In August the towns give up. Lucca goes quiet inside its walls in a way that has nothing to do with peace. Half the shutters are closed. There are handwritten signs on the doors of the good places, back on…
Ischia, the Green Island
They call it l’isola verde and I assumed, before I came, that this was the kind of thing tourist boards decide in a meeting. It is not. The island really is green, and the green is the strange part, because…
Victoria’s Complete Guide to Ischia
The hydrofoil from Naples takes about fifty minutes, and what it puts you down on does not behave like a resort. Ischia has traffic. It has a bus station, a hospital, a market on the seafront, schoolchildren spilling out into…
Lake Como Weddings: A Complete Guide to Getting Married on the Lake
I have watched a great many weddings arrive on Lake Como. Not as a guest, most of the time, but from the water, from the deck of a boat or a café terrace across the bay, the way you cannot…
Bologna – The Room They Put Back Together
I went out early on the last morning, before the heat, when the porticoes still held the cool of the night in them like a cellar. There was almost nobody under the arches at that hour. A man hosing down…
Milan – The Cathedral Came by Boat
There is no sea here. That is the thing about Milan nobody says out loud, and in August you feel it in your whole body. No coast to drive to at six o’clock. No river worth the name. The lakes…
