Northern Italy's Best Experiences
Top Picks for Venice, Milan, Florence, Turin and the Cinque Terre
Whether it's Verona's arena by candlelight before the opera or St Mark's Square in high water, the travel highlights of northern Italy are more than just sightseeing.
Venice: St Mark's Square on a warm evening at the high tide, with the orchestras playing and people walking barefoot through the water, shoes in their hands, through the patterns of St. Marks Basilica reflected in the water. It's pure magic - enough to make me actually sit at a table in one of the cafes and order the city's most expensive glass of Campari.
Venice: Sailing into the Grand Canal at dawn, standing on the deck to see the whole city wrapped in sunlit haze, like a shawl of pink cotton candy.
Milan: Walking on the roof of the Duomo, between the lacy stone pinnacles and spires, looking straight down past the grimacing stone gargoyles into Piazza Real, and out over the city rooftops to the snow-covered Alps.
Florence: Standing inside the Duomo, under the center of Brunelleschi's enormous dome, trying to picture what it looked like when it was being built over a shell of suspended scaffolding, and marveling at the genius that conceived the first of the Renaissance's great domes.
Cinque Terre: Hiking the upper sections between clifftop Corniglia and Vernazza, where the trail is narrower and less traveled, and the ocean crashes against the rocks straight below, then descending to the tiny colorful harbor of Vernazza to relax in a café and watch local kids play in the piazza.
Lake Como: Dancing in the grand parlor at Bellagio's Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni after dinner in the evening, and stepping off the dance floor to watch an elderly Italian couple execute a perfect tango.
Verona: Sitting in the darkened Arena before the overture begins at the Opera Festival, to see the entire Arena de Verona begin to glow from the light of thousands of tiny candles.
Turin: Celebrating the joys of everything chocolate, in a month of theatre, music, film, art and food, all about Turin's favorite product, at CioccolaTò, in March. Turin is Italy's chocolate capital, and even the espresso is laced with it (called a Bicerin, after the café that invented it).
