Venice is a dream that shines on the waters, a city of painted palaces and serene churches. This unique urban masterpiece has canals instead of streets, boats instead of buses, and ornate bridges instead of subways. A trip to Venice provides an unforgettable glimpse of life's defining moments played out on watery avenues: weddings, funerals, carnivals and regattas. Yet, in these opulent surroundings the daily grind continues: commuters pack on to the rush hour vaporetti (waterbuses), dustmen collect rubbish in their refuse boats and fishermen deliver their catch to the market.

Particularly tourists visit Venice to experience its inimitable charm. The inconvenient of this can be felt in the narrow streets and cramped piazzas of its sought-after areas. A good way to get to know a more personal side of Venice is to saunter through its romantic back streets and residential quarters.

Maybe the only ways of getting around Venice are walking and paying up for the 'expensive-but-worth-it' gondola, water bus/taxi or a regular taxi is officially banned in the lagoon city, a bicycle won’t help you much.

The classic gondola ride with the opera-warbling operator is pretty touristy and expensive but the traghetto is a commuter gondola that crosses the Grand Canal at strategic points. It's entirely a balance test for newbies, as you have to stand. Water taxis (motorboats) are almost as expensive as gondolas, but their pilots don't wear stripy shirts and bellow out 'O Sole Mio'.

If you are looking for the cheerful bars and restaurants, you can't go wrong with the area surrounding Campo di Santa Margarita in San Polo. There you will get an Irish pub, trendy bars that do the limbo, and just plain fun. The area is visited by students from the University and is buzzing with life during the weekends as market stalls of fish and vegetables open up.

The City of Venice

Venice

Venice

Venice

Venice

Florence is considered one of the most magnificent cities in Italy, as well as the world. Located in the heart of Tuscany, the tourist can find fields of sunflowers, miles of vineyards, rolling hills and mountaintop castles. This place is the Renaissance capital of the world, its famous sons are Leonardo Da Vinci, Dante Alighieri, Machiavelli, Fra Angelico and Michelangelo. It is a destination not to be missed.

Florence has an exceptional artistic patrimony, celebrated testimony to its secular civilization. Cimabue and Giotto were considered the fathers of Italian painting, they lived in this place, along with Arnolfo and Andrea Pisano, reformists of architecture and sculpture; Brunelleschi, Donatello and Masaccio, founders of the Renaissance. The Italian Renaissance, Europe's richest cultural period, began in Florence when the artist Brunelleschi finished the Duomo, with the huge dome. Ghiberti and the Della Robbia; Filippo Lippi and l'Angelico; Botticelli and Paolo Uccello; the universal geniuses Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. Their works are exhibited in the city's many museums and known around of the world. Boccaccio wrote his 'Decameron' in Florence. From the 13th to the 16th century it was a seemingly endless source of creative masterpieces and Italian genius. During the Italian Renaissance Florence constructed its renaissance palaces and squares, turning it into a living museum. Many squares, such as Piazza della Signoria exhibit famous statues and fountains.

Probably Florence is a city of incomparable indoor pleasures. Its chapels, galleries and museums are an incomparable treasure, apprehending the complex, often elusive spirit of the Renaissance more fully than any other place in the country. The most famous museum in Florence is the Uffizi which houses works by Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Titian and Rubens. Other great art museums include the Pitti Palace, Galleria dell'Accademia and Palazzo Vecchio. Florence is also home to some of the biggest churches in Italy, including the famous Duomo of Florence, San Lorenzo, Santa Maria Novella and Santa Croce.

The surroundings of Florence have many things to offer to the visitor. You can explore this region for weeks without being bored. For these day trips the city of Florence is the perfect starting point.

Florence

Florence

Florence

Florence

Naples is located between the world's most famous volcano and the deep blue sea, is beautiful and ugly in same measure. It can be an intimidating place, anarchic and occasionally law-abiding. The traffic is severe and the peace and the quiet is hard to find. But it's an extraordinarily vivacious city, the food (especially pizza) is great, opera, classical music and jazz are ingrained in its culture and the treasure trove of sights hidden away here is at times overwhelming.

The city, the volcanos and its surroundings are also geographically blessed, the ever-present giant of Vesuvius bears down on the city, with the fruitful hills of the Sorrento Peninsula plunging to the well-endowed Amalfi Coast on one side and the ornamental beads of Capri, Ischia and Procida out to sea on the other, you’re never far away from captivating scenery. Towns and villages cling to cliffs or cluster around harbours in true picture- postcard style and views are colourful and panoramically spectacular. And if it’s history you’re after, the once-buried wonders of Pompeii and Herculaneum to the east are only slightly more amazing than the ruined marvels of the Campi Flegrei to the west, while to the south, crumbling Paestum is the most majestic of them all.

Naples has a lot of history to get over before it can feel properly at ease with itself. It possess a strong but also confused sense of civic pride and tradition: its dialect betrays its mixed parentage, particularly its Spanish and French influences. For hundreds of years it was tossed from one set of rulers to another, and still has a profound anti-establishment feeling, and a distrust of outsiders.

