Fodor's Italy 2001
"Fodor's guides cover culture authoritatively and rarely miss a sight or museum." - National Geographic Traveler
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No matter what your budget or whether it's your first trip or fifteenth, Fodor's Gold Guides get you where you want to go.
New for 2001! Your personal supply of Post-it® flags makes it easy to mark your favorite listings and keep track of frequently used pages.
Color planning sections help you decide where to go with region-by-region virtual tours and cross-referencing to the main text.
Full-size, foldout map keeps you on course.
Insider info that's totally up to date. Every year our local experts give you the inside track, showing you all the things to see and do -- from must-see sights to off-the-beaten-path adventures, from shopping to outdoor fun.
Hundreds of hotel and restaurant choices in all price ranges -- from budget-friendly B&Bs to luxury hotels, from casual eateries to the hottest new restaurants, complete with thorough reviews showing what makes each place special.
Smart Travel Tips A to Z section helps you take care of the nitty gritty with essential local contacts and great advice--from how to take your mountain bike with you to what to do in an emergency.
We've compiled a helpful list of guidebooks that complement
Fodor's Italy 2001. To learn more about them, just enter the title in the keyword search box.
Fodor's upCLOSE Italy: Designed for travelers who want to travel well and spend less.
Fodor's Exploring Italy: An information-rich cultural guide in full color.
Fodor's Escape to the Amalfi Coast: Full-color guide highlighting 25 one-of-a-kind experiences in Capri, Positano, Sorrento, and the Bay of Naples.
Fodor's Escape to Tuscany: Full-color guide highlighting 25 one-of-a-kind experiences in Tuscany.
Fodor's Exploring Tuscany: An information-rich cultural guide in full color.
Fodor's Florence, Tuscany, UmbriaFodor's Rome 2001Fodor's Holy Rome: A millenium guide to the Christian sights.
Destination ItalyNo less an observer of life than Goethe once exhaled into the now-famous diaries he kept of his 18th-century journey through Italy, "I can honestly say I've never been as happy in my life as now." The great German poet was neither the first nor the last visitor to fall blissfully under the spell of this justifiably fabled land, with its stunning landscapes, stupendous contributions to Western civilization, and unabashed enthusiasm for life's pleasures. Be prepared to be swept away; sooner or later on your own Italian journey, you're bound to succumb to Italy's charms.
RomeRome -- antique, Renaissance, Baroque, always papal -- is a veritable Grand Canyon of culture, built of stratified layers of ancient, medieval, and modern. It's the mixture of old and new that gives Rome its vibrancy, with Vespas and compact cars buzzing past the famous sights and subtle details that tell the stories of the city. Walk through Old Rome, taking in the Baroque splendor. Continue along the Via Portico d'Ottavia of the Jewish Ghetto, past the Bocca della Verità, set into the vestibule of a 12th-century church, and cross the Tiber River to the cobblestone alleys of Trastevere. Stop for a Campari break at a café in the timeless 17th-century Piazza Navona, take pleasure in an hour stolen alongside Bernini's splashing
Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, or wander through the colorful
Campo dei Fiori market to savor the aromas of fresh produce blessed by the balm of the Roman sun.
FlorenceFlorence, the "Athens of Italy" and the key to the Renaissance, hugs the banks of the Arno River. Folded among the emerald cypress-studded hills of north-central Tuscany, the city is anchored by the
Duomo, with its Brunelleschi dome, an engineering tour de force. Elegant and somewhat aloof, as if set apart by its past greatness, Florence shares with Rome the honor of first place among Italian cities for the magnitude of its artistic works. Among them is the Renaissance masterpiece started by Masaccio and Masolino and finished by Lippi, the
Santa Maria del Carmine fresco cycle in the Cappella Brancacci. Through its innovative style, their creation changed the course of art forever. In the Galleria dell'Accademia, you will find one of the most visited and powerful works of art in the world, Michelangelo's David.
VeniceArriving in Venice for the first time, the humorist Robert Benchley shot off a telegram to his editor at the New Yorker, "Streets full of water. Please advise." Water captures the imagination here, rendering the city dreamlike. Above all, watery Venice is a city of fantasy, and its lavish palaces and churches -- such as the domed
Chiesa di Santa Maria della Salute, gracing the entrance to the Grand Canal -- rise out of the lagoon like mirages. The prosaic becomes extraordinary here. The fishermen and lace makers who live on the nearby, low-lying island of
Burano paint their simple houses in playfully bright hues. The city's symbol, perched among Moors and angels on the enameled facade of the
Torre dell'Orologio in Piazza San Marco, is not just a lion but a supernatural leonine creature that sprouts wings.
Italian RivieraNot nearly as worldly as its counterpart across the French border, the "other" Riviera more than compensates by being a little balmier, a lot less discovered, a little sweeter, and, well, more enticingly Italian. The charm of this region, officially known as Liguria and forming an arc around the helter-skelter port city of Genoa, can be as subtle as the soft ocher-color facade of a palazzo in the faded, genteel resort of
Rapallo. For more drama you need only travel to the easternmost edge of the region, where the Riviera attains a picturesque crescendo. Here,
Riomaggiore and its four sibling villages cling to seaside cliffs and give a name to one of Europe's most breathtaking coastlines -- and most popular walking terrain -- the Cinque Terre, or Five Lands.
CampaniaMount Vesuvius may grumble, the earth around Naples may shoot steaming gases, the dark waters of Lago d'Averno may lend credence to the ancients' belief that this was the entrance to the underworld, the port cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum may be frozen in time forever by a catastrophic volcanic eruption. But blessed by gentle light and washed by warm seas, Campania defies these omens. A vast treasury of Baroque architecture, classical antiquities, and Renaissance masterpieces, it is above all appreciated for its beauty and easygoing ways: It's not a coincidence that the frescoes in Pompeii's
Villa dei Misteri -- perhaps our most astonishing paintings from the ancient world -- depict a young woman's initiation into the cult of Dionysus, the god of wine. The very names here -- Capri, Positano, Amalfi, and even Naples -- evoke sybaritic pleasures and hedonism, fragrant lemon groves and turquoise seas.
SicilyThe architecture of magical Sicily reflects the island's centuries of changing dominion under the Greeks, Arabs, Normans, and Spaniards. Baroque church-hopping could be a sport in the mist-shrouded streets of Palermo, seafaring Siracusa, and the ceramics center of
Caltagirone. The breezes are sultry and everyday life is without pretense, as witnessed in the workaday stalls of Palermo's Vucciria market and in
Catania, its fish market piled high with the island's ubiquitous sardines. A phalanx of Greek temples stands sentinel in Agrigento's Valley of the Temples, blanketed in almond, oleander, and juniper blossoms.
SardiniaSavagely beautiful landscapes of dense and mountainous bush, rock-strewn beaches, and weathered coves with wind-sculpted granite formations intensify Sardinia's aura of isolation. This Mediterranean island west of mainland Italy is far enough from imperial and papal Rome to have its own enigmatic character, which has been shaped by an amalgam of peoples and architectural styles: Phoenician, Spanish, Moorish, Turkish, Genoan, and Pisan. If here in midsummer, you've been cast in the role of an Italian movie star, so grab your yacht and wraparounds and tack to the Costa Smeralda, where the international jet set slips into resorts such as Cala di Volpe in Porto Cervo.
