For over a century, the Touring Club of Italy has been publishing the country's most authoritative guidebooks and maps. The Heritage Series is the expert's guide to travel and sightseeing in Italy. Each volume includes museums, town histories, churches, landmarks, and archaeological sites. There are dozens of maps that give an overview of each city, plus detailed neighborhood plans. Listings of accommodations and restaurants are complete with addresses, price ranges, hours, and phone and fax numbers.

Scenic routes, charming hotels, authentic regional cuisine... Take a journey through the back roads of northern and central Italy to discover the area's real soul and charm. DK Eyewitness Back Roads Northern and Central Italy driving vacation guide will take you via scenic routes to discover charming Italian villages, local restaurants, and intimate places to stay. Unearth the real soul of northern and central Italy, relying on all the practical information you could need, from road conditions and length of drive to parking information and opening hours. Twenty-five themed drives, each lasting one to five days, reveal breathtaking views, hidden gems, and authentic local experiences that can only be discovered by road. Each tour is bursting with insider knowledge and loaded with ideas for varied activities, from short walks and longer hikes to days on the beach or at a spa, to wine tours, cycling trips, and swimming in secluded Italian lakes. Meanwhile, the most friendly, best-value hotels and guest houses and charming restaurants specializing in regional produce have been selected by expert authors. Discover the unexpected on your driving vacation with DK Eyewitness Back Roads Northern and Central Italy.

For centuries, social life in rural Tuscany has centered around the veglia, an evening gathering of family and friends at the hearth. Folklore by the Fireside is a thorough and insightful study of this custom—from the tales, riddles, lullabies, and folk prayers performed as the small children are put to bed to the courtship songs and dances later in the evening to the anti-veglia male gossip, card games, and protest songs originating in the tavern. Alessandro Falassi skillfully correlates the veglia to the rites of passage and family values of an agrarian society. Although the impact of mass media and other factors has tended to weaken the tradition, even today Tuscan children are taught to behave and adolescents are guided along the conventional path to adulthood, courtship, and marriage through veglia folklore. This is the first work to deal systematically with Tuscan folklore from a semiotic and structural viewpoint and to examine the veglia as a means of handing down traditional values. It is important not only for its careful, detailed description but also for its rigorous methodology and theoretical richness.

Enjoy a journey to the forest-rimmed convent where The English Patient was filmed and learn traditional cuisine under cookbook doyenne Lorenza de'Medici. With this completely updated Fodor's guide you can cheer on Palio horsemen from a luxurious room overlooking Siena's square or climb a footpath to Michelangelo's marble quarries and stay overnight at a hiker's hut in the hills. Explore Florence, city of the lily, the city that gave birth to the Renaissance and changed the way we see the world. For centuries its wondrous art has captured the imagination of travellers, and it continues to do so today. This new edition features coverage of the latest local trends and top spots and has a jam-packed 'Smart Travel Tips A-Z' chapter, plus Great Itineraries, Fodor's Choice, and web addresses. In addition, it lists the latest sights and activities and up-to-date options for hotels, restaurants, shopping and nightlife.

Thenew, full-colourRough Guide to Tuscanyand Umbriais the ultimate travel guide to some of Europe's most popular tourist destinations. Covering the region more comprehensively than any other guide, it's packed with up-to-date and expert information on all the attractions, from the great museums of Florence and Siena to the tiny rural villages, as well as guiding you to the best of the beaches, forests, mountains and vineyard-clad hills. It also gives you the lowdown on the best hotels and restaurants for all budgets, and illuminates the sights with background information on history, folklore, art, architecture and festivals. Dozens of photographs and easy-to-use colour maps complete a guide that has long been established as the best you can buy. Make the most of your time, with The Rough Guide to Tuscany and Umbria.

Italy's First African War (1880-1896) pitted a young and ambitious European nation against the ancient Empire of Ethiopia. The Least of Europe's Great Powers rashly assailed Africa's most formidable military power. The outcome was humiliating defeat for Italy and the survival, uniquely for any African nation in the years of the European Scramble for that continent, of Ethiopian independence. Notwithstanding Italy's disastrous first experience in the colonial fray, this book argues that the impact of the war went well beyond the battlefields of the Ethiopian highlands and reached into the minds of the Italian people at home. Through a detailed and exhaustive study of Italian popular culture, this book asks how far the First African War impacted on the Italian nation-building project and how far Italians were themselves changed by undergoing the experience of war and defeat in East Africa. Finaldi argues, for the first time in historiography on the subject, that there was substantial support for and awareness of Italy's military campaign and that 'Empire', as has come to be regarded as fundamental in the histories of other European countries, needs to be brought firmly into the mainstream of Italian national history. This book is an essential contribution to debates on the relationship between European national identity and culture and imperialism in the late 19th century.