Lonely Planet Southern Italy , livre ebook

Southern Italy

Contents

Plan Your Trip

Welcome to Southern Italy
Southern Italy’s Top 11
Need to Know
First Time Southern Italy
What’s New
Accommodation
Getting Around
If You Like…
Month by Month
Itineraries
Activities
Eat & Drink Like a Local
Family Travel
Regions at a Glance

On The Road

NAPLES & CAMPANIA
Naples
South of Naples
Herculaneum (Ercolano)
Mt Vesuvius
Pompeii
Sorrento
The Islands
Capri
Ischia
Procida
The Amalfi Coast
Positano
Nocelle
Praiano
Amalfi
Ravello
Salerno & the Cilento
Salerno
Cilento Coast
Parco Nazionale del Cilento e Vallo di Diano
Historical Riches
PUGLIA, BASILICATA & CALABRIA
Puglia
Bari
Around Bari
Promontorio del Gargano
Isole Tremiti
Valle d’Itria
Salento
Basilicata
Matera
Appennino Lucano
Maratea
Calabria
Northern Tyrrhenian Coast
Cosenza
Parco Nazionale della Sila
Ionian Coast
Parco Nazionale dell’Aspromonte
Reggio Calabria
Southern Tyrrhenian Coast
Surprises of the South
SICILY
Palermo & Around
Palermo
Tyrrhenian Coast
Cefalù
Aeolian Islands
Lipari
Vulcano
Salina
Stromboli
Ionian Coast
Taormina
Catania
Mt Etna
Southeastern Sicily
Syracuse
Noto
Modica
Ragusa
Central Sicily & the Mediterranean Coast
Agrigento
Western Sicily
Marsala
Selinunte
Trapani
Erice
Segesta
Delightful Desserts
A Graeco–Roman Legacy

Understand

History
The Southern Way of Life
The Mafia
Art & Architecture

Survive

Directory A–Z
Accessible Travel
Discount Cards
Electricity
Health
Insurance
Internet Access
Language Courses
Legal Matters
LGBT+ Travellers
Maps
Media
Money
Opening Hours
Post
Public Holidays
Telephone
Time
Toilets
Tourist Information
Visas
Volunteering
Women Travellers
Work
Transport
GETTING THERE & AWAY
Entering Italy
Air
Land
Sea
GETTING AROUND
Air
Bicycle
Boat
Bus
Car & Motorcycle
Local Transport
Train
Language
Behind the Scenes
Our Writers
Welcome to Southern Italy

Italy’s peeling, sun-bleached south is the country at its most ancient, soulful and sensual. Down here, the ruins are older, the lunches longer, and the landscapes wilder and more intense.

Gripping History
At the crossroads of civilisations for millennia, southern Italy is littered with the detritus of diverse and gilded ages. Every carved stone and every frescoed palace tells a story, from fiery Carthaginian invasions and power-hungry kings to the humble hopes of Roman slaves and gladiators. Here, ancient Greek temples are older than Rome, Byzantine mosaics attest to cosmopolitan encounters and royal palaces outsize Versailles. Southern Italy is home to no fewer than 13 Unesco World Heritage cultural sites, each laced with tales of victory, failure and ever-relevant humanity.

Culinary Prowess
Italy’s fertile south is a belt-busting feast: bubbling, wood-fired pizza and potent espresso in Naples; long lunches at vine-fringed Pugliese farmhouses; just-caught sardines on a Tyrrhenian island; luscious cannoli at a Taormina pasticceria . Should you go mushroom hunting in Calabria? Taste-test your first red aubergine at an heirloom trattoria in Basilicata? Feast on fresh sea urchin on an Adriatic beach? Or just kick back with a glass of low-intervention Etna red as you debate who has the creamiest buffalo mozzarella: Caserta, Paestum or Foggia?

A Warm Benvenuto
Southern Italians are naturally curious, famously affable and quick to share their opinion. Family and friends are sacred, and time spent laughing, arguing or gossiping is as integral to southern life as long, sizzling summers. One minute you’re picking produce at a street market, the next you’re in the middle of a feverish discussion about who grows Italy’s sweetest pomodori (tomatoes). No one is a stranger for long, and a casual chiacchiera (chat) could easily land you at the dining table of your new best friend.

Natural Highs
Rugged mountains, fiery volcanoes and electric-blue grottoes – southern Italy feels like a giant adventure playground. Crank up the heart rate rafting down Calabria’s river Lao, scaling Europe’s most active volcano, Stromboli, or diving into prehistoric sea caves on Puglia’s Promontorio del Gargano. If you need to bring it down a notch, consider slow pedalling across Puglia’s gentle countryside, sailing along the Amalfi Coast or simply soaking in Vulcano’s healing geothermal mud. The options may be many, but there is one constant: a landscape that is beautiful, diverse and just a little ethereal.