Contrasted to other European cities, Naples is an ample, chaotic and sometimes "overbearing" city, but in all these things lies the city's charm. It has its share of petty crime, and derelict areas that visually detract a tourist's point of view. In spite of this, most of Naples' inhabitants know how to enjoy the joys of life. Naples has been compared to Marseilles and referred to as the "Bombay" of Europe. This reputation should not deter potential travellers from visiting Naples, as it is safer than most large American cities and the chaos has been steadily subsiding over the last few years.

Naples

Naples

Naples

Naples

Pisa, known worldwide for its Leaning Tower, absolutely deserves more than the habitual day stop which traditionally occurs on tourist routes. The construction started about 1170s and took 200 years to complete. As the ground on which the Tower was built on was not firm, the tower tilted. As the centuries passed, the tilt became more and more. In order to save the tower, in 1988, the tower was closed to visitors and with the help of skilful engineers, the tower now leans about 6 degrees and was reopened in 2001. This freakishly beautiful building is only one part of Pisa's breathtaking Campo dei Miracoli, or Field of Miracles, where the Duomo, Baptistry and Camposanto complete a dazzling architectural ensemble, which belong to Pisa's "Golden Age".

The city has an ancient history which was at its most excellent period during the era of the Marine Republic. For the tourists, Pisa is considered as a treasure chest full of surprises; from the bright Lungarni quays walled by noble buildings, to the web of narrow, medieval alleys leading to the famous Piazza dei Miracoli. Home of Galileo Galilei, Pisa is today an important university city and offers a lively student lifestyle.

Pisa is located in Tuscany, Central Italy, on the right bank of the mouth of the River Arno on the Ligurian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa. Although Pisa is known worldwide for its Leaning Tower (the bell tower of the city's cathedral), the city of over 87,500 residents contains more than 20 other historic churches, several palaces and various bridges across the River Arno.

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The City of Pisa

Pisa

Pisa

Pisa

Pisa

Milan is a city that evokes extreme feelings; the city lifestyle is extreme too. A frenetic, restless rhythm is an element of work and leisure, so much so that it is difficult to stay unmoved and not get overwhelmed by the entire cultural and social stimulus. Perhaps to this reason, Milan makes itself indispensable, because it is impossible to stay so alive and full of energy when you are away from the city.

Milan is always one step ahead: a laboratory of artistic experiments and a building site for social behavior that is continuously changing. City full of contradictions, ancient and modern trends and counter-trends, fashion and underground, middle class and working class, but always simply “cool”.

This city is whole about worldly pleasures. Theatre and cinema prosper in this fashionable milieu, as does a hopping club scene and a slew of tempting restaurants. Apart from a few gems, the city is not renowned for its looks; it's lifestyle that counts. Shopping is of quasi-religious significance.

Milan is one of the principal artistic centers of Italy of the north.

Some cultural centers of Milan:

• The Duomo, the second largest cathedral of the world and the world's largest collection of marble statues.
• The Castello Sforzesco
• The Basilica of Sant'Ambrogio
• The Palaeo-Christian Basilica of San Lorenzo
• The Biblioteca Ambrosiana, containing drawings and notebooks by Leonardo da Vinci among its vast holdings of books, manuscripts, and drawings, and is one of the main repositories of European culture. The city is also the home of the Brera Academy of Fine Arts.
• The church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, housing one of the most famous paintings of Leonardo da Vinci, The Last Supper
• The Pinacoteca di Brera, Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Poldi Pezzoli, the Bagatti Valsecchi Museum and the Musei del Castello galleries, which host a great number of pictorial masterpieces.

Milan

Milan

Milan

Milan

Rome Caput Mundi, Rome the ageless City. A different city around the world because of the absolutely opposite styles of art and life that manage to live side by side there: Imperial Rome and Baroque Rome, sophisticated Rome and working-class Rome.

Rome has a long and tempestuous history. No other city had the attention center of the world for such a long period. The city more loved of the Roman Empire, lavished with architectural jewelry by her emperors, but also often seized raided and destroyed. Also fires and earthquakes left their scars, but each time the eternal city recovered from her injuries. Cheap flights to Rome.

Rome's history is strongly related to the history of Europe. Not just the Roman emperors, but also medieval emperors and kings like Charlemagne or Otto I saw Rome as the true seat of power. They confronted the new rulers, the popes for the supreme power. It was the dispute about who was the true representative of God. Both emperor and pope claimed to be true inheritors of the Roman Empire.

It is said that one life is not enough to get to comprehend Rome. Maybe you'll require about ten, as much as the countless stray cats that also occupy the city, but a week will do for a first introduction. At each corner of each street there’s a story to tell. Thousands of stories together tell the history of a three thousand year old city. Two weeks may be enough for a hasty tour through most everything; a month would be better. Fortunately, Rome (population 2.900.000) is compact enough to skim the best in three (full) days, and if you have more time we guarantee you will find delightful and fulfilling ways to use it.

The most impressive features in Rome comprehend the Trevi fountain (remind Anita Ekberg in the classic scene in La Dolce Vita) and the Spanish Steps, the Roman heritage sights such as the Pantheon, the Colloseum and the Forum Romanum, at least some of the world famous churches such as Il Gesu, S. Giovanni in Laterano or Sta. Maria Maggiore. Make sure not to miss a stroll through the Vatican City with the incredibly huge St. Peter's Cathedral and the unrivalled Vatican Museum.

The City of Rome

Rome

Rome

Rome

Rome