Greek settlers colonized parts of the Tuscan coast and the Bay of city in the eighth century BC, moving on to Naxos on Sicily’s Ionian coast, and founding the city of Syracuse in the year 736 BC. The colonies they established in Sicily and southern Italy came to be known as Magna Graecia . Along with Etruscan cities to the north they were the early Italian civilizations to leave substantial buildings and written records.The Greek settlements were hugely successful, introducing the vine and the olive to Italy, and establishing a high-yielding agricultural system. Cities like Syracuse and Tarentum were wealthier and more sophisticated than those on mainland Greece, dominating trade in the central Mediterranean, despite competition from Carthage. Ruins such as the temples of Agrigento and Selinunte , the fortified walls around Gela, and the theatres at Syracuse and Taormina on Sicily attest to a great prosperity, and Magna Graecia became an enriching influence on the culture of the Greek homeland – Archimedes, Aeschylus and Empedocles were all from Sicily. Yet these colonies suffered from the same factionalism as the Greek states, and the cities of Tarentum, Metapontum, Sybaris and Croton were united only when visaged with the threat of outside invasion. From 400 BC, after Sybaris was razed to the ground, the other colonies went into irreversible economic decline, to become satellite states of Rome.
The Etruscans were the other major civilization of the period, mostly living in the area between the Tiber and Arno rivers. Their language, known mostly from funerary texts, is one of the last relics of an ancient language common to the Mediterranean. Some say they arrived in Italy around the ninth century BC from western Anatolia, others that they came from the north, and a third hypothesis places their origins in Etruria. Whatever the case, they set up a cluster of twelve city states in northern Italy, traded with Greek colonies to the south and were the most powerful people in northern Italy by the sixth century BC, edging out the indigenous population of Ligurians, Latins and Sabines. Tomb frescoes in Umbria and Lazio depict a refined and luxurious culture with highly developed systems of divination, based on the reading of animal entrails and the flight of birds. Herodotus wrote that the Etruscans recorded their ancestry along the female line, and tomb excavations last century revealed that women were buried in special sarcophagi carved with their names. Well-preserved chamber tombs with surround paintings exist at Cerveteri and Tarquinia , the two major sites in Italy. The Etruscans were technically advanced, creating new agricultural land through irrigation and building their cities on ramparted hilltops – a pattern of settlement that has left a permanent mark on central Italy. Their kingdom contracted, however, after invasions by the Cumans , Syracusans and Gauls , and was eventually forced into alliance with the embryonic Roman state.
A number of basic things are reasonably inexpensive: a pizza or plate of pasta with a beer (the staple cheap meal in a restaurant) will set you back between £5/$8 and £10/$16 on average, though in some of the larger, more visited cities – Florence and Venice, for example – it can be difficult to find appealing venues in this price range; Rome and Naples, on the other hand, are no problem. Buses and trains are cheap too: the rail journey from Rome to Milan on an Intercity train, for instance, costing just £46/$74 for a second-class return – a five-and-a-half-hour, six-hundred-kilometre trip. Drinking , by contrast, is pricey – unless you stick to wine. Soft drinks and coffee cost around the same as in Britain and more than in North America; a large glass of beer can cost up to £3/$5 if you decide to sit down. Room rates start at a bottom line of £15/$24 for the most basic double room in a one-star hotel, although again in Milan, Florence or Venice it’s hard to find anything under £25/$40. Overall, in central Italy, if you’re watching your budget – camping, buying food from shops and markets – you could get by on around £25/$40 a day; a more realistic average regular budget – staying in one-star hotels, taking trains and intake one cheap meal out a day – would be approaching £40/$64, perhaps a little less in the south; while to live reasonably well you probably need to spend at least £50/$80 a day.Bear in mind, too, that the time of year can make a big difference. During the height of summer, in July and August when the Italians take their holidays, hotel prices can escalate; outside the season, however, you can often negotiate much lower rates. Apart from state museums and sites, which are free to under-18s and over 65s, and half price to people under 26, there are few reductions or discounts: only a handful of museums accept ISIC cards, and buses and trains never do.
The north is “discovered” Italy. The regions of Piemonte and Lombardy , in the northwest, make up the richest and most cosmopolitan part of the country, and the two main centres, Turin and Milan, are its wealthiest large cities. In their southern reaches, these regions are flat and scenically dull, especially Lombardy, but in the north the presence of the Alps shapes the character of each: skiing and hiking are prime activities, and the lakes and mountains of Lombardy are time-honoured tourist territory. Liguria , the small coastal domain to the south, has long been known as the “Italian Riviera” and is accordingly crowded with sun-seeking holiday-makers for much of the summer season. Nonetheless it’s a beautiful stretch of coast, and its capital, Genoa, is a bustling port with a long seafaring tradition.
