Italy Travel Arts Guide - Guide for Italy Cruise Shore Excursions and Italy Tours

The following is a city-by-city guide to some of Italy's art exhibitions happening January, February March Winter and Spring 2011. If you are on an Italy tour, Italy cruise or traveling in Italy you may want to add one of these Italy art exhibits to your Italy travel itinerary or Italy shore excursion.

ALBA - Fondazione Ferrero: Giorgio Morandi, The Essence of Landscape; 70 works; until January 16.

BARLETTA - Palazza Marra: Giuseppe De Nittis, 43 engravings; until January 16.

FLORENCE - Palazzo Vecchio: For The Love of God, Damien Hirst's famous diamond-encrusted skull in only third outing since creation in 2007; until May 1.

- Palazzo Strozzi: 'Bronzino, Painter and Poet at the Medici Court'; 90 works in world's first monographic show; to January 23.

- Palazzo Pitti: Vinum Nostrum. The Art, Science and Myths of Wine in Civilisation; from prehistoric winegrowing to Dionysus cult, Etruscan, Roman use; show features oldest surviving wine container, on loan from Georgia; until April 30.

GENOA - Palazzo Ducale: 'Mediterranean, From Courbet to Monet and Matisse'; 80 mostly Impressionist works including Renoir, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Munch; until May 1.

MILAN - Palazzo Reale: 'Salvador Dali', The Dream Draws Near'; 50 works, until January 30.

- Museo Poldi Pezzoli: Sandro Botticelli, all of his works in Lombardy museums brought together for first time; until February 28.

PADUA - Palazzo Zabarella: "From Canova to Modigliani, the Face of the 19th Century"; 100 portraits and sculptures; until February 27.

PASSARIANO (UDINE) - Villa Manin: 'Edvard Munch and the Spirit of the North'; 122 works; until March 6.

REGGIO EMILIA - city centre: 150 huge Italian flags marking 150th anniversary of Italian unity; until June 2.

RIMINI - Castel Sismondo: The Marvellous Years: Impressionism; 100 works from international museums including Monet and Pissarro, Sisley and Degas, Bazille and Renoir, Cezanne and Guillaumin, Morisot and Fantin-Latour, Gauguin and Van Gogh; until March 27.

- same venue: Caravaggio's first religious painting, The Ecstasy of St Francis, back in Italy for first time in 25 years from Wadsworth Museum, Hartford, as well as several contemporaries; until March 27.

ROME - Scuderie del Quirinale: '1861: The Painters of the Risorgimento', war scenes, Garibaldi's Red Shirts, leaders' portraits; to January 16.

- Vittoriano: 'Vincent Van Gogh, Timeless Landscape, Modern City'; 110 masterpieces in first major Rome show in 22 years; until January 30.

- Musei Capitolini: Leonardo da Vinci's Portrait of a Musician (1490), loaned by Milan's Biblioteca Ambrosiana for first time ever; until February 27.

- Museo Fondazione Roma: Rome and the Ancient World, more than 140 paintings, sculptures, other works including loans from Prado, Louvre, Hermitage, Victoria and Albert Museum showing how classical works fired the imagination of 18th-century Rome; until March 6.

- Palazzo Venezia: The Two Empires, The Eagle and the Dragon; more than 400 works on Roman (up to Trajan) and Chinese (Qin and Han) empires, spanning second century BC to fourth century AD; marks Year of Chinese Culture in Italy and is paired with other exhibit at Roman Forum; until February 6.

- Palazzo delle Esposizioni: The City of the Gods, 450 artefacts from ancient Mexican site of Teotihuacan (2nd-century BC to 5th-century AD), once the largest city in pre-Columbian Americas; until February 27.

- Galleria Borghese: Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Other Renaissance; 45 works from major international museums; until February 13.

- Chiostro del Bramante: Greats from the Veneto, 15th- 18th Century; Bellini, Lotto, Titian, Veronese, Tiepolo, Canaletto; 80 works from Accademia Carrara in Bergamo; until January 30.

SAN MARINO - Palazzo Sums: 25 Impressionist works including Monet, Cezanne and Renoir; until March 27, in tandem with Rimini show.

TRIESTE - Castello di Miramare: Giorgio De Chirico, 70 paintings and 20 sketches; until February 27.

TURIN - Palazzo Reale, Palazzo Chiablese, Castello di Racconigi: "Vittorio Emanuele II: The Gentleman King"; new documents, pictures on life of Italy's first post-unification king; until March 13.

VENICE - Palazzo Grimani: Hieronymous Bosch, Vision of the afterlife (1500-1503), Triptych of Saint Liberata (1505) and Triptych of the Hermits (1510); until March 20.

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