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Certainly, there is no shortage of magical destinations within a country as diverse as Italy to take your fancy but as you know as well as me, it remains a very popular country to visit. Many people come with stars in their eyes and very determined and full itineraries to hit the hot spots that they’ve read so much about online.  Cinque Terre, Veni...

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Carlo Tacconi is the worker who gets on the highest and most beautiful roof of Florence. The only one that enters the golden ball of Verrocchio on top of Brunelleschi’s Dome of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, the symbol of the city. Up there, 116 meters from the ground, after 463 steps, opens the window and enjoys a unique view. “We get on...

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Fourteen completely renovated rooms have opened on the first floor of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, forming a new large section of paintings dedicated to the 16th century, the golden century of Italian painting, featuring Venetian and Florentine masterpieces from the Medici collection. The new arrangement comprises 105 works of art, a part of whi...

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Secondo uno studio di Phocuswright per il turismo europeo si prevede, almeno fino al 2022, una crescita del 12%, con l’Italia protagonista. A riportare i dati è Federturismo – Confindustria.  Le entrate turistiche nel corso di quest’anno raggiungeranno i 295 miliardi di euro rispetto ai 286 dello scorso anno, ma il 2019 sarà l’anno del definitivo s...

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A long, steep stone staircase connects the port of Marina Grande in Capri with the town of Anacapri, 300 meters above. Made up of 921 steps dug out of the side of Mount Solaro, Scala Fenicia was built by Greek colonists around the V-IV century BC, most likely on a pre-existing trail. Just like in other Greek towns, it connected an inhabited village...

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“Life is a combination of magic and pasta,” observed iconic Italian film director Federico Fellini – perhaps an inadvertent but accurate summary of his aesthetic throughout his four decades of movie making. Uniquely blending gritty realism and lyrical fantasy, Fellini (1920-1993) created some of the most arresting visual images ever projected on th...

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Italians have always been known to go south to the heel of Italy’s boot in summer, where the 500 miles of coastline offers sublime beaches and a dialed-down ambiance. Helen Mirren and Taylor Hackford, Meryl Streep and Francis Ford Coppola have found Puglia (Apulia) the perfect escape from the frenetic pace that comes with celebrity. In the last fiv...

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The ancient city of Elea, which derives its name from the local spring Hyele, was founded around 540 B.C. by a group of exiles from the Greek city of Phocaea, in present-day Turkey, occupied by the Persians. The city, which was known in the 5th century B.C. mainly for Parmenides and Zeno, founders of the famous Eleatic philosophy school, reached a...

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Legend has it that the grotto hidden among the craggy cliffs on San Marco hill in Sutera in the heart of Sicily holds a treasure chest full of gold coins. In order to find it, three men must dream simultaneously about the precise place to dig. Treasure or no treasure, the grotto itself is an archaeological gem, its walls adorned with a multi-colour...

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The Royal Armory of Turin was founded when in the 1830s Charles Albert (1798-1849), king of Sardinia, began collecting weapons belonging to the Savoy in the Beaumont gallery, which until then had housed the large paintings moved to the Royal Picture Gallery. What was then known as the “Antique and Modern Armory” was organized by its first director ...

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