INAOSSIEN

Italy!!! Everyone knows something about Italy.

From the time of the Romans, Caesar and Mark Antony, Marcus Aurelius and Constantine. The old maritime republics of Venice, Pisa, Genova and Amalfi. The great cities of Naples, Milan and Florence. The art of Raphael, the sculptures of Michelangelo, the engines of Leonardo. The splendid architecture of Bramante, Bernini, Borromini - and Palladio.

From the Alps and the Lakes, to its islands and its beaches, Italy is so many things to so many people.

Yet few people know how deep is its history, how diverse its culture, how much it has influenced life around the world.

Long before the Romans there were Etruscans and Greeks; before Rome many towns were settled, and flourish still.

For centuries after Rome’s collapse, long before the republics could send forth their seagoing boats, Goths, Lombards, Saracens and Byzantines all sought to hold some part of Italy while its own people just tried to survive.

Naples was once the most populous city in Europe, its kingdom a glittering prize for Normans, Angevins and Aragonese to struggle over.

Pavia, not Milan, was once capital of Lombardy, dour merchants using their ducats to set up banking houses around Europe, while Florence minted her florins and Venice her sequins - and all grew wealthy on trade.

Giotto, Donatello and Brunelleschi were masters before Leonardo was even a student. Before them Petrarch, Dante Alighieri and Boccaccio limned poetic tales that would later inspire Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton.

Brunelleschi’s domes, Bernini’s colonnades and Palladio’s villas are all the foundations stones for the great buildings of the West - from Buckingham Palace to the White House.

And while Italy sank into long torpor punctuated by brutal battles and ragged rebellions, art and music glittered in its princely courts and shone forth to brighten the world, right the way up to the present day.

Despite many difficulties in recent times, Italy still holds great value and interest for the traveler. Just turn a corner in Rome and you can travel a thousand years in time. In the hills of Umbria it seems if time has not moved in as many years. In modernist Milan fashion is so sharp it would appear the rest of the world has yet to catch up.

And amongst it all, jewels waiting to be discovered: cracked temples in Campania, stone castles in Puglia, wooded valleys in Abruzzo, ancient abbeys in Lazio, elegant villas in Veneto, painted houses in Liguria, flat-roofed cottages in Sicily, timbered huts in Trentino…

Italy’s marvels never end…

Reveal more at: Reveal Italy