Italien

Fusing haughty elegance with down-to-earth grit in one beautifully colonnaded medieval grid, Bologna is a city of two intriguing halves. One side is a hard-working, high-tech city located in the super-rich Po valley where suave opera-goers waltz out of regal theatres and into some of the nation's finest restaurants. The other is a bolshie, politically edgy city that hosts the world's oldest university and is famous for its graffiti-embellished piazzas filled with mildly inebriated students swapping Gothic fashion tips.

Heavenly devotion and earthly delights coexist in San Polo and Santa Croce, where divine art rubs up against the ancient red-light district, now home to artisan workshops and osterie (taverns). Don’t miss fraternal-twin masterpieces: Titian’s glowing Madonna at I Frari and turbulent Tintorettos at Scuola Grande di San Rocco. Quirky museums fill Grand Canal palazzi (mansions) with fashion and natural history oddities, while island-grown produce crams the stalls of the Rialto Market.

Encompassing two of Rome's seven hills, this sweeping, multifaceted area offers everything from dramatic basilicas and medieval churches to ancient ruins, colourful markets and popular clubs. Its best-known drawcards are the Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano and Terme di Caracalla, but there are heavenly views to be had on the Aventino and Villa Celimontana is a lovely, tranquil park. Down by the river, Testaccio is a trendy district known for its nose-to-tail Roman cuisine and weekend clubbing.

With its lyrical landscapes, world-class art and a superb cucina contadina (farmer's kitchen), the Tuscan experience is perfectly in symbiosis with the land.

Counting the Trevi Fountain and Spanish Steps among its A-list sights, this central part of Rome is debonair and perennially packed with tourists. Designer boutiques, fashionable bars, swish hotels and a handful of historic cafes and restaurants crowd the streets between Piazza di Spagna and Piazza del Popolo in Tridente, while those around Piazza Barberini and the Trevi Fountain, within shouting distance of the president's palace on the Quirinale Hill, are home to multiple art galleries and an array of eateries that vary wildly in type and quality.

Sweeping north from the Apennines to the fertile Po valley, Emilia-Romagna boasts some of Italy’s most hospitable people, some of its most productive land, some of its fastest vehicles (Ferrari, Ducati, Maserati and Lamborghini call Emilia-Romagna home) and most soul-satisfying food. Since antiquity, the verdant Po lowlands have sown enough agricultural riches to feed a nation and finance an unending production line of lavish products: luxury cars, regal palazzi (mansions), Romanesque churches, prosperous towns and a gigantic operatic legacy (Verdi and Pavarotti, no less).

De kommer med marmorstatyer, infinitypool och olivlundar. I Toscana kryllar det av riktiga drömvillor som går att hyra på Airbnb. Kanske är det i sommar du samlar ihop dina favoritpersoner och drar till Italien? Låt oss i alla fall leka med tanken...

Neither part of fashion conscious, Ferrari-producing northern Italy, nor the siesta-loving, anarchic world of the south, Abruzzo is something of an enigma. Despite its proximity to Rome and its long history of tribalism and pre-Roman civilisation, it sits well down the pecking order of Italian regions in terms of touristic allure.

Poetiska alptoppar, hemgjord ravioli och en och annan svettpärla. Följ med på en sagolik vandring mellan fjällstugor i dramatiska Dolomiterna.

Västra Sicilien bär minnen från det förflutna i landskapet, i matkulturen, ja, i varenda gatsten. Med start i populära semesterorten Cefalu gav vi oss ut på en kulinarisk utflykt för att upptäcka Siciliens minst kända landsända.