A well-traveled travel advisor was once asked, “Of all the places in the world you’ve been, where is your favorite destination?” Her response, accompanied with a wry smile, “Anywhere in Italy.” We couldn’t agree more. Italy is one of the world’s best-loved destinations, and it’s no wonder — two-thirds of the world’s historical artistic heritage is located there. Whether you crave culture, history, art, architecture, theatre, fabulous regional cuisine, world-renowned wines, varied and stunning scenery, beaches, jagged coastline, designer shopping, or simply the art of il dolce far niente — the sweet doing nothing — Italy has something for everyone.

This is a country for all that is good in life. A visit to Italy is a lesson in living well. Open-air vegetable and fruit markets, neighborhood bakeries and fresh cheeses made daily are fixtures of Italian life. Tradition reigns: Neighbors still meet in the piazza to discuss the day, laundry is still line-dried, even in the largest cities, and the passeggiata (leisurely stroll) is still made in the evening air — preferably with a gelato in hand. From the mountains to the coast, the emphasis is on simple pleasures and high quality.

The “boot” of Italy — about to kick the Sicilian “football” with the island of Sardinia already in the air — is surrounded by five seas and is up to its “thigh” in water. That amounts to about 7,300 kilometers of Italian coastline surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea, which has been historically divided into several smaller seas (the Ligurian, Tyrrhenian, Sardinia, Adriatic, and Ionian Seas). No place in Italy is very far from the sea, with the most active ports being Venice, Genoa, Portofino, and Ancona in the north; Civitavecchia, Salerno, Naples, and Brindisi in the south; and Palermo in Sicily.

Some say that the people of Italy civilized Europe twice, once in ancient times and again after the Middle Ages during the Renaissance, when such noble citizens as Galileo, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci made enormous contributions to science, art and architecture.

This month’s Travel Video share, created by Wow Tapes, a media production company head-quartered in Rome, features all things Italia. It’s a remarkable film, which starts out with eye-catching inverted landscape footage, then it catapults you through a fast-paced whirlwind of scenes from Italian locales. What we like best about the film is the way it immerses the viewer into the culture and the people of Italy. It captures the history, the topography, the food, the markets, the arts, the crafts, the small villages, the larger cities, the beaches, the diversity, the everyday life, the nightlife, the personalities, the scenic landscapes, and the importance of the sea-inspired lifestyle — literally, all things Italia.  It’s a wild ride! We hope you enjoy it, and we hope it inspires you to visit the land of la dolce vita (the sweet life) very soon!

The Avant Team