A new and 50% enlarged, entertaining, but fundamentally serious selection of the most rewarding places to visit in the most visited and beloved country in the world. The previous edition was published by Wilmington Square Books in 2014.

 ‘A minor classic’ said the TLS

This personal, and wonderfully well informed, selection of the most rewarding towns, cities, villages and individual monuments in Italy is the definitive guidebook for the discerning traveller. The author has been visiting Italy, for study, for work and for pleasure, for over fifty years, and is the perfect companion for those who want to know about more than the obvious attractions. 

As well as comprehensively covering the finest sights in the major tourist centres of Rome, Florence, Venice and elsewhere, Russell discusses and describes the neglected, or little known, masterpieces that are still to be found the length and breadth of the Italian peninsula. In a book that will educate and astonish the expert as surely as it will guide and inform the first-time visitor, the author chooses and explores palaces and gardens, city squares and lonely churches, frescoes and altarpieces, great museums and tiny ruins that together provide a richly textured portrait of a country where the history and patterns of civilization lie more thickly than anywhere else on earth. 

“Masterpieces come in all shapes and sizes, and this is a small one. [It is] like a conversation with a well informed friend. He tells you exactly what you want to know, in the most succinct terms”.--Country Life 

“The author has achieved the near impossible…a must-squeeze-into-hand-baggage or the back pack.”--House and Garden