Library4Travel - Italy

Birthplace of the Roman Empire and the European Renaissance, few countries have as rich a history, heritage and culture as Italy. With its beautiful cities, stunning architecture, amazing churches, outstanding galleries and superb cuisine, travel to Italy should be high on everybody's agenda.

Easily traveled, today Italy has one of the best railroad systems in Europe. Eurail Italy Rail Passes make it convenient and affordable to go from one city to another. The trains are clean and quiet and the ride is smooth. I can attest to these facts because I've spent some time on them.

Italy also has great bus networks. From tour buses to "Hop On, Hop Off" day passes and very inexpensive city buses, there is a bus for every need.

Rome's beautiful modern airport, Leonardo da Vinci/Fiumicino, is Europe's sixth in traffic volume and has connections to major cities worldwide. Milan's Malpensa airport is another major hub, and there are international airports at Pisa/Florence, Venice, Naples and several other cities.

Friendly people, good food, and fine wines are found throughout Italy. Tuscany (Chianti) is the heart of the wine country but excellent wines can be found all over the country. Italy is of course renowned for its delicious pasta dishes and seafood - it's hard not to eat well!

I was amazed at how many of the Italians on the tourist trail were bilingual, even multilingual. This was extremely helpful.

Italy's famed, rich, artistic past has produced some of the most famous artists and influential people that the world has ever known. Marvel at the works of Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Botticelli, Lippi, Ghirlandaio and many others. Relive the works of Galileo, Dante and Petrarch. Join us as we travel with E. V. Lucas and explore Rome, Florence, and Venice with his great "Wanderer" series.

There's a particular pleasure to be had by reading classic travel literature. Guide books are another thing: practical, factual handbooks that need to be as up to date as possible when they accompany the traveller. But to capture the spirit, the essence of a country or a great city, within a historical perspective, it takes the descriptive skills of a great writer coupled with the knowledge and acumen of a scholar.

Such books can be hard to find, or costly in out-of-print, second-hand editions. So this site is bringing you some of the best traveler's tales from Italy. We start with E.V. Lucas's "A Wanderer in Florence" from 1912; and Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton's 1834 novelization of "The Last Days of Pompeii" - an inventive and exciting tale of life in this great Roman city in the 1st century AD, and its spectacular and cataclysmic destruction in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD. Immersed in Bulwer-Lytton's unjustly neglected novel, you'll delve into the mysteries of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Mt. Vesuvius, and be transported back in time to when Pompeii was a thriving, decadent city, now preserved in ruin.

In Florence, E.V. Lucas will be your classic guide to the Duomo, San Lorenzo, Santa Croce, Santa Maria Novella and the many other Florentine churches with their outstanding architecture, paintings and sculptures; and to the immortal collections of the Uffizi, the Accademia and the Pitti Palace. In other "Wanderer" volumes (coming soon) Lucas will help you explore the Colosseum, the Forum and the Vatican in Rome; and the canals, piazzas and churches of Venice.

These books certainly enhanced my recent trip to Italy!

This site aims to make freely available some of the most fascinating literature now in the public domain (i.e. out of copyright) as online books, offering a wealth of information that is still of intrinsic value. We scan and convert these indispensable texts into web pages that are easy to find and digest, broken down into convenient short sections and sub-sections in line with the chapter and sub-section divisions of the original book. This makes it easy for you to access and read some of most useful and interesting extant material on travel in Britain.

All material on this site is available free of charge to students, researchers, historians, travellers and general readers, with no subscription fees.

James E. Donaldson, Editor
wwwy.library4travel.org
editor@library4travel.org