Annotation This guide to Sicily contains in-depth information combined with detailed maps and photographs. Special feature spreads provide facts combined with walks and drives in the surrounding area.

Birthplace of pizza and a treasure-trove of museums, art galleries, and medieval palaces, Naples is the centerpiece of National Geographic's all-new guide to southern Italy. The book points out the city's best spots, then heads to Pompeii and Herculaneium, the Amalfi Coast, and fabled Capri and other offshore islands, and more.

A popular series of guidebooks for the modern-day traveler offering information on cities and countries around the world continues, presenting up-to-date backgrounds and descriptions, detailed maps, hundreds of photographs, and much more, including walking and driving tours, visitor information directories, and cultural sidebars.

Take a tour through the Mediterranean’s largest island in this fascinating history of Sicily for armchair travelers, history buffs, and anyone planning their next trip to Italy. PLUS: Includes Sicily travel guide resources like maps, pronunciation keys, and suggestions for further reading! The emigration of people from Sicily often overshadows the importance of the people who immigrated to its shores throughout the centuries. Greeks, Romans, Vandals, Goths, Byzantines, Muslims, Normans, Hohenstaufens, Spaniards, Bourbons, the Savoy Kingdom of Italy—and countless others—have all held sway and left lasting influences on the island’s culture and architecture. Moreover, Sicily’s character has been shaped by what has passed it by. Events that affected Europe, namely the Crusades and Columbus’ discovery of the Americas, had little influence on Italy’s most famous island. A fascinating history of Sicily for the general reader, this book examines how location turned this charming Mediterranean island into the epicenter of major historical conquests, cultures, and more. Complete with maps, biographical notes, suggestions for further reading, a glossary, and pronunciation keys, this is at once a useful travel guide and an informative, entertaining exploration of the island’s remarkable history.

The National Geographic Traveler guidebooks are in tune with the growing trend toward experiential travel. Each book provides inspiring photography, insider tips, and expert advice for a more authentic, enriching experience of the destination. These books serve a readership of active, discerning travelers, and supply information, historical context, and cultural interpretation not available on the Internet. Italy offers a perfect combination of art, culture, monuments, food, fashion, shopping and fun. The natural landscapes are unique in their variety and completely harmonized with human activity. This book takes its readers on a journey through the peninsula, in the company of one of the best-known Italian tourist guides. There are practical tips on organizing a tour, descriptions of the history and the culture of Italy, its art and artisan movements, and of course, the cuisine. The chapters of the guide will provide the traveler with a well-structured, untrammeled guide to the beauties of Italy, starting with the legendary capital Rome, and followed by the regional attractions. Come with us as we visit Lombardy and its lakes, view the splendors of Venice, and travel from Emilia Romagna to the "regions of the monasteries" in the Apennines and on to the gems of southern Italy--the islands of Sicily and Sardinia. Every aspect of Italian life is dealt with in the numerous information boxes that describe a wide range of activities for tourists seeking unforgettable experiences. Follow in the steps of the Grand Tour; take part in the Palio di Siena, explore the trulli in Puglia; walk through medieval Rome; enjoy a truffle tasting; explore the Chianti vineyards by car...

A blending of art and cultural criticism, travel writing, and personal narrative, Sicilian Odyssey is Francine Prose's imaginative consideration of the diverse cultural legacies found juxtaposed and entangled on the Mediterranean island of Sicily. She writes of the intensity of Sicily, the "commitment to the extreme," where the history is more colorful, the sun hotter, the cooking earthier, the violence more horrific, the carnival more raucous, the politics more Byzantine than other places on Earth, and how much the island can teach us about the triumph of beauty over violence and life over death. Prose examines architectural sites and objects and looks at the ways in which myth and actuality converge. Exploring the intact and beautiful Greek amphitheaters at Siracusa and Taormina, the cathedral at Monreale, the Roman mosaics at Piazza Armerina, and some of the masterpieces of the Baroque scattered throughout the island, Prose focuses her keen insight to imagine them in their own time, to examine the evolution and decline of the cultures that produced them, and to deconstruct powerful responses each evokes in her.

Readers go on a drive along the Amalfi Coast; a boat trip to Capri and the islands; a walk through old Naples; and visit the Trulli houses of Puglia with author Tim Jepson, a renowned expert on Italian travel. Opening chapters give readers practical advice on planning your trip and explains the city and its surrounds in the context of its rich history and culture, its arts, and, of course, its cuisine. Subsequent chapters take readers to the gorgeous and historic Amalfi Coast and its islands and through the storied city of Naples, followed by visits to Vesuvius, Puglia, Calabria and Basilicata, and Sicily and Sardinia. Contemporary editorial features and experiential sidebars highlight every aspect of life in the south of Italy, and offer a wide range of activities for the traveler to seek out: Take a walk through old Naples; explore underground Naples; learn more about pizzas and pizzerias; take a Romanesque Puglia drive; journey through the Sila Mountains; and learn the truth about the Mafia in Sicily.