Ten Things To Experience In Italy Before You Die
Despite what the name might imply, this newsletter doesn’t offer much in the way of travel advice. Even after twenty years of journeying regularly to Italy, I hesitate to offer so much as a restaurant recommendation.
Most of the education that can be gleaned from Life Lived Italian is of the hard-knock variety. Don’t rent an electric car unless you know where to charge it. Don’t try to check into an agriturismo in the throes of a wedding party. Don’t go cave exploring without an exit strategy. Those kinds of things. Where to find the best gelato in Florence or Venice I’ll leave to writers like Laura Itzkowitz, Gillian Longworth McGuire, and Elizabeth Minchilli, all of whom are high on my recommendation list and whose newsletters fill up the “saved” section of my own profile.
But in what is becoming an August tradition, I’ve noticed that my media feed is filled these days with cantankerous summer vacation postmortems, from guests and hosts alike, all of whom seem to be saying the same thing: the travel season in Europe, particularly in Southern countries like Italy, Greece and Spain, can’t continue like this. The hospitality industry is devouring the places it was hoping to preserve, and not being very hospitable in the process.
Emiko Davies raised the point quite perceptively in her recent Substack post “Is Overtourism killing Florence’s dining scene?”. Days later, Italian journalist Ilaria Maria Sala contributed a guest column in the NY Times, detailing how the insatiable appetite for mortadella was ruining Bologna (Bologna destroyed by baloney— the painful irony of it). Of course, TikTok has weighed in as well, with plenty of hot, sweaty Americans bemoaning the lack of air-conditioning, the endless stairs, and the preponderance of hot, sweaty Americans along the Amalfi Coast. In Barcelona, locals hosed down tourists with water pistols in protest. In Rome, tourists might have considered that a favor.
To be honest, I’ve missed most of the scuffle. Like someone cloistered in a monastery while revolution roars outside, my Italian life seems to largely be lived in an alternate universe. In June, I visited the Villa Farnese in Caprarola, a Renaissance masterpiece of architecture, sculpture and painting and was almost entirely alone, until a group of students arrived, murmuring in the garden. In Modena, I went to the Pavarotti Museum, and wandered around the great man’s home on my own, more like a burglar than a tourist. In the lakeside town of Marta, the only sound along the promenade of this old fishing village was the seagulls laughing hysterically from the red tile roofs faded grey by time.
The truth is that Italy is not really filled with tourists, not even at the height of the season. The problem is that all of the visitors have gathered in the same eight places, sometimes even the same sandwich shop, at the same time. Towns like Urbino, Ravenna, Narnia, or Agrigento are full of art and history and yet still offer the kind of sightseeing experience one sees in turn of the century picture books, where the lone writer or artist wanders in quiet solitude, scribbling in his or her journal. The beaches of the Adriatic have the same beach beds and umbrellas as the ones in Positano, minus the stairs— and at least some of the hot, sweaty Americans.
In that spirit, I’m offering up my first, and probably only, must-see list for the Italian sightseer. The good news is, it’s not site specific. You can find it all in whatever piazza you find yourself, whether it’s a tiny “ghost town” like Civita di Bagnoregio, a mid-size city like Lecce or Mantua, or Piazza del Carmine in Milano. Personally, I compiled the list while sipping a granita in the Piazza del Plebiscito , the medieval square in Viterbo. Never heard of Piazza del Plebiscito? Never been to Viterbo? Exactly my point.
Ten Things To Experience In Italy Before You Die
Children kicking a soccer ball against a 15th century wall.
Lemon trees. Extra points for nearby jasmine. Taken together, it’s how paradise must smell.
Stucco painted in a shade that’s neither orange nor brown, but the color of a half-drunk cappuccino or a faded page of parchment.
The waltzing rhythm of an Italian saying goodbye on the phone. Dotted half note. Quarter note. Quarter note. Quarter note. “Ciaoooo…. ciao, ciao, ciao.”
A fountain, preferably not the Trevi, though that counts too. Even a simple wall spout will do. So long as it splatters, splashes and gurgles— the refreshing sound of tranquility dripping softly into a bucket. Extra points for the appearance of gargoyles, lions or sea nymphs.
An archway that perfectly frames the landscape beyond.
Mediterranean umbrella pines, side by side, making a greater archway still, framing the city itself.
A cool cat sleeping on shaded stairs.
Doors—big wooden ones, maybe with studs and bars and bolts that look like it would take a band of Visigoths to break them down. And the tiny wooden doors built into those great ones, that swing open to let in the plumber or the TV repairman.
A priest or nun locking up their church in the marbled light of evening, and striding in their robes across an empty piazza. Extra points for church bells.
Congratulations. Whatever square you’re in, you’ve likely ticked at least three-quarters of the boxes. Now you can relax.
You’ve not seen everything, of course. You never will. That’s why they made books and travel shows and maybe even Instagram. The spritz you’re drinking or the panino you’re eating may not be on anyone’s top 10 list. But rest assured that whatever Italy has to teach you, it will find you where you are. It’s a country of happy accidents and random encounters with beauty. In this two-thousand year old museum of life, the little side rooms can be just as life-changing as the Great Halls. If you can’t find anything that speaks to you where you are, I doubt you’ll find it at the Uffizi either.
Italy will of course survive this current round of bad publicity. For their part, vacationers will get a chance to try it all over again next year. But the towns and the ways of life that are being trampled in a quest to replicate someone else’s TikTok video, likely shot on a sunny day in early March, may not be so lucky. Maybe we need to give some of these places a rest, and learn to find meaning in something other than the best gelato or a prize piece of mortadella. Maybe we don’t need to change how we travel so much as to change how we see.
In the interests of authenticity, I’ll be living my best life Italian-style over the next two weeks, and savoring the last two weeks of the summer. I trust many of you will be doing the same. I’m so grateful for each of you who supports Life Lived Italian by reading, sharing, and adding your comments. Wishing everyone the best for Ferragosto and Labor Day, and I’ll be back in your inbox in September. Buon divertimento!
Very good idea. It's such a fascinating book, but obviously describes a way of life that's almost incomprehensible on certain levels, even while it can feel quite contemporary in others. Maybe there's a much more interesting take from the female vantage point. Have been working on a project involving Caterina Sforza, who was an incredible female character from that time....
It’s true— often some of the best museums in Rome are almost empty, while everyone crams into the Vaticano or the Colosseo. Maybe you’re right— maybe TikTok is doing us all a favor by pulling most of the people away from what we want to see.