About Italy

Note: ENIT is on the Web at www.enit.it

Australia : contact the consulate, Level 45, 1 Macquarie Place, Sydney 2000, NSW (tel 02/9392 7900).

Canada : 1 Place Ville Marie, Suite 1914, Montréal, Québec H3B 2C3 (tel 514/866-7667); 175 Bloor St East, Suite 907, South Tower, Toronto, ON M4W 3R8 (tel 416/925-4882); www.italiantourism.com .

Ireland : 47 Merrion Square, Dublin 2 (tel 01/766 397).

New Zealand : apply to the embassy, 34 Grant Rd, Thorndon, Wellington (tel 04/473 5339).

UK : 1 Princes St, London W1R 8AY (tel 020/7408 1254).

USA : 630 5th Ave, Suite 1565, New York, NY 10111 (tel 212/245-5618; brochure requests tel 212/245-4822); 500 North Michigan Ave, Suite 2240, Chicago, IL 60611 (tel 312/644-0996; brochure requests tel 312/644-0990); 12400 Wilshire Blvd, Suite 550, Los Angeles, CA 90025 (tel 310/820-1898; brochure requests tel 310/820-0098); www.italiantourism.com

Most Italian towns and main city train stations and airports have a tourist office , usually known as an APT ( Azienda per Il Turismo ) or just ufficio turistico , and signposted by the standard “i” symbol. Note that not all places with the symbol are impartial information offices, however, and that not all information offices are called APTs; there are any number of acronyms, including EPT ( Ente Provinciale per il Turismo ); IAT ( Ufficio di Informazione e Accoglienza Turistica ); and AAST ( Azienda Autónoma di Soggiorno e Turismo , a smaller local outfit). When there isn’t one of any of these, there will sometimes be a Pro Loco office, usually run by businesses in smaller villages, which will have much the same kind of information but generally keep much shorter hours. All of these vary in degrees of usefulness, and apart from the main cities and tourist areas the staff aren’t likely to speak English. But you should always be healthy at least to get a free town plan, a list of accommodation and a local listings booklet in Italian, and some will reserve you a room and sell places on guided tours.Opening hours vary, but larger city and resort offices are likely to be open Monday to Saturday 9am to 1pm and 4 to 7pm, and sometimes for a short period on Sunday mornings; smaller offices may open weekdays only, while Pro Loco times are notoriously erratic - some open for only a couple of hours a day, even in summer. If the tourist office isn’t open and all else fails, the local telephone office, most hotels, and bars with phones should all have a copy of the local Tuttocittà (a supplement to the main telephone directories), which carries listings and phone numbers of essential services, adverts for restaurants and shops, together with indexed maps of the appropriate city.

Italian Web sites have proliferated in recent years and wage a wealth of information; we’ve listed a few of the more useful ones here. For the Internet addresses of the major travel and accommodation organizations, see the relevant sections.

Football www.football.it League tables, news and links.

In Italy www.initaly.com Travel tips, campsites, services and etiquette.

Italian Ministry for Arts and the Environment www.beniculturali.it Museums, temporary exhibitions, performances and so on - in Italian language only.

Italian State Railways (FS) www.fs-on-line.com Timetable information in Italian and English.

Italian Yellow Pages www.paginegialle.it Online phone book.

Italian National Parks www.parks.it Contacts and wildlife information.

Italytour 68 www.italytour.com Shopping, fashion, trains and hotels.

Museums www.museionline.it Links to museums and exhibition sites, dates, events.

Opera www.operabase.com Listings and contact details for the country’s major venues.

Venere www.venere.it Probably the best site for accessing the Web pages of those hotels that have them - and booking rooms online.

Weather www.meteo.it Forecasts - in Italian, but with self-explanatory symbols.

Portofino
Explore the peaceful travel paths of picture-perfect Portofino, where Europe’s jetset royals, film stars and other glitterati come to holiday year after year.

Café Florian
Sip a cappuccino for all it’s worth (prices are outrageous) at eighteenth-century café Florian in Venice with its view of Piazza San Marco, the Campanile and the incomparably exotic Basilica.

Palazzo Te
Experience the delight - for some, the shock - of the frankly erotic frescoes decorating Mantua’s Palazzo Te; it’s an unforgettable lovers’ retreat created by Renaissance artist/architect Giulio Romano for Federico Gonzaga, a fabulously wealthy prince, and his mistress.

Trattoria Corrieri
Tuck into the world-famous culinary masterpieces of immaculate Parma - emphasis on five kinds of prosciutto and real parmesan cheese - at the memorable, but not overpriced, Trattoria Corrieri.

Galleria dell’Accademia
In Florence’s Galleria dell’Accademia, have a individualized encounter with Michelangelo’s David , the stalwart nude hero placed in his own domed space like some pagan god in a cult shrine.

Assisi
In Assisi, attend one of the evenhandedly frequent concerts in the Upper Church of the Basilica di San Francesco, a space so beautiful and uplifting the music truly takes on celestial dimensions.

Abruzzi
At the very old-fashioned pensione Abruzzi in Rome you’ll open your shutters in the morning to the imposing, timeless façade of the Pantheon, the most perfectly preserved of all Roman temples.

Da Michele
Sink your teeth into an trusty pizza in the most traditional of Neapolitan pizzerias, Da Michele in Naples, where savory pies are fashioned according to the three most time-honored recipes: marinara, margherita and ripieno.

Monte Solaro
Take the scenic chairlift ride up to the top of Monte Solaro, the highest point on the island of Capri, for stupendous views of the entire Bay of Naples.

Mount Etna
Climb to the uppermost level of the third-century BC Teatro Greco in Taormina, Sicily, for a view of snow-capped Mount Etna, then let your gaze plunge to the turquoise sea far, far below.

One way of spending time in Italy is to combine a holiday with learning the language, or taking one of many summer courses on myriad aspects of Italian art and culture. There are a great many places where you can do this, usually offering language courses of varying levels of intensity for between one and three months