InternationalBeen thereApril 20, 2025

Italy

Lazio · Lombardy · Campania, Italy · Rome · Milan · the Amalfi Coast

Where

Lazio · Lombardy · Campania

Country

Italy

Type

International

Who

Family

The place

Italy is where so much of the Western world was invented — Rome's empire, Latin, Roman law and roads, and then, a thousand years later, the Renaissance that remade art and science. A unified country only since 1861, it's really a patchwork of fiercely distinct regions, each with its own food, dialect, and thousand-year history.

Our 2025 trip ran the length of it: imperial Rome, fashionable Milan in the north, the ruins of Pompeii under Vesuvius, and the cliffside towns of the Amalfi Coast above a bright blue sea. Layers of empire, art, and la dolce vita — with the best food on earth in between.

Italy on Wikipedia →

Places I visited

History & facts for each spot — with a “then & now” archival photo where one exists.

Then · c.1943
Now
1
Milan
Italy's financial and fashion capital in the north — home to Leonardo's *Last Supper*, the vast Gothic Duomo that took six centuries to build, and the La Scala opera house.
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Archival photo: Milano, Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II (bombardata) 02 — Wikimedia Commons
2
Rome
The Eternal City — capital of an empire that ruled the Mediterranean for 500 years, then of Western Christendom. The Colosseum (80 AD), the Pantheon, the Forum, and Vatican City stacked across nearly three thousand years.
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3
Amalfi Coast
A UNESCO-listed stretch of pastel towns — Positano, Amalfi, Ravello — clinging to cliffs above the Tyrrhenian Sea. Amalfi was once a powerful maritime republic that rivaled Venice.
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4
Pompeii
The Roman city frozen in time by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD — buried under ash and forgotten until 1748. The most complete picture we have of daily life in the ancient world.
Read more on Wikipedia →