Published by
FROMMER MEDIA LLC
Copyright 2017 by Frommer Media LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the Publisher. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to .
Frommers is a registered trademark of Arthur Frommer. Frommer Media LLC is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.
ISBN 978-1-62887-318-4 (paper), 978-1-62887-319-1 (e-book)
Editorial Director: Pauline Frommer
Editor: Elizabeth Heath
Production Editor: Lindsay Conner
Cartographer: Liz Puhl
Photo Editor: Meghan Lamb
For information on our other products or services, see www.frommers.com.
Frommer Media LLC also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic formats.
How to Contact Us
In researching this book, we discovered many wonderful placeshotels, restaurants, shops, and more. Were sure youll find others. Please tell us about them, so we can share the information with your fellow travelers in upcoming editions. If you were disappointed with a recommendation, wed love to know that, too. Please write to:
Frommers Star Ratings System
Every hotel, restaurant and attraction listed in this guide has been ranked for quality and value. Heres what the stars mean:
Recommended
Highly Recommended
A must! Don't miss!
Manufactured in China
5 4 3 2 1
AN IMPORTANT NOTE
The world is a dynamic place. Hotels change ownership, restaurants hike their prices, museums alter their opening hours, and busses and trains change their routings. And all of this can occur in the several months after our authors have visited, inspected, and written about these hotels, restaurants, museums and transportation services. Though we have made valiant efforts to keep all our information fresh and up-to-date, some few changes can inevitably occur in the periods before a revised edition of this guidebook is published. So please bear with us if a tiny number of the details in this book have changed. Please also note that we have no responsibility or liability for any inaccuracy or errors or omissions, or for inconvenience, loss, damage, or expenses suffered by anyone as a result of assertions in this guide.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Stephen Brewer has been savoring Italian pleasures ever since he sipped his first cappuccino while a student in Rome many, many years ago (togas had just gone out of fashion). He has written about Italy for many magazines and guidebooks and remains transported in equal measure by Bolognese cooking, Tuscan hillsides, the Bay of Naples, and the streets of Palermo.
Stephen Keeling has been traveling to Italy since 1985 and covering his favorite nation for Frommers since 2007. He is co-author of the award-winning Frommers family travel guide to Tuscany & Umbria, and has researched numerous travel books in Europe, Asia and the Americas. Stephen lives in New York City.
Melanie Renzulli has been writing about Italy for guidebooks, magazines, and travel blogs for nearly 20 years. She has explored the Italian capital from several different perspectives, giving her unique insight into the citys major attractions and quiet backstreets. While Melanies favorite features of Rome change nearly every day, shes always up for peeking into an old church, ambling about ancient ruins, and stopping for an aperitivo.
Michelle Schoenung is an American journalist and translator in Milan who relocated to the Belpaese in 2000 for what was to be a yearlong adventure. Her writings and translations have appeared in magazines and books in the United States and Italy. In her free time, she likes to read, run, travel, cook and explore the city with her two rambunctious Italian-American sons.
Donald Strachan is a travel journalist who has written about Italy for publications worldwide, including National Geographic Traveler, The Guardian, Sunday Telegraph, CNN.com, and many others. He has also written several Italy guidebooks for Frommers, including Frommers EasyGuide to Rome, Florence, and Venice. For more, see www.donaldstrachan.com.
Michelangelos statue of David, a copy outside the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence.
J ust hear the word Italy and you can already see it. The noble stones of ancient Rome and the Greek temples of Sicily. The wine hills of Piedmont and Tuscany, the ruins of Pompeii, the secret canals and crumbling palaces of Venice. For centuries, visitors have come here looking for their own slice of la dolce vita , and for the most part, they have found it.
Nowhere in the world is the impact of the Renaissance felt more fully than in its birthplace, Florence, whose huge repository of art includes works left by Masaccio, Botticelli, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and many, many others. Much of the known world was once ruled from Rome, a city supposedly founded by twins Romulus and Remus in 753 b.c. Theres no place with more artistic treasuresnot even Venice, a seemingly impossible floating city whose beauty and history was shaped by its centuries of trade with the Byzantine and Islamic worlds to the east.
Of course, theres more. Long before Italy was a country, it was a loose collection of city-states. Centuries of alliance and rivalry left a legacy of art and architecture in Verona, with its romance and an intact Roman Arena, and in Mantua, which blossomed during the Renaissance under the Gonzaga dynasty. Padua and its sublime Giotto frescoes are within easy reach of Venice, too. In Siena, ethereal art and Gothic palaces survive, barely altered since the citys heyday in the 1300s.
Earlier still, the eruption of Vesuvius in a.d. 79 preserved Pompeii and Herculaneum under volcanic ash for 2 millennia. It remains the best place to get close-up with everyday life in the Roman era. The buildings of ancient Greece still stand at Paestum, in Campania, and at sites on Sicily, the Mediterraneans largest island. Cave dwellings, frescoed rupestrian churches, and even a rock cathedral honeycomb one side of Matera, in Basilicata.
The corrugated, vine-clad hills of the Chianti and the cypress-studded, emerald-green expanses of the Val dOrcia serve up iconic images of Tuscany. Adventurous walkers of all ages can hike between the coastal villages of the Cinque Terre, where you can travel untroubled by the 21st century. Whether its seafood along the Sicilian coast, pizza in Naples, pasta in Bologna, pesto in Genoa, or the red Barolo and Barbaresco wines of Piedmont, your taste buds are in for an adventure of their own. Milan and Florence are centers of world fashion. Welcome to La Bella Italia!