Fodor's Italy 2001: Completely Updated Every Year, Color Photos and Pull-Out Map, Smart Travel Tips from A to Z (Travel Guide)

This volume presents information on travel, restaurants, accommodations, sightseeing, and shopping for Italy-bound tourists.

Destination Italy

No 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.

Rome

Rome -- 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.

Florence

Florence, 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.

Venice

Arriving 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 Riviera

Not 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.

Campania

Mount 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.

Sicily

The 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.

Sardinia

Savagely 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.