1,000 Places to See Before You Die

by Patricia Schultz

  The Grand Hotel Timeo, pampering guests since the 19th century, reopened in 2010 after a lavish renovation. Balconied rooms look over terraced gardens and down to the sea, where you’ll find its sister hotel, the Villa Sant’Andrea. The Hotel Villa Ducale was once the ancestral home of the Quartuccis, who warmly welcome guests today in the 15 attractive seaview rooms. The hotel’s tile floors, stone walls, and flowering terraces hold second place to the attentive service and familial ambience.

  Dining in Sicily can be simple and sublime, as Vecchia Taormina proves with its pizza alla Norma, topped with roasted eggplant and ricotta. The charmingly modest La Piazzetta claims to serve the freshest fish in town in its cozy dining room and alfresco courtyard.

  Sicily’s most dramatic venue for summertime performances is Taormina’s ancient Greek amphitheater, hewn into a rock face above the town. The acoustics are perfect, and stage columns frame the scene-stealer, Mount Etna. An hour’s drive from Taormina brings you face-to-face with this volatile volcano, which has erupted 300 times since the first records were made 3,000 years ago. Jeep tours bounce toward the 10,922-foot summit, through groves of lemon, orange, and almond trees, and vineyards. The olive trees that flourish on the fertile lower slopes give way to a toasted, barren landscape—brooding, dark, and fascinating. The final ascent is via cable car over pinnacles of frozen lava, minor craters, and belching smoke holes—proof that this is Europe’s most active volcano.

  WHERE: 33 miles/53 km north of Catania. HOTEL SAN DOMENICO: Tel 39/0942-613111; in the U.S., 212-515-5500; www.sandomenicopalace.hotelsinsicily.it. Cost: from $415 (off-peak), from $560 (peak). When: closed mid-Jan–mid-Mar. GRAND HOTEL TIMEO: Tel 39/0942-627-0200; in the U.S., 800-237-1236; www.grandhoteltimeo.com. Cost: from $590. When: closed mid-Nov–mid-Mar. HOTEL VILLA DUCALE: Tel 39/0942-28153; www.villaducale.com. Cost: from $145 (off-peak), from $290 (peak). When: closed Dec–Feb. VECCHIA TAORMINA: Tel 39/0942-625589. Cost: lunch $20. LA PIAZZETTA: Tel 39/0942-626317. Cost: dinner $35. BEST TIMES: Apr–May and Sep–Oct to avoid heat and crowds; mid-Jun for film festival; Jul–mid-Aug for arts festival of music, ballet, and opera with performances in Teatro Greco.

  Italy’s High Haven

  THE DOLOMITE DRIVE AND CORTINA D’AMPEZZO

  Trentino-Alto Adige, Italy

  An engineering feat, the Dolomite Drive rises and falls for 68 miles through the majestic beauty of the saw-toothed peaks of the Dolomite Mountains in the northern reaches of Alpine Italy. From Bolzano, a Tyrolean city of onion-domed churches, the road climbs the 7,500-foot-high Passo del pordoi before descending to 4,000-foot-high Cortina, Italy’s number one ski resort and scene of the 1956 Winter Olympics. Today more than 95 miles of ski runs challenge intermediate and advanced skiers while trails beckon summertime trekkers, and the via ferrata (iron path), a network of cables, ladders, and rungs put in place during World War I, provides hikers with an extra challenge.

  Cortina is also well suited to relaxing, people-watching, and witnessing the spectacle of the sunset enveloping the limestone peaks in a rosy glow. An excellent base for exploring is the celebrated 100-year-old Miramonti Majestic Grand Hotel, a former Austro-Hungarian hunting lodge on the outskirts of town. Most of the 105 rooms have balconies and captivating views, and inside are a blazing hearth and cozy bar offering 18 kinds of hot chocolate. Rosa Alpina Hotel and Spa is a delightful hideaway outside San Cassiano, ten miles west of Cortina and ten times more low-key; guests enjoy luxurious quarters and an acclaimed gourmet restaurant, St. Hubertus. The environmentally friendly Lagació Mountain Residence offers one of the most refreshing mountain retreats on earth; one- and two-bedroom apartments warmly paneled in local woods and facing the mountains, plus organic food and a Finnish sauna and steam bath.

