Sorrento is a town built for photographs, and almost all of them are about the same two things: the bay and the light. Vesuvius across the water, the painted boats of the marina, a ravine full of green, a cloister…
Supporting Guide
Day Trips from Sorrento
The best argument for basing yourself in Sorrento is everything you can reach from it. In under an hour by boat or train you can be on Capri, in Positano, walking Pompeii under Vesuvius, or eating pizza in Naples. This…
Getting to Sorrento and Getting Around
Sorrento is easy to reach once you know the one quirk: the nearest airport is Naples, and the little train that serves the town does not stop there, so you connect through the city. Once you have arrived, you will…
Getting to Assisi and the Best Day Trips
Getting to Assisi is easier than the town’s pink hilltop silhouette makes it look, and once you have arrived it becomes the perfect base for wandering the rest of Umbria. The one thing to understand before you go is that…
The Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi: A Complete Guide
The Basilica of San Francesco is the reason most people come to Assisi, and it is the one place in town I always send friends to first. It is two churches stacked into the hillside, a UNESCO World Heritage Site,…
The Best Photo Spots in Assisi
Assisi is one of those hill towns that seems built to be photographed, all pale limestone and pink Subasio stone stacked up a green mountainside, glowing at the end of the day. I have carried a camera up and down…
The Best Time to Visit Assisi
The best time to visit Assisi, if you want the town at its gentlest, is spring or autumn: roughly April into May, and September into October. That is when the light is soft on the pale limestone, the hills are…
Where to Eat and Drink in Assisi
Eating well in Assisi is less about hunting for a hidden gem and more about slowing down enough to notice how good the everyday food is. This is Umbria, the green heart of Italy, and the cooking here is honest…
Where to Stay in Assisi
Where you stay in Assisi shapes the whole trip, more than in most towns I know. Sleep inside the walls and you get the thing people come for: pale limestone lanes emptying of daytrippers by evening, bells at dawn, a…
An Assisi Itinerary: One to Two Days
Assisi is small enough to walk end to end in about twenty-five minutes, which fools a lot of people into thinking one day is plenty. It is, just about. Give the town a single day and you will see the…
The Best Things to Do in Assisi
The best things to do in Assisi are not a checklist to race through, they are a slow unspooling of one small pink-stoned town on the flank of Monte Subasio. I have come back more than once, and every time…
Getting Around and Day Trips from Pisa and Lucca
Getting around Pisa and Lucca is one of the quiet pleasures of this corner of Tuscany, and it asks very little of you. Two walkable historic centres sit half an hour apart by train, a small international airport feeds straight…
