We are thrilled to announce our latest addition to the app  Inside Italy by Trust&Travel – Sicily! Browse Inside Italy by Trust&Travel for handpicked sightseeing and foodie tips for every age group. Just select one of our categories, e.g. Tours & Classes, Shopping or Special Gems or peruse the map to find activities with kids or our new favourite Sicilian beachside restaurants. Or forget about sightseeing and just enjoy watching the Mediterranean right from the sofa of Casa Sampieri, a 3 bedroom house on the quay of a fishing village in southern Sicily. Water temperatu ..read more

A model railway museum in Florence? A friend took her grandchildren and can’t recommend the new HZero museum enough. All of them simply loved it. One of Europe’s largest model railways is located in a former cinema only a few steps from the Santa Maria Novella train station in Florence. The museum was initiated by Giuseppe di San Giuliano, who was the owner of one of our villas in Sicily. At Villa San Giuliano he created a mesmerizing Mediterranean garden. For his model railway he also created landscapes, but miniature ones, inspired by the Dolomites, the island of Elba or the streets of ..read more

I finally visited the isle of Montecristo, the tiny Mediterranean island where Alexandre Dumas’ count got his name and treasure. Today the island is a nature reserve and visits are strictly regulated. No more than 1725 people can visit each year. Every January the Parco del Arcipelago puts the available tickets up on their website. They sell out immediately. Alexandre Dumas actually never visited the island himself. He spent time on the nearby islands of Pianosa (a prison island) and Elba where he heard all the stories about the treasure that supposedly lay hidden there. Composer Giaco ..read more

At the end of the 19th century, Mariano Fortuny acquired palazzo Pesaro degli Orfