| Italy is perhaps Europe's
most complex and alluring destination. It is
a modern, industrialized nation, but it is
also, to an equal degree, a Mediterranean
country, with a southern European
sensibility. Agricultural land covers much
of the country, a lot of which, especially
in the south, is still owned under almost
feudal conditions. In towns and villages all
over the country, life grinds to a halt in
the middle of the day for a siesta, and is
strongly family-oriented, with an emphasis
on the traditions and rituals of the
Catholic Church, which, notwithstanding a
growing scepticism among the country's youth,
still dominates people's lives. Above all,
Italy provokes reaction. Its people are
volatile, rarely indifferent, and on one and
the same day you might encounter the kind of
disdain dished out to tourist masses
everywhere and an hour later be treated to
embarrassingly generous hospitality. If
there is a single national characteristic,
it's to embrace life to the full: in the
hundreds of local festivals taking place
across the country on any given day, to
celebrate a saint or the local harvest; in
the importance placed on good food; in the
obsession with clothes and image; and above
all in the daily domestic ritual of the
collective evening stroll or passeggiata
– a sociable affair celebrated by young and
old alike in every town and village across
the country.
Italy only became a unified state in
1861, and, as a result, Italians often feel
more loyalty to their region than to the
nation as a whole – something manifest in
different cuisines, dialects, landscape and
often varying standards of living. There is
also, of course, the country's enormous
cultural legacy: Tuscany alone has more
classified historical monuments than any
country in the world; there are considerable
remnants of the Roman Empire all over the
country, notably of course in Rome itself;
and every region retains its own relics of
an artistic tradition generally acknowledged
to be among the world's richest.
Yet there's no reason to be intimidated
by the art and architecture. If you want to
lie on a beach, there are any number of
places to do so: beaches are for the most
part sandy; coastal development has been
kept relatively under control, and many
resorts are still largely the preserve of
Italian tourists, while other parts of the
coast, especially in the south of the
country, are almost entirely undiscovered.
Mountains, too, run the country's length –
from the Alps and Dolomites in the north
right along the Apennines, which form the
spine of the peninsula – and are an
important reference-point for most Italians.
Skiing and other winter sports are practised
avidly, and in the five national parks,
protected from the national passion for
hunting, wildlife of all sorts thrives.
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