Italy

The New York Times dedicates a section of its Web site to Italy, which is also linked to pages from the Frommer's travel guide. Articles from the newspaper focus on particular regions, and there are also more general guides to the country.

Travel + Leisure magazine offers a database of knowledgeable, often witty, articles on Italy. There are also guides to Tuscany and Florence, Milan, and the Amalfi Coast.

The Washington Post carries articles on various aspects of vacationing in Italy. Some are most likely to appeal to the armchair traveler, such as the piece on renting a cottage on the steep cliffs of the Amalfi Coast. But other pieces are of more general interest, such as a guide to budget dining in Rome.

Fodor's is reputedly the world's largest publisher of travel guides. Its pages on Italy are unpretentious, easy to navigate, and cover most regions (with the exception of Puglia and Sardinia). With more than 700 writers across the planet, the recommendations supplied here should be reliable. You'll also find maps and weather reports for your chosen destination.

TimeOut City Guides generally place a greater emphasis on nightlife than history and culture, reflecting the interests of its hip, young readership. There are guides linked to here for all of the major Italian cities, and the sightseeing information and event calendar are useful.

ItalyGuides.it provides glimpses of the country that are likely to leave you slavering for the real thing. Rome, Venice, Florence, Pisa, Siena, Naples, and Sicily are profiled with 360-degree, all-angles interactive photography that allows you to scan the most famous and beautiful locations. Plus, there are free audio guides that you can download to an mp3 player, such as an iPod. The Venice section is particularly impressive.

Dream of Italy is a carefully crafted subscription newsletter that offers expert advice for travelers to Italy, covering destinations, hotels, restaurants and events you won't find in a typical guidebook. Free articles are available on the site.

National Geographic Traveler provides a "trip planner" for Florence, a concise, one-page guide to the city covering restaurants, cafés, and accommodation as well as the most popular tourist attractions.

The Uffizi Gallery in Florence is home to Carravaggio's Bacchus and Botticelli's Venus, two of the most famous works of the Italian Renaissance. Even if you can't identify these pieces by name, you won't fail to recognize them from a photo ... or up close.

Travel + Leisure readers voted Florence the world's best city in a 2007 poll. The magazine naturally includes a guide to Tuscany and its capital that covers the whole gamut of high-end establishments, from the luxurious to the merely very comfortable.

The Los Angeles Times publishes a long story, dating from February 2007, about a journalist's exploration of the Puglia region in southern Italy--the heel of the peninsula's boot. Puglia has been relatively unexplored by tourists, and is increasingly feted as a holiday destination. There are also links to the area's B&Bs and an advice page for Americans going to Puglia.

The Guardian reports that the Amalfi Coast, south of Naples, "can claim to be Europe's most magnificent stretch of coast." Amalfi is a winding length of cliff face on which villages perch at vertiginous angles. It's normally considered a resort for Europe's richest, but The Guardian offers tips on how to enjoy the region's movie-set scenery without busting the bank.

ItalyGuides.it has a particularly impressive section on Venice. Take a virtual tour using interactive photos and a downloadable audio guide. If you thought the floating museum that is Venice had no appeal for you, this may make you think again.

The Independent sent a restaurant critic over the length of Italy on a tour of regional cuisine. The resultant article covers everything from the heavy polenta-and-steak dishes of the north to the simpler, lighter pasta dishes and rich olive oils of the south. A number of restaurant recommendations are included.

Osterie & Locande D'Italia is a "guide to traditional places to eat and stay in Italy" (in English, the title is "Restaurants and Inns of Italy"). Compiled by Italy's Slow Food Movement, this book is an insider's take on Italian dining, written by chefs and culinary experts. At almost $30, it's not cheap, but contains profiles of more than 2,000 establishments that satisfied picky native authors.

The Slow Food Movement was inspired by the appearance, in 1986, of a McDonald's restaurant in Rome's historic Piazza di Spagna. This organization now has representatives across the globe working to defend quiet material pleasures in opposition to "the folly of the fast life." More information on this movement can be found courtesy of The Nation.
 

The U.S. Department of State provides Consular Information Sheets for Italy, San Marino, and the Holy See. Essential information regarding entry and exit requirements, safety and security, crime, and embassy registration is provided. Look in the left-hand sidebar to link to the State department's International Travel Page for additional advice and practical details.

The Italian Government Tourist Board devotes a page to the essential topic of money, explaining how American tourists can find ATMs that work with U.S. bank cards, and so on.

LifeinItaly.com provides a multimedia insight into aspects of Italian life not likely to be thoroughly covered in much depth in other travel guides. You will find pointers and observations covering subjects such as festivals, safety tips for women, and renting an apartment.

Italylogue hosts a short, handy video on how to use an Italian pay phone, which is more confusing than you might imagine. These phones accept coins, Italian phone cards (which are available from corner stores and cafés), and credit cards.

LifeinItaly.com makes the observation that Italians are compulsive in their use of cell phones. This site provides a mobile how-to guide, so you can chat to your heart's content when you're abroad and not feel left out.

The BBC offers a free mixed-level interactive course in the Italian language.

Lonely Planet is a long-established publisher of guides for the budget to mid-price traveler, and now sells audio phrasebooks to download in mp3 format. You can put these recordings onto an iPod or similar device. The Lonely Planet's Real Talk Italian is $5.50.

Collins has a free online dictionary that could be very useful if you have ready access to the Internet while you're traveling.

