Past tours organized and led by Michael Barker for The Decorative Arts Society - 1850 to the Present went to Barcelona, Brussels, Lisbon, Oporto, Bilbao, Biarritz & the Basque Country, Prague, Helsinki, Brno & Bratislava, Riga, Havana, Ljubljana, Nice & the French Riviera, Bordeaux, Rennes, Dinan & St Malo, Nantes & Angers, Toulouse & Albi, Marseille & Aix-en-Provence, Rouen & Dieppe, Nancy & Strasbourg, Lille & Roubaix, Picardy & Artois, Cambrai & Le-Cateau on the trail of Matisse and a series of annual tours of Paris, each exploring different, little- known aspects of the city. For The Friends of Charleston, we went to the Côte d'Azur, visiting the Matisse chapel and a private villa frequented by 'Bloomsbury;' to Dieppe in the footsteps of Virginia Woolf and we then followed the trail of 'Bloomsbury in Paris' including a visit to Picasso's studio. For Paris-NadFas we went to Normandy to investigate Anglo-French artistic and literary connections.

Michael Barker has now established MB Art & Architecture Tours, based in Paris, personally leading small groups of ten or more. Its first trip was a winter escape to the sun to explore the surprisingly little-visited Art Deco city of Casablanca, followed by another winter escape: to exotic Marrakech with a visit to a sumptuous private Art Deco villa and a trip into the High Atlas. Next, by complete contrast, to Turin, with its wealth of Baroque, Art Nouveau and moderne architecture. The first Spring 2006 tour took us to the splendid cities of Lille and Amiens, exploring Picardy and experiencing the moving architecture created by Lutyens for the Imperial War Graves commission. The second tour explored little-known aspects of Paris while the third tour took us to the utterly different Provençal cities of Nimes & Montpellier.

Michael Barker's career, principally spent in the restoration of old buildings in England and France, has included researching and participating in the creation of some 20 documentary films made by Christian Bussy of RTBF (Belgian State Television) for his programme Arts-Magazine - devoted to art and architecture - in Britain, France, Italy and Austria – Palladio, Gothick, Art Nouveau and Le Corbusier were among the subjects - repeats still crop up on late-night foreign TV. Author of a well-received short biography: Sir Edwin Lutyens, co-author of the ground-breaking guide: The North of France and co-author of The Thiepval Guide. Michael Barker's numerous articles have covered a wide range of subjects concerning architecture and the decorative arts in France. Three books are in the pipeline: Dieppe and its Artists, Paris and Bloomsbury and The Life of Robert Lutyens - architect, writer and painter - the son of Sir Edwin Lutyens, architect of the world's biggest palace at New Delhi.

Our Trips in 2006: It has been an extremely interesting year of travel to foreign parts - and truly memorable - with the wide variety of visual pleasures, flavours and contrasting cultures that we all experienced. Our 2006 tours season began with a flourish in February when 23 of us, from England, France, America, Italy, Belgium and Ireland, travelled to sunny Marrakech where, based at our comfortable hotel, we explored the exotic aspects of this extraordinary, colourful ancient Moroccan city. We went up into the High Atlas to a delicious lunch in an old Berber hill-top fort reached by steep mule-paths with young boys tending goats and women washing clothes in swift-flowing streams and with outstanding views all around of old villages clinging vertiginously to the slopes of the snow-covered mountain peaks. By contrast, thanks to the introduction by local expert Lara Cleminson, we were warmly welcomed at a superb Art Deco private villa built by a Frenchman in 1928 in the heart of the Palmeraie. Lara also arranged our convivial dinner at an atmospheric country inn, which though newly built, is in the romantic style created by Charles Boccara, leading local architect, who reinvents the Moroccan vernacular using traditional materials. Member's enthusiastic comments about this and other tours are flagged up on the website under 'Testimonials.'

In March it was a 'Bloomsbury in Paris' tour, exploring the haunts in St Germain-des-Prés and Montparnasse of Virginia Woolf and her fellow Bloomsbury writers and artists who frequented Picasso, Matisse, Derain and Gertrude Stein. Hidden corners where Augustus John lived, getting into two of the places where Picasso painted and into a picturesque, rose-bowered enclave of studios where Boris Anrep created his mosaics for the National Gallery in London, were among the various pleasures we experienced off the beaten track.

It has become realised belatedly that Turin, with its magnificent backcloth of the Alps, is one of the great unsung cities of Italy. In fine weather in May, aided by local resident Harriet Graham, we explored its wealth of Baroque, Eclectic, Art Nouveau, Modernist and contemporary architecture including getting into a rare Art Nouveau building by Raimondo d'Aronco, and generally enjoyed Turin's wonderful old-fashioned cafés with rich interiors, its spacious, arcaded squares, its excellent cuisine and Piedmont wines. The smartly revamped former Lingotto factory - made famous by the 1960s film: The Italian Job - and Metropolis an exceptional exhibition of modern art were among the numerous pleasures in this city of dramatic contrasts.

It was a warm sunny June in France for our 'Lutyens in Picardy' tour. After a perambulation of Lille, another splendid city with Baroque and fin-de-siècle architecture, now becoming better known for its many treasures - where we saw the one of Guimard's most extraordinary Art Nouveau achievements, the vivid Art Deco mosaics in a renowned poissonnerie and visited the Beaux Arts Museum with its rich art collections - we then headed by mini-bus to the mediaeval city of Arras which has two magnificent cobbled squares of Flemish-gabled houses, now beautifully enhanced after dusk by subtle illumination which we exulted in while we sat with our apéritifs before going to our gastronomic dinner. Our journey continued in the wide open spaces of Artois and Picardy under huge skies where remote lanes led us to the many moving cemeteries and notable monuments of the Great War - dramatic architecture and landscaping of the highest order - created by the genius of Lutyens and his fellow architects.

