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SOUTHERN ITALY
CALABRIA
Part of the southern regions of Italy, Calabria comprises the toe of Italy’s boot – a great place for experienced travelers to discover. The capital of Calabria is Catanzaro. Lined with mountains and situated between two seas (Tyrrhenian and Ionian) with 500 miles of coastline, Calabria has remained an undisturbed, unspoiled paradise, full of both ancient mountaintop villages and newer seaside towns. It is a peninsula that measures 150 miles long and just 20 miles wide at its narrowest. Calabria is separated from Sicily by the Strait of Messina, and has been under the reign of just about every civilization you can think of -- Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Aragonese, Normans, Spanish, French, Bourbons. No point in the region is more than 31 miles from a coast. This often-forgotten land offers something for everyone from art and culture to world-renowned cuisine and its fresh, simple ingredients directly from her mountains and seas. CAMPANIA Campania is a region celebrated for its climate, the fertility of the lands, and the astonishingly beautiful landscapes. The territory is mostly gentle hills. Mt. Vesuvius on the Gulf of Naples is one of the very few still active volcanoes in Europe. The two beautiful gulfs of Naples and Salerno with the Amalfi Coast, separated by the Sorrento peninsula, are world-famous for the high cliffs, sandy bays, grottoes and islands (Ischia, Procida, Capri), each view an enchanting postcard picture, surrounded by crystal clear blue water. All of this offers such a great experience for the senses--the feel of the air, the fragrance of the pine trees, lemons and oranges--that the ancients rightly called this region "felix ager", a happy land. The coastline boasts some famous places, full of charm, such as Positano, the setting of the “summer” Dolce Vita in the 1960s, Ravello, a place loved by artists and intellectuals such as Greta Garbo and Richard Wagner, Vietri, famous for pottery production, and many others too. The most famous islands are Ischia, which has one of the greatest number of thermal spas in the world and Capri, with its three Faraglioni (fascinating rock formations that jut hundreds of yards straight up from the sea), Blue Grotto, jet-setters, and timeless charm. Whenever one talks of Neapolitan and Campanian food, it is just impossible to not start with pizza, the dish invented around the end of the 19th century by a Neapolitan cook and which then became famous worldwide. And of course we cannot forget the famous, locally-made Limoncello di Sorrento, a delicious lemon-based liqueur. To most foreigners "Italian cuisine" is basically Neapolitan cooking because most of the Italian immigrants to the world came from the Campanian city of Naples and its environs. When this ethnic group opened restaurants in their new countries, they naturally served the style of food it loved and knew best: Neapolitan (Campanian) cooking. The Campanian countryside produces superb fruits and vegetables, particularly tomatoes and eggplants. The mild mozzarella cheese that is made from water buffalo milk regularly finds its way to the table, often with tomatoes on a salad plate. The city of Pompeii was established in the 12th century B.C. and enjoyed great prosperity from the point of view of culture, economy and city planning until 79 A.D. when the terrible eruption of Vesuvius covered everything in lava and small stones and buried this ancient Campania town with a seven-meter high blanket of ash and lapillus. The many archeological digs that have been going on for decades have discovered many of the monuments that survived the disaster. This is a site not to miss while visiting Campania. SICILY (SICILIA) The Mediterranean’s largest island, Sicily, consists of miles and miles of vineyards rivaling any in Tuscany or Piedmont, endless olive groves sprouting from emerald-green carpets of grass, forests of shiny citrus and fruit trees, rugged silver mountains, all against a backdrop of the deep blue sea. It is also home to Europe’s greatest natural wonder, Mount Etna, a spectacular active volcano. Its nocturnal fires and lava flows leave a stream of steam and light in its wake. Sicily also has a massive amount of world-class art, ranging from Greek to Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Norman, French, and Spanish, and some of it enjoys the most astonishing setting, abandoned on a hillside or nestled into a deserted cove where you can come upon it so naturally that you almost think you’ve stepped into a time machine. The world's first multicultural society, Sicily is Italy's (and Europe's) most historically cosmopolitan region, having been ruled by Asians, Africans and Europeans. Taormina has long been Sicily's most famous resort town, it is laced with endlessly winding medieval streets and tiny passages, each with its own secrets--great restaurants, cafés and gelaterie (ice cream shops). Magnificent views of the sea complete the picture. The most famous is the view overlooking the Greco-Roman amphitheatre, one of Sicily's largest, with Mount Etna and the sea in the background. Though several Mediterranean powers of old controlled all or parts of Sicily, it was the conquering Arabs who made the most enduring culinary imprint on this mountainous island anchored off the tip of the Italian peninsula. During the Middle Ages, the Arabs introduced the now famous Sicilian art of making sweets: sugary ices and rich pastries studded with candied fruits and almond paste. Ricotta is the island’s most consumed cheese, bar none. A specialty dessert of theirs is cannolo, a confection consisting of a hard, tubular pastry shell stuffed with ricotta cheese enriched with cream, candied fruit, and sometimes chocolate. Seafood is Sicily's leading protein source because of its abundance. Tuna, swordfish and sardines head the charts. Meat is usually tough and expensive, owing