Of all European countries,
Italy is perhaps the hardest to classify. It is a
modern, industrialized nation. It is the harbinger of style,
its designers leading the way with each season's fashions. But
it is also, to an equal degree, a Mediterranean country, with
all that that implies. Agricultural land covers much of the
country, a lot of it, especially in the south, still owned
under almost feudal conditions. In towns and villages all over
the country, life grinds to a halt in the middle of the day
for a siesta, and is strongly family-oriented, with an
emphasis on the traditions and rituals of the Catholic Church
which, notwithstanding a growing scepticism among the
country's youth, still dominates people's lives here to an
immediately obvious degree.
Above all Italy provokes reaction. Its people are volatile,
rarely indifferent to anything, and on one and the same day
you might encounter the kind of disdain dished out to tourist
masses worldwide, and an hour later be treated to
embarrassingly generous hospitality. If there is a single
national characteristic, it's to embrace life to the full: in
the hundreds of local festivals taking place across the
country on any given day, to celebrate a saint or the local
harvest; in the importance placed on good food; in the
obsession with clothes and image; and above all in the daily
domestic ritual of the collective evening stroll or
passeggiata - a sociable affair celebrated by young and old
alike in every town and village across the country.
Italy only became a unified state in 1861 and, as a result,
Italians often feel more loyalty to their region than the
nation as a whole - something manifest in different cuisines,
dialects, landscape and often varying standards of living.
There is also, of course, the country's enormous cultural
legacy: Tuscany alone has more classified historical monuments
than any country in the world; there are considerable remnants
of the Roman Empire all over the country, notably of course in
Rome itself; and every region retains its own relics of an
artistic tradition generally acknowledged to be among the
world's richest.
Yet there's no reason to be intimidated by the art and
architecture. If you want to lie on a beach, there are any
number of places to do it: development has been kept
relatively under control, and many resorts are still largely
the preserve of Italian tourists. Other parts of the coast,
especially in the south of the country, are almost entirely
undiscovered. Beaches are for the most part sandy, and doubts
about the cleanliness of the water have been confined to the
northern part of the Adriatic coast and the Riviera.
Mountains, too, run the country's length - from the Alps and
Dolomites in the north right along the Apennines, which form
the spine of the peninsula - and are an important
reference-point for most Italians. Skiing and other winter
sports are practised avidly, and in the five national parks,
protected from the national passion for hunting, wildlife of
all sorts thrives