Guides for globetrotters

The Italy I know best

Practical guides written by a seasoned traveler for visitors who want to connect with the cultures, rhythms and nuances of Italy’s regions: to go beyond the usual three monuments and the obligatory photo, and to share Italy’s natural and artistic beauty, its food and its culture with the world.

How the series began

I was born and still live in Milan, but my personal geography never stopped at the city limits. As a boy, holidays had three precise coordinates: Liguria, the Apennine hills of Upper Val Tidone and the Salento of my paternal grandparents, where every August from the age of eight I went back to the red earth, the clear sea and rituals that resist time.

Then work arrived, and with it another way of traveling: not just leaving, but living in a place for weeks, learning its distances, its habits, even its timetables. I lived Rome and Turin from the inside for a few months; then Bologna, Genoa, Naples, Venice, Ancona, Bari and many more. From 1996, at Oracle, the radius widened to more than 60 countries across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the United States and Asia.

Traveling this much also changes how you see home. In recent years, international colleagues visiting Italy for work or a short holiday began asking me for practical advice, the kind you won’t find in generic guidebooks: what is really worth seeing in a few days, how to get around without wasting time, where to stay, which restaurants to choose.

At first I replied with scattered messages. Then, occasion after occasion, I found myself putting together real dossiers: well-planned itineraries, reliable addresses, alternatives for different tastes and budgets, and above all the details that change a trip. That is where the idea of the series came from: designed first for international travelers, but just as happy to speak to Italians curious to rediscover Italy with fresh eyes.

The volumes