The Curious Traveller

Up among the wild, forbidding peaks of the Gran Sasso National Park, in Abruzzo, stands a medieval village of cobbled lanes, sun-flooded squares and ancient stone houses. - ...read more

A chocolate-themed hotel, complete with chocolate shop and chocolate menu in the restaurant, is the obvious place to stay for the upcoming Eurochocolate festival 2008 in Perugia - ...read more

It is hardly what you’d expect cloistered nuns to gaze upon during the course of their silent lives. Bold scenes of boar hunting, bowling, dancing, even a Carnival revel come alive in a riot of colours on the tiled panels that decorate the cloister garden of the Santa Chiara Monastery in Naples. - ...read more

The road twists and turns up a steep hillside behind the tiny village of Domus de Maria. At every bend, a glimmering sea, wrapped in the soft pink haze of distance, plays a game of hide and seek with the peaks, while the waterside scrubland rarefies, replaced by the round, robust solidity of chestnut trees and holm oaks. - ...read more

Under a pale silver moon, the sea is a glossy sheet of molten obsidian. But flickering in the distance, the lights of Sicily dance on the crest of tiny breeze-stirred wavelets. - ...read more

An intricate forest of firs and beech. A steep, forbidding road. A last bend, and then the Benedictine Eremo di Camaldoli, hidden behind thick, tall walls from which only the tip of two belltowers emerge. - ...read more

Achingly white limestone cliffs rise sharply from a cobalt blue sea. A lone sailing boat leaves a soft wake in the water, and the silence that fills the air is barely interrupted by leaves gently murmuring in the breeze. - ...read more

An ordinary ferry trip - designed to simply save villagers some time from the twists and turns of the roads - can become a wonderful holiday experience with one secret ingredient... its a ferry trip between Varenna and Bellagio on Lake Como. - ...read more

The most well known type of pesto comes from Liguria and Carla Passino discovered a temple to pesto in a restaurant called "La Stalla dei Frati" - ...read more

Find out what Carla Passino considers a "top beach" in Southern Sardinia and you will never again look at a beach in the same way - only the very best will do! - ...read more

In her new series, exclusive to the ITALY Website - titled "The Curious Traveller", Carla Passino takes us on a tour around some great and lesser known places to visit in Italy. We start with a wonderful castle in the hills close to Aosta - Il Castello di Fénis dates back to the 13th century and proved to be a great day out. - ...read more