How Are We Different?

There are now many programmes in Italy, of widely varying quality, mainly of the language-learning or trips 'around "Art" cities' variety.

The John Hall Course is Entirely Different.

Fundamental to the character of the Course is spending a meaningful period of time in one city - six weeks in Venice. This allows a residential style of living. Students feel at home in, and get to know, an Italian city in some depth, not as sightseers in transit.

Being resident in Venice makes possible the structure of superb lectures, covering not only classic Venetian and Italian art but also Music, History, World Cinema, Literature, Contemporary Art and Architecture.

Our staff of lecturers - around thirty - are all distinguished in their field - university professors and lecturers, curators, critics, conductors, theatre directors, writers……please see the list of lecturers in 'Faculty'.

Optional practical classes in Photography, Studio Life Drawing and Portraiture, Italian Language.

Many very special doors are opened to students, making possible private visits (when closed to the public). These include: in London, the National Gallery, Christie's Auction House, Richard Rogers Architect Studios; in Venice, St. Mark's, an unforgettable night-visit, with the mosaics illuminated, the Giorgio Cini Foundation on the island of S. Giorgio Maggiore; in Florence, the Uffizi and the Accademia (Michelangelo's David); in Rome, the Villa Borghese Gallery (Titian, Bernini, Caravaggio and other masterpieces), the Keats-Shelley Memorial House (where Keats died), the Vatican Museums including Raphael's Stanze and the Sistine Chapel with Michelangelo's ceiling.

The Course gives a foretaste of a university style of living and learning as well as the experience of living in some of Europe's most beautiful and historically important cities.

"I owe more to the months spent on the Venice Course than I do to the whole of my time in the sixth form at Public School or even to my three years as an undergraduate at Cambridge. The instruction provided was excellent and also so enjoyable that I cannot think of it as separate from the outings we were encouraged to organize independently - to see the villas on the Brenta, to the remoter churches of the city, to the Fenice Opera House. Our exploration of Italian Art and Architecture was particularly exhilarating because it was inseparable from our introduction to a foreign way of life." (Nicholas Penny, former student, Director of the National Gallery, London).