This small local town on Italy’s east coast is home to the most eye-watering collection of Byzantine mosaics, set in several sites across the town – eight of which are UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The colours, detail and sheer size of these artworks will take your breath away, especially considering their age. You can get…

Florence has got to be one of Italy’s busiest cities in the summer. It is swarming with tourists, the narrow cobbled streets packed with people from all over the world – but all for good reason. The ‘birthplace of the Renaissance’, the city is a hotbed of history and art, one of the most unmissable…

Abetone is a small ski town in the mountains on the border between Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna. We visited on 1 August 2018, and like all ski towns in the summer, it seemed surreal – the chalets, built for snow, transformed by the green all around them and the colourful flowers in their window boxes, everything…

The Cinque Terre (‘five towns’ in Italian) is a collection of five small fishing villages perched on the steep west Italian coast. Historically inaccessible except by small tracks, they are now extremely popular with tourists and are connected by trains which tunnel through the cliffs. Though very crowded in summer, their beauty makes them definitely…