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        ITALY AND THE ITALIANS
        From the Alps down to the southern tip of Sicily, Italy
        provides the most tangible proof that the world is indeed a wonderous
        stage. Architects and sculptors treat the myriad parks and gardens as
        set designs, and nature turns the landscapes, replete with statuesque
        cypresses, tortuous olive and fig trees, and rows of vineyards, into so
        many artful backdrops for the daily brio and histrionics of la vita
        italiana.
        In the cities, the cathedrals, palazzos, monumental public
        buildings, and open-air piazzas are planned as if harmonious elements
        in unrivalled stagesets. Venice’s dazzling basilica, the Doges’ Palace
        (Palazzo Ducale), and the 500-year-old Clock Tower (Torre
        dell’Orologio), all within the sprawling Piazza San Marco and adjacent
        Piazzetta, are the very focus of the city’s life. The same is true of
        Rome’s grand piazzas — Navona, del Popolo, and di Spagna; Siena’s
        unique Campo; and Florence’s elegant Piazza della Signoria. Conceived
        as a theater and emphasizing the decorative space as much as the
        buildings surrounding it, the piazza satisfies the need of
        Mediterranean peoples to conduct their lives in the open air.
        And we mustn’t overlook the players. In each town, at that
        magic moment of the passeggiata at the end of each afternoon, they
        stroll across the piazza, find themselves a well-placed seat at their
        favorite café or stand in groups to argue business, politics, or
        soccer —  the latter tends to be the most popular subject. Their
        celebrated gift for gesticulation aids the inherent air of drama that
        reassures them of the appreciation of their audience. No people more
        joyfully live up to their legendary image than the Italians. As Orson
        Welles put it, all 58-odd million of them are actors, with only a few
        bad ones, and those, he added most unfairly, are found on the stage and
        in films.
        Watch them at the wheel of a car: Long ago, driving became a
        major opportunity for the Italians to display their dramatic talents.
        An Italian designer observed that a nation’s cars are like its people:
        Scandinavian and German models are solid, strong, and reliable, built
        to resist an accident; Italian cars tend to be more fragile, but slick
        and spirited, built to avoid an accident. They are designed, above all,
        to indulge the national sense of style. The imaginative flair of a
        Neapolitan taxi driver zig-zagging out of a traffic jam forces the
        admiration of any nerve-shattered back-seat passenger.
        In the purely visual sphere, style has been a national
        preoccupation from the Renaissance masters such as Michelangelo and
        Leo­nardo da Vinci to the grandiose cinematographic fantasies of
        Fellini and Visconti in the modern era. It is evident not only in the
        splendor of the frescoes and monumental fountains but also in the
        dazzling design of a scarlet Lamborghini, a coffee pot, or a fountain
        pen. The sartorially savvy man-about-town knows that good “English”
        tailoring, and the textiles used, are not only to be found on Saville
        Row but in the meticulous workshops of Milan, Florence, and Rome. The
        fashion followers of the world have long been worshipping at the altar
        of Italy’s high priests and priestesses — unrivalled fashion houses and
        the generations-old textile factories that supply them.
        The world also stands in awe of Italian cuisine. In the
        simplest trattoria or most elegant of restaurants, the experience of
        your meal often begins before you sit down. Not with the menu, but with
        the magnificent display sprawled across a long table as you enter:
        seafood antipasti, stuffed eggplant and zucchini, grilled peppers in
        red, yellow, and green, and whatever bounty this morning’s market
        yielded.
        If you take a plane or train the length of the peninsula,
        Italy offers yet another cornacopia of delights. In the north, the
        snowcapped Alps and jagged pink pinnacles of the Dolomites; the
        gleaming Alpine-backed lakes of Como, Garda, and Maggiore; the fertile
        and industrial plain of the Po, stretching from Turin and Milan across
        to ancient Verona; the Palladian-villa studded hills of Vicenza; and
        the romantic canals of Venice.
        On the west coast, the Italian Riviera curves from San Remo
        to Viareggio on either side of the venerable port city of Genoa. Behind
        the alternating rocky and sandy coastline, from the marble quarries of
        Carrara, the mountain chain of the Apennines reaches south into
        Tuscany — where lie the ageless beauties of Pisa, Lucca, Florence, and
        Siena, not to mention the smaller, and arguably more magical, hillside
        towns of Montepulciano, Volterra, and San Gimignano.
        Landlocked Umbria’s rich green countryside surrounds a
        golden triangle of historic cities, the Assisi of St. Francis, the
        noble university hillside town of Perugia, and the medieval mountain
        post of Gubbio. To the east, the grand Byzantine citadel of Ravenna
        dominates the seaside resorts lining the Adriatic.
        The Eternal City, Rome, lies halfway down the west coast.
        For more than 26 centuries it has witnessed countless declines, falls,
        and rebirths, and today continues to resist the assaults of brutal
        modernity in its time-locked, color-rich historical center.