to a lack of suitable pasturing land. Sicilians adore fruits and vegetables, especially tomato, eggplant, artichoke, citrus fruits, almonds, and olives. Olive oil is Sicily's favorite cooking medium (except in Palermo, where cooks prefer butter). Sicily’s best known wine is Marsala, a fortified wine similar to Sherry and Madeira. It can be dry or sweet and is widely used by chefs as a cooking wine. The best-known table wine is the dry white Mt. Etna. SARDINIA (SARDEGNA) This region is a unique island in the center of the Mediterranean Sea (just south of the French island of Corsica). It is the second largest island in the Mediterranean Sea after Sicily. It can be reached easily from Rome by plane (about a 1-hour flight) or ferry. The island has a mountainous interior, steeped in tradition, with spectacular rugged coasts. The interior is characterized by impervious mountain zones containing wide green valleys covered by scrub, a grassy land with a mixture of myrtle, serpillo, India figs and dwarf oaks. To the northeast the mountains stick out along the coast, La Costa Smeralda (or Emerald Coast) is a sophisticated and trendy stretch of coastal resort towns and harbors where the jet-set like to see and to be seen. Other coastal areas are rich in splendid sea, bays, isolated inlets, hidden grottoes, rock out-croppings as well as stretches of white and pink sand. It has a vibrant cultural heritage. Interiorly, Sardinia has fascinating archaeological sites and indigenous stone towers called Nuraghi, besides interesting Punic and Roman cultural remains. It is an island of extremes – a mountainous interior, steeped in tradition ... nuraghi and cuisine (wild boar) ... sophisticated and trendy coastal resort towns and harbors. Throughout Sardinia’s history of upheaval, the islanders retreated to the inland mountains, where many of them remain today, raising sheep and growing grapes on terraced mountain terrain. Sheepherding and fishing have always been central to the economy of Sardinia, so many of the specialties feature lamb, sheep’s cheese, and fish. Sardinia has a succulent traditional cuisine, rich in meats and fish and wonderful, affordable wines. It is in fact the most distinctive of Italy’s regional cooking, mainly due to the island’s geographic isolation from Italy’s mainland. The cuisine of Sardinia can be divided into two cooking styles (as varied as its terrain): coastal cuisine, defined by a broad variety of seafood, and inland cuisine, especially renowned for spit roasted meats. Wild mushrooms and game are also gastronomic stars. A few famous specialties of the island are Carta de Musica, literally, music paper. It's a thin, crisp, circular flatbread; spit roasted meats, traditionally a whole animal (often suckling pig, baby lamb and wild game) cooked over aromatic herbs and wood charcoal; and Cannonau, a strong red wine, good with roasted meats; Mirtu liquor, a potent after dinner digestive made from myrtle berries. BASILICATA Positioned in the “instep” of the boot that is Italy, this southern region is as a whole mountainous, the highest point of the southern Apennines being Monte Pollino ( 7325 ft). Monte Vulture, in the northwest corner, is an extinct volcano ( 4365 ft). The mountainous terrain made communications difficult until modern times, and Basilicata was one of the least developed provinces of Italy. Basilicata also used to be one of the poorest regions in Italy, but has become significantly richer over the past few years because of the discovery of oil. Matera has gained international fame for its ancient town, the "Sassi di Matera" (meaning "stones of Matera"). The Sassi originate from a prehistoric (troglodyte) settlement, and are suspected to be some of the first human settlements in Italy. They are houses dug into the tuff (or Italian "tufo") rock itself, which is characteristic of Basilicata and Puglia. Tufo is a type of rock consisting of consolidated volcanic ash. Many of these "houses" are really only caverns, and the streets in some parts of the Sassi often are located on the rooftops of other houses The region’s food is based on a typically Mediterranean diet of local production foods, rich in the use of olive oil, tomatoes, fresh mozzarella (di bufala, which is of a specific cow that thrives best in dry, mountainous coastal settings such as Basilicata offers), lemons, fresh vegetables, pasta and of course, wine. PUGLIA Located in Italy’s heel, with more than 500 miles of coast on two seas, the Adriatic and the Ionian, Puglia has all sorts of gorgeous beaches. Puglia has some of the brightest seas, most diverse art and architecture, most mouthwatering peasant cuisine and kindest people in all of Italy — including strangers who will go out of their way to lead you to one after another stunning beach on impossibly lapis-lazuli waters. No other image says Puglia better than the trullo, a rural home that's essentially a whitewashed teepee of small limestone slabs stacked without mortar, with a cone surmounted by pagan or religious symbols. They are scattered among olive groves and huge prickly pear cacti in the Valle d'Itria, inland in a triangle between Bari, Taranto and Brindisi. Considering the foods of Puglia, staples include, orecchiette (ear-shaped pasta), as well as horse meat steaks, ciceri e tria (handmade tagliatelle with garbanzo beans), fave e cicoria (pureed fava beans and chicory), and a favored dessert is cakes spilling over with figs. Meat, grilled or cured, reigns inland, nowhere more spectacularly than at Cisternino, in trulli land. At night, the absurdly numerous butchers of this whitewashed village set up tiny tables on the sidewalks and cook to order whatever you select from their marble counters, preceded by minuscule black olives, homemade cheeses and salami. Seafood, including delicacies like octopus and sea urchins, rule the coast. An interesting fact: Puglia is Italy’s region with the largest olive oil production. |
