easy hikes and city walks in Italy
The island of Capri – just off the Italian coast near the southern city of Naples – is a truly dazzling spectacle. You could be forgiven for thinking that a theme park operator had carefully assembled all the familiar Mediterranean motives – azure skies and the turquoise sea, rocks, trees, hills, a marina, caves –…
The architecture of fascism is everywhere in Italy. If you have ever visited the country and are fascinated by fascist architecture, chances are you will have seen loads of it – unknowingly, perhaps, because these buildings blend in well with the rest of Italy’s street furniture, baroque churches and Renaissance palazzi included. The architecture of Italian…
I don’t know about you, but whenever we come across a town that has been labeled a City of the Arts, I get a queasy feeling in my stomach. From experience I know that all too often, this means grim medieval palazzi and stuffy churches that have been packed with dark, baffling and impenetrable paintings…
Today, we will start our second set of walks in Emilia-Romagna. In contrast to the first group of hikes that we posted a few weeks ago – which were full day trips – the shorter walks from this second group require less of a commitment and take a much smaller chunk out of your holiday…
MEDVIEDENKO Of all the cities you visited when you were abroad, Doctor, which one did you like the best? DORN Genoa. TREPLIEFF Why Genoa? DORN Because there is such a splendid crowd in its streets. When you leave the hotel in the evening, and throw yourself into the heart of that throng, and move with…
Hiking in Italy, like so much else in this sweet and lovely country, is by turns an exasperating and wonderful experience. Whether you are getting one or the other is largely determined by the kind of people who are in charge of the town or municipal district you are visiting. Some towns could clearly not…
For most of its history, Rimini – established by the Romans more than 2000 years ago – was a sleepy provincial town on the Adriatic coast. Within 20 years after the end of WWII, however, two dramatic changes occurred: first came the arrival of mass tourism. And then a local boy, the scion of a…
Of all the major European countries, Italy has always appeared to me the most culturally uniform. There is little that connects the baroque splendours of Catholic Bavaria with the Protestant restraint of Germany’s Hanseatic North and little common ground between Strasbourg and Nice, but there is an “Italianate-ness” of streets and buildings that is immediately…
For our recent journey through Emilia Romagna, a region in northern and central Italy, we decided to hire a car – something we had not done for several years, generally preferring to make our way on public transport and, of course, on foot. After so many years of not using a car for our journeys, I…
I must have advised you several times already that, if you take a trip to the French Riviera, you should combine this with a brief visit to Italy. On my list of suggestions, this is one of the top “Things To Do on the French Riviera” (right behind gate-crashing Brad Pitt’s yacht-warming party at the film…