Italien

Nu öppnar flera länder i Europa för besökande turister. Från och med 30 juni blir det möjligt att besöka de flesta Medelhavsländerna. Men länderna har infört olika restriktioner och krav. Vagabond har kollat läget för Grekland, Italien och Spanien – svenskarnas favoriter!

The most evocative of Venice's southern islands are tiny specks capped with monasteries such as San Servolo, San Lazzaro degli Armeni and (especially) San Giorgio Maggiore, its gracious Palladio church forming the essential backdrop for dreamy lagoon views. The much larger crescent of Giudecca has its own Palladian masterpieces and is a fascinating mash-up of luxury hotels, workaday apartments, the remnants of industry and a still-functioning women's prison. Lido is Venice's 12km beach escape, its A-list film festival a hangover from its days as one of Europe's most glamorous resorts.

For all the noise, chaos and scruffiness that hit the visitor at first glance, Catania has a strong magnetic pull. This is Sicily at its most youthful, a city packed with cool and gritty bars, abundant energy and an earthy spirit in sharp contrast to Palermo’s aristocratic airs.

Poets and politicians, divas and dictators, they've all been drawn to captivating Lake Garda (Lago di Garda). In fact, 7% of all tourists to Italy head for the lake’s shores, taking to its wind-ruffled waters in the north and village- and vineyard-hopping in the south. Surrounded by three distinct regions – Lombardy, Trentino Alto-Adige and the Veneto – the lake’s cultural diversity attracts a cosmopolitan crowd. Mitteleuropeans colonise northern resorts such as Riva del Garda and Torbole, where restaurants serve air-dried ham and Austrian-style carne salada (salted beef), while in the south, French and Italian families bed down in Valtenesi farmhouses and family-friendly spa towns such as Sirmione and Bardolino.

Covering 370 sq km, Lake Garda is the largest of the Italian lakes, straddling the border between three regions: the Lombard plains to the west, Alpine Trentino Alto-Adige to the north and the rolling hills of the Veneto to the east. Look around and you’ll be surprised to see a Mediterranean landscape of vineyards, olive groves and citrus orchards that is thanks to the lake's uniquely mild microclimate.

When museum and/or tourist overload strikes – a common occurrence in this culturally resplendent city – consider stretching your legs amid some urban greenery in this soul-soothing eastern neighbourhood on the Oltrarno (aka 'the other side of the river'). Fronted by the grandiose palace of Palazzo Pitti, jam-packed with museums, Boboli's magnificent tier of palaces, villas and gardens climbs uphill to San Miniato, a hilltop ’hood famously crowned by a copy of Michelangelo's David and one of the city’s oldest and most beautiful churches. Views, predictably, are sweeping and soul-soaring.

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.

Eternal crossroads of the Mediterranean, the gorgeous island of Sicily continues to seduce travellers with its dazzling diversity of landscapes and cultural treasures.

Toscana är en välbesökt region i Italien och de vanliga resmålen som Siena, Florens, San Gimignano och Pisa dryper av turister. Men är man en vin-nörd, eller reser med en, hittar man guldklimpar bortom turiststråken. Här är en favorit!

The Italian boot’s heel (Puglia), instep (Basilicata) and toe (Calabria) are where the 'Mezzogiorno' (southern Italy) shows all its throbbing intensity. Long stereotyped as the poorer, more passionate cousins of Italy's sophisticated northerners, these regions are finally being appreciated for their true richness. You will see washing on weather-worn balconies, scooters speeding down medieval alleys and ancient towns crumbling under Mediterranean suns. But look past the pasta-advert stereotypes and you'll find things altogether more complex and wonderful; gritty, unsentimental cities with pedigrees stretching back thousands of years; dramatically broken coastlines that have harboured fisherfolk and pirates for millennia; and above all, proud and generous people, eager to share these delights with you.