Recommended Reading
Here are some gems that inspired us along our journey in Italy.
Beautiful Ruins
An epic story moving from the Italian coast in 1962 to current-day Hollywood, Beautiful Ruins is an absolutely wonderful novel. Walter skillfully weaves together the lives of his many characters that span generations and countries to a very satisfying conclusion.
Rick Steves' Italian Phrasebook & Dictionary
Rick Steves, bestselling author of travel guides to Europe, offers well-tested phrases and key words to cover every situation a traveler is likely to encounter.
Lonely Planet: Italy
Lonely Planet will get you to the heart of Italy, with amazing travel experiences and the best planning advice. Italy is an extraordinary feast of heart-thumping, soul-stirring art, food and landscapes rivalled by few and coveted by millions.
Rick Steves' Cinque Terre Snapshot
In this compact guide, Rick Steves covers the essentials of the Cinque Terre, including Corniglia, Vernazza, and the nearby towns of Santa Margherita Ligure and Portofino. You'll get Rick's firsthand advice on the best sights, eating, sleeping, and nightlife, and the maps and self-guided tours will ensure you make the most of your experience.
The Agony and the Ecstasy: A Biographical Novel of Michelangelo
A masterpiece in its own right, this novel offers a compelling portrait of Michelangelo’s dangerous, impassioned loves, and the God-driven fury from which he wrested the greatest art the world has ever known.
Eating Rome Living the Good Life in the Eternal City
Elizabeth Minchilli has been eating her way through Rome since she was 12 years old. Eating Rome, based on her popular blog Elizabeth Minchilli in Rome, is her homage to the city that feeds her, literally and figuratively. Her story is a personal, quirky and deliciously entertaining look at some of the city's monuments to food culture.
Go Slow Italy
Italy, the birthplace of the Slow movement and the home of Slow Food, is a natural as the second destination in our new Slow series. Alastair Sawday has handpicked forty-six exceptional places to stay–places where attention is lavished on some of the most important things in life: convivial meals, community, a respect for the environment, and a celebration of regional distinctiveness.
Italian Folktales
Chosen as one of the New York Times’s ten best books in the year of its original publication, this collection immediately won a cherished place among lovers of the tale and vaulted Calvino into the ranks of the great folklorists. Introduction by the Author; illustrations. Translated by George Martin. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book
Osterie & Locande d'Italia: A Guide to Traditional Places to Eat and Stay in Italy
This new guidebook combines two of the most popular Slow Food travel guides to Italy: Osterie d'Italia and Locande d'Italia. It has contributed to the revival of eating places that particularly reflect local flavor and character: restaurants, osterias, trattorias, and wine shops.
Pleasures and Landscapes A Travellers Tale
Sybille Bedford once wrote that travel writing is inseparable from the writer's tastes, idiosyncrasies, and general temperament--it is what happens to him when he is confronted with a column, a bird, a sage, a cheat, a riot; wine, fruit, dirt; the delay in the dirt, the failing airplane.
The Enchanted April
A recipe for happiness: four women, one medieval Italian castle, plenty of wisteria, and solitude as needed.
The women at the center of The Enchanted April are alike only in their dissatisfaction with their everyday lives. They find each other—and the castle of their dreams—through a classified ad in a London newspaper one rainy February afternoon.
Time Enough for Love
Through dark magic, Californian Gwendolyn Godwyn has been swept back in time to medieval Italy. There, she finds herself in the midst of a war between Italy’s rightful queen, Adelaide, and those who have kidnapped her and seek to usurp her crown. Risking her life, Gwen elects to play a pivotal role in the planned rescue.
A Tuscan Childhood
The sparkling memoir of an idyllic, bohemian childhood in an enchanted Tuscan castle between the wars.
When Kinta Beevor was five, her father, the painter Aubrey Waterfield, bought the sixteenth-century Fortezza della Brunella in the Tuscan village of Aulla.
Twilight in Italy: Sketches from Etruscan Places, Sea and Sardinia
Written at the height of D.H. Lawrence's creative energies, TWILIGHT IN ITALY (1916) is composed of seven short pieces that sparkle with the humor and lively sensory images for which he is known. Features an Introduction by Anthony Burgess.