In Umbria and Calabria you can’t miss the most important Jazz music festivals but in anyplace you will reach you will meet bands and groups, processions dedicated to saints and beatified in a fusion of sacred and profane rhythms. And simply playing between these two worlds, the sacred and profane, you will find intense and satisfying itineraries for all dreamers. This land is linked to Roman Greek mythology, with its epic, its heroes and its sites, described by the great classics and made of its own fairytales and characters of northern Europe, in the Dolomites you will listen of dwarves and elves, in Umbria instead you will be conquered by the lives of saints.

In Sicily you will revive the medieval adventures of Saracen invaders and leave your mind fly in the horse ridings of Orlando. If your soul is in search of peace and stillness you can simply choose to stay in one of the many monasteries to feel the mystery of the times in which “The name of the Rose” is settled or to find the souls of the elected and the damned of the Divine Comedy.
This multitude of elements was born from the meeting of people that crossed, conquered and always loved this land, a fusion of cultures and traditions, extremely different one from the other, that have been added by invaders, that enrich with new elements the older ones.

From North to South, East to West from the many dialects of all its cities that contain Arabic Greek, Turkish, Germanic, Portuguish, French and Spanish words, the remote influences of foreign civilizations, that still survive in present times, will be revealed to you. In all seasons you will relax your body and soul. Nature has been generous to this country: gentle hills, the moors in Piedmont, the Chianti region in Tuscany, fertile plains crossed by rivers, the basins of Aniene and Po rivers, plenty of lakes where you can swim from the Alps to those of volcanic origins in central Italy, the jewel that is the Garda lake, breathtaking mountains, the Alps that crown the north and some peaks in the very south, the Calabrian Sila and the Sicilian volcano, The Etna, and all around the sea that embraces all this.Sea coasts for all tastes, sands that fade from black into white, cliffs, bays of pebbles and islands, the queen of all Italian islands, Sardinia where you will dream and feel like being in the tropic seas.

You can try the gentle massage of thermal waters in one the 150 spa centers, at least 1 in each Italian region, and you will finally understand why Romans where so fond of it. Many of the spa centers discovered in the Roman times are still there, ready to use, waiting for you.
You will leave Italy with a single thought: here I wish to return!

Monica Bettin