  More than 50 refuges where shepherds and hikers once sought shelter in the mountains above Cortina have been converted to restaurants where you can ski or hike in for a hearty lunch or dinner. At Rifugio Averau, you can even spend the night in rustic accommodations and greet the mountain dawn without leaving the slopes.

  The dramatic peaks and green valleys of the Dolomites bring a little piece of Austria to Northern Italy.

  WHERE: Cortina is 100 miles/161 km north of Venice. HOW: Dolomite Mountains offers several hiking, biking, and skiing tours. Tel 39/0436-7320, in the U.S., 303-898-3376; www.dolomitemountains.com. Cost:7-day trips from $2,065, inclusive. MIRAMONTI MAJESTIC: Tel 39/0436-4201; www.miramontimajestic.it. Cost: from $550 (off-peak), from $840 (peak). When: closed late Mar–May, Sep–mid-Dec. ROSA ALPINA: Tel 39/0471-849500; www.rosalpina.it. Cost: from $485 (off-peak), from $940 (peak); dinner at St. Hubertus $70. LAGACIÓ MOUNTAIN RESIDENCE: Tel 39/0471-849503; www.lagacio.com. Cost:1-bedroom apartments from $210 (off-peak), from $390 (peak). RIFUGIO AVERAU: Tel 39/0436-4660. Cost: from $70 per person, inclusive. When: mid-Apr–May, mid-Oct–Nov. BEST TIMES: Jan–Mar for skiing; Jul–Aug for hiking.

  “The god who created the hills around Florence was an artist. No! He was a jeweler, engraver, sculptor, bronze founder and painter: He was a Florentine.”—Anatole France

  FLORENCE

  Tuscany, Italy

  The capital of Tuscany, Firenze (Florence) is, most famously, the cradle of the Renaissance, epitomized by the cupola that Filippo Brunelleschi designed for the Duomo more than 600 years ago. Michelangelo’s David and countless other treasures fill the city’s museums and churches. The Florentine lifestyle is a work of art in itself, to be savored in historic cafés, welcoming trattorias, trendy boutiques, and the city’s medieval streets and piazzas rimmed with fortresslike palazzos.

  TOP ATTRACTIONS

  MUSEO NAZIONALE DEL BARGELLO—The Bargello National Museum is to Renaissance sculpture what the Uffizi (see p. 206) is to painting. A Gothic fortress from 1255, once a prison and place of execution, it houses Florence’s—and arguably Italy’s—greatest collection of Renaissance sculpture. Galleries surrounding a vast courtyard are filled with such masterpieces as Michelangelo’s slightly tipsy-looking Bacchus, a bronze of David by Donatello, and Brunelleschi’s losing designs for the doors of the Baptistery (the award went to Ghiberti, but Brunelleschi proved his genius with the cathedral dome). INFO: Tel 39/055-238-8606; www.polomuseale.firenze.it.

  BASILICA OF SANTA CROCE—The church built by the Franciscans between 1294 and 1442 is the final resting place of some of the most famous Florentines of the Renaissance and also houses magnificent art treasures. The tombs of Michelangelo, Machiavelli, Galileo, Ghiberti, and others, along with a memorial to Dante, who died in exile in Ravenna (see p. 181), are surrounded by Giotto’s masterful frescoes depicting scenes from the life and death of Saint Francis and Donatello’s famous crucifix. Taddeo Gaddi’s frescoes in the Cappella Baroncelli depict scenes from the life of the Virgin. INFO: Tel 39/055-244619; www.santacroce.firenze.it.

  The church’s marble façade was added in 1863.

