Scenic walks in urban environments come in one of two guises: they take you either through a cartoon version of nature that has been carefully designed for the delight of urbanites or through feral landscapes – abandoned “brownfield sites” such as railway lines, port installations and industrial depots – that have been reclaimed by nature….
For today’s post, we are going to climb the Vomero, the other hill of Naples, the one that does not have smoke coming out of its ears. Or rather, I should say, we were going to climb the Vomero, because that was the original scenario. We wanted to tell you all about the Salita del…
If you have seen a Bible movie at any time in the last few decades that was shot on a proper location rather than a soundstage, there is a good chance that Matera was in it. In fact, Matera – located in the southern Italian region of Basilicata – stood in so frequently for the…
Despite the sassi, the rock churches and all the other fascinating things that you can see in Matera, the highlights of any walk around the town are the magnificent views across the Murgia landscape. But this landscape is not only there to be marveled at. After all, all those bright lines that are zigzagging up…
Matera is the ugly caterpillar on the tree of international travel destinations. 70 years ago, the town was the epitome of the backward, benighted Italian South, so poor and neglected that it was officially designated a national disgrace – la vergogna nazionale – by the country’s first post-WWII government. Today, it is one of Europe’s…
Last week, I said that Bari was not a mandatory stop on the Great Italian Tourist Tour. Today, I would like to qualify that a little. It is true that most printed travel guides refer to Bari only in passing, but they do recommend it as a convenient stopover to a place which has become…
Bari, the largest city on the Adriatic coast, is not a mandatory stop on the Great Italian Tourist Trail. No Renaissance masterpieces are on public display, the town’s history does not feature names that you would recognize from old High School lessons, and you will not see reflections of magnificent medieval architecture in the sparkling…
Why yearn for faraway countries when so much beauty is close at hand? I would love to say that we went to explore the Parc du Cap Martin on the French Riviera inspired by these famous words of Goethe, but the truth is far more prosaic: a friend had invited us for a drink in…
“Parma as a capital city needed a river”, said the Italian poet Artilio Bertolucci (the father of the internationally famous and Oscar-winning film director), “but since it is was only a small capital of an undistinguished Duchy, all it got was a torrente.” Torrenti are so unfamiliar in Northern European countries that most of the…
Today, we will be offering you: a lake that looks occasionally like a piece from the Amazon jungle … … a river that looks occasionally like a canal … … a gem of an old town with plenty of interesting views and motives … … and a spate of horses, largely in one shape and…