History Study Tours
No matter how many books and documents are studied, how many films are watched, how much careful explanation is given, nothing compares to the experience of actually being in the places where History was made.
From Luther’s struggles with his Church to the horrors of the Holocaust and the madness of the Cold War, we have tours to grab your students’ attention and focus their minds.
Choose your tour below
World War 1
It is now more than a century since the Great War ended, but its echoes still sound through our daily lives.
In studying the period, we hope our young people learn of the madness of war and of the ease with which civilised people sink to inhumanity.
Our tours to Ypres and the Somme include hard fact, but also allow time for reflection and for your own input – there is community in a school group of children and teachers gathered together in a War Graves cemetery or at the Last Post ceremony in Ypres.
If we can, we like to include visits to sites which are particularly relevant to your students, associated with their family, school or district.
It is also possible to relive the journey of an Australian platoon marching to Tyne Cot on 4th October 1917.
Since 2014, we have included in our programme a six-day coach tour which traces the full length of the Western Front from Nieuwpoort on the Belgian coast all the way to Pfetterhouse on the Franco-Swiss border.
Third Reich and World War 2
Whichever precise dates mark the beginning and end of your period of study, we have tour programmes to suit your needs.
Berlin is a must, with so many extant reminders of the period, from the Olympic Stadium to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp; but also with many documentation and memorial centres to help us interpret the times.
It may be your sole destination, either by coach or by air, but it can also be combined with Munich (for the early days of the Nazi Party), Nuremberg (for the years of power and the immense rallies); Prague and Theresienstadt (the road to the Holocaust) or Kraków and Auschwitz.
The Cold War
The photograph above sums up the madness of the Cold War years. The watchtower to the left is in the German Democratic Republic, the one on the right is an American tower in the Federal Republic of Germany.
Your group can begin to get some understanding of the times on a tour to Berlin, Leipzig and the former frontier zones. You will visit secret police headquarters and prisons, bunkers from which the country could be run in the event of war, and the frontier itself, fortified as much against escape as against attack.
The Occupation of Poland 1939 - 1945
These two tours are designed to show a little of what life was like in German-occupied Poland through the war years.
Both tours start in Warsaw, where we visit Gestapo detention cells and the national memorial just outside the city on the site where their victims were brought to be executed. Also in Warsaw, we shall go to the Museum of the Uprising, telling the story and commemorating the victims of the 1944 struggle to free their city.
In Łódż, we see the prison which the fleeing Germans set alight with its inmates locked in their cells and also the wartime ghetto and the memorial to the Jews who were deported from the Radegast station.
After Łódż, you may choose to continue westwards, on the route of the Red Army in 1944 and 1945, or to continue to the old capital of Poland, Kraków.
In the first version, Poznań was the last major defended centre before Berlin for the advancing Red Army. Here, we visit Fort VII, used as a concentration camp and also take a look into the Enigma Museum, which tells the story of Polish codebreakers.
Soon after crossing the Odra River, the post-War frontier between Germany and Poland, we come to the Seelow Heights, where the Red Army had its last supply stop before heading on to Berlin. Here we visit the memorial site and the museum before covering the last seventy kilometres to the German capital.
We can add suitable relevant visits for your time in the city.
If you choose to continue to Kraków, you might visit the exhibition on life under the occupation, housed in Schindler’s factory and also the Museum of the Home Army, Europe’s largest resistance movement.
The final day of this version of the tour is spent in an extended guided visit to Auschwitz and Birkenau.
Budapest in WW2 and The Cold War
Budapest is a beautiful city to visit in its own right, and it contains a wealth of visits to help an understanding of the politics of the Twentieth Century.
Central European Jewish history is covered with a visit to the largest synagogue in Europe and to the excellent Holocaust Memorial.
The nature of totalitarian régimes of both right and left becomes clear during a visit to the House of Terror, once the headquarters of the fascist secret police, then of the communists.
Statue Park is a bleak collection of statues from the communist era, now displayed in a park on the edge of the city.
Recently opened, and a brilliant visit, is the wartime hospital buried deep underground in Castle Hill. It was used towards the end of WW2 and again during the Uprising in 1956. It also contains a Cold War era nuclear shelter. A number of relevant themed activities are available here.
Additionally, many groups enjoy a visit to the Museum of Military History, with its displays of equipment from the nineteenth century to the present day.
Revolutionary and Napoleonic Paris
Over two days with our expert guide in Paris and Versailles, the essential elements of the Revolution and the Napoleonic era are brought to light.
The Château de Versailles is the centrepiece of the tour, and it is coupled with a visit to the real tennis court where the members of the Estates General launched the Revolution with their oath of 20th June 1789.
Within Paris, you will walk from the Palais Royale to the Louvre and through the Tuileries Gardens to Place de la Concorde, where Louis XVI was one of thousands executed by guillotine
You also visit the Concièrgerie, used as a prison by the revolutionaries, where you will see the cell occupied by Marie-Antoinette in her last days and then to the Invalides, containing Napoleon’s tomb.
The Troubles in Northern Ireland
(or should that be “The British – Irish conflict in the North of Ireland”?)
Although we all know that history is written by the winners, the situation here today is all but unique. The story of a very recent struggle is told by those who participated on both sides. Your students can talk with ex-prisoners from the Loyalist and Republican communities and perhaps form an understanding of their different world views.
In just two days, our groups have fully guided visits in Belfast to the Falls Road and the Shankill and in Derry to the Bogside and to the Apprentice Boys’ Hall. In both cities, the political murals of both communities form a back-drop to the tour.
If visiting Belfast on a weekday, it is also possible to include a visit to Stormont and talk with members of the Legislative Assembly (when it is in session).
If time permits, it is also possible to visit the former border checkpoints between Counties Derry and Donegal.
Large groups might travel by coach and ferry or, as we recommend for smaller groups, by air from your local airport to Belfast International.