  BASILICA OF SANTA MARIA NOVELLA—Built for the Dominican order in the late 13th and early 14th centuries, Santa Maria Novella is the only major church in Florence that retains its original façade, a Gothic and Renaissance mélange of multicolored marble, friezes, and niches. Behind the massive doorways are some of Florence’s greatest treasures: frescoes by Domenico Ghirlandaio, Filippino Lippi, and Nardo di Cione; two famous crosses, one by Giotto and one by Brunelleschi in the Cappella Gondi; Masaccio’s Trinità, the first painting to ever use perspective; and the pulpit from which Galileo was denounced for saying the earth orbits the sun. Since 1221, the monks have formulated balms and ointments from herbs they cultivated, and some of the same recipes still find their way into scents and soaps available at the well-known 17th-century Officina-Profumo Farmaceutica di Santa Maria, just around the corner on Via della Scala. INFO: Church: Tel 39/055-215918. Pharmacy: Tel 39/055-216276.

  GALLERIA DELL’ACCADEMIA—Michelangelo’s colossal David has been acclaimed ever since the Florentine artist unveiled it in 1504, and for several centuries the imposing, dignified figure of the youth who slew Goliath comm
anded pride of place as the centerpiece of the Piazza della Signoria (see next page). Since 1873, David has stood inside the Accademia built to house him (a lifesize copy replaced him in the piazza), together with Michelangelo’s four powerful, unfinished Prisoners, their forms struggling to break free from the raw marble that encases them. INFO: Tel 39/055-238-8612; www.polomuseale.firenze.it.

  IL DUOMO (CATTEDRALE DI SANTA MARIA DEI FIORI)—Several architects overcame enormous technical challenges to design what is probably the central achievement of Renaissance architecture. The cathedral, finally consecrated in 1436, is topped by Filippo Brunelleschi’s enormous octagonal dome (the largest in the world when it was built and now the very symbol of Florence) and houses an enormous Last Judgment fresco by Vasari and Federico Zuccari. The red, white, and green marble façade is a 19th-century addition. Other landmarks on the Piazza del Duomo are the freestanding baptistery, with its famous bronze Doors of Paradise by Ghiberti, and Giotto’s slender bell tower. The Duomo Museum, behind the cathedral, houses much of the sculpture removed for protection. INFO: Tel 39/055-230-2885; www.operaduomo.firenze.it.

  MEDICI CHAPELS—The Sagrestia Nuova (New Sacristy) of the Cappelle Medicee (Medici Chapels) was Michelangelo’s first architectural project, begun in the 1520s to house the remains of Lorenzo the Magnificent and three other members of the ruling clan. Reclining, allegorical statues of female Dawn and male Dusk adorn the tomb of Lorenzo II, Duke of Urbino, and figures of male Day and female Night grace the tomb of Giuliano, Duke of Memours. Ironically, Michelangelo didn’t complete the two most important tombs—those of Lorenzo Il Magnifico and his brother, Giuliano, who lie in a plain selpuchre opposite the altar. INFO: Tel 39/055-238-8602; www.polomuseale.firenze.it.

  MUSEO SAN MARCO—The most celebrated friar of this 13th-century Dominican monastery was the mystical Fra Angelico. His masterworks, The Annunciation, The Crucifixion, and The Last Judgement, are found here, as are a number of painted panels, altarpieces, and a series of frescoes that grace many of the plain cells where the monks lived and prayed. Savonarola, the fire-and-brimstone fundamentalist who won and then lost favor with the Medicis, was prior of the monastery and resided in cell 11. Of a half dozen beautiful Last Supper frescoes found in Florence’s various monasteries, the one in San Marco’s refectory, by Domenico Ghirlandaio, is one of the most important. Ghirlandaio taught a young Michelangelo the art of fresco painting, something that would serve him well decades later in the Sistine Chapel in Rome (see p. 185). INFO: Tel 39/055-238-8608; www.museumsinflorence.com.

