Theatre Tours Music Tours Opera / Ballet Tours Festival Tours European Tours

European Theatre Tours

London Arts Discovery, in recent years has combined its expert British theatre tours with highly popular three to four night extensions to the European continent, as add-ons to our London tours. We are now also developing these as complete seven or eight night tours in themselves, and have begun to explore some of the most exciting destinations - Berlin, Paris, Prague, Vienna - in a way that combines the arts and life of the present with the culture of the past.

Performances remain the core of what we do in our four chosen great cities, but we break the language-barrier by concentrating on opera, dance and concerts by some of the world's greatest orchestras, and by redefining 'performance' to include great architecture, painting, landscape and food.

There's more. We have also expanded our summer festivals programme beyond Edinburgh, with tours to Aix-en-Provence in July. From 2001, we're adding marvellous Avignon and Orange to Aix in July, and offering two brand-new destinations: Munich/Salzburg in July and August, and the Verona Arena in July and August.

Great Cities of Europe - Year Round

Paris - Plus

Still the world's most beautiful big city, and impossible to tire of. London Arts has been taking tours to Paris almost as long as to London - particularly since the Channel Tunnel brought the two capitals within a comfortable three-hour train ride. The wealth of treasures is unsurpassed. All tours include performances at both of the two great Parisian opera houses - Garnier and Bastille - for opera and dance. A private backstage visit at the Bastille is a major highlight, together with guided tours of the main museums such as the Louvre and the Orsay and some of Paris's superb small private museums such as the Jacquemart-André and the Maillol. There is plenty of time for individual sightseeing and shopping, plus one or two days out of the city, perhaps to visit Monet's garden, Fontainebleau Château and forest, the cathedrals of Chartres or Rheims, or Champagne country, including a tasting at a private Champagne producer, and lunch at a Michelin-starred restaurant in the countryside.

Prague (with Cesky Krumlov)

We began running tours to Prague almost as soon as it reopened to the world - it is our most popular Continental destination after Paris. Everything you have heard about it is true. As an architectural ensemble, despite a tormented history, it is as miraculous as Venice: Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo merge effortlessly into Art Nouveau, Cubism and Art Deco. As a musical centre, it is enthusiastic and lively, with young players literally bursting on to the streets, and the spirit of Mozart invoked over all. The three theatres and two concert halls are all beautiful, and we hear performances in at least three. We also explore how the Czechs survived half a millennium of oppression by their neighbours and what, ten years after the Velvet Revolution, it means to be Czech today, in conversation with a resident of the city who has lived through the changes. Our day trip is to the tiny painted Bohemian city of Cesky Krumlov, whose huge fortress contains the best-preserved, working baroque theatre in the world.

Berlin (with Potsdam and Dresden)

Our fizziest new destination, a metropolis reborn. London Arts ran a highly successful trip to the German capital for Washington Opera last year, and returns with Manhattan Theatre Club this spring. Few cities are so richly endowed in the performing and visual arts: six orchestras, three opera houses, historic collections housed in classic and state-of-the art museums. We shall enjoy many of these, in private tours or individual free time, and take two spectacular day trips: to Potsdam, 'the Prussian Arcadia'; and to the great Saxon city of Dresden, now recovering its splendour after the disasters of the 20th century. We discuss Berlin's tragic role in those times and visit two contemporary architectural masterpieces - the Reichstag and the Jewish Museum - which have been inspired by the need to secure a civilised future while never forgetting the past.

Vienna (with the Danube Valley)

The heartland of Western classical music, Vienna remains a grand, superbly well preserved 19th and early 20th century city. Performances at the State Opera and one of the historic concert halls are the highlights of our tours, together with the great palace of Schonbrunn and the Habsburg collection of Old Master paintings in the Kunsthistorisches Museum. But the city of Beethoven, Schubert, Freud and Klimt is also about self-indulgence. Vienna is wonderfully walkable and compact: we guide you to the best coffee-houses and cake shops. We take a day trip to the great abbey of Melk on the Danube, Europe's greatest river, and sail down one of its most glorious stretches between vineyards, castles and little riverside towns. We look at contemporary Vienna and talk to a leading journalist of the post-war generation about the myths and realities of Austria's troubled past and her identity crisis today. We end with a relaxed farewell supper at one of the vineyards between the edge of the city and the Vienna Woods.