Italy has long been a centre of historic importance and cultural significance in Europe. An essential stop-off on the Grand Tour, the cultural rite of passage for travellers in the seventeenth century, the country was associated with intellectual thinking, high class living and an inherently Classical style. Thankfully, it retains many of its original features today, both physical and intellectual, so that a visit to the country is a step into the past, at the same time as into a distinctly modern and thoroughly modernised state. Here, past and present merge, with the self-contained Vatican still an important influence over an essentially religious and traditional state, and yet with the larger cities coming to the fore with innovative regeneration and distinct cultures all as progressive as they are redolent with the past that bore them.
In the country’s capital city of Rome wi
Last Edit by ASchilz on 4/10/2011 EDIT NOW >>
