Italy isn’t a big country, but most tourists spend their time in a pretty small part of it. To get really off the beaten path in Italy, you may need to get off the mainland and explore the rugged back country on the island of Sardinia. But if touring Sardinia sounds too daunting to do on your own, never fear - there’s a week-long tour that will take you through Sardinia, just waiting for you to sign up!
This BootsnAll exclusive sailing and hiking tour in Sardinia will show you the best this Italian …
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Rome was built on seven hills, and the Palatine Hill is the central hill as well as the site for one of the oldest parts of the city. It is in a cave here that (legend says) Romulus and Remus were suckled by the famous she-wolf - Romulus being the one who founded Rome once he grew up - so this hill is not only extremely well-known but also revered in Roman mythology. The importance of the Palatine Hill is more than just based in myth, however, as excavations here have revealed evidence of people living on the site around 1000 B.C.E.
The Palatine Hill overlooks the Roman Forum on one side and the Circus Maximus on the other. It is easy to combine a visit with the Colosseum and the Forum with a visit to the Palatine Hill. The buildings on the hill once included palaces of Augustus, Tiberius and Domitian, as well as other important Romans of the period, and a temple dedicated to Apollo. This site was also where ancient Romans celebrated the festival of Lupercalia, honoring the saving of Romulus and Remus by the she-wolf.
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Even if you don’t speak Italian, many games transcend language altogether so you don’t need to speak to understand them. Chess is one of those games, and it’s even more universally understood when you combine it with the notion of two men vying for the hand of a lovely young woman! What we’re talking about here is a tradition dating back to the mid-15th century, when a chess match instead of a duel was used to decide who of the two eligible suitors would marry the woman in question. But commemorating that occasion with a regular chess match wouldn’t be very interesting, would it? Not interesting enough for the town of Marostica, Italy, which makes recreating a chess match a spectator sport.
Every even-numbered year in Marostica, which is in the Veneto region of Italy roughly an hour northwest of Venice (but not on a train line), to mark the occasion of that 1450s chess match they hold a life-size chess match in the town’s main square. It’s called “La Partita a Scacchi con Personaggi Viventi,” and you may be able to gather from that title what makes this chess match so special - instead of chess pieces, it’s played with human beings and horses (in period dress, of course) on a gigantic board.
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Stumped as to what to get the Italophile on your Christmas list this year? Or just looking for a little something extra to fill your own stocking? Look no further than the Ms. Adventures in Italy basket which is up for grabs at this year’s Menu for Hope auction. Sara has put together a food-lovers dream collection of goodies that are famous in Italy as well as abroad, and any Italy lover - or foodie, for that matter - would be pleased as punch to get this. Trust me.
Sara’s a serious foodie herself, so I can only guess that every item in this incredible basked of Italian food has been personally tested and can be vouched for by Sara herself. Here are some of the items Sara has chosen for this year’s Menu for Hope basket, which come from all over the country:
Balsamic vinegar from Modena
White truffle oil from Abruzzo
Bronte pistachio cream from Sicily
Modica chocolate bars from Sicily
Extra virgin olive oil from a family friend in Puglia
Are you drooling yet? Because I am.
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Pictures of Venice are almost instantly recognizable - the canals and the Venice gondolas are unique and completely photogenic, so it’s not surprising that every photographer and their brother has a collection of Venice pictures. And while I, as a lover of Venice, can look at pictures of the city for hours and still be sighing, most people are going to get bored with the umpteenth shot of gondolas and little arched bridges. But I think even the most jaded viewer will find something of interest in “VenicExposed,” by Luca Campigotto.
Campigotto is from Venice - so he’s spent a lifetime seeing the city. He’s particularly fond of architectural photography, and he’s chosen to highlight Venice’s buildings and structures in a way that makes them stand out: he’s photographed them at night. Never has Venice looked so utterly deserted than in Campigotto’s photographs, but it’s not an unpleasant sight. It’s eerie to see those empty canals and dark, fast-moving water, but it’s an inviting kind of eerie.
