Berlitz Pocket Guide Italy (Travel Guide eBook)

• Publisher: Berlitz Travel
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781785730368
• Edition: 11
• Topic: Desarrollo personal
• Subtopic: Viajes

From fantastic Florence and the picture-perfect Tuscan countryside, to the grandeur of Rome, and the elegance of Venice, Italy has much to tempt the visitor. Berlitz Pocket Guide Italy is a concise, full-colour travel guide that combines lively text with vivid photography to highlight the best that the country has to offer.

Inside Italy Pocket Guide:

? Where To Go details all the key sights in the country, while handy maps on the cover flaps help you find your way around, and are cross-referenced to the text.

? Top 10 Attractions gives a run-down of the best sights to take in on your trip.

? Perfect Tour provides an itinerary of the country.

? What To Do is a snapshot of ways to spend your spare time, from exploring vineyards, to walking the streets of Venice, or working your way around Rome's stylish bars.

? Essential information on Italy's culture, including a brief history of the country.

? Eating Out covers the country's best cuisine.

? Curated listings of the best hotels and restaurants.

? A-Z of all the practical information you'll need.

About Berlitz: Berlitz draws on years of travel and language expertise to bring you a wide range of travel and language products, including travel guides, maps, phrase books, language-learning courses, dictionaries and kids' language products.

Where To Go

Planning a trip to Italy entails a series of difficult decisions. ‘Doing’ Italy is a lifetime’s job and many devotees are so in love with the place that they won’t even think of an alternative destination. After a predictable first romance with Rome, Venice or Florence, they spend the rest of their lives systematically working their way through the small but wildly varied country, region by region, visit after visit. If this is your first trip, you would do well to establish an overall impression. If the seduction works – and it usually does – you will want to come back time and again.

Sunset over Rome

Bill Wassman/Apa Publications

Getting Around

This section is divided into six areas and includes all the most important towns and regions. Five of the six areas have a principal city as a focus or starting point: Rome for central Italy; Florence for Tuscany, with Umbria and the Adriatic seaside resorts to the east; Venice for Veneto, the Dolomites and Emilia-Romagna’s historic towns from Parma to Ravenna; Milan for Lombardy, Piedmont and the Italian Riviera to the west; and Naples for the south. The sixth area focuses on Italy’s two largest islands, Sicily and Sardinia.

Those with a passion for the big city can combine Rome with the artistic delights of Florence and Tuscany, or Milan with the magical romance of Venice. For those who like to be active, mountains, lakes and wind lend themselves to myriad year-round sporting activities. Italy has 7,600km (4,722 miles) of coastline and when the summer heat gets too much, you can cool off at one of the many seaside resorts or any of the gem-like islands.

Nowhere is it easier or more delightful to overdose on museums and monuments than in Italy. While it would be a crime to ignore the churches, palazzi and museums chronicling the glories of Italy’s history, the best way to enjoy them is to also spend plenty of time soaking up the atmosphere from a front-row seat in a caffè, joining the early evening street passeggiata (promenade) or watching seaside life unfold from under a beach umbrella. The siesta is one of the greatest of all Mediterranean institutions and the most important Italian expression you may ever learn is dolce far niente (the sweetness of doing nothing).

Museum Tips

Museum-going in Italy is not always simple. Even the local tourist office cannot always keep up with the changes in opening hours. Some museums are closed temporarily – for days, months or even years – for restauro (restoration). This is a blanket term covering budgetary problems for museum staff and modern security systems, or genuine, long overdue programmes to renovate the buildings and restore the paintings. Many ancient Roman monuments may also go into prolonged hiding under protective scaffolding.

When you visit one of the huge museums such as the Uffizi or the Vatican, treat it like Italy itself. Unless you’re a museum-fiend, don’t try to see it all. Before you begin, study the museum plan at the entrance, then head for the things that capture your interest. Or, if you prefer serendipity – stumbling across beautiful surprises – just wander around, but not for much more than a few hours. Otherwise, you may struggle to recall the next day, let alone years later, just what masterpieces you saw. Many cities offer cost-effective tourist passes that include entry to museums. For major sights, pre-booking tickets is recommended.