Temple E, Selinunte | MAREMAGNUM/GETTY IMAGES ©

Why I Love Southern Italy
By Cristian Bonetto, Writer
Southern Italy is like the Slow Food of travel. While much of Europe marches to an increasingly homogenised beat, this corner of the continent dances to its own hypnotic tune. Melancholy folk songs still fill the air, eyeshadow is applied thick and bright, and hearts are proudly worn on sleeves. Many of my fondest travel memories have been formed here: epic Sunday lunches to the sound of Pino Daniele; hot winds whistling through ancient temples; quiet swims in milky blue waters. I might hail from the north, but my heart belongs to the Mezzogiorno.
For more see, Our Writers
Southern Italy’s Top 11

Amalfi Coast
Italy’s most celebrated coastline is a gripping strip: coastal mountains plunge into creamy blue sea in a prime-time vertical scene of precipitous crags, sun-bleached villages and lush woodland. Between sea and sky, mountaintop hiking trails deliver Tyrrhenian panoramas fit for a god. While some may argue that the peninsula’s most beautiful coast is Liguria’s Cinque Terre or Calabria’s Costa Viola, it is the Amalfi Coast that has seduced and inspired countless greats, from Richard Wagner and DH Lawrence to Tennessee Williams, Rudolf Nureyev and Gore Vidal.

Atrani | BALATE DORIN/SHUTTERSTOCK ©

Top Experiences
Ghostly Pompeii
Frozen in its death throes, the sprawling, time-warped ruins of Pompeii hurtle you 2000 years into the past. Wander through chariot-grooved Roman streets and elegantly frescoed villas and bathhouses, food stores, markets, theatres and even an ancient brothel. Then, your eye on ominous Mt Vesuvius, ponder Pliny the Younger’s terrifying account of the town’s final hours: ‘Darkness came on again, again ashes, thick and heavy. We got up repeatedly to shake these off; otherwise we would have been buried and crushed by the weight’.

MARIANCECCARELLI/GETTY IMAGES ©


Top Experiences
Naples
Refined and rough, tough and tender, Naples is a contradictory, complex beast. Gritty alleyways hit palm-fringed boulevards; crumbling facades mask baroque naves and ballrooms; and cultish shrines flank street-art murals and a wave of hip new bars, eateries and galleries. This is a metropolis that thrives on intensity, from the muscular strength of Neapolitan espresso to the high-octane rush of the city’s markets and cacophonous streets. It’s also one of Italy’s current tourist hotspots, its wealth of history, architecture, art and culinary riches finally winning the fans it deserves.

MIKOLAJN/GETTY IMAGES ©

Top Experiences
Capri
Rising from the Bay of Naples, Capri has been seducing mortals for millennia and even the summer hordes can’t quite dilute its ethereal magic. Emperor Tiberius reputedly threw his lovers off its dizzying cliffs, travellers on the Grand Tour waxed lyrical about its electric-blue grotto and celebrities continue to moor their yachts in its turquoise waters. Despite its enduring popularity, solitude is easily found down sleepy, bucolic trails or on the chairlift to Capri’s highest peak, Monte Solaro, where the views could move the most jaded to tears.

GIMAS/SHUTTERSTOCK ©


Top Experiences
Aeolian Island-Hopping
The Greeks don’t have a monopoly on Mediterranean island-hopping. Sicily’s Aeolian Islands might be a little less famous than their Aegean Sea rivals, but they are no less stunning. Mix and match from seven volcanic outcrops, among them thermal hotspot Vulcano, vine-laced Salina, and fiery, lava-spewing Stromboli. But don’t just take our word for it. The islands are one of only five Italian natural landscapes to have made it onto Unesco’s World Heritage list, another of which is Sicily’s colossal Mt Etna.

SLOW IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES ©


Top Experiences
Baroque Lecce
The extravagant architectural character of many Puglian towns exemplifies the region’s homegrown barocco leccese (Lecce baroque). It’s a style perfectly suited to the local stone, so soft it practically begs to be carved. Local craftsmen vied for ever-greater heights of creativity, crowding facades with swirling vegetal designs, gargoyles and strange zoomorphic figures. Lecce’s Basilica di Santa Croce is the high point of the style, so outrageously busy the Marchese Grimaldi said it made him think a lunatic was having a nightmare.

MANX_IN_THE_WORLD/GETTY IMAGES ©


Top Experiences
Matera
Tinged gold by the morning sun, Matera is an extraordinary and ancient city. In no other place do you come face to face with such powerful images of Italy’s lost peasant culture: its Unesco World Heritage–listed sassi (cave dwellings), once a symbol of Basilicata’s abject poverty. Fast forward to the present and these cavernous dwellings are finding new life as on-point eateries, bars and boutique accommodation, a testament to Matera’s 21st-century renaissance and its status as one of Italy’s hottest in-the-know destinations.

DAVIDIONUT/GETTY IMAGES ©

Top Experiences
Temples in Agrigento
Few archaeological sites evoke the past like Agrigento’s Valley of the Temples . Located on a ridge overlooking the Mediterranean, its stoic temples belonged to Akragas, a once-great city settled by the Greeks. The scars of ancient battle endure in the 5th-century-BC Tempio di Hera, while the Tempio della Concordia’s remarkable state of prese