Florence & Rome: Behind the Scenes of Art Restoration & Conservation

October 18 – 25, 2025

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Art Destinations Cultural Heritage Travel

 In Florence, Rome, and the Vatican, go behind the scenes in Italy’s leading art conversation and restoration laboratories

Travel with Frank Dabell, a renowned art historian and lifelong Rome resident to see how skilled experts are protecting the rich legacy of Medici and papal patronage on an exclusive journey. In Florence, delight in private looks at the Uffizi’s restoration labs and the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, where master craftsmen preserve the Medici’s Renaissance vision by creating “paintings” from precious stones, and witness the meticulous restoration of the Battistero di San Giovanni’s shimmering dome mosaics, where Dante was baptized.

Masterpieces Revealed: From Florence to the Eternal City

In Siena, see Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s vivid 14th-century Effects of Good and Bad Government frescoes restored after centuries, a monumental depiction of justice and tyranny still resonating today. In Rome, gain rare access to the Vatican’s conservation labs, where modern science meets Renaissance ingenuity, and marvel at the restoration of Pietro Cavallini’s 1293 Last Judgment fresco, whose groundbreaking naturalism paved the way for the Renaissance.

Highlights

Lecturer

Frank Dabell

Lecturer

Frank Dabell studied at Oxford University and The Courtauld Institute of Art at London University. As a Fellow of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Frank regularly lectured and gave talks. He is the former Director of the Piero Corsini Gallery in New York, and lectured at the City College of New York. He has led tours for major museums on journeys throughout Europe and North Africa. He has published extensively since the mid-1980s and is completing a book on Piero della Francesca. Frank was born in Paris and lives in Rome, where he teaches art history at Temple University’s Study Abroad program, and at the University of Rome.

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