Make your way through five distinctly different countries in Central and Eastern Europe, encountering capitals of history and culture from Warsaw and Vienna to Budapest, and exploring World Heritage sites from Krakow to Prague. 

Starting at: $7,097 * Price includes special offer * Includes airfare, taxes & all fees Make a Reservation Ask Us A Question or Call 855-330-1542
Evening in the main square of Krakow
Evening in the main square of Krakow
Kraków's engaging main square
Kraków's engaging main square
Interior of St. Mary's Basilica, Kraków
Interior of St. Mary's Basilica, Kraków
Poland's Wieliczka Salt Mines, a World Heritage site
Poland's Wieliczka Salt Mines, a World Heritage site
Old Town Warsaw, a World Heritage Site
Old Town Warsaw, a World Heritage Site
Budapest, one of Europe's most beautiful cities, situated along the Danube River
Budapest, one of Europe's most beautiful cities, situated along the Danube River
The Matthias Church, located on the Pest side of Budapest
The Matthias Church, located on the Pest side of Budapest
Fishermen's Bastion, Budapest
Fishermen's Bastion, Budapest
Interior of Dohany Street Synagogue, Budapest
Interior of Dohany Street Synagogue, Budapest
St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna
St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna
Vienna's State Opera House
Vienna's State Opera House
Schönbrunn Palace outside Vienna
Schönbrunn Palace outside Vienna
Charles Bridge, Prague
Charles Bridge, Prague
Prague's astronomical clock near the main square
Prague's astronomical clock near the main square
Prague Castle
Prague Castle
Gothic mosaic facade, St. Vitus Cathedral, Prague
Gothic mosaic facade, St. Vitus Cathedral, Prague
Jewish Ceremonial Hall, now part of the Jewish Museum, Prague
Jewish Ceremonial Hall, now part of the Jewish Museum, Prague
The legendary Charles Bridge, Prague
The legendary Charles Bridge, Prague

Old World Europe

Poland, Hungary, Austria, and the Czech Republic

16 days from $7,097 | includes airfare, taxes and all fees

Make your way through five distinctly different countries in Central and Eastern Europe, encountering capitals of history and culture from Warsaw and Vienna to Budapest, and exploring World Heritage sites from Krakow to Prague. 

or Call 855-330-1542

Tour Details

WHAT OUR TRAVELERS SAY

The capitals of Old World Europe tour was the most thought-provoking and emotionally intense tour I've ever experienced. It will live on in my memory after the others have faded.

- Sylvia L.

Our trip was an outstanding learning experience that came without the stress of planning and executing a 15-day tour through five countries. Smithsonian did everything for us!

- Tom M.

The Old World Europe tour gave us an intimate view of the history and culture of eastern Europe. We learned a lot and enjoyed every minute. 

- Kate H.

The total Smithsonian experience was excellent from the tour director to the hotels, itinerary, and logistics. We wouldn't hesitate to use Smithsonian again.

- Ken & Karen O.

JOURNEYS DISPATCHES

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Accommodations

* Click on hotel name to visit hotel web-site.

Polonia Palace Hotel

Warsaw, Poland

Opened more than 90 years ago, the French-style Polonia Palace Hotel preserves the unique characteristics of early 20th-century architecture while incorporating many contemporary features. The conveniently located hotel stands near the Palace of Culture and Science and numerous shopping areas. Hotel amenities include a restaurant, bar, Fitness Center, and sauna. Each of the 206 air-conditioned rooms come fully equipped with a private bath with hair dryer, in-room safe, mini-bar, TV, and phone.

Hotel Pod Roza

Krakow, Poland

Located in the center of Old Town on beloved Florianska Street, this is Krakow's oldest hotel. In-deed, the neo-classical building's origins date to the 14th century as a private home and it became a hotel in the 17th century. The hotel offers a restaurant, café, bar, currency exchange, and shops. Your room features contemporary amenities, including private bath with hair dryer, mini-bar, Internet access, TV, and phone.

Hilton Budapest

Budapest, Hungary

A Gothic building incorporating part of a 16th-century Jesuit college and a 13th-century monastery, the Budapest Hilton is located in the Castle District of Buda, near Fisherman's Bastion and Matthias Church. Hotel amenities include two restaurants and a lounge, Fitness Center, casino, and elevator service. Your climate-controlled room has a private bath with hair dryer, in-room safe, mini-bar, Internet access, TV, and phone.

Hilton Vienna Plaza

Vienna, Austria

The Vienna Plaza is located on the famous Ringstrasse, opposite the Vienna Stock Exchange and within walking distance of the city center. Among its facilities are a restaurant, bar, health club, sauna, massage treatments, whirlpool, solarium, and elevator and laundry service. Your air-conditioned room has a private bathroom with hair dryer, mini-bar, in-room safe, Internet access, TV, and phone.

