Italy

The program cost is $6,599 plus University fees of $TBD, totaling $TBD. After you have applied for your desired program, you must make a deposit of $500 via ULINK. The $500 deposit is applied towards the cost of the program. The initial deadline to apply and pay the deposit is December 16. A $100 late fee will be charged after December 16. View Payment Policies & Instructions. 
Program cost includes tuition for 9 credit hours, lodging for four weeks in furnished apartments with kitchens located in the city center of Florence, the field trips in Tuscany mentioned above, transportation to and from Rome, lodging in Rome, admission to Florence’s state museums (such as the Uffizi, Pitti and Academia) as well as many of the city’s palaces and churches. Students will be responsible for their own meals during the program (an additional meal voucher program is available). Round-trip airfare on the group flight which includes transportation to and from the airport is $1,855. 

This language and culture course is mandated for all students participating in the Italy Study Abroad program.

This course provides an introduction to the conversational Italian language and will expose students to various aspects of the Italian culture. The language component is held three (3) hours per week. The additional components are held at various times (day and evenings) throughout the six-week period. This course will include:

• Pre-Departure Orientation – Preparation for travel and life in Italy
• Italian Language – Conversational Italian taught by a local language school
• Cooking Italian – Hands-on cooking experience preparing authentic Italian cuisine      
• Wine Tasting – Seminar on Italian wine and proper tasting techniques
• Culture – Guided tours and visits to cultural sites and activities

All course meetings (except the orientation) are led by certified and qualified Italian-based teachers or guides and are arranged by the American Institute of Foreign Studies (AIFS). There is no need to list this course as an option because ALL participants will automatically be scheduled to take this course.

Metalwork and jewelry have a rich history rooted in the Renaissance era, with Florence, Italy, as a vibrant hub of artistic and intellectual rebirth. This period saw an extraordinary boom in craftsmanship across many disciplines, with renowned artists like Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Donatello, and Luca della Robbia mastering metalsmithing techniques.

Throughout the course, we’ll visit iconic locations to witness these masterpieces firsthand, including Palazzo Pitti, Bargello National Museum, Uffizi Gallery, Opera del Duomo Museum, Gucci Garden and Museum, and Palazzo Strozzi.

You’ll also learn the processes of Renaissance metalsmithing and get hands-on opportunities to try these techniques yourself. No prior art experience is needed—just curiosity and a willingness to create!

In this course, you will uncover the layers of history that made Florence a hub of cultural and artistic innovation. What factors propelled Italy to the forefront of the Renaissance? Which artistic monuments in Florence and nearby cities have become enduring symbols of this extraordinary era?

We’ll explore iconic sites including Palazzo Pitti, Bargello National Museum, Uffizi Gallery, Opera del Duomo Museum, Gucci Gardens and Museum, Palazzo Strozzi, and many other nearby locations that showcase the lasting impact of Renaissance artists.

This course gives you the unique opportunity to experience these masterworks in person—not just to learn about their historical importance, but to appreciate their scale, beauty, and the environments that made them so influential.

Inspired by the tradition of the Grand Tour as an educational journey, this course transforms Florence—and its surrounding cities—into an open-air classroom for exploring the rich legacy of Italian design. Open to students of all levels, the course emphasizes field sketching and visual analysis, offering daily opportunities to draw, observe, and reflect on some of the world’s most influential architectural and artistic achievements.

Florence’s buildings, piazzas, gardens, museums, and studios will serve as our primary sites of investigation. Through guided tours, daily sketching assignments, photography, and site-specific readings, you’ll engage directly with the built environment, strengthening both your technical drawing skills and your understanding of design principles. Together, we’ll closely examine interior and exterior spaces, historic landmarks, and design details to uncover the elements that make great design endure.

Using both sketchbooks and cameras as tools for documentation and analysis, you’ll participate in group discussions and critiques that encourage reflection and growth. To broaden your perspective, the course also includes excursions to nearby cities such as Pisa, Siena, Venice, Verona, San Gimignano, and Lucca—revealing how regional traditions shaped Italy’s cultural and design legacy from Roman times to the present.

Join us to study and experience the works of Italian masters such as Brunelleschi, Alberti, Michelangelo, and da Vinci, while developing your own creative eye in the very landscapes that inspired them.

Step into the captivating world of Italian design, where history and modernity converge. In this course, you will immerse yourself in the exploration of public spaces, interiors, and objects across Italy’s most iconic cities. Through guided excursions, curated readings, and lively discussions, you’ll discover the multilayered fabric of Florence, Rome, Venice, and beyond—where Roman, medieval, Renaissance, 19th-century, modern, and contemporary influences coexist and shape the present.

These extraordinary locations will become your open-air classrooms, offering firsthand insight into the legacies of Italian design and the ongoing dialogue between nature, architecture, and art. Projected sites include Venice’s Grand Canal and Piazza San Marco, Rome’s Pantheon, Piazza Navona, and St. Peter’s Basilica, and Florence’s San Lorenzo, Uffizi Galleries, Boboli Gardens, and Piazza San Michelangelo.

