A new cruise offering from Smithsonian Journeys and PONANT
Set sail from Malta to voyage all the way around Sicily, encountering captivating towns from Palermo to Taormina, simmering volcanoes, and important Greco-Roman archaeological sites from Agrigento to Syracuse.
A Circumnavigation of Sicily
Round-trip from Malta aboard the 184-guest Le Champlain or Le Bougainville
9 days from $7,420
A new cruise offering from Smithsonian Journeys and PONANT
Set sail from Malta to voyage all the way around Sicily, encountering captivating towns from Palermo to Taormina, simmering volcanoes, and important Greco-Roman archaeological sites from Agrigento to Syracuse.
Experts
Charles Ingrao
Charlie Ingrao, a popular Smithsonian Journeys Expert, is professor emeritus of history at Purdue University, where he has taught a broad range of courses on the European world, including the Italian Renaissance. He is an Italian-American dual citizen whose family hails from Sicily, and has devoted much of his scholarship to Italy’s Spanish and Austrian Habsburg heritage. He has also been active in the public sphere, having given over a hundred public lectures to academic, governmental, and military audiences on five continents, and been a regular commentator for print, radio, and television media, including The News Hour with Jim Lehrer (PBS).
Allan Langdale
Allan Langdale grew up on Vancouver Island wondering what the rest of the world was like and has spent much of his adult life finding out. Allan is an art and architectural historian, photographer, filmmaker, and travel writer who received his Ph.D. in art history from UC Santa Barbara. He has taught courses in Italian Renaissance art, Greek, Roman, Byzantine (including Georgian and Armenian architecture), and Indian and Islamic art and architecture. He currently teaches art history at UC Santa Cruz as a lecturer.
Along with several articles, Allan wrote the definitive architectural field guide to the little-known region of Turkish Cyprus, In a Contested Realm (2012) and also made the award-winning documentary film The Stones of Famagusta: the Story of a Forgotten City (2008). His travel books include Palermo: Travels in the City of Happiness (2015) and The Hippodrome of Istanbul / Constantinople: An Illustrated Handbook of its History (2019).
A popular Smithsonian Expert, Allan has traveled extensively in the eastern Mediterranean, the Black Sea region, the Middle East—including Jordan and Egypt—and India.
Justin Leidwanger
Justin Leidwanger is an Associate Professor of Mediterranean archaeology at Stanford University, where he holds positions in the Department of Classics, the Archaeology Center, and the Doerr School of Sustainability’s Oceans Department. He teaches courses on maritime archaeology, ancient architectural engineering and technology, heritage ethics, and the economic systems of the Greeks and Romans. A Midwesterner lured by the sea, historic architecture, and strong coffee, he found a second home in the warm waters of the Mediterranean, where he has conducted fieldwork along the Cypriot, Turkish, and Italian coasts. His recent excavation of a massive late Roman shipwreck of marble architecture at Marzamemi, Sicily is part of an ongoing investigation into the island’s deep historical connections to (and across) its surrounding waters, ranging from trade and warfare to migration and fishing. He has written articles on shipwrecks, ports, and ancient trade, and is the author or editor of several books, including Roman Seas.
Andrew Becker
Dr. Andrew Becker (Andy) was born in Burma (now Myanmar), spent part of his childhood in Indonesia, and has continued to travel ever since (mostly Europe and Asia). He has been lecturing in Italy since 1997, first as a professor teaching students abroad, then since 2015 with Smithsonian Journeys. His degrees are from the University Michigan (BA), Cambridge University (BA/MA), and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Ph.D.). Andy teaches at Virginia Tech (with stints teaching in Switzerland and London), and has won numerous local and national awards for teaching.
Andy’s scholarly specialties are ancient: specifically the cultures, literatures, and languages of Ancient Rome (and Greece), as well as the constant, recurring re-engagement of many later civilizations with Ancient Rome (and Greece).
Gary Radke
Gary Radke served as Dean's Professor of the Humanities and professor of art history in the College of Arts and Sciences at Syracuse University. Upon joining the faculty in 1980, he promptly took over the Florence Graduate Program in Italian Renaissance Art and has since helped elevate it- and the department of Art & Music Histories in general- to international prominence. Radke is one of the world's leading experts on Italian Medieval and Renaissance art and architecture, with a special interest in 15th-century Florentine sculpture. Since 2001, Radke has served as a guest curator at Atlanta's High Museum of Art, where he organized a series of high-profile shows-and their respective exhibition catalogs- featuring works by Leonardo, Michelangelo, Ghiberti, Verrocchio, and other Italian Renaissance masters. Radke is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome.