For someone of my generation, the months between school and university were mainly to be spent bumming around Asia with a backpack and a Lonely Planet guide, kipping down in fleapit hostels and phoning home when the money ran out. Even today, most gap-year wishlists tend to involve cheap adventures in far-flung destinations.
For those with the means, there is, however, a rather more highbrow alternative. Every year for the past six decades a group of young people, many of them scions of well-to-do British families, have chosen to spend part of their gap year soaking up the aesthetic glories of Italy courtesy of the John Hall Venice course. Founded in 1965 by John Hall, then an English teacher at King’s School Canterbury, and now run by his son Charlie, the course is described on its website as “a huge cultural mind-opener”.
In terms of depth and breadth, John Hall Venice certainly puts most other cultural tours in the shade. The itinerary, which costs £14,560, begins with an induction week in London (normally at the end of January) when the year’s intake of 30-40 students are primed for the feast awaiting them with general introductions to art appreciation and history. The group then decamps to Venice, its home base for the next five weeks, from where excursions leave for Ravenna, Rome, Florence, and Siena.