| Italy is perhaps Europe's most complex
and alluring destination. It is a modern, industrialized nation, but
it is also, to an equal degree, a Mediterranean country, with a
southern European sensibility. Agricultural land covers much of the
country, a lot of which, especially in the south, is still owned
under almost feudal conditions. In towns and villages all over the
country, life grinds to a halt in the middle of the day for a
siesta, and is strongly family-oriented, with an emphasis on the
traditions and rituals of the Catholic Church, which,
notwithstanding a growing scepticism among the country's youth,
still dominates people's lives.
Above all, Italy provokes reaction. Its people are volatile,
rarely indifferent, and on one and the same day you might encounter
the kind of disdain dished out to tourist masses everywhere and an
hour later be treated to embarrassingly generous hospitality. If
there is a single national characteristic, it's to embrace life to
the full: in the hundreds of local festivals taking place across the
country on any given day, to celebrate a saint or the local harvest;
in the importance placed on good food; in the obsession with clothes
and image; and above all in the daily domestic ritual of the
collective evening stroll or passeggiata – a sociable affair
celebrated by young and old alike in every town and village across
the country.
Italy only became a unified state in 1861, and, as a result,
Italians often feel more loyalty to their region than to the nation
as a whole – something manifest in different cuisines, dialects,
landscape and often varying standards of living. There is also, of
course, the country's enormous cultural legacy: Tuscany alone has
more classified historical monuments than any country in the world;
there are considerable remnants of the Roman Empire all over the
country, notably of course in Rome itself; and every region retains
its own relics of an artistic tradition generally acknowledged to be
among the world's richest.
Yet there's no reason to be intimidated by the art and
architecture. If you want to lie on a beach, there are any number of
places to do so: beaches are for the most part sandy; coastal
development has been kept relatively under control, and many resorts
are still largely the preserve of Italian tourists, while other
parts of the coast, especially in the south of the country, are
almost entirely undiscovered. Mountains, too, run the country's
length – from the Alps and Dolomites in the north right along the
Apennines, which form the spine of the peninsula – and are an
important reference-point for most Italians. Skiing and other winter
sports are practiced avidly, and in the five national parks,
protected from the national passion for hunting, wildlife of all
sorts thrives.
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