Italy Historian Behind 3,000 Tours Unveils Myth and Sea Odyssey Program in Italy and Greece

Chameleon Travel Shop’s fifth Buried Italy program traces Odyssey sites in southern Italy, Ithaca and Kefalonia.

POMPANO BEACH, FL, UNITED STATES, September 3, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Chameleon Travel Shop has launched the Myth and Sea Odyssey Program, which traces the places in southern Italy tied to Homer’s Odyssey and continues on to Kefalonia and Ithaca, the Greek islands where the story starts. The boutique company builds small group and private cultural programs for travelers who want to understand Italy, not just photograph it. It is also opening a King Arthur program across England, Wales and Cornwall.

Joseph Walker, the Italy historian who leads Chameleon Travel Shop, announced both programs during a recent appearance on the Where Have You Been? Travel Stories podcast with host Bill Roehm. Walker is a U.S. Navy veteran, a historian of ancient and medieval Italy, the voice behind the social media channel Italian History with Joseph, the author of Buried Italy and a consultant on documentary productions that appeared on the BBC, the History Channel and the Discovery Channel. He has worked on more than 3,000 tours and helped rediscover Portus Julius, the submerged Roman harbor north of Naples that now supports a local tourism industry.

The problem Walker describes is not access to Italy. It is understanding. Travelers come home with photographs of buildings they cannot name, a gap Roehm raised on the show about his own pictures.

His own turn came around 1990. As a young sailor he kept hearing whispers about a sunken city up the coast, so he hired a fisherman’s boat and went looking. The water was cold and cloudy and the fisherman told him not to get in. Then a break in the clouds lit the water, Walker saw walls under the hull, dove 10 to 12 feet, waved away the silt and found a Roman mosaic floor. He ran the first tours there for several years.

Asking locally is still how the programs earn access. Near Cumae, the oldest Greek colony in the West, Walker spent years building trust with a farming family that lives inside one of the earliest Roman amphitheatres ever built and grows citrus and grapes where gladiators once fought. They eventually invited him to press grapes with his feet at harvest and to stay for the meal. The stop appears on no printed schedule. He offers it as a 15 minute detour and lets the group vote.

“There’s no amount of money that can do that because that’s 35 years of relationships,” Walker said on the Where Have You Been? Travel Stories podcast.

The programs repeat that kind of moment. In Otranto, at the southern tip of Puglia, he brings travelers to a cathedral floor laid in the 1100s by a monk named Pantaleone, who worked King Arthur, the zodiac, Alexander the Great and Islamic and Scandinavian motifs into one tree of life so a town that could not read would still learn the shape of the known world. Pantaleone came out of San Nicola di Casole, a monastery library many in the 1400s called the greatest in the West, burned in an Ottoman raid in 1480.

The Buried Italy Series now runs five programs, all based in southern Italy, and separate itineraries reach Etruscan tombs in central Italy and the Dolomites and Venice further north. Groups start at eight travelers and cap at 15, averaging about 10, because the places he goes will not take a bus. Tailor-made programs are built from scratch, with whole days left empty.

“I feel like I should be paying you,” Roehm told Walker during the episode.

Walker, who lives between Perugia, Italy and Florida, has been asked to rejoin Normans of the Sun, the living history group he performed with at medieval festivals including the Palio of Oria in Puglia and Calendimaggio in Assisi further north.

“If you’ve been to Italy, you’ve got to go back. And if you have not been to Italy, you have to go. It will be transformational in your life,” Walker said.
The free collection Walker announced on the episode includes field notes on seven places that require an introduction to enter, a chapter cut from Buried Italy and 72 hours of early access to new programs, at www.italianhistorywithjoseph.com/stories.

About Chameleon Travel Shop

Chameleon Travel Shop designs small group and private cultural travel in Italy for people who want the history explained, not just the view. Led by Italy historian Joseph Walker, the company runs the Buried Italy Series along with Sicily, Etruscan and northern Italy itineraries, plus tailor-made programs built around archaeology, regional food and wine and Italian-American heritage. Its team is based in Italy, so travelers are never handed to an outside operator, and travel advisors use the company as their Italy specialist.

Media Contact:
Joseph Walker, Director, Chameleon Travel Shop
Email: Joseph.walker@chameleontravelshop.com
Website: www.chameleontravelshop.com

Joseph Walker
Chameleon Travel Shop
joseph.walker@chameleontravelshop.com
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