|
 Of
all European countries, Italy is perhaps the hardest to classify. It is
a modern, industrialized nation. It is the harbinger of style, its
designers leading the way with each season's fashions. But it is also,
to an equal degree, a Mediterranean country, with all that that implies.
Agricultural land covers much of the country, a lot of it, especially in
the south, still owned under almost feudal conditions. In towns and
villages all over the country, life grinds to a halt in the middle of
the day for a siesta, and is strongly family-oriented, with an emphasis
on the traditions and rituals of the Catholic Church which,
notwithstanding a growing scepticism among the country's youth, still
dominates people's lives here to an immediately obvious degree.
Above all Italy provokes reaction. Its people are volatile, rarely
indifferent to anything, and on one and the same day you might encounter
the kind of disdain dished out to tourist masses worldwide, and an hour
later be treated to embarrassingly generous hospitality. If there is a
single national characteristic, it's to embrace life to the full: in the
hundreds of local festivals taking place across the country on any given
day, to celebrate a saint or the local harvest; in the importance placed
on good food; in the obsession with clothes and image; and above all in
the daily domestic ritual of the collective evening stroll or
passeggiata - a sociable affair celebrated by young and old alike in
every town and village across the country.
Italy only became a unified state in 1861 and, as a result, Italians
often feel more loyalty to their region than the nation as a whole -
something manifest in different cuisines, dialects, landscape and often
varying standards of living. There is also, of course, the country's
enormous cultural legacy: Tuscany alone has more classified historical
monuments than any country in the world; there are considerable remnants
of the Roman Empire all over the country, notably of course in Rome
itself; and every region retains its own relics of an artistic tradition
generally acknowledged to be among the world's richest.
Yet there's no reason to be intimidated by the art and architecture. If
you want to lie on a beach, there are any number of places to do it:
development has been kept relatively under control, and many resorts are
still largely the preserve of Italian tourists. Other parts of the coast,
especially in the south of the country, are almost entirely undiscovered.
Beaches are for the most part sandy, and doubts about the cleanliness of
the water have been confined to the northern part of the Adriatic coast
and the Riviera. Mountains, too, run the country's length - from the
Alps and Dolomites in the north right along the Apennines, which form
the spine of the peninsula - and are an important reference-point for
most Italians. Skiing and other winter sports are practised avidly, and
in the five national parks, protected from the national passion for
hunting, wildlife of all sorts thrives |
