Fiesole travel guide

Find some of the best places to stay, visit or eat while staying around Fiesole with Freya Middleton’s guide to the highlights of the area… Images by Freya Middleton unless otherwise stated What to see and do Estate Fieosolana  Via Portigiani 1, Fiesole An annual theatre and music festival usually takes place at the Roman […]

Finding Fiesole

Fiesole offers a day away from the bustle of Florence and is well worth exploring when you get there, writes Florence tour guide Freya Middleton. Images by Freya Middleton  Going to Fiesole is something I have always loved, and I’m not alone. The place has been continuously inhabited and constantly visited by foreigners since the […]

Amalfi Amore

Adrian Mourby takes a road trip along the awe-inspiring Amalfi Coast from Sorrento to Salerno… Images by Kate Tadman-Mourby unless otherwise stated There was a seagull on our balcony, a very large one, enjoying what was left of the pre-prandial grissini. The Excelsior Vittoria in Sorrento 1 stands on top of a cliff outside the […]

Pilgrimage to Possagno

You could travel the world’s museums to see the works of Antonio Canova, or you could go to Possagno, Joe Gartman writes… Images by Patricia Gartman There’s an elegantly mirrored and frescoed room in Venice’s Correr Museum, just off Piazza San Marco. I suppose you’d call the décor neoclassical: the mirrors are square, the frescoes […]

Standing at the crossroads in Gorizia

Medieval Borgo Castello

Amy McPherson steps into Gorizia’s multilayered culture to discover a charming fusion city… Photos by Amy McPherson unless otherwise stated   Gorizia is one of those border cities that doesn’t feel quite one or the other. On the one hand, it is characteristically Italian: emotions are thrown around in the wild gestures of hands. Yet […]

Winter in the Valle di Gran San Bernardo

san bernardo carnival

Rachael Martin arrives in Aosta’s ‘cold valley’ just in time for carnival, as well as taking advantage of the snowy weather to explore the region Photos by Rachael Martin unless otherwise stated   It’s carnival time on a cold February morning in the Great St Bernard Valley in northern Italy’s Aosta Valley region. I’m in […]

Viewpoint: Miracle of Summer Snow

summer snow

People gather outside the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore on Rome’s Esquiline Hill to witness a soap foam re-creation of the Miracle of Summer Snow… Photo by Getty Images Legend has it… that on the night of 4th August, a long, long time ago, it snowed in Rome. Not everywhere, and not a lot, but […]

Five best Italian piazzas

Piazza del Campo, Siena

The piazza is at the heart of Italian life and each one boasts its own unique history and atmosphere – here we pay homage to a few of our favourites Photos by iStock 1 Dubbed by Napoleon “Europe’s finest drawing room”, Venice’s Piazza San Marco is simply breathtaking. Even during the height of the season, when […]

Meet Paolo Arrigo

Paolo Arrigo

Christine Smallwood meets up with Paolo Arrigo and finds out about his deep-rooted connection with the soil Photos courtesy of Paolo Arrigo   Last spring I rediscovered a book that has been on my shelf for a decade. As I planted some veg seeds in my garden for the first time, From Seed to Plate […]