easy hikes and city walks in Italy
The cities of Calabria rank low on the list of Italy’s travel destinations. Few people would choose Reggio di Calabria or Catanzaro as a base for their tour of the region in the same way that they would structure a trip to Sicily around extended visits of Palermo or Catania. Which is why we approached…
Few things in unfamiliar cities are as irresistibly enticing as hilltop castles. I don’t know about you, but whenever I spot one such castle perching over a city that we are visiting for the first time, I feel something very powerful is pulling me up – and cannot rest until I have looked down on…
The Calabrian town of Cosenza – situated on the toes of the Italian boot – appears to be haunted by its own past. Much of this is down to the old town’s video-game architecture and the mix of busy street life and eerily quiet lanes, often within a cat’s whisker of each other. But partly…
Agropoli is the perfect day trip from Naples. This small and picturesque town, located at the southern tip of the Gulf of Salerno, is only one hour away by train from Naples and will provide you with a much needed balm for your nerves and soul after a few days in Europe’s most anarchic city….
There are two ways of exploring Naples. You can opt to tick off the well-known points of interest: the Caravaggios and the catacombs, the churches and the royal palaces. But you can also venture out into the streets of the city without a fixed itinerary in order to experience Naples on a visceral level: immersing…
The shorelines of Lake Mergozzo and the Lago Maggiore are less than a mile and a world apart. Where the Lago Maggiore is sublime and dramatic, Lake Mergozzo is serene and understated – and where the former is besieged by crowds, you can conduct a walk around its near neighbour in blessed solitude. The contrast…
On one level, the Borromean Islands in the Lago Maggiore can be seen as three independent destinations: as three little towns that have developed in as much isolation from one another as it is possible for places only a few hundred meters apart. Alternatively, however, you can also understand them as cogs in the same…
Northern Italy’s Lago Maggiore may be a big lake – so big that hiking around it will take you a week or more – but its three most celebrated beauty spots are packed into a tiny sub-section. In the Golfo Borromeo, the Lago’s narrow side arm between Stresa and Verbania, you can find all three…
The Lago Maggiore is, despite what its name appears to suggest, not the largest body of water in the Italian “Lake District” (that honour goes to Lake Garda), but it is the most stretched-out. The shortest route around it is 170 km long, and more than 60 km lie between Arona in the south and…
Piacenza, says one of my guide books for Northern Italy, is known as the “City of Bricks”, but this, I believe, does not quite hit the mark. It is it true that many buildings in town, including some grand architectural statements of Church and State, have been constructed from that relatively humble material … ……