Your backpacking travel planner

Italy is surely one of the finest and most varied holiday destinations in all of Europe, with its many different cities and regions offering something unique and fresh – with characteristics all of its own. Whether you enjoy a ski or snowboard trip in the north of the country, the numerous fantastic ancient historical attractions of Rome, or are more interested in checking out the many brilliant designer boutiques in Milan its easy to understand and recognise just how much Italy has to offer as a holiday destination.


If you are however looking to get away from all the mad traffic, endless hussle and bustle and congestion of Italy’s big cities but still fancy a holiday to this great European country then you may prefer to take up the option of renting a villa in the Tuscany region of Italy. Whether traveling to Italy with a group of friends or family, many holidaymakers choose to rent Tuscany villa to get a much more authentic experience of rural Italy and the local Italian way of life.
If you do somehow tire of the beautiful countryside in the region there are also some great nearby cities you can visit such as Florence, Siena and Pisa – each with their own unique charm and great visitor attractions, restaurant, bards and cafes. With so much to do in the region and with a great degree of freedom to experience it in – you’ll find that renting a villa in Tuscany can be a very different and exciting way to experience Italy.

Do you remember how Puglia was touted as "the new Tuscany" by the travel media last year? Well, as we recently discovered, the reality is very different. We've just completed a road trip in Calabria researching a guidebook, and spent some time in Basilicata at the start of the trip and drove through Basilicata and Puglia at the end. Conde Nast Traveller called this remote heel of Italy's boot "captivating", writing that Lecce was "the Florence of the Baroque". But then the travel media seems to be on an endless search for 'undiscovered' places to promote as the next hot destination, and once 'discovered', there's a tendency to compare the place with another. As if our imaginations were incapable of conceiving something new or different. A few years ago Croatia was the new Greece, now Montenegro is the new Croatia, and even Abu Dhabi is being hailed as the new Dubai. (Oh, I think I wrote that, but you know what I mean.) Before Puglia, Basilicata was under the spotlight, after it hit the screen in Mel Gibson's The Passion of Christ, which was filmed in Matera, pictured. But if you travel through either Italian regions, you'll quickly realize that while they may boast two of southern Italy's most atmospheric cities in Matera and Lecce, and some dramatic, craggy coastline and azure-colored sea more reminiscent of Greece than Italy, they're also home to some of Italy's scruffiest beaches, shabbiest towns, driest countryside, and some seriously ugly urban development. Conde Nast Traveller's website might claim you'll be "gloriously alone" if you venture this far south, but you won't. Aside from the fact that the south has always been popular with Italian summer holidaymakers because it's cheaper than the northern rivieras (70% of the region's tourists are Italian), we saw more tour buses in Matera's public car park in one morning than we did during our whole research trip in Calabria. But is Calabria the new Puglia? Let's just say that first you'd better get any images of a low-key Tuscany or quaint Florence out of your head. Then let's consider Calabria on its own terms.