The two contrasting Provençal cities of Montpellier and Nîmes were chosen as our weekend destination in late June. From our hôtel de charme in Montpellier's old quarter we meandered its narrow, picturesque streets lined with mediaeval and classical mansions with attractive courtyards before arriving at the lively Place de la Comédie, the epitome of the lively, tree-shaded large public squares that French cities excel in. Bofill's megalomaniac modern-classical 'Antigone' was unavoidable but it simply did not stand comparison with real classical architecture: the magnificent Promenade de Peyrou and the Arc de Triomphe. On the edge of the city we visited the cathedral and the nearby Jardin des Plantes, the oldest botanical garden in France. Further out: an Art Deco church with stunning mosaics and stained glass and an Art Deco former hospital with gigantic Deco sculptures, now converted into smart apartments. Nîmes, only 35 miles away, is utterly different in character. It also has old mansions in picturesque narrow streets but its focal points are the great Arena and the Maison Carrée, two of the finest monuments of Ancient Rome outside Italy. The latter stands opposite Norman Foster's Carré d'Art - for once for him almost self-effacing. Nîmes equally has a grand classical layout: Les Jardins de la Fontaine with a vast ensemble of allées and formal, balustraded waterways, but here with a background of wooded hills. With Romanesque, Baroque, neo-Gothic and Art Deco churches, an Art Deco school and Jean Nouvel's avant-garde Nemausus, the city offered a fine range of things to see. And not forgetting delicious meals in both venues.

Istanbul is one of the most extraordinary and fascinating cities imaginable. In early October, 14 of us stayed in the atmospheric Pera Palace hotel (as did Mata Hari, Trotsky, Greta Garbo, Agatha Christie, Graham Greene int al), French-built when the city was still Constantinople, in the Europeanised quarter of this great, sprawling city. Its main street at night could not have been more lively; cheerful young people thronging its innumerable cafés and restaurants, some of them rather sophisticated in the Western sense. More varied than any other city visited this year, Istanbul offered notable Art Nouveau architecture - by Raimondo d'Aronco among others - the almost-too-sumptuous Eclectic palaces and mosques by the Armenian but Paris-trained Balyan dynasty, an avant-garde hospital by Charles Holden - later the architect of Oscar Wilde's tomb, Senate House, Great War memorials and modernist London tube stations - the neo-Gothic Crimean Memorial church by GE Street, the classical former British Embassy by Sir Charles Barry, architect of the Houses of Parliament, and interesting 19c and 20c bank buildings and churches by Italian and Greek architects. In Old Istanbul, before tackling the major sights of Topkapi Palace, the magical Aghia Sofia and the Blue Mosque, we visited the great Sinan's more intimate Rustem Pasa mosque with beautiful Iznik tiles, the lively Spice market with morning coffee courteously served at the legendary Pandeli restaurant with its lovely blue-tiled interior and then a glimpse inside a coffee-merchant's Art Deco premises with its pretty staircase. The vast, underground eerily-dripping, multi-columned Basilica Cistern - featured in a James Bond film - made a deep impression. While the service was a bit orientally slow, we had an excellent lunch at the restaurant in the grand Sirkeci Station built by a German architect as the terminal of the Orient Express. A very good lunch was enjoyed on the terrace of the sophisticated restaurant (impeccable service this time) at a new contemporary arts museum (with proper paintings not 'installations') with entertaining views of the bustling river traffic and the far Asian shore. A boat journey up the Bosphorus was an essential trip, with views of the yalis - aristocratic waterside mansions - both picturesque and grand. Istanbul has major museums of course but its new Industrial Museum was described by a member, an expert in these matters, as one of the finest of its kind he has ever visited.

The Seine Valley & Rouen was my last tour in 2006 - also in October - in perfect, golden autumnal weather - organized for The Friends of Charleston - 'Bloomsbury Group' addicts. After a jolly bistro lunch, we explored aspects of Paris in the footsteps of 'Bloomsberries', ending up for dinner at the best restaurant in the arrondissement. Next morning our mini-bus took us to the country house of painter André Derain, his studio evocatively crowded with artist's impedimenta. We then ventured into the beautiful, lush meandering Seine Valley with its tall chalk cliffs. After a sumptuous auberge lunch we passed through villages made known world-wide by the Impressionists before arriving at the most famous of them all: Giverny - where we visited Claude Monet's pink-rendered house with his sublimely decorated interiors and lush, colourful gardens, the American Impressionists museum and the enchanting fin-de-siècle inn where Monet's friends lodged and painted in the studio outside, in a romantic, bosky garden. Passing the dramatic ruins of Richard-the-Lion-Heart's castle, we then looked at the picturesque small Norman town of Lyons-la-Forêt - home of Ravel and often used for filming historical-epics - surrounded by the largest beech forest in Europe. Dinner was a relaxed feast in a restaurant next to our hotel in the heart of the ancient city of Rouen which we explored the following day - its cathedral a favourite subject of Monet, its picturesque mediaeval streets and its excellent museums.