Orvieto & Assisi

The orvieto assisi tour from civitavecchia places two of Italy's most extraordinary cities on a single extraordinary day. You depart the port at seven, settle into the V-Class on the A1 motorway, and rise with the road into Umbria as the morning light turns the travertine cliffs below Orvieto to gold. Two hours later, you are standing in the Piazza del Duomo before the crowds arrive, looking at a Gothic facade of such ambition that Michelangelo studied Signorelli's frescoes inside as preparation for the Sistine Chapel.

The umbria day trip civitavecchia cruise continues after lunch through the soft folded hills that Turner and Perugino both struggled to paint accurately. Assisi occupies an entire hillside, and Giotto's cycle in the Basilica di San Francesco is one of the handful of works in the world that genuinely changes the way you see painting. The tomb of Saint Francis, in the lower church, has the particular quality of silence that only very old places of pilgrimage ever achieve. The V-Class is spacious enough that the two-hour return drive is as comfortable as the outbound — your group arrives at the port rested, not depleted.

Two cathedrals, two worldviews, one extraordinary day

• Orvieto Cathedral and Signorelli's frescoes

  The Cappella di San Brizio contains the Last Judgement cycle that Michelangelo acknowledged as a model for the Sistine ceiling. Your driver times the visit before the afternoon light fades inside the nave.

• Assisi — Basilica di San Francesco

  Giotto's Life of Saint Francis, painted in the last decade of the thirteenth century, invented the visual language of Western narrative art. The lower church holds the saint's tomb and a quality of stillness that the crowds upstairs rarely disturb.

• V-Class comfort on long routes

  Three hundred and fifty kilometres in a day demands space, smooth leather and a driver whose only concern is your comfort. The Mercedes V-Class — standard on this route — carries up to seven passengers without the fatigue of a minibus.