Author: Charlotte Hill
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There is a moment, arriving at Villa Cora, when Florence does something unexpected: it disappears. The noise of the city, the crowds at the Pitti Palace three minutes away, the scooters on the lungarno — all of it gone.
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Florence has never been a city that does luxury loudly. Its finest hotels occupy Renaissance palazzi and 19th-century villas, their facades indistinguishable from the buildings on either side — which is, of course, precisely the point.
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There are buildings that impress. And then there is the Florence Cathedral — the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore — which does something rarer: it astonishes, repeatedly, across centuries,…
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Florence does not produce wine. It does something more interesting — it collects the finest bottles from the hills, valleys, and coastline that surround it, and offers them to anyone who knows where to look.
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Florence does not compete with other cities. It occupies a category of its own — a small, dense, walkable capital of human civilisation that has produced more art, architecture, and intellectual fire per square kilometre than almost anywhere on earth.
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hePuglia is the part of Italy that the rest of Italy talks about when it thinks nobody is listening.
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There is a small sign above the entrance of Palazzo Daniele that reads questa casa non è un albergo – this house is not a hotel. It is a statement of intent, and after any stay here, it becomes clear that this is not marketing language.
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Italy is the most complex wine country on earth. It has 20 administrative regions, 341 DOC designations and 79 DOCG wines as of 2026 (the highest quality tier) and over 500 indigenous grape varieties found nowhere else in the world.
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Lake Como from the water is one thing. Lake Como from above is another entirely. The mountains, the villas, the villages arranged along the shoreline, the deep blue-green of the…
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Lake Como has a reputation problem when it comes to food. Travelers arrive expecting mediocre tourist menus and overpriced pasta with a view — and in the most crowded spots on the most crowded days, that is exactly what they find.