Portofino is small, so small that the question of how to reach it matters more than the map suggests. There is no motorway exit with its name on it, no airport, no train station of its own. The village sits…
Supporting Guide
The Perfect Naples Itinerary
Naples rewards the traveller who gives it time. It is tempting to treat the city as a one-night stopover on the way to Capri or the Amalfi Coast, but that is a mistake; Naples is one of the great cities…
Day Trips from Naples
Naples sits at the centre of one of the richest corners of Italy, and this is one of the great joys of basing yourself here: you can spend your days out among Roman ruins, on volcano slopes, or on impossibly…
The Best Photo Spots in Naples
Naples is one of the most photogenic cities in Italy, but it does not photograph the way Florence or Venice do. Its beauty is not tidy; it is the washing strung across a canyon of a lane, the scooter blurring…
Where to Eat in Naples
Naples is, to my mind, the greatest eating city in Italy, and it is not close. This is the birthplace of the pizza, the home of a hundred fried things and a hundred sweet ones, a city where food is…
The Best Things to Do in Naples
Naples wears its heart on the outside. There is no polite distance here, no glass between you and the city; you are simply in it, in the noise and the faith and the football and the fried dough, and it…
Getting to Naples and Getting Around
Naples does not ease you in. You step off the train or out of the airport and the city is simply there, loud and fast and entirely itself, scooters everywhere, laundry overhead, the smell of coffee and fried dough in…
Where to Stay in Naples
Where you sleep in Naples matters more than in most cities, because the character changes so completely from one quarter to the next. A few streets can be the difference between waking to a sea view and church bells or…
Hiking the Path of the Gods Above Positano
If you do one walk on the entire Amalfi Coast, make it the Path of the Gods, the Sentiero degli Dei, a high mountain trail that runs along the cliffs between the village of Bomerano and the hamlet of Nocelle…
Where to Stay in Positano: The Best Areas and Hotels
Positano is a village that pours down a cliff to the sea, which means the only real question about where to stay is a simple one: how many steps are you willing to climb, and how close do you want…
Getting Around Tuscany
I will tell you the single most important thing about a Tuscany trip before anything else, because it changes everything: you need a car. Not for Florence, and not for Siena, but for the Tuscany of your imagination, the one…
The Best Towns in Tuscany
Tuscany keeps its treasure in its small towns. Florence gets the fame, and it deserves it, but the deeper magic of this region is in the hilltop villages, each one a little walled world of golden stone and Renaissance squares…
