Our Renaissance Women culinary tours are designed for the independent, single female traveler, who wants the freedom to travel solo, yet appreciates the comfort of a female travel group.  This program is also perfect for mothers, daughters, and grandmothers, taking an all-girls trip, or girl friends reuniting for a fun cooking vacation in sunny Italy. The programs are limited to small groups of same-minded independent women travelers who love to cook, tour, relax and do a little shopping.  A perfect way to meet new friends or travel with existing friends, while traveling in beautiful Italy.  

The cooking classes bring you in the kitchen with some of Italy’s most talented chefs for hands-on cooking classes.  Our Executive chefs will instruct and show you the way to make a full course menu during your program.  Lunch or dinner follows with the foods prepared in class.  Wine, water, dessert and café included.  Classes are kept deliberately small in order to ensure more individual attention for each student and promote a warm and relaxed atmosphere. 

In each of the women only tours, participants also learn about Italy’s Renaissance Women and how they shaped the culinary, art, music, culture and fashion scenes.  Each participant receives a hand-made journal made in Italy, perfect for jotting down your travel notes, musings, sketches, & thoughts from your Italian Renaissance vacation so your experience will stay with you forever.

Villa D’Este
Villa d’Este was built by the architect Pelligrino Pelligrini for the Cardinal Tolomeo Gallio in 1568 and was considered one of the finest examples of architecture and landscaping. Back then its name was Garrovo, and was famous in all the world for its unmatched beauty, attracting such eminent guests as the Sultan of Morocco who visited it to see if it were indeed as beautiful as its reputation claimed. In 1815, the Villa was bought by Caroline of Brunswick, Princess of Wales and future Queen of England, and renamed Villa d’Este. Only in 1873 was it transformed into a luxury hotel by a group of high society Milanese, a function it covers to this day. Since then, the villa has been sensitively remodeled to provide every conceivable modern convenience while respecting and conserving the villa’s original façade and old fashioned charm. Inside, you can expect to find bathrooms of milky white marble, crystal chandeliers, gilt urns, silk curtains, imposing marble staircases, but also an indoor swimming pool and one of the world’s top spas and beauty centers. Outside there is another pool, this one built into the lake, tennis courts, a squash court and access to a variety of other water sports. And of course, Villa d’Este’s stunning gardens, rich in both Baroque and Romantic elements, for which the villa is so famous. Wander along paths and hidden passageways that take you past magnificent topiary hedges, bamboo bushes, oleanders, jasmine and roses to discover the garden’s unexpected treasures: temples, marble statues, stairways, bridges and mock fortifications.

Facilities and Services
Villa d’Este’s staff is at your complete disposal to satisfy all your vacation requirements. Over the years, the villa has held all manner of awards and recognitions, and presently holds the Travel and Leisure 2006 award for the Top Hotel Spa in Europe, in recognition not only of the hotel’s first class amenities but also its dedicated and hard working staff who are specially trained to provide superlative service and do whatever it takes to make clients’ stays more enjoyable.

Enjoy use of the hotel’s state of the art Beauty Center that offers a large selection of European body and facial treatments, or splash about in one of its two lovely heated pools, the outside one actually designed to float on the lake. Sun lovers can help themselves to a comfortable lounger at the edge of the pool or relax in one of the reclining chairs dotted about the villa’s panoramic patios and terraces. Lunch and dinner can be enjoyed at one of the hotel’s three restaurants, the Grill, La Veranda, Luciano Parolari’s kingdom, or the newer Japanese Kisho Restaurant.

Villa d’Este’s location on the shores of Lake Como means Milan is a mere 45 minutes away, but it may just be that you are so taken by Villa d’Este and its spectacular surroundings that you decide a visit to Milan can wait till another day.

Chef Luciano
Chef Luciano Parolari has been the executive chef at Villa d’Este for over 20 years, and supervises a super-efficient group of forty kitchen staff. Also known as the ‘King of Risotto’, Chef Luciano has cooked all round the world at numerous prestigious events and locations, such as the New York Yacht Club and the James Beard Foundation, and is an attentive and genial host who seeks to pass on his skills and secrets to students visiting his kitchen. Students will also receive a copy of the award winning ‘Villa d’Este Cookbook’, a collection of Chef Luciano’s best loved recipes.

Cooking Classes
Chef Luciano’s lessons are rigorously hands-on, and are held in the villa’s spacious kitchens and pastry kitchen. Here your chef will take you on a tour of his specially designed herb garden which he added to Villa d’Este’s already beautiful grounds, and explain the particular herbs that you will find in the cooking class he has planned around the use of these aromatic Mediterranean plants. In another class you will be at work in the pastry kitchen, and in another, in one of the villa’s main kitchens. All lessons are followed by a three course lunch at the Verandah Restaurant and include beverage.