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LAST month marked the seventh anniversary of the launch of Europe’s first open-access high-speed operator. With its distinctive bright red trains and Italo brand, NTV quickly established itself as a high-profile challenger to incumbent Trenitalia’s flagship Frecciarossa services. With an initial investment of €967m, including €625m for a fleet of 2...

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Our return flight to England last month was cancelled, but were we upset? On the contrary, extra time in Rome in glorious sunny weather without the crowds was a bonus. We decided to visit places outside the centro storico where it was likely there’d be no tourists at all. We were right. The Foro Italico, north of the city centre, is one of the few...

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Less than an hour north of Rome lies Calcata, a mediaeval village clinging to a volcanic cliff surging out of the mists of the densely-wooded Treja valley. With its rugged tufa walls and steep pathways, entering this mystical, car-free hamlet is like stepping back in time or falling into a dream where Woodstock meets Hansel and Gretel. Stuff of fai...

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With 7,000 kilometers of coastline, Italy has plenty of seaside locations worth visiting. Seaside villages are popular destinations during the summer season, but it’s in winter that they reveal their true spirit, their stories strictly intertwined with life at sea. On winter days, the beaches empty out and seaside hamlets turn peaceful and silent,...

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Life becomes a time warp in Cornello dei Tasso, a golden stone medieval hamlet of unusual beauty perched on a cliff in the Brembana Valley at 800 m above sea level. Only eight kilometers north of San Pellegrino Terme and thirty kilometers from the city of Bergamo, it portrays Italy how it used to be.  Cornello dei Tasso seems to have stood still, u...

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If you’ve been to Venice, you may or may not have noticed two columns on the Doge Palace’s loggiato looking a different color from all others (if you haven’t been, take note for when you visit!).  They are centrally located along the loggiato (exterior gallery), facing the Piazzetta, right in front of the Biblioteca Marciana; and they are pink, mad...

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A journey to the Amalfi Coast feels like being in a place where dreams come true. On one side the blue sea stretches to the horizon while paradisiacal gardens lay on the other side. Following these gardens, all grown naturally, leads to the kitchens of four exquisite hotels between the Gulf of Naples and the Amalfi Coast that all belong to the Rela...

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Sicily’s coastline stretches for more than 930 miles and covers a dozen islands. With the temperatures warm enough for swimming from mid-May to early October, it’s easy to see why locals spend half the year here diving off craggy rocks and splashing about in the dramatic blues of the Ionian, Tyrrhenian and Mediterranean seas. From pebble shores and...

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I am the first person to admit that life in Italy is not always a bed of roses. Or rather, it is a bed of roses, but someone neglected to remove the thorns. So, just as you get comfy and cozy on this sweet smelling bed, you get pricked, and it hurts. Then, you curse the bed and the whole idea of the bed and whose idea was it to lie down in this stu...

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Red, orange and yellow. These colors have become symbols of the restrictions on life in Italy during the COVID-19 pandemic. Among many things it has entailed — from closed shops to restrictions on movement, the tricolor system of epidemiological measures introduced in November has closed cultural institutions across the country. And that has includ...

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