The Everything Travel Guide to Italy

A complete guide to Venice, Florence, Rome, and Capri - and all the breathtaking places in between

Kim Kavin

• Publisher: Everything
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781440501807
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Travel

From the fashionable beaches of Capri to the awe-inspiring ruins of ancient Rome, Italy has something for everyone. This guide will help you get the most out of your trip to this beautiful country. Whether you want to discover the rural beauty of Tuscany, take a gondola ride through Venice, or admire the glory of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City, this all-new guide shows you how!Here you'll find the latest on:

• The best places to stay and dine in every region of Italy
• Sample itineraries for trips ranging from a day to two months
• Must-see ruins, museums, and natural wonders
• Useful Italian words and phrases to make the trip go smoothly
• A guide to world-famous Italian wine and cuisine

Filled with practical tips and exciting travel suggestions, this guide contains all the information you need to plan the Italian vacation of your dreams.

CHAPTER 1
Buongiorno!

Or buona sera, if you’re reading this at night. Good day, good evening, and welcome to Italy, a nation that has given birth to some of the world’s greatest history, minds, foods, and wines. With at least a dozen primary regions and major islands to explore, including world-class cities that have stood for centuries, Italy offers almost every type of vacation you can imagine. Where else can you walk in the foot steps of an emperor, view some of the planet’s finest masterpieces, shop for the latest fashions, and dine on classic regional recipes, all in a single day?

From Ancient Rome to the European Union

Archaeologists have found evidence supporting the notion that humans inhabited present-day Italy as early as 200,000 years ago, and it is believed that Greek colonies were established on the land as early as the eighth century B.C., just before the first communities of what would become Ancient Rome began to form. The massive Roman Empire started here and dominated most of Europe for some 1,200 years.

During the Middle Ages, the various regions of Italy were annexed and re-annexed to various neighboring empires while the first of Italy’s city-states began to emerge, eventually becoming known as the four classic Maritime Republics. You will recognize their names even today: Venice, Pisa, Genoa, and Amalfi, each strategically located along the coastline where merchant ships traveled. By the 1400s, Italy had fueled the Renaissance that would last for 300 years, inspiring a renewed interest in learning and culture that soon spread across modern-day Europe.

Question

What is a Renaissance man?
Generally speaking, the term refers to a person whose intelligence and knowledge are not restricted to a single subject area. Some of the best-known Italian Renaissance men included Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, who painted, wrote, sculpted, designed architectural and engineering plans, and more.

Toward Modern Boundaries

Italy became a unified state in the late 1800s, though its borders continued to shift into the early 1900s. Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini rose to power in 1922 and remained in control until 1943. Italy was liberated from fascist rule in 1945 at the end of World War II.

After more territorial transitions in the wake of that war, the Marshall Plan helped rebuild Italy within the borders that we know today. During those same postwar years, Italy—along with Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Holland, and West Germany—became a founding member of the European Coal and Steel Community in the first step toward the economic unification of Europe.

Italy also has played a strong role on the world stage as part of the United Nations, into which it was admitted in 1955. The nation’s soldiers have helped with peacekeeping missions from Somalia to Lebanon, as well as supporting the United States’ Operation Enduring Freedom with 2,000 troops in Afghanistan in 2003.

The European Union

In 1993, a generation after the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community, Italy became one of the founding members of the European Union, which continues to grow and strengthen today. The Treaty of Maastricht established the multinational entity, stating that Italy and the other member states share an economic market that guarantees the free movement of people, goods, services, and capital. There are foreign policy components, as well, but in general each country still has its own systems of laws and government. When you visit Italy you are within the European Union, yet you are still subject to Italian customs and laws.

Fact

Italy is one of the countries in the European Union’s euro zone, meaning places where the euro is the official form of currency. Italy adopted the euro in 1999, before which the lira had been the national currency. Lira had been used since 1861, and you needed to exchange nearly 2,000 lira to get a single euro when the new currency was adopted.

What’s nice about the European Union for travelers is that once you enter, you don’t need to get your passport stamped when crossing the borders between countries. Should you want to cross the northwestern Italian border with France to visit a beach on the Côte d’Azur, you can do so without international authorization.

Great Minds

Italy has produced some of the world’s most celebrated thinkers, artists, and leaders. You will likely find countless references to the most renowned as you travel from region to region, so here’s a quick primer on some of Italy’s most prestigious citizens throughout history.

