For independent travelers who want to dig deeper
Italy is a true travel dream destination for most travelers, romanticized in movies and books, but it really comes to life for the independent traveler who digs deeper than the romantic Italian stereotypes of Rome and tries to understand Italy as a whole.
One of the first things to understand is that while Italy’s history is over 2000 years old, modern Italy is a young country, younger than even the United States, with Italy only becoming a unified country in 1861.
A traveler should also know that Italy is very regional, each region, even each town can have its own unique cultural and culinary differences. The north of Italy is very different than the south of Italy, just by driving from one region to another the food you enjoyed the night before is no longer available and the new town you are in has a new specialty to discover and enjoy.
What people don’t always realize before they go to Italy is just how varied it is meaning that each region — and, usually, each town — has its own culinary, cultural and linguistic traditions that define it, even today. As Stanley Tucci realizes in his CNN Original series, “Searching for Italy,” every region is a whole different entity.