A walk along Nice’s Promenade des Anglais captures all that’s best about the French Riviera: swish hotels, a blue Mediterranean and awnings stamped with expensive brand names. Santa Margherita is our first port of call in Italy, a country that still sets the benchmark for style and design. Around the piazzas in Florence, along Rome’s Via Condotti, on Sorrento’s Tasso Square, bars and trattorias look out from elegant façades onto enviable vistas. Further south, sips of Sicilian Marsala go down well around Palermo where Arab markets mix with Byzantine, Baroque and Norman styles. Roman and Greek temples round up this cultural festival in Catania where lava flows from nearby Mt Etna have yet to dampen the city’s high spirits.

* At these ports you will be taken ashore by ship’s or local tender.