  PIAZZA DELLA SIGNORIA—The piazza that was the civic center of Florence for more than 700 years is now a popular outdoor sculpture gallery and site of round-the-clock street life. Giambologna’s bronze of Grand Duke Cosimo I on horseback and other sculptures are originals, whereas others (notably Michelangelo’s David and Donatello’s Marzocco) are replicas of originals that now reside in the city’s various museums. A plaque in front of Bartolomeo Ammannati’s Neptune fountain marks the spot where Savonarola held his Bonfire of the Vanities in the 1490s and, a year later, was hanged and burned. You can enjoy some of these views from In Piazza della Signoria, a small welcoming inn with rooms overlooking the square. IN PIAZZA DELLA SIGNORIA: Tel 39/055-239-9546; www.inpiazzadellasignoria.com. Cost: from $230 (off-peak), from $315 (peak).

  The Neptune fountain in the Piazza della Signoria was initially ridiculed as “the White Giant” and used as a basin for laundry.

  PALAZZO VECCHIO—The Gothic palace in the Piazza della Signoria was completed in 1302 to house the Republic’s 500-man congress and later served as home to the Medicis, including Duke Cosimo I, until they moved into the Palazzo Pitti. You can now find Michelangelo’s statue Victory; Vasari’s Quartiere degli Elementi; and Donatello’s original Judith and Holofernes statue here. INFO: Tel 39/055-276-8465; www.museumsinflorence.com.

  PALAZZO PITTI AND THE GALLERIA PALATINA—Built by wealthy Florentine merchant and banker Luca Pitti in the late 15th century across the Arno from the Palazzo Vecchio, the Pitti Palace was bought by the Medicis in 1550 and substantially enlarged, becoming the official residence of the ruling dukes. Today it houses the Palatine Gallery (Galleria Palatina), whose 26 rooms display High Renaissance and later-era art, including works by Titian, a large number by Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Caravaggio, and a number of smaller museums. Climb the hill behind the palazzo and enjoy a picnic in the 16th-century Boboli Gardens, with sweeping views of Florence’s historic center across the river. INFO: Tel 39/055-238-8616; www.polomuseale.firenze.it.

  UFFIZI GALLERIES (GALLERIA DEGLI UFFIZI)—A palace designed in 1560 by architect Giorgio Vasari for Grand Duke Cosimo de’ Medici houses many of the masterworks of Western civilization, collected by the Medicis themselves and bequeathed to the people of Florence. Botticelli (his Allegory of Springtime and Birth of Venus are among the attention-getters), Michelangelo (represented here by his only painting in Florence, the Doni Tondo), Cimabue, Raphael, Giotto, Leonardo da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Filippo Lippi . . . the list amazes. INFO: Tel 39/055-294883; www.polomuseale.firenze.it. Advance tickets online: www.firenzemusei.it.

  OTHER MUST-DOS

  IL PONTE VECCHIO—The oldest and most famous bridge across the Arno River was built by Taddeo Gaddi in 1345. Butchers occupied the bridge’s over-water shops until Medici dukes objected to the stench and installed the goldsmiths and jewelers who still occupy the premises today, selling everything from museum-quality hand-crafted heirlooms to more affordable mementos. So popular is the bridge that Germans retreating from Florence at the end of World War II did not blow it up, making the Ponte Vecchio the only Arno bridge to be spared.

  The medieval Ponte Vecchio, spanning the Arno at its narrowest, replaced a bridge of wood and stone dating to Roman times.

  MERCATO DI SAN LORENZO AND THE MERCATO CENTRALE—Italy’s largest open-air market comprises hundreds of white canvas-topped stalls filling the streets around the Church of San Lorenzo. Amid the purveyors of leather goods and kitsch souvenirs rises the glass and cast-iron 19th-century Mercato Centrale, where butchers, fishmongers, cheese merchants, and other vendors supply Florentines, including many chefs, with their daily staples. If hunger strikes, hit Nerbone, a popular no-lingering lunch counter within the mercato. Or make your way across the piazza to Zà Zà, a boisterous and ever-popular trattoria where steak and other Florentine staples are served at crowded tables. NERBONE: Tel 39/055-219949. ZÀ ZÀ: Tel 39/055-215411; www.trattoriazaza.it. Cost: lunch $30.