Grand Hotel Bohemia

Prague, Czech Republic

Ideally located in the center of Prague next to Powder Tower and within walking distance of Old Town Square and Old Town Hall, the 78-room Grand Hotel Bohemia is just steps from Wenceslas Square. The hotel offers a restaurant, bar, and coffee shop. Air-conditioned guest rooms have private bath with hair dryer, in-room safe, mini-bar, Internet access, TV, and phone.

Activity Level

Expectations: One of our Classic Land Journeys, this tour features five countries in Central and Eastern Europe with visits to cities, iconic sites, and hidden gems. Although comprehensive, it is not rushed, but well paced and finely tuned. Expectations include longer touring days with many full-day motor coach excursions and six different hotels. Most full-day excursions are from four to six hours; seven afternoons are at leisure and there is one free day in Budapest. Expect standing and walking for long periods of time during city tours, museum visits, and outdoor activities; daily walks of up to three miles, sometimes over difficult terrain that includes cobblestones and city hills, and uneven pavement; stairs without handrails and absence of elevators; and longer walks to get to city centers where coaches are prohibited. There are three longer coach rides of approximately three to six and a half hours duration. 

Appropriate for: Travelers who are physically fit and comfortable with longer days of touring (both walking tours and coach time).

Tour Extension

Berlin Post-Tour Extension — 4 Days, 3 Nights 

Explore the cosmopolitan German capital – a city of art, culture, and history – as you wish. Your tour extension cost includes:

  • Rail transportation Prague/Berlin
  • Three (3) nights accommodations at Hotel am Steinplatz (Superior First Class)
  • Meal inclusions: three (3) breakfasts
  • Transfer from rail station and to airport

Testimonials

WHAT OUR TRAVELERS SAY

The capitals of Old World Europe tour was the most thought-provoking and emotionally intense tour I've ever experienced. It will live on in my memory after the others have faded.

- Sylvia L.

Our trip was an outstanding learning experience that came without the stress of planning and executing a 15-day tour through five countries. Smithsonian did everything for us!

- Tom M.

The Old World Europe tour gave us an intimate view of the history and culture of eastern Europe. We learned a lot and enjoyed every minute. 

- Kate H.

The total Smithsonian experience was excellent from the tour director to the hotels, itinerary, and logistics. We wouldn't hesitate to use Smithsonian again.

- Ken & Karen O.
Reading List

Highly Recommended

Budapest 1900: A Historical Portrait of a City and Its Culture
By: John Lukacs
"Lukacs's book is a lyrical, sometimes dazzling, never merely nostalgic evocation of a glorious period in the city's history. . . . {His} true sympathy lies . . . not with the famous expatriates, but with the writers and intellectuals who lived and died at home: the poets Endre Ady and Mihaly Babits; the novelists Ferenc Herczeg, Sandor Hunyady, Frigyes Karinthy, Dezso Kosztolanyi, Gyula Krudy, Kalman Mikszath, and Zsigmond Moricz; the political essayist DezsoSzabo; the playwright Erno Szep; the literary historian Antal Szerb; and others. . . . {John Lukacs} sets out to explain Hungarian literature to English-speaking readers. Though I have no idea whether or not he will succeed, few interpreters of Hungarian literature have made a more touching and eloquent attempt." -- The New York Review of Books
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The Magic Lantern: The Revolution of '89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, and Prague
By: Timothy Garton Ash
The Magic Lantern is one of those rare books that define a historic moment, written by a brilliant witness who was also a participant in epochal events. Whether covering Poland’s first free parliamentary elections—in which Solidarity found itself in the position of trying to limit the scope of its victory—or sitting in at the meetings of an unlikely coalition of bohemian intellectuals and Catholic clerics orchestrating the liberation of Czechoslovakia, Garton Ash writes with enormous sympathy and power.
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Lonely Planet Eastern Europe 16 (Travel Guide)
By: Baker, Mark, Bloom, Greg, Butler, Stuart, Dragicevich, Peter, Fallon, Steve, Ham, Anthony, Isalska, Anita, Lee, Jessica, Maric, Vesna, Morgan, MaSovaida, Ragozin, Leonid, Raub, Kevin, Vladisavljevic, Brana, Wilson, Neil
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Danubia: A Personal History of Habsburg Europe
By: Simon Winder
LONGLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE, A CHARMINGLY PERSONAL HISTORY OF HABSBURG EUROPE BY THE AUTHOR OF GERMANIAFrom the end of the Middle Ages to the First World War, Europe was dominated by one family: the Habsburgs. Their unprecedented rule is the focus of Simon Winder's vivid third book, Danubia.Winder's approach is friendly, witty, personal; this is a narrative that, while erudite and well researched, prefers to be discursive and anecdotal. In his survey of the centuries of often incompetent Habsburg rule which have continued to shape the fate of Central Europe, Winder does not shy away from the horrors, railing against the effects of nationalism, recounting the violence that was often part of life. But this is a history dominated above all by Winder's energy and curiosity. Eminently readable and thrillingly informative, Danubia is a treat that readers will be eager to dip into.
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Also Recommended