        Another world unto itself, the exhilarating chaos of Naples
        commands its magnificent bay, the visible isles of Ischia and Capri,
        and the ruins of Pompeii in the shadow of Vesuvius, its still active
        volcano. To the south, the former fishing villages of Sorrento and
        Positano spill down the craggy cliffs of the serpentine Amalfi coast,
        justifiably tauted as one of the world’s most beautiful drives. On the
        other side of the peninsula, off the tourist track in the peninsula’s
        “heel,” are the curiously romantic landscapes of Puglia, from its
        centuries-old trulli constructions to the medieval fortresses of the
        German emperors.
        Italy’s western approaches are guarded by two of the
        Mediterranean’s largest islands, Sardinia and Sicily, both rugged,
        mysterious, and steeped in history. Smaller islands with fabled names
        such as Elba, Stromboli, and Lipari fill in the necklace of floating
        gems, many reached only by boat, where the lifestyle is that of the
        Mediterranean one hundred years ago.
        The Italian people, with Latins and Etruscans mixing over
        themillennia with Greeks, Lombards, Normans, French, and Spaniards, are
        as fascinatingly diverse as this panoply of landscapes. Each region
        sustains a solid and pugnacious local pride from historic division into
        the city-states, duchies, kingdoms, and republics of Florence, Naples,
        Venice, Lombardy, Piedmont, and Sicily. Nurtured within the
        geographical separations of the Alps, the Po valley, and the coasts on
        either side of the Apennines, it was this very diversity that created
        the richness of Italian art and its competing regional schools of
        painting and architecture. Significantly, the move toward national
        unity in the 19th century coincided with a dramatic artistic decline
        from which the country is only now recovering.
        Given its short history as a unified nation, much of
        Italy’s patriotic sense seems to be most visible in the national
        football (soccer) team. After the devastating experience of Mussolini’s
        fascism, national government is rarely regarded as an obvious solution
        to the people’s daily problems. If some form of government proves
        necessary, they prefer the local town hall to the parliament in
        Rome.
        Most Italians are naturally cheerful and friendly towards
        foreigners. In recent years there have been unprecedented numbers of
        immigrants from the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and Africa. The Italians
        reserve their scorn for each other — Venetians and Romans or Milanese
        and Neapolitans comically bemoan the new EU-imposed automobile license
        plates that no longer designate the driver’s origin. It is not so easy
        to recognize the home town of a fellow driver.
        Beyond the regional identifications, the country remains
        divided culturally, economically, and psychologically between the
        prosperous, industrial North and less developed South, or Mezzogiorno
        (“Midday”). This division was perpetuated by centuries of feudal rule
        in Naples and Sicily, while the North developed more progressive forms
        of economy and government. The division has come almost to the point of
        regarding the South as Italy’s own Third World, as it offers a supply
        of cheap migrant labor.
        But the warm-hearted, high-spirited Neapolitans in no way
        feel themselves inferior to the cool, pragmatic “managerial” types of
        the vibrant northern cities. Italy’s two halves come face to face in
        Turin, where Fiat’s automobile factories have for generations attracted
        thousands of workers from the Mezzogiorno. Sociologists have noted that
        the transplanted southerners tend to support the populist Juventus
        football team, owned by Fiat’s Agnelli family, while the other, more
        bourgeois local team, Torino, is favored by the longer-established
        Turin citizenry.
        Foreign visitors are not obliged to take sides. We are free
        to fall in love with the entire country and invariably do: it’s a
        glorious lifelong love affair.
        •FACTS AND FIGURES
        •Geography: The Italian landmass covers 301,245 sq km
        (116,228 sq miles). The familiar boot-like silhouette stretches 1,200
        km (850 miles) from the northwest Alpine frontier, with France to the
        southeast “heel” of Puglia. Below the three great lakes, Maggiore,
        Como, and Garda, the fertile plain of the Po river separates the Alps
        from the rugged chain of the Apennines, running like a wall down the
        middle of the peninsula to the arid south. Other major rivers are the
        Tiber in Rome, the Arno in Tuscany, and the Adige in the Tyrolean
        Dolomites. Across the Adriatic to the east lies the rocky coastline of
        the former Yugoslavia. Off the Tyrrhenian (west) coast are the islands
        of Sardinia (south of France’s Corsica) and Sicily (off the boot’s
        “toe”), largest of the Mediterranean islands. Three major volcanoes in
        the south, Naples’ Vesuvius, and Sicily’s Stromboli and Etna, are still
        active. The highest point is on Mont Blanc (Monte Bianco), at 4,760 m
        (15,616 ft).
        •Population: 58 million
        •Capital: Rome (pop. 2,830,000)
        •Major cities: Milan (1,500,000), Naples (1,200,000), Turin
        (1,000,000), Genoa (700,000), Palermo (700,000), Bologna (400,000),
        Florence (400,000), Catania (380,000), Bari (370,000), Venice proper
        (340,000).
        •Government: By its constitution of 1948, Italy is a
        republic of provinces grouped into 20 regions. A President with
        honorary (rather than political) powers is chosen by an Electoral
        Assembly of parliamentary and regional representatives. Government is
        truly in the hands of a Prime Minister and his cabinet selected from
        among the parliament’s Senate of 322 members and more powerful
        630-strong Chamber of Deputies. A parliamentary mandate is five
        years.
        •Religion: 99% Catholic, 1% Protestant, Greek Orthodox, and
        Jewish.