the top. Streets resembling open-air museums. Bridges that create seem-less bonds between the banks of rivers such as the Rialto in Venice or Ponte Vecchio in Florence.
Walls originally designed to defend a city have later been turned into wonderfully imposing rings that have been giving communities a sense of security for centuries. Ample flights of steps from which to savour the spectacle of a city’s life. The taste for beauty is all pervasive, from the tiny village, to the old town, to cities great and small. Beauty touches every nook, every vista, everything. The ancient Italians left a world of elegant architecture and monuments behind for future generations to stare in amazement at.
Italy has a wealth of religious architecture, towers and churches launched towards the sky. Striking spires, dainty cupolas, artistic facades, and bell towers jutting up towards the blue sky and towards an Italian heaven, mysterious naves that guard artistic masterpieces ancient and modern.
Visit any Italian city, town or village and you will see churches everywhere, guardians of and witnesses to a faith thousands of years old and then tiny chapels on the mountain tops, solitary shrines on street corners, statues and frescoes for the protection of the home. Small signs of popular devotion that stand as corollaries to the magnificence of the cathedrals. Italy loves religious architecture.
A series of masterpieces that tell the entire story of western architecture: from the elegant Romanesque forms of Santa Maria all’ Aquila to the fanciful Gothic spires of the beautiful Cathedral in Milan, from the perfect example of Renaissance architecture in Florence Cathedral to the baroque wonder of Lecce