Rome rewards the prepared traveller. The Eternal City draws millions of visitors each year, and like any great global capital, it demands a measure of awareness. Pickpockets work the crowded metro and the queues outside the Colosseum. Selfie sticks and backpacks can become weapons in packed piazzas where space is at a premium. The sun […]
Categories: Cities, Italy, Rome, Sights, Travelling Tips
Venice during Carnival is a city wearing a mask both literally and metaphorically. The narrow alleys fill with people in velvet cloaks and feathered headdresses, their faces hidden behind elaborate porcelain masks that turn every encounter into a mystery. The air carries the smell of fried dough and espresso mixed with the brackish scent of […]
The Gardens of Ninfa (Giardino di Ninfa) are widely considered the most romantic garden in the world, a hauntingly beautiful English-style landscape garden created among the atmospheric ruins of a medieval ghost town in the Lazio countryside, just south of Rome. Declared a Natural Monument of the Italian Republic and described by The New York […]
Categories: Gardens, Italy, Nature, Nature, Virtual Travel
The Ponte Vecchio is the only Florentine bridge to survive the Second World War intact. On August 4, 1944, as the German army retreated across the Arno, they dynamited every bridge in the city. Ponte Vecchio was spared. Instead, the mines blew up the buildings at both ends, blocking access, but the bridge itself stood. […]
The Colosseum is 1,935 years old and it is still the largest amphitheatre ever built. The outer wall originally rose 48 metres, the height of a modern 16-storey building, and the arena floor covered 3,357 square metres. It held 50,000 spectators who entered through 80 numbered arches. The building was completed in 80 AD under […]
Categories: Cities, Italy, Rome, Sights, Sights, Virtual Travel
The Canal Grande curves through Venice in a reverse-S shape for 3.8 km, from the Santa Lucia railway station to the Bacino di San Marco. It is the city’s main thoroughfare and its most theatrical stage. The canal is lined with 170 palaces built between the 13th and 18th centuries. No road runs alongside it. […]
A thousand years of rain and frost, and the glacier that once covered the Ritten plateau melted 10,000 years ago. What it left behind is a forest of earth pillars capped by boulders that look as though a giant dropped them from a great height. The pillars cluster in a ravine above the village of […]
Filicudi is the third smallest of the seven Aeolian Islands and the least visited after Alicudi. The permanent population hovers around 250 people. There is one bank, one pharmacy, one school with a single teacher, and a handful of restaurants that close for lunch. The island has no airport, no ferry from the mainland, and […]
Mount Etna is the largest active volcano in Europe and the most frequently erupting volcano on Earth. It has been erupting for at least 500,000 years. In 2021 alone it erupted more than 50 times. The locals call it Mungibeddu in Sicilian, and they have learned to live with a mountain that could, at any […]
Categories: Islands, Italy, Nature, Nature, Sicily, Volcanoes
The Cascate del Serio is the tallest waterfall in Italy at 315 metres, and it is only visible for a few hours each week. The water is regulated by a hydroelectric dam upstream, and the valve that releases the water into the natural falls is opened on a fixed schedule. The rest of the time […]
Categories: Italy, Nature, Nature, Waterfalls