Julius Caesar

It’s not every man who has a Shakespearean tragedy written in his name and a palace-style casino named after him in Las Vegas, but then again, it’s not every man who starts a civil war that ends up making him the leader of the Roman Empire. Such is the story of Julius Caesar, who was proclaimed dictator for life, had a love affair with Cleopatra, and ruled until the Ides of March in 44 B.C., when his old friend Brutus (et tu?) assassinated him. You can view the whole sordid affair by watching the 1953 film Julius Caesar, which was nominated for Best Picture Oscar and for which Marlon Brando was nominated as Best Actor (he played Mark Antony).

Fact

Julius Caesar learned about leadership and responsibility early in life, when his father died suddenly one morning while putting on his shoes. Caesar was just sixteen years old at the time, and he immediately became head of his entire family. The following year, he was named a high priest, but lost that designation before joining the army.

Galileo Galilei

The work of Galileo Galilei is widely renowned as part of the scientific revolution that took place in the 1500s and 1600s. He made vast improvements to the telescope that helped to confirm the phases of Venus, discover some of Jupiter’s satellites, and analyze sunspots.

He caused a great deal of controversy when he claimed he could prove that the sun, and not the Earth, was the center of the known universe. His work greatly angered the Roman Catholic Church, which eventually forced him to recant his scientific testimony. He died under house arrest during the Inquisition, which sought to confine and destroy heretics.

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci is best remembered as a painter, but he also was a mathematician, inventor, botanist, scientist, engineer, musician, architect, and writer. His two most famous works are the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper, and his lesser-known contributions include designs for a helicopter and a calculator, and the theory of plate tectonics.

Interestingly, da Vinci’s drawings of the human body—including the iconic Vitruvian Man—were based on countless hours that he spent dissecting cadavers at hospitals in Florence, Milan, and Rome. He was one of the first people in history to draw a fetus still inside the womb.

Michelangelo

His full name was actually Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, and he is best remembered for his sculpture David and his Sistine Chapel frescoes. Michelangelo was ahead of his time, but he was also honored within it, becoming the first Western artist to have a biography printed before he died. Unlike his contemporary da Vinci, whose best-known works are spread throughout Europe, Michelangelo’s David is on display at the Accademia di Belle Arti Firenze, while his frescoes still grace the Sistine Chapel ceilings in Vatican City.

Dante Alighieri

This poet from Florence was typically called simply “Dante,” and his Divina Commedia, or Divine Comedy, is renowned to this day as an exceptional detailing of a journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. How can a journey through Hell be called a comedy, you ask? Because in Dante’s days (the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries), any work not written in Latin was considered trivial. Dante wrote in what he called Italian, an altered regional dialect of Tuscany.

Niccolò Machiavelli

If you look up the word “Machiavellian” in the dictionary, the definition reads: “characterized by subtle or unscrupulous cunning, deception, expediency, or dishonesty.” The word is often used in modern politics as part of the phrase “Machiavellian tactics,” describing someone who places brute political force above morality.

Fact

The modern use of the word “Machiavellian” really fails to honor the true viewpoints of the man himself. Machiavelli believed that sometimes, the ends justify the means when it comes to political power, but in general, he was far less of an extremist than the current definition implies.

Poor Niccolò brought this legacy on himself, not so much in his well-regarded work as a diplomat from Italy serving in France, but because he described such methods of retaining power in his work The Prince, which was not published until 1532, five years after his death, when he was no longer around to point out its more moderate themes.

Ital...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. Buongiorno!
• 2. Rome
• 3. Vatican City
• 4. Northeastern Italy
• 5. North-Central Italy
• 6. Northwestern Italy
• 7. Bologna.
• 8. Tuscany
• 9. Central Italy
• 10. The Southeast Coast.
• 11. Campania
• 12. The Southwest Coast
• 13. Sicily
• 14. Sardinia
• 15. Italian Food
• 16. Italian Wine
• 17. Visiting Italy by Boat
• 18. Beyond Italy and into Europe
• 19. Key Italian Words and Phrases
• 20. Sample Itineraries
• Appendix A: Helpful Websites
• Appendix B: Buon viaggio!: Travel Essentials
• Appendix C: Italian Art and Culture