What can a long-dead writer tell you about travelling in Italy? A lot you'd never otherwise see. History enthusiast Stewart Skelt shares some of his favourite travel writing about Italy throughout the centuries. All armchair travellers and lovers of Italy surely enjoy travel writing on Italy – such books extend the pleasure of the actual journey for weeks and months beforehand, and afterwards as well.

But for the lover of travel and history, there are two particular pleasures. One is reading books by people who travelled many years ago, and whose writings about their experience are therefore descriptions both of the places they visited and the era in which they lived. The