Imagine being led through the backstreets of 17th-Century Rome with the dazzling but dangerous Caravaggio as your guide. You call at the spectacular palazzo of his great patron, Cardinal Scipione Borghese, stop in a tavern to meet his lover and model, Fillide Melandroni. And then he leads you past the Pantheon to the church of San Luigi dei Francesi to see his latest painting, one which – we now know – is about to change the course of art history.

Four hundred years later, that painting – the Calling of St Matthew – is still hanging in the same place in the same church. And the Caravaggio trail is just one of a dozen itineraries through which this book traces the lives and works of more than twenty artists, from Giotto to Tiepolo and Raphael to Artemisia Gentileschi. By following their footsteps you will be immersed in their worlds and discover paintings and sculptures which are still in situ – in the churches and chapels, palaces and villas for which they were originally made.