Bike-sharing scheme in Rome

Ming Tang-Evans/Apa Publications

Rome and Lazio

Crowning seven hills along the winding banks of the River Tiber, Rome 1 [map] has numerous personalities: ancient Rome of imperial ruins; Catholic Rome of Vatican City and countless churches; the Renaissance city of Michelangelo and Raphael; and the Baroque of Bernini and Borromini. It is also a modern metropolis of interminable traffic jams, fashionable boutiques and caffès, as well as factories and characterless post-war suburbs. The secret of the Eternal City’s magic is that it lives and relishes all its ages: churches are built on the ruins of Roman baths or pagan temples, while the trendy caffè crowd on Piazza Navona draw inspiration from Bernini’s grandiose 17th-century fountain.

To attempt to know its every nook and cranny is daunting, but by starting with the ancient city around the Colosseum or the Vatican, you will come to know one age at a time.

Classical Rome

The nucleus of Classical Rome is around the Forum, with the Colosseum to the east, and the Palatine Hill and Baths of Caracalla to the south. Take them in your stride, avoid the midday sun in the shade-less Forum and enjoy a picnic and siesta on the Palatine. Even if you’re not interested in archaeology, it’s worth at least an hour or two to stand among the debris of an empire and wonder whether Fifth Avenue, Piccadilly or the Champs-Elysées will look any better 2,000 years from now.

The Roman Forum

With a leap of the imagination, you can stand among the columns, arches and porticoes of the Roman Forum A [map] (daily Nov–mid-Feb 8.30am–4.30pm, mid-Feb–Mar until 5pm, Apr–Sept until 7pm, Oct until 6.30pm; last entry one hour before closing) and picture the civic, commercial and religious hub of the city, the first in Europe to house a million inhabitants. Earthquake, fire, flood and the plunder of barbarians and Renaissance architects reduced the area to a cow pasture until the 19th-century excavations. A detailed map and audio guide, rented at the entrance (on Via dei Fori Imperiali), will help you trace the layout of the ancient buildings.

The Forum, hub of ancient Rome

Ming Tang-Evans/Apa Publications

Part of the Curia, home of the Roman Senate, still stands. Steps nearby lead underground to the Lapis Niger, a black marble pavement laid by Julius Caesar over the presumed grave of Romulus, the city’s founder. To the south of it are remains of the Basilica Julia law court and the Rostra orators’ platform from which Mark Antony informed the people of Caesar’s assassination. Countless Renaissance and Baroque sculptors have drawn inspiration from the friezes on the Arch of Septimius Severus (a 3rd-century emperor).

The Temple of Saturn doubled as state treasury and site of the debauchery known as the Saturnalia, pagan precursor of Christmas. In the circular Temple of Vesta, the sacred flame of Rome was tended by six Vestal Virgins who would be buried alive if they broke their 30-year vow of chastity. At the end of Via Sacra, the Arch of Titus commemorates the sacking of Jerusalem in AD70.

Of the Imperial Forums, built as an adjunct to the Roman Forum in honour of Julius Caesar, Augustus, Trajan, Vespasian and Domitian, the most sumptuous was Trajan’s. The beautifully designed Museum of the Imperial Forums (Museo dei Fiori Imperiali; www.mercatiditraiano.it; daily 9.30am–6.30pm) gives access to Trajan’s Markets, a tiered semi-circular structure of shops that sold everything from silks and spices to fish and flowers. The soaring Trajan’s Column (AD113) celebrates the emperor’s campaigns against the Dacians in what is now Romania, the detailed friezes spiralling around the column constitute a textbook of Roman warfare. St Peter’s statue on top replaced that of the emperor in 1587.

The Palatine Hill

South of the Forum, a slope leads to the Palatine Hill (Colle Palat...