand Place, Royal Museums of Fine Art and Magritte collection and take a special Art Nouveau walk. We drive through the Meuse Valley to majestic gardens at Annevoie and Freÿr Castle and the picturesque cities of Dinant and Mons. We take a dedicated ‘Australian’ tour of Flanders’ battlefields. We explore cathedrals and town halls in Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp and Utrecht and see art treasures like Van Eyck’s vast Adoration of the Lamb and Michelangelo’s Bruges Madonna. We enjoy Vermeer’s View of Delft and Girl with a Pearl Earring in The Hague, Rembrandt’s The Night Watch in the Rijksmuseum, Brueghel’s rowdy Flemish crowd scenes and the Dutch landscapes of van Ruysdael. We explore Rembrandt’s Amsterdam house and two extensive van Gogh collections in his museum and the Kröller-Müller Museum, with its fine sculpture garden. Ghent’s Design Museum showcases glass, ceramic and furniture and we observe the conservation of tapestries at the Royal Manufacturers De Wit Mechelen. The Rietveld Schröder House is a Der Stijl masterpiece, the Museum aan de Stroom (MAS) a revolutionary exhibition space, and in Rotterdam we view cutting-edge contemporary architecture. We see Bruges’ canals through the literary eyes of Georges Rodenbach and the fields of Flanders through the writings of Emile Verhaeren and visit the quiet spaces of Modern Devotion spirituality in the beguinages of Bruges and Antwerp.

What's excluded

• International Airfare: Australia-Brussels, Amserdam-Australia
• Personal spending money
• Airport-hotel transfers if not travelling on the ASA ‘designated’ flights
• Luggage in excess of 20 kg (44 lbs)
• Travel Insurance.

Accommodation