2025 SUMMER RETREATS
Experience the best Italy has to offer 🇮🇹 🏛
Dear esteemed reader — lector augustus!
Evan here. As you might know, I’ve been living in Italy for the past 3 years. Notwithstanding the bureaucratic headaches — or should I say migraines? — it really is an incredible country.
There’s a ton to love about Italy. But the best part, in my opinion, is how it inspires the soul. Everything from Italy’s history, food, art, architecture, nature, literature, and music inspires and uplifts you. One of my favorite things about living here is being able to welcome guests, and helping them experience this sensation for themselves.
That’s why this summer, I’m hosting not one but TWO retreats in Italy. They’re each pretty different — one is in Rome, and the other is where I live in Bergamo — but they’re both similar in that they open the doors to a local culture that the vast majority of tourists never experience.
Below is a quick overview of each retreat. Check them out, and if you’d like to join us this summer, click the “Apply” button at the end of this email to get started!
The History of Rome as Told by its Heroes
June 23 - 27, 2025
“Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.”
Our first ever INVICTUS retreat tells the story of Rome through the lives of the men who built her.
Each day, James a.ka. Western Exile (Roman historian and resident of ten years; co-author of INVICTUS) and I walk you through each of the city’s five main ages — the ancient, medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, and post-revolutionary periods.
Along the way, you’ll learn from the lives of men like Julius Caesar, Caesar Augustus, Constantine, Pope Gregory the Great, Raphael, Michelangelo, the “Warrior Pope”, Bernini, Caravaggio, and many more.
But importantly, you won’t just absorb the history of the Eternal City — you’ll get to experience firsthand the work, art, and architecture of the men who built her.
“Only in Rome is it possible to understand Rome”
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Italian Journey
On top of all this, you get the absolute best culinary experience imaginable. While most would be content to give you the food that “impresses Americans, but not locals”, James will leverage his decade of experience in Rome to make sure you eat and drink like a true romano.
There’s no other retreat I know of that gives you this all-encompassing of a dive into the history of Rome and the men who made her great. To apply to join us, click the button at the end of this email.
Leisure: The Basis of Culture
June 9 - 13, 2025
“Leisure, it must be remembered, is not a Sunday afternoon idyll, but the preserve of freedom, of education and culture, and of that undiminished humanity which views the world as a whole.”
This retreat, hosted slightly earlier in the summer, is an in-person walk through philosopher Josef Pieper’s seminal work, Leisure: The Basis of Culture. For one week, O.W. Root of Necktie Salvage and I will take you to the hidden gems of Northern Italy so you can experience firsthand what it means for leisure to be the basis of culture.
You’ll get to explore everything from philosophy and fine dining to the art of cocktails, conversation, and classical music. Each day we’ll study part of Pieper’s Leisure: The Basis of Culture so that by the end of your trip, you’ll have learned how to properly unwind, enjoy the finer things in life, and embrace the adage “less is more.”
Leisure is a form of that stillness that is necessary preparation for accepting reality; only the person who is still can hear, and whoever is not still, cannot hear.
Such stillness is not mere soundlessness or a dead muteness; it means, rather, that the soul’s power, as real, of responding to the real — a co-respondence, eternally established in nature — has not yet descended into words.
Leisure is the disposition of perceptive understanding, of contemplative beholding, and immersion — in the real.
-Josef Pieper
The majority of the retreat will take place in Bergamo (watch this video to check it out), but we will also visit Milan and Lake Garda (pictured above). To apply to join us, click the button at the end of this email.
Pricing & How to Apply
(Members of our Praetorian Guard get 5% off on retreats, and priority selection for attendance!)
Pricing for each retreat will vary based on both overall demand and your personal rooming preferences — UPDATED: $4,250 is the average so far.
This price covers lodging, activities, and all meals (including house wine 😉), and excludes transport to and from the retreat. Where many cut costs by skimping on quality, we promise to give you only the best — the best local food, drink, and experiences that Rome and Bergamo have to offer!
To join us, click the button below to apply now. To ensure we only review serious applications, you will be asked to make a 100% refundable deposit of $50 upon application:
I hope you can join us for one of our 2025 summer retreats! Feel free to reply to this email if you have any questions about the tours or your application.
See you in Italy,
-Evan
I might have to get a job so I can see Rome with your tour group some day. sigh.
Any chance of a retreat in October?