By exploring these historically and culturally significant sites, you’ll witness how the city itself is woven into its architecture, gardens, and artworks—revealing the seamless fusion of urban life and cultural expression.

How have American writers imagined Italy as a land of dreams, desires, and disillusionments? In this course, we explore how U.S. authors from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—from Mark Twain to Gertrude Stein to Tennessee Williams—narrate their experiences in Italy, transforming the country into a space of personal and artistic discovery that profoundly influenced American literature.

Through class discussions, museum visits, and immersive experiences in Florence, students will see how Italy becomes far more than just a backdrop in American writing. Stroll through iconic piazzas, people-watch at a sidewalk café, admire Renaissance masterpieces at galleries like the Uffizi, and reflect on moments from your readings as you explore the very places that shaped these authors’ imaginations.

From the romantic allure of Tuscany to modernist disillusionment in Rome, this course offers a deep dive into the interplay of place, identity, and artistic creativity. Join us for a unique journey through literature and the landscapes that bring these stories to life!

Do you dream of wandering the cobblestone streets of Florence while exploring classic films like Roman Holiday and The Talented Mr. Ripley? This course brings U.S. films set in Italy to life, examining how Italy has been imagined on screen from the postwar era to the 21st century.

Through film screenings, discussions, and immersive cultural experiences, you’ll explore how Italy is portrayed as a land of romance, reinvention, and self-discovery. Analyze iconic films such as Call Me by Your Name and Under the Tuscan Sun, while using the city itself as your classroom.

Experience Florence firsthand: stroll through piazzas, toss a coin in a fountain, explore beautiful gardens, savor world-famous cuisine on a food and wine tour, and take in breathtaking views of the Duomo from Piazzale Michelangelo—all while reflecting on the cinematic allure of Italy.

This course encourages critical thinking about cinematic tourism, cultural identity, and the ways film shapes our vision of Italy. 

Set against the stunning backdrop of Tuscany, this course explores how information systems and technology drive business across Italy. How do restaurants manage sales? How do hotels handle room bookings or provide seamless Wi-Fi for guests? In what ways do store owners use technology to decide how many items to order or what price to set? How do museums create engaging websites for the public, or track their collections with databases?

We’ll answer these questions hands-on—by building websites, designing databases, developing mobile apps, and using decision support systems. Through real-world examples and practical projects, you’ll see firsthand how technology powers businesses in one of the world’s most iconic regions.

In the seventeenth century, Galileo proved that the Earth was not the center of the universe—a discovery that transformed how the world understood mathematics and computing. In this course, students will explore Italy while uncovering the country’s groundbreaking contributions to technology and computing. You’ll see Leonardo da Vinci’s flying machine up close, discuss Marconi’s pioneering work with radio waves—the foundation of Wi-Fi—and examine modern innovations like Alessandro Volta’s battery cell and Federico Faggin’s design of the first microprocessor. Together, we’ll explore how these discoveries shaped the devices we use today—computers, tablets, and phones—and the ways we communicate in our connected world.
 

This course introduces you to anthropology through its four main branches: biological anthropology, archaeology, linguistic anthropology, and cultural anthropology. Together, we’ll explore how humans evolved, how cultures form and change, how power is built, and how meaning is created across time and space.

Italy offers a remarkable landscape to investigate these questions. We’ll begin with human origins at the Museo di Storia Naturale del Mediterraneo, where fossil reconstructions and primate exhibits illuminate evolution and adaptation. At Florence’s Museo Archeologico Nazionale, we’ll analyze Etruscan artifacts to better understand early state formation, cultural exchange, and empire. In the hill town of Fiesole, we’ll walk through layers of Etruscan, Roman, and Christian history, observing how kinship, ritual, and religion shift across centuries. On a walking tour of fascist-era Florence, we’ll examine how architecture, memory, and national myth can be used to construct political identity and justify violence.

This is not a tourist course about “Italian culture.” It’s an anthropological toolkit for reading the world more critically. By the end, you’ll know how to interpret landscapes, objects, gestures, and institutions through a comparative lens—and you’ll take away skills that help you ask sharper, deeper questions wherever your path leads next.

This course uses the tools of anthropology to explore how food connects people to place—and how it becomes a site of resistance, nostalgia, and cultural performance. Based in Florence, with field visits across Tuscany and optional excursions to Cinque Terre and Rome, the course immerses you in Italy’s most iconic food traditions and debates.

You’ll discover how food is tied to environment, history, and identity as you sample gelato and working-class street food in Florence, taste olive oil in Chianti, join a countryside truffle hunt, and visit marble-curing cellars where lardo embodies regional pride. Along the way, you’ll learn to “read” food as text, as history, and as a cultural object—seeing how taste becomes territory and how meals carry meaning far beyond the plate.

This course is designed for students curious about food systems, cultural heritage, and the anthropology of everyday life. It’s not only about what people eat, but also about what food means—and why that matters.