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Venice to Athens

Aboard Silver Ray with Silversea Cruises

Departure Date

8 July 2024

Duration

11 Nights

Fly Cruise From

£7,400pp

Cruise Reference

ART-4VESI16

Cruise Overview

Venice is a city unlike any other.

No matter how often you've seen it in photos and films, the real thing is more dreamlike than you could imagine.

With canals where streets should be, water shimmers everywhere.

The fabulous palaces and churches reflect centuries of history in what was a wealthy trading center between Europe and the Orient.

Getting lost in the narrow alleyways is a quintessential part of exploring Venice, but at some point you'll almost surely end up in Piazza San Marco, where tourists and locals congregate for a coffee or an aperitif.
Up until the end of World War I, Trieste was the only port of the vast Austro-Hungarian Empire and therefore a major industrial and financial center.

In the early years of the 20th century, Trieste and its surroundings also became famous by their association with some of the most important names of Italian literature, such as Italo Svevo, and English and German letters.

James Joyce drew inspiration from the city's multiethnic population, and Rainer Maria Rilke was inspired by the seacoast west of the city.

Although it has lost its importance as a port and a center of finance, it has never fully lost its roll as an intellectual center.

The streets hold a mix of monumental, neoclassical, and art-nouveau architecture built by the Austrians during Trieste's days of glory, granting an air of melancholy stateliness to a city that lives as much in the past as the present.
Dalmatia's capital for more than 1,000 years, Zadar is all too often passed over by travelers on their way to Split or Dubrovnik.

What they miss out on is a city of more than 73,000 that is remarkably lovely and lively despite—and, in some measure, because of—its tumultuous history.

The Old Town, separated from the rest of the city on a peninsula some 4 km (2½ miles) long and just 1,640 feet wide, is bustling and beautiful: the marble pedestrian streets are replete with Roman ruins, medieval churches, palaces, museums, archives, and libraries.

Parts of the new town are comparatively dreary, a testament to what a world war followed by decades of communism, not to mention a civil war, can do to the architecture of a city that is 3,000 years old.

A settlement had already existed on the site of the present-day city for some 2,000 years when Rome finally conquered Zadar in the 1st century BC; the foundations of the forum can be seen today.

Before the Romans came the Liburnians had made it a key center for trade with the Greeks and Romans for 800 years.

In the 3rd century BC the Romans began to seriously pester the Liburnians, but required two centuries to bring the area under their control.

During the Byzantine era, Zadar became the capital of Dalmatia, and this period saw the construction of its most famous church, the 9th-century St.

Donat's Basilica.

It remained the region's foremost city through the ensuing centuries.

The city then experienced successive onslaughts and occupations—both long and short—by the Osogoths, the Croatian-Hungarian kings, the Venetians, the Turks, the Habsburgs, the French, the Habsburgs again, and finally the Italians before becoming part of Yugoslavia and, in 1991, the independent republic of Croatia.

Zadar was for centuries an Italian-speaking city, and Italian is still spoken widely, especially by older people.

Indeed, it was ceded to Italy in 1921 under the Treaty of Rapallo (and reverted to its Italian name of Zara).

Its occupation by the Germans from 1943 led to intense bombing by the Allies during World War II, which left most of the city in ruins.

Zadar became part of Tito's Yugoslavia in 1947, prompting many Italian residents to leave.

Zadar's most recent ravages occurred during a three-month siege by Serb forces and months more of bombardment during the Croatian-Serbian war between 1991 and 1995.

But you'd be hard-pressed to find outward signs of this today in what is a city to behold.

There are helpful interpretive signs in English all around the Old Town, so you certainly won't feel lost when trying to make sense of the wide variety of architectural sites you might otherwise pass by with only a cursory look.

Cruise Itinerary

Aboard Silver Ray

Launch Year: 2024 Length: 244 Width: 30 Currency: USD Capacity: 728 Crew Count: 556 Deck Count: Cabin Count: 363

Set sail from summer 2024 aboard the second Nova Class ship Silver Ray

Get ready for Silver Ray. Silversea’s second Nova Class ship arrives in summer 2024 and promises guests seamless destination connection. Silver Ray mirrors every aspect of her sister ship, Silver Nova, including a pioneering, asymmetrical design and extraordinary use of glass in both public areas and in suite for uninterrupted views wherever you are! What’s more, Silver Ray is one of the most spacious ships ever built, offering an exceptionally high space-to-guest ratio yet remaining nimble enough to offer purity in movement, as her name suggests. She is truly our ray of light.

Silver Ray preserves all our trademarks and delivers a new way of luxury cruising. Her revolutionary horizontal design ensures outstanding public areas, which fuse seamlessly together. Silver Ray will introduce a brand new selection of superb, spacious suites, many of which promise offer a 270˚ view from sea to sky. Eight restaurants and an unprecedented choice of bars complete the experience, offering delicious drinking and dining at any time of the day.

Silver Ray Facilities

Silver Ray Includes

Cabin Details

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