Customer Reviews

One Hundred & One Beautiful Small Towns of Italy (101 Beautiful Small Towns)

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ONE HUNDRED AND ONE BEAUTIFUL SMALL TOWNS OF ITALY is a lavishly illustrated insider's look at the Italy as known to Italians. Writer Paolo Lazzarin took on this project of focusing on the secret treasures within Italy and wrote it for Italians. Now Rizzoli has released it internationally and all of us who love this most romantic of countries are the richer for this guidebook.

Lazzarin has divided his book into the multiple regions of Italy from the north to the south and shows us all the hidden small towns that are in the regions of the famous cities such as Venice, Milan, Florence, Siena, and Rome. He is careful to acknowledge the influence of these cities we all know, but at the same time he graces each of the 101 towns with descriptions of the land the architecture, the artisans, the foods, and the special places that provide a strong magnet to the reader.

Many of the towns names are familiar, but only because the names appear on cheeses, wines, olive oil, and trinkets! Yet in this book the towns of Spoleto, San Gimignano, Arezzo, Gallipoli, Portofino, Gubbio, Ischia, Modena, Aosta and all the others come to life in warm prose and breathtaking photography.

This special book is illuminating as a resource guide for the next voyage to Italia; it also is one of the more beautiful gift books for treasured friends and loved ones on the market today! Grady Harp, November 2004.

By Bill Marsano. An old Italian pastime is the compiling of lists of the 'cento citta'--the hundred most appealing Italian cities and towns. Candidates should be small enough for intimacy but big enough to afford urban pleasures. They needn't be sunk in wilderness but countryside should certainly be at hand. Agreeable climate? Another plus. The lists are always highly personal and endlessly debatable, and here's Paolo Lazzarin, journalist and photographer, with his own nominations. He outdoes tradition by selecting 101 towns, all, per the subtitle, beautiful and small.

And all in all, he does a pretty good job; certainly this book will help the Italy-lorn struggle through a long winter of discontent with being too far from the Blessed Peninsula. And, as Jane Austen wrote, or should have, "It is a truth universally acknowledged that staring at pictures of Italy never did a body any harm." The photos are the principal part and appeal of the book; this is not a survey course ("Italy: From the Etruscans to Berlusconi"). There is an abundance of them but I could wish more were better and/or better chosen.

Some do not illustrate, others do not evoke, and still others are well-worn tourist-office images. For example, here you'll get no hint of what Riva del Garda actually looks like, and still less of Faenza, which is represented only by its famous ceramics. In San Remo, must we see the casino--again? The entry for Valenza has an extended caption about a nature reserve sitting beside a large and ordinary shot of a palazzo's interior staircase.

As for the writing, the best I can say is that it avoids the customary excesses; Italians are too often overwhelmed by patrimony and resort to cheerleading in prose form. On the other hand, Lazzarin is mechanical, unspired. It's hard to believe that he's really at one with all these places, even, occasionally, that he has the facts. Shall Trento really be called a hamlet? Is Triora really "perched above the sea"? (I distinctly recall its being a 10-mile drive inland.) Shouldn't Lazzarin admit that the Cinque Terre's hill paths are terminally overrun by vapid Rick Steves tourists? And there's an overall lack of sophistication: Siena's Piazza del Campo, Lazzarin confides, "was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995." Believe me, gentle reader, the designation is irrelevant to Siena, that living masterpiece. Its sole value is to validate the pack of overpaid, underworked artsy UN bureaucrats who awarded it. (And still one wonders: 1995? What on earth took them so long?)

Still, still--you could do worse. Lazzarin has found his way to plenty of places most Americans have never heard of or have merely passed by: Triora, Ortona (no T, no C; just plain Ortona), Cividale, Sondrio, Anagni and others, and with this book in your lap and some wine at hand, you'll have a good enough time visiting them, and perhaps be inspired to check ticket prices online. If that should happen, then your next step is to get some of the Cadogan Guides to Italy and to Italian regions; they are written by Dana Facaros and Michael Pauls, and they are much the best I've run into. Lucky you: They're all available fromn Amazon, too.--Bill Marsano is a professional writer and editor who has won several awards for his articles. He visits Italy several times a year.

A very Beautiful book that was a gift to a friend who loves Italy. The detailed, colorful pictures are a pleasure for the eyes. Highly recommend.

A lovely book with lovely pictures.

However, the title is a bit misleading. The author's definition of 'small town' is ... different. He apaprently defines anything smaller and less touristed than Rome/Venice/Milan/Florence as a 'small town' and an 'undiscovered gem/off the beaten track' So his list includes not only truely 'small towns' like Lucca and Portfino, but metropolises of half a million people (Catania, Trieste) and large cities (100,000+) that are well known to the tourist hoards (Pisa, Verona, Siena, Perugia). He also includes some heavily touristed islands (Capri, Ischia, Elba) and one city where NOBODY lives (Pompeii).

So, enjoy browsing the pictures, but don't expect to find more than half a dozen truly 'undiscovered gems' among his 101 choices.

"101 Beautiful Small Towns of Italy" is not a guide book in the strict sense of the word. It is a wonderful coffee table book you should always keep there in order to browse through and get pleasure from the beautiful photos of all those beautiful towns. It is divided according to historical regions of Northern, Central and Southern Italy, as well as the islands. It gives you a host of the facts about the history and culture of the towns. And their histories are so entertwined, you get the history of Italy in miniature.
But the book also gives such extensive information about what to see in these towns and around them, what and where to eat, where and what to shop for,as well as a lot of advice about places to stay, that you really can use it as a guide book.
Highly recommended for everybody who enjoys travelling and beautiful photography.

This is a great book, nice and big and beautifully presented , I recommend this book for travel or just to read about this country

Beautiful book with great photos and good discriptions.
Lots to learn about these towns in detail. Helps you visit these
towns in your own time and comfort of your home.
Learn about places you would love to see in time.
Italy is beautiful and full of history and this is the
way to see it before a trip. I recommend this book to anyone who
loves Italy.

If you want to see the beautilful, historic small towns/villages of Italy this book is a must.

I already had a copy of this book (given to me as a gift) and was so pleased with it, I purchased this copy as a gift for a friend. As a frequent visitor to Italy, I have really enjoyed retracing my steps and looking for new places to visit

This is a coffee table book that you'll actually read! It brings back memories of the wonderful places we've visited and well as selecting new places to go.
Highly recommended for Italy lovers!