Category Archives: Italy holidays

Valencia tops surprising poll of travellers’ favourite coastal stays in Europe

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A new Which? survey reveals that visitors are starting to look beyond the old overcrowded favourites such as Barcelona and Málaga

Ask for a lineup of the most popular European coastal destinations and you might expect the usual suspects: Venice, Lisbon and Nice. Travellers from the era of the Grand Tour might have added Biarritz and Naples – but a survey of 3,500 readers by consumer organisation Which? suggests that visitors are starting to look beyond the old favourites and discover new destinations.

The Spanish Mediterranean port of Valencia was the surprising winner in a recent poll that looked at 12 separate criteria, including quality of the beaches, seafronts and marinas; attractiveness; food and drink; and value for money. Respondents cited the city’s history, futuristic architecture and gastronomy, but also its peace and quiet. With traditional favourites such as Barcelona struggling with overpopularity – numbers there are heading back towards the 2019 high of 13.9 million overnight visitors – that seems significant.

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‘Nudity on the beach is normal’: how Sardinia is tapping into the naturist revival

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The island’s plans also include special hotels, hiking trails and a village resort, but not all the locals are in favour

Sergio Cossu’s nude awakening came in 1972, when, at the age of 16 and needing a getaway from his family, he ventured to Santa Teresa Gallura, whose stretch of wild, pristine coastline in northern Sardinia was a mecca for hippies from across Europe.

“It was my first solo holiday away from the traditional family setting,” he said. “There was this feeling of an immense connection with nature; from that point on it was impossible to wear a costume on a beach again. There was less of a taboo about nudity back then but, paradoxically, naturism diminished in the 1990s with the explosion of gyms and this focus on having the perfect body. But over the last 20 years, there has been a revival.”

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How one man’s love of isolation put an Italian ghost town on the map

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Abandoned hamlet’s last remaining resident is now its unofficial guide. Our writer joins him for a tour

Giuseppe Spagnuolo wakes up at about 6am each day, eats the leftovers of the previous night’s dinner for breakfast, greets the stray cats he calls his “security guards” and clambers down the steps of his crumbling home to splash his face with water from the fountain in the square. Occasionally, he walks up to the next village, if his “aches and pains” allow, for coffee in the bar.

For 25 years, Spagnuolo has been the only inhabitant in Roscigno Vecchia, a long-abandoned hamlet 400m up a mountain in the Cilento area of Italy’s southern Campania region. “If you’ve experienced the school of life like I have, then you can easily live this way,” the 74-year-old said, sitting in front of the fire in his kitchen, which is cluttered with pots, pans, bottles of wine, tinned tomatoes, cheese and hanging salamis.

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How Maradona inspired Paolo Sorrentino’s film about Naples, Hand of God – and inadvertently saved his life

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The Italian director’s new, semi-autobiographical film reveals a charming and rarely seen side of his home city

‘This, for me, is the most beautiful place on Earth,” Paolo Sorrentino told Filippo Scotti, the actor playing the director’s younger self in his latest film, as their 1980s Riva speedboat chopped the waves of the Bay of Naples. Their view stretched from the precipitous peninsula of Sorrento all the way west towards Posillipo. The two promontories flank the sprawling port city, offering a warm embrace to all those who disembark there. Sorrentino’s new film, the Hand of God, opens with that same view: the sun-mottled bay, whose peace is disturbed by the sound of four Rivas as they speed towards the shore. The film is both a love letter to, and a portal into, Paolo Sorrentino’s Naples.

In cinemas now and on Netflix this week, The Hand of God sees the Academy award-winning director return to his home city for the first time since One Man Up, his 2001 debut. Sorrentino tells the story of his own coming of age, up to the moment when his life is shattered by the death of his parents in a tragic accident. Sorrentino’s story is a tale of great grief, loss and perseverance, set in a middle-class part of Naples, a far cry from the impoverished neighbourhoods shown in the city’s other recent portraits: Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend or the mafia-focused Gomorrah series.

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Hot summer nights: ‘I was alone on holiday, and this was my last night on the island …’

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Heartbroken, sunburned and without my makeup, I felt totally lost. Perhaps the handsome stranger at my table could offer some excitement?

It was high summer on the Italian island of Procida, too hot but somehow still green, and I was eating dinner at a beachside cafe that spilled on to the black sand of the west-facing Spiaggia di Ciraccio.

I wasn’t supposed to be here. Ten days earlier, a long-building romance with a screenwriter from Milan had ended abruptly. It had begun when our knees touched in his car. Long emails full of agony and promise followed, made all the less real for jumping between English and Italian, but then stopped. A short trip to Naples to try things in a new context was cancelled. I was desperately sad, but had already booked my flight to Italy and, as it happened, a friend was staying on the island nearby. So, I tagged along.

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Stanley Tucci: the flirty hero of foodie TV you need in your life

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The actor charms the pants off everyone he meets in his new culinary travelogue that will whet your appetite for a trip abroad when it’s finally allowed

You may not realise this at the moment, but your heart has been crying out for a series like Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy. If you saw last night’s first episode, tucked away on CNN International, you will already be aware of this. If you didn’t, stop what you’re doing and seek it out. It’s less a TV show and more an hour of full-body relaxation. By the time the episode ended, I felt as if my entire brain had been taken out and massaged in olive oil.

Although the title suggests a different series, in which a beloved actor receives a concussion then forlornly attempts to navigate Google Maps, this is actually a culinary travelogue. Tucci visits a different Italian region in every episode and contentedly samples its food. It is a formula you will have seen thousands of times before, albeit with a couple of key differences.

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Romans revolt as tourists turn their noses up at city’s decay

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Rubbish, potholes and metro closures contribute to anger among visitors and citizens alike

As the day draws to a close in Rome, tourists are enjoying a nightcap at a bar on Piazza della Rotonda. In front of them stands the majestic Pantheon, the imposing domed temple built by Emperor Hadrian.

To their right, however, is a scene less befitting the piazza, famed for its elegance and history. A photomural of the temple covers boarding that surrounds a building under renovation and as the night gets later it is used to prop up a pile of rubbish bags and boxes discarded by nearby restaurants.

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