Italien

Borromeiska öarna är tre italienska pärlor vackert belägna i Lago Maggiore. Vi tog båten dit och upptäckte botaniska trädgårdar och pittoreska fiskrestauranger.

This part of the city fuses a gutsy market precinct – a covered produce market and noisy street stalls surrounding the Basilica di San Lorenzo – with capacious Piazza San Marco, home to Florence University and a much-loved museum. Between the two is the world’s most famous sculpture, David. The result is a sensory experience jam-packed with urban grit, uplifting art and some fabulously authentic, local-loved addresses to eat, drink and shop.

Palermo har rest sig och lämnat sitt dåliga rykte bakom sig. På gott och ont har staden blivit ett av världens trendigaste och häftigaste resmål.

Italiens region Emilia-Romagna har det mesta man vill få ut av ett besök i landet. God mat, vacker natur, pittoreska städer och mycket mer. Här är 5 platser du borde besöka!

The Ionian Coast is studded with enough Sicilian icons to fill a souvenir tea towel. It’s here that you’ll find the skinny Strait of Messina, mighty Mt Etna and the world’s most spectacularly located ancient Greek theatre. Catania is the region's centre, a gritty, vibrant city packed with students, bars and nightlife. Its black-and-white baroque is World Heritage–listed, while its hyperactive fish market is one of Sicily’s most appetising sights. Halfway up a rocky mountainside, regal Taormina is sophisticated and exclusive, a favourite of holidaying VIPs and day-tripping tourists. Brooding menacingly on the city's doorstep, Mt Etna offers unforgettable hiking, both to the summit craters and around the woods that carpet its lower slopes. Etna is also a vino-making hotspot, dotted with vines and celebrated wineries. With a car and a little planning, the mountain sets a stunning scene for hunting out the perfect vintage.

Flamboyant, guarded, feisty yet staunchly aristocratic, Palermo is a seething mass of contradictions. Pock-marked buildings, broken pavements and decrepit infrastructure reveal deep political and economic cracks, and yet all are easy to overlook when you enter a church full of luminously beautiful Byzantine mosaics, wander along a street of stately baroque palazzi (palaces) or eavesdrop on the genial banter between canny stall owners and bargain-hunting housewives at a street market. Palermo is a cryptic creature, a city where nefarious neglect and soul-stirring beauty have always linked arms, where preconceptions are concurrently affirmed and subverted, where light and shade stir impressions that bury deep under your skin.

Italien har drabbats hårt av coronaviruset varpå hela landet satts i karantän. Ett annars myllrande Italien blev tyst rapporterade många, men till och med då hittar italienare satt att lätta upp stämningen och stämma upp i sång och musik.

Medieval towns, gentle lakes hemmed in by steep hillsides, vast plains, prehistoric rock art and mighty mountains make this part of the Lombard region one of northern Italy's most underrated corners. You'd need a couple of weeks to cover the area well, so you need to make choices. Bergamo, with its medieval Città Alta (Upper Town), is a must, and it's an inspired choice if this is your point of arrival in Italy. Townies and church lovers might concentrate on the main centres (Brescia, Cremona, Crema and Lodi), which all have fascinating medieval cores. An alternative tour of plains settlements will turn up palaces, castles and forts. Wine buffs may prefer touring the Franciacorta, south of Lake Iseo. North of Bergamo, several valleys lead deep into the picturesque Orobie Alps.

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.

Tröttnat på snöfattiga dalar och hederliga men lite tråkiga alphotell? Vänd blicken uppåt. I italienska Aostadalen bor man bäst på bergens snösäkra rifugios. Med dem som utgångspunkt blir skidresan en totalupplevelse för hela familjen.