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When I travel, I try as hard as humanly possible to not stand out like a tourist. I’m well aware that I’m usually instantly recognizable as an outsider, but if I can pass for at least semi-local-looking some of the time, that makes me happy. Toward that end, I don’t carry big, unwieldy folding city maps when I’m walking around an unfamiliar place. But I also don’t go map-free. Instead, I opt for maps that fold themselves and tuck in and out of a pocket in a flash - they’re pop-up maps.
My favorite maps are made by the Map Group, a British company, who I’ve decided are geniuses when it comes to design. They’ve created a series of maps that are smaller than an average postcard and yet usually contain four or five maps of a city or region. In the folds of the map, there are directories to help you find major streets and monuments, and there’s usually either a map of the bus and metro lines or indications on the city map where the stops are. If the touristy parts of the city aren’t that big, there may also be a map of the region surrounding the city you’re in, too.
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More and more travelers are abandoning traditional guidebooks in favor of online research these days, and while I’m a huge fan of the internet I still like to have a good old-fashioned paper tome on whatever place I’m about to visit. I always supplement it with online research, but I like paper. It’s very challenging to get those little sticky flags to stay on the websites I want to refer back to.
Because I like paper, I was happy to find that the folks at Moleskine have come out with a new line of city guides. Rather than being traditional guidebooks, these little books are clever combinations of handy maps for a given city and lots of empty pages for their owners to jot down either notes from online research or on-the-ground information about that restaurant find or favorite shoe shop. There are even little sticker tabs you can apply to whatever pages you want to be able to find in a snap. It’s customize-able to whoever owns it, and it’s just a fabulous idea.
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Of all the piazzas in Rome, Piazza Navona is one of the most popular for both tourists and residents. The first thing that you’ll notice when you enter this oblong piazza is its odd shape. Rather than a big angular shape with a big church or government building at one end, the Piazza Navona is long and skinny - and if you look at the “corners,” you’ll notice they’re not corners at all. They’re rounded. What gives?
The odd shape of the piazza will make perfect sense once you realize that this space was once the site of an ancient Roman circus, generally an elongated version of a Roman arena where people would go to watch athletic and theatre events. And although the circus which once occupied Piazza Navona is gone, it has left its clearly-defined outline on the curved buildings which once surrounded it. The piazza is today one of the best places to see Baroque architecture in Rome.
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I’ve long wanted to try a Home Food dinner, but during my past trips to Italy it never worked out - I was never in one of the cities hosting a dinner during my time in the country. When planning last month’s trip to Milan, however, I reasoned that with a week in the city there just had to be a Home Food dinner in Milan (or nearby) that we could attend. As luck would have it, there was.
If you’re unfamiliar with Home Food, read my post about the organization (written back when I was salivating over just the idea) for more details, including how to sign up. The gist of it is that Italians who are approved by the people who run Home Food invite strangers into their homes and serve meals which are traditional to that city or region, using seasonal and regional ingredients. The whole thing has sounded brilliant to me since I first heard about it, and I was thrilled to find an event right in Milan during my trip in November.
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Rome’s Spanish Steps and the piazza at their base are, collectively, both an incredibly romantic spot to spend an evening with a sweetheart on your arm and also a place to get royally ripped off by vendors and pickpockets alike. Your opinion of the area will certainly depend on which end of the spectrum your experience settles in. Let’s try to make sure you end up more with stars than rage in your eyes, shall we?
First, a little information. The Spanish Steps (Scalinata della Trinità dei Monti in Italian) is, as the name suggests, a long and grand staircase in Rome which connects two piazze - the Piazza di Spagna at the base and the Piazza Trinità dei Monti at the top. The stairway was built in the 1720s in an effort to connect the Vatican with the Spanish embassy (hence the name). The building at the top of the steps is the Trinità dei Monti, a church built in the 16th century.
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