Luxury Holidays in Italy

“Though one cannot always remember exactly why one has been happy,” wrote WH Auden when he left Italy, in his poem Goodbye to the Mezzogiorno, “there is no forgetting that one was.” It is easier to be happy in Italy than anywhere. From church bells and espressos in the piazza to experiencing the world’s greatest art in galleries and churches, Italy gives beauty and taste. From lunching on Europe’s best food, snoozing under cypresses beside azure swimming pools or under pines by bright warm seas, to evenings at the opera in Verona, a palazzo in Venice or an osteria in Naples, Italy gives serenity and nourishment.

Many of the continent’s richest landscapes are here. Hike or ski the stunning Dolomites. Glide through the Canaletto scene of Venice’s Grand Canal. Climb Sicily’s volcano goddess, Etna. Stroll the Cinque Terre. Duck into the caves of Matera (one of our oldest continuously inhabited cities, tunnelled troglodytic into a valley side), and you will be adventuring in one of humanity’s most influential societies. Italy has always shown the world what living and the good life can be, from the citrus groves of the Amalfi Coast to the mansions of Lake Como.

It has given birth to history’s greatest inventors and thinkers, groundbreaking artists and architects, to ideas and iconic design dating from Roman central heating and the Colosseum to Prada shoes and Ferrari cars. It is the perfect place to travel, a country you cannot regret nor forget. Italy asks nothing of the traveller but your ease and your enjoyment of all it offers. Italians dress, cook, talk, sing, love and debate with matchless delight and enthusiasm. Fate and geography have given them a heavenly peninsula of a country, sun-blessed, sea-blessed, adorned with islands, and they live gratefully. Time feels different here as a result, slower, the present moment especially bright. You will see: it’s an Italian thing, and you sense it especially in moonlight, or in that violet darkness of pines where the cicadas sing.