ARIELA, LLC can arrange customized tours to different locales that provide general historic, artistic, archaeological and literary backgrounds as well as focus on particular themes. Most trips run from 14 to 21 days.

Designed to provide enjoyable educational experiences, all trips center around site and museum visits, and they include some light educational reading materials and topic discussion sessions. They also include ample time for relaxation, shopping, glorious beaches, and scrumptious food and drink!

Crete, Kommos beach

Primary locales are Greece and Turkey; other possible itineraries include Southwest U.S. archaeological sites and Western European museum tours. The local arrangements for most tours are handled by in-country vendors, such as the Hellenic Educational and Research Center (HERC) in Athens, Greece.

Basic Tour Itineraries

View from Pronaia, Sanctuary before the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, Greece

View major ancient landmarks and learn the basic social, cultural, historic, artistic, archaeological and literary backgrounds to the sites. Some examples:

• GREECE
  Athens, Delphi, Olympia, Mycenae, Epidauros, select islands
• TURKEY
  Istanbul, Troy, Ephesus, southern coast and/or Cappadocia


Sultanahmet Camii, “The Blue Mosque,” Istanbul, Turkey

• GREECE-TURKEY COMBINATION
• SOUTHWEST U.S.
  Casa Grande, Montezuma’s Well and Castle, Mesa Verde, Canyon de Chelly, Walnut Canyon, Wupatki

Possible Themed Tours

Tour themes can be customized according to the interests of the group. Tours can be tailored to particular groups, such as women’s groups; lesbian/gay; parents or grandparents with high school or older children; etc.

Some examples of tour themes:

Ancient Greek Theatre Tour

Ancient Greek Drama from Its Origins to Today includes viewing ancient theatre sites, reading and viewing performances of Ancient Greek and modern plays, meeting with contemporary directors and actors

Minoan dancing women

Women’s World of Ancient Greece

Goddesses, Rituals, Social Identity—visits to many of the major sites and others with an emphasis on the female-oriented dimensions of the sites and material

Ancient Greek Art, Architecture or Engineering

Ancient Greece excelled in these art forms and each can readily form the subject of its own tour.

• The ART TOUR concentrates on museum artwork and select sites, exploring in greater detail the ideas expressed in and the development of the superb vase and wall paintings and sculptures.
• The ARCHITECTURE TOUR focuses on the impressive building styles of temples, public buildings and domestic architecture; their ground plans, construction methods, and developments over time.
• The ENGINEERING TOUR focuses on the remarkable engineering feats that include the Efpalinon Tunnel on Samos, the walls and citadels of Tiryns and Mycenae, beehive tombs, the Parthenon in Athens, and more.

Temple of Apollo, Corinth, Greece, Acrocorinth in the background

Mythology of the Land

Ancient Greece and/or Turkey excursions that explore the mythological tales and characters as related to the sites we visit.

Minoans and Mycenaeans

The Prehistoric civilizations on Crete, Santorini, the Cycladic Islands, and mainland Greece, especially, Mycenae

Lycian Rock Tombs, Dalyan, Turkey

Anatolia, Cradle of Civilizations

Explore the rich diversity of ancient civilizations that have flourished on the land base of modern Turkey that includes Paleolithic, Neolithic, Bronze Age, Hittite, Phrygian, Greek, Roman, Jewish, early Christian, and other cultures from Byzantine to Ottoman through modern times.

Western European and/or North American Museum Tours

View and learn about the great works of ancient art housed in major museums in Europe and/or North America. These might include the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the British Museum in London, the Louvre in Paris, Antiquities and Pergamum Museums, Berlin

Leksand, Sweden river view

Back to Top