"Terra di belleze, nazione di crea ..." a Italy Travel Page by mikey_e

I'm not sure why I truly love Italy as a place to explore (I don't think I'm quite prepared to be able to live in a city like Rome or Milan), but it probably started when I was 15 and began Italian language lessons. I know that I make a big deal out of language and travel, but Italy and Italian are really an exception - six years' worth of Italian lessons including three years at the oldest faculty of Italian Studies in North America. Still, my first trip to Italy was in 1992, when I was 9 years old, and it certainly captured my imagination at that time, even if we only did a sort of whirlwind tour through Florence, Rome and Venice. I returned again in 1994 (Verona and Sirmione), 1998 (San Remo), 1999 (Trieste, Padova, Bologna, Ferrara, Trento, Bolzano, Ortisei, Milan, Genova, Torino, Aosta), 2005 (Palermo, Agrigento, Catania, Messina, Reggio di Calabria, Cosenza, Taranto, Bari, Brindisi, Lecce, Pescara, Termoli, Campobasso, Sulmone, L'Aquila, Perugia, Roma, Latina, Napoli, Benevento and others) and 2006 (Bologna, Modena, Firenze, Trieste, Gorizia). And let me tell you - language definitely makes a difference!

Both from conversations with fellow travellers and from the paucity of VT tip pages, I've noticed that a small fraction of tourists who visit northern Italy actually make it to the Mezzogiorno - the South. This really is a shame, as the southern half of the country has so much to offer. Not just a friendlier and more laid-back people (as many rightfully claim) but a wealth of ancient sites and an intricate culture and history that are sure to fascinate those tired of the same tourist-shills and hawkers on the streets of Florence. The extreme south was once called Magna Graecia (Greater Greece) and it has the traces to prove it, from the Valle dei Tempi near Agrigento to bronzes in Reggio di Calabria's museum to the stunning people of Calabria and Basilicata. More than standard ruins and museums, there is the fascinating influence of Arab and Norman invaders in Sicily, the small isolated Albanian and Greek communities throughout Calabria and Puglia, the chaos of Naples, the superb food just about anywhere in the south and the relatively empty and beautiful beaches near the Tremiti Islands.

None of this, of course, is meant to take away from the well-deserved reputation of northern Italy. You cannot claim to have sampled all the delights of western culture if you have not been to Florence, and there are plenty of other cities to whet your artistic appetite, including Bologna, Modena, Venezia and Roma. More than that, this is the home of high fashion (Milano), fast cars (Modena and Torino), romance (Venezia), Roman Catholocism (Roma), ski resorts (Aosta and Val di Badia/Cortona), and, yes, even some grand Hapsburg architecture (Trieste). There is more to northern Italy, especially for those people who want to feel as if they have done something a bit off the tourist track, and that includes cultural tourism, like visiting the Ladin and German communities in Alto Adige, retracing Joyce's footsteps in Trieste, and seeing one of the bishoprics of the much-feared Waldensian or Bogomil heresy in Sirmione.