Perceptive Travel featured a piece by travel writer and editor David Farley. He offers some comfort to the linguistically challenged visitor to Italy with a humorous account of his struggles to learn Italian after moving to Calcata, a village just north of Rome. Believe it or not, he was there researching the disappearance of the town relic, the Holy Foreskin.

The BBC brings you an interactive profile of Italy covering the contemporary situation of this nation of 57 million.

LifeinItaly.com does a pretty good job of condensing 3,000 years into a third as many words. Familiarity with a few names and terms--Etruscans, Romulus and Remus, Garibaldi, for example--will enhance your enjoyment if you're planning to explore Italy's incomparable cultural heritage.

The Corriere Della Sera translates into English as "The Evening Messenger" and is Italy's newspaper of record. Its small English-language section is available online, and will provide grist for the conversational mill when chatting to the Italians that you meet.

World Hum carries the tag line "travel dispatches from a shrinking planet," and provides links to travel guides and news stories. At time of writing, the Italy page included a report on visiting Cinque Terre on Italy's West Coast, and one on a U.S. embassy warning to American tourists that a Neapolitan dispute about garbage collection has created a health hazard.

In Italy hosts this personal account of experiencing Il Palio di Siena, a horse race and festival that occurs every July 2 and August 16 in the Medieval Tuscan town of Siena. During this festival, the 17 quarters of the city compete in a no-holds-barred race over the cobbles of Siena's central square. After reading about one person's experience, click the link at the bottom of the page for events leading up to the festival.

La Notte Bianca provides information on its official site about the all-night citywide festival that has been held in Rome every year since 2003. Museums and galleries stay open through the early hours, there are guided tours of churches, concerts, plays put on in the streets, free salsa lessons, and innumerable other events. On the site, get a schedule of events, and create a route by selecting your favorites.

The International Herald Tribune reports on the Carnival of Ivrea, which revolves around a series of battles fought between local volunteers armed with millions of oranges. Occurring in the early spring before Lent, the festival turns the streets of Ivrea, a northern Italian town, into one enormous smoothie as the locals put themselves through a medieval-style blender.

The Venice Biennale occurs, as the name suggests, once every two years (in odd years). Originally a festival of international art, it has diversified over time to involve every artistic medium imaginable--film, dance, and music, as well as contemporary art--and is now a highbrow version of the Cannes Film Festival. On the site, research the festival events, locate venues, purchase tickets, or check the archives.

Travelmax compiles a list of upcoming events from around Italy in this comprehensive student travel guide.

Booking Buddy runs a search using a number of different travel sites to find the cheapest airfare available, so you no longer have to traipse around the Internet looking for a bargain.

RyanAir is a discount airline servicing many destinations in Europe. If you plan on visiting multiple destinations overseas, RyanAir is an inexpensive way to get from one to the next.

RailEurope is a service that allows you to buy rail tickets between European destinations and to check timetables on the continent before you travel.

Trenitalia has an English-language guide to rail travel across the Italian peninsula. There's an interactive timetable and a booking facility, both of which are very useful if you can overcome the fact that these two parts of the site are in Italian.

Auto Europe has car rentals available for many Italian cities, as well as chauffer services for those who want to travel in style.

LifeinItaly.com provides several pages with advice on driving in Italy. You may be eager to read this, since the recklessness of the Italian driver is proverbial in Europe. If you're determined to explore Italy by road, then this site is a useful place to visit. 

Alitalia is an Italian airline servicing many locations in Italy and beyond. This page has a clear map of the airline's destinations in Italy, as well as a search tool allowing you to find and book your flight.

Plus Villages operate throughout Europe and provide hostels and campsites that tend to offer a wide range of amenities (such as a laundry, Internet café, and pool, depending on location). The rates are low, and the accommodation varies from corrugated huts, which may be shared by campers, to air-conditioned mobile homes.

TripAdvisor compiles a list of the top hotels in Italy based on the opinions of its many thousands of users. The site provides a way to confirm or qualify the hotel reviews you find elsewhere.

Travel + Leisure recommends and reviews dozens of hotels throughout Italy. The least expensive double room in a Milanese hotel in Travel + Leisure's low-price bracket was €165 (currently around $225) a night in October, but if you're looking for Old World grandeur or modern boutique luxury, this is the place to go.

Agriturismo carries a directory of farms, with maps, sales blurbs from the various establishments, prices, and a booking facility. There's not much more to the site than that, and prospective holidaymakers would do well to look for recommendations elsewhere, such as TripAdvisor, before making a reservation.

The Washington Post recently ran an article by two writers who went to Sicily to get a taste of the increasingly popular phenomenon of agriturismo.

The International Herald Tribune also reports on the rise of agriturismo. There are now 14,000 agriturismi (the plural noun for the farmhouse-inns) scattered throughout the mainland and islands of Italy.

CRW Bicycle Stories hosts the account of two cyclists who in 1998 weaved a route across Umbria and Tuscany, taking in Venice, Assisi, Florence, Rome, and a number of "surprisingly pleasant" towns and villages in between. These travelers aren't writers, but their enthusiasm might inspire readers to find other adventurous ways to explore Italy.

RealTravel compiles Italy travel blogs. Scroll through the list on this page to see what strikes your fancy, or use the search tool in the upper toolbar to find a particular area or region.

La Bella Figura is a humorous guide to Italian culture from Beppe Severgnini, who took a 10-day trip to thirty places across Italy. 

Italian Neighbors recounts the experiences of British author Tim Parks in his 10 years in the northern Italian city Verona (where Romeo and Juliet is set). Reviewers have described this as a fast and witty memoir with more intellectual clout than Under the Tuscan Sun, which covers similar ground.