A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888-1889
By: Frederic Morton
On January 30, 1889, at the champagne-splashed hight of the Viennese Carnival, the handsome and charming Crown Prince Rudolf fired a revolver at his teenaged mistress and then himself. The two shots that rang out at Mayerling in the Vienna Woods echo still.Frederic Morton, author of the bestselling Rothschilds, deftly tells the haunting story of the Prince and his city, where, in the span of only ten months, "the Western dream started to go wrong." In Rudolf's Vienna moved other young men with striking intellectual and artistic talents—and all as frustrated as the Prince. Among them were: young Sigmund Freud, Gustav Mahler, Theodor Herzl, Gustav Klimt, and the playwright Arthur Schnitzler, whose La Ronde was the great erotic drama of the fin de siecle. Morton studies these and other gifted young men, interweaving their fates with that of the doomed Prince and the entire city through to the eve of Easter, just after Rudolf's body is lowered into its permanent sarcophagus and a son named Adolf Hitler is born to Frau Klara Hitler.
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Prague: A Traveler's Literary Companion (Traveler's Literary Companions) by Paul Wilson (1995) Paperback
By: Whereabouts Press
Will be shipped from US. Used books may not include companion materials, may have some shelf wear, may contain highlighting/notes, may not include CDs or access codes. 100% money back guarantee.
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The Kingdom of Auschwitz: 1940-1945
By: Otto Friedrich
A short and thoroughly accurate history of the Auschwitz concentration camp, this compelling book is authoritative in its factual details, devastating in its emotional impact.
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Eastern Europe!, 2nd Edition: Everything You Need to Know About the History (and More) of a Region that Shaped Our World and Still Does
By: Jankowski, Tomek
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The Romani Gypsies
By: Yaron Matras
“Gypsies” have lived among Europeans since the Middle Ages. Yet Roms still seem exotic to Westerners, who often rely on fictional depictions for what they know, or think they know, about this much-misunderstood people. The Romani Gypsies challenges stereotypes that have long been the unwelcome travel companions of this community in Europe and the New World. Yaron Matras offers a perspective-changing account of who the Roms are, how they live today, and how they have survived over centuries.Descendants of Indian migrants, Roms began moving into western Europe in the 1300s, refugees of a collapsing Byzantine Empire. By the 1500s they had spread throughout Europe, working as itinerant smiths and toolmakers, healers and entertainers, and would soon reach the Americas. Often described as Egyptian―hence the name Gypsies―they were ostracized as beggars, vilified as criminals, respected as artisans, and idealized as free spirits. They have been both enslaved and protected, forced to settle down and forcibly expelled, in a pattern of manipulation and persecution that persists in our own time.Matras draws on decades of first-hand research into Romani life to explain the organization of Romani society, its shared language, history, and traditions, as well as differences among widely dispersed Romani groups. He also details the present-day dilemmas surrounding the struggle of Roms for political recognition in European countries which are, by turns, either ambivalent or openly hostile.
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The Radetzky March (Works of Joseph Roth)
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Travel Insurance

For the convenience of our travelers, Smithsonian Journeys includes a basic medical expense and evacuation plan through Trip Mate, a Generali Global Assistance & Insurance Services brand, at no additional charge. This plan provides post-departure Medical and Dental coverage of $250,000 per person and Emergency Assistance and Transportation coverage of $1,000,000 per person (U.S. Residents Only). Note: For full details regarding these coverages please review the following Plan Documents here.

In addition, we recommend that travelers purchase a travel protection plan to help protect their travel investment from unforeseen events such as cancellation due to illness, flight delays due to adverse weather, baggage loss, and more. For your convenience, Smithsonian Journeys offers an optional Travel Protection Plan administered by Trip Mate, a Generali Global Assistance & Insurance Services brand. For those interested, optional "Cancel for Any Reason" coverage is available for an additional charge. Note: Certain eligibility requirements apply and Cancel for Any Reason coverage is not available to New York residents. For full details regarding this coverage please review the following Plan Documents here.

To learn more about the Travel Protection Plan, you may visit https://www.generalipartner.com/smithsonianjourneys or call the administrator, Trip Mate, a Generali Global Assistance & Insurance Services brand at (866) 501-3252.

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