  PIAZZALE MICHELANGIOLO AND SAN MINIATO AL MONTE—The postcard-worthy views from the piazzale’s hilltop square, centered around a copy of Michelangelo’s David, have inspired Renaissance masters and countless modern-day shutterbugs. The nearby Chiesa di San Miniato al Monte—Florence’s oldest church—dominates the city’s highest hill. A daily program of Gregorian chant in this 11th-century Romanesque landmark transports you back to the Middle Ages. INFO: Tel 39/055-234-2731; www.san-miniato-al-monte.com.

  WHERE TO STAY

  BEACCI TORNABUONI—Haven for travelers since the days of the Grand Tour, this newly refurbished hotel has retained its old-fashioned air of gentility amid amiable sitting rooms, a flowery terrace overlooking tile rooftops, and 28 large, airy guest rooms. One of its biggest assets may be the chic shops of the Via Tornabuoni just outside the door. INFO: Tel 39/055-212645; www.tornabuonihotels.com. Cost: from $200 (off-peak), from $350 (peak).

  HOTEL CASCI—A conveniently situated 14th-century palazzo that was once home to composer Gioacchino Rossini provides comfortable accommodations and a warm welcome from the Lombardi family. The euros you save you can spend on dinner. INFO: Tel 39/055-211686; www.hotelcasci.com. Cost: from $115 (off-peak), from $215 (peak).

  FOUR SEASONS—Guests live better than the Medicis in a Renaissance convent and palazzo that have been meticulously restored and are awash in museum-quality frescoes, inlaid marble, and tapestries. The Duomo and other sights are a leisurely 20-minute walk away, but the pampering of a clair
voyant staff, a spa, the largest private garden in Florence, and the acclaimed il Palagio restaurant make it nearly impossible to leave. INFO: Tel 39/055-26261; in the U.S., 800-819-5053; www.fourseasons.com. Cost: from $420 (off-peak), from $800 (peak); dinner at il Palagio $110.

  HOTEL HELVETIA AND BRISTOL—Travelers from Igor Stravinsky to the Danish royal family have lodged in this grandly revamped 19th-century palazzo, a plush mix of British-style comfort and old-world Italian elegance. It’s nestled on a side street between the tony, shop-lined Via Tornabuoni and the Duomo, the very heart of Florence, and an enjoyable stroll away from all the major sights. INFO: Tel 39/055-26651; in the U.S., 800-223-6800; www.royaldemeure.com. Cost: from $550.

  STYLISH QUARTERS—Florentines have always been trendsetters, and several fashion-forward hotels occupying centuries-old buildings bespeak the latest word in Italian style. J. K. Place sports an exquisitely refined Neoclassical look, and a roof terrace looks across red tile roofs to the Duomo. The Continentale infuses a 14th-century riverside palazzo with a clean 1950s Italian style, with the Ponte Vecchio only an arm’s length away; the hotel is part of a group run by the style-infallible Ferragamo clan that also includes the nearby and equally chic Gallery Hotel Art and Hotel Lungarno. The aura of a private home permeates Casa Howard, where antiques are scattered among contemporary pieces and amenities include a Turkish bath. J. K. PLACE: Tel 39/055-264-5181; www.jkplace.com. Cost: from $450. CONTINENTALE: Tel 39/055-2726-4000; www.lungarnohotels.com. Cost: from $240 (off-peak), from $375 (peak). GALLERY HOTEL ART: Tel 39/055-27263; www.galleryhotelart.com. Cost: from $440. HOTEL LUNGARNO: Tel 39/055-27261; www.lungarnocollection.com. Cost: from $470. CASA HOWARD: Tel 39/0669-924555; www.casahoward.com. Cost: from $150 (off-peak), from $300 (peak).