Venice diary, entry 2 of 5 I practise the violin before I do anything else, wherever I happen to wake, and this morning I played at a window thrown open over a canal so narrow I could almost have passed…
The Ambrosian Hours – Milan
I have never once arrived in Milan and felt welcomed. This is not a complaint; it is, I have come to think, the whole point of the place. Other Italian cities rush out to meet you at the station with…
Victoria’s Complete Guide to Milan
Milan does not flirt. Other Italian cities lean in with their beauty, all golden light and postcard views, and you fall for them before you have unpacked. Milan makes you work a little, and I have come to love it…
Victoria’s Complete Guide to Bergamo
Most people meet Bergamo by accident. They fly into a low-cost airport that calls itself Milan, climb straight onto a bus toward the city an hour away, and never once turn to look at the walled town on the hill…
Dante’s Exile
What happens when the place that made you no longer wants you? I found myself turning that question over this morning in a quiet corner of Verona, standing beneath a pale marble figure that almost everyone walks straight past. They…
A Warmth in the Stone – The Dolomites
Nobody warns you that these mountains keep a secret hour. All day the Dolomites stand pale and severe, grey rock against a hard blue sky, handsome in the way a cathedral is handsome, which is to say a little forbidding….
