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Sicily sits at the toe of Italy's boot, just 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) from the mainland, at its closest point, and a short ferry ride from the town of Messina. But our gateway to Sicily was on the other side of the island, flying into the capital Palermo. We have holidayed in Italy before, but now with my partner and our 6-year-old daughter Kitty i...

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Baking summer heat has forced Rome to close some of the drinking fountains known as "big noses", or "nasoni", that constantly gush fresh water on thousands of street corners, causing a public outcry. Hit by the soaring temperatures drying out southern Europe, the Italian capital has started turning off up to 30 of the 2,800 distinctive curved metal...

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A decade ago, I would never have said much about wines from Abruzzo or Molise, except for those from a handful of producers. And even in those few cases, save for Valentini (first without equals), I wouldn’t have done so in the generally glowing terms I use today. For Abruzzo’s and Molise’s white wines were generally neutral and oxidized quickly, w...

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It’s amazing, given the millions who flock into Venice, that hardly any tourists venture beyond the lagoon. Just 50km from la Serenissima, on the fringes of the volcanic Euganean hills, which provided stone for the pavements of Venice a millennium ago, there’s an enormous undiscovered castle. Castello del Catajo was built by the Obizzi family in ar...

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There are places you go to get away from it all. And then there’s Sant’Angelo. To get to this Italian village, you take an hour-long ferry from Naples to the volcanic island of Ischia, nestled a few waves’ breadth from Capri in the heart of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Then you take a meandering hour-long bus from the island’s manicured capital, Ischia Por...

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There is a sense of shame as Luigi Plasmati, 89, recollects growing up amid chronic poverty in a crammed cave in Matera, an ancient, bruised city in Italy’s southern Basilicata region.“It was brutal,” he said. “There were families of maybe nine or 10 children, sleeping next to mules and pigs. We were dying of hunger.” Less than 70 years ago some 15...

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Do all roads really lead to Rome? The Via Appia Antica (The Appian Way) aka “Regina Viarum” (Queen of Roads) is one of the most famous roads in Europe and is considered to be one of the oldest in Rome. It was named after the Roman censor, Appius Claudius Caecus, who initiated and completed the first 90 kilometers of the road in 312 BC.  In roughly...

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Tourist flows should be monitored at famous sites in Italy in cities like Rome and Florence, with access limited when crowd numbers swell, the culture and tourism minister said on Tuesday. Italy's 51 UNESCO World Heritage sites include whole city centers and town squares which have been increasingly worn out by the footfall of visitors over the cen...

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I'm standing at a large wooden barrel in front of a rustic outdoor bar with a huge platter of cured meat and cheese balanced on top of it. As slice after slice of the finest Parma ham melts like butter in my mouth, I’m enveloped by the buzz coming from so many others doing the same thing under the welcoming heaters. After cleansing the intense flav...

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Wedged between Florence and Rome, rural Tuscany offers the quintessential Italian experience: sun-soaked hill towns, green and rolling screen-saver hills, romantically fortified farms, and cypress trees marching single file up lonely ridges. We go to Italy to experience the finesse of Florence, the splish-splash of Venice, and the grandeur of Rome,...

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