Italy Travel

Matera, “la Città Sotterranea”, the underground city. A hundred years ago ignored by a distant government. A rabbit warren of intense poverty, a clot of hardscrabble lives spent sleeping in caves, working in fields far away. The Sassi. Wet, moldy hovels scraped out of limestone with warm blooded animals for heat, cold blooded for annoyance and disease. The shame of Italy.

Bassano del Grappa is an interesting Veneto town associated with Grappa, ceramics, and a covered wooden bridge, the Ponte degli Alpini. Bassano del Grappa has a romantic side as well. Sit at a bar over the Palladian covered bridge and the serene Brenta river and you can't help feeling all is well with the world.

How did Italy get like this? A professional review of books that speak of the Italian cooking of the poor, cucina povera, as well as Mussolini, the forgotten region of Calabria and more.

See what to expect in Italy in September including festivals, events, and weather. Plan your September visit to Italy with this travel guide.

See 5 recommended places to go in Italy in 2018. Our top picks include a northern Italy city and region, southern Tuscany sights, and Palermo, Sicily.

See 5 top places to go in Italy in 2019 from Matera and Naples in the south to Milan, Bolzano, and off the beaten path Valcamonica in northern Italy.

One of Italy's most beautiful villages in the Abruzzo makes a fine day trip from Sulmona.

Italy has 12 public holidays. Find the dates for Italian national public holidays and see what's closed and how they're celebrated.

Aquileia was once a major city of over 100,000 people waiting for the barbarians to pour across the borders. It sat pretty along the Natiso river in Friuli. It even has the symbol of Rome right in front of the Basilica’s bell tower.

Fidenza is a lively town of 28,000 people located along the Via Emilia between Parma and Piacenza, a mere 23 km from Parma. It has a fantastic cathedral facade peppered with Romanesque carvings intended to speak to illiterate pilgrims who plied the Via Francigena on their way to Rome.

You can pay 17 euro to see the Ferrari museum in Maranello, but the Stranguellini is easy to visit and it’s free when you make an appointment. If you like to see fast cars with small motors made by hand, this is the place you’ll want to visit.

Explore Italy's east coast with our guide to best places to go and where to stay. See top cities and towns to visit along the Adriatic Sea from Trieste to Puglia.

See highlights of our Italy travels 2018: Palermo, Rome, Piemonte's Val Chisone, Emilia Romagna castles and spa town, and off the beaten track Molise region.

Watch the process of making the famous breadsticks of Piemonte in the town of Barolo

Most visitors to Italy make Venice a top place to go but don’t see much else along the Adriatic coast. It's a shame, because there are many fine destinations to explore, and this article shows you where to go and what to see.

An account of my friends Robert and Dori and their recent flight from San Francisco to Italy ending up in their Lucca condominium (ownership of which along with their residence permits allows them to bypass the restrictions of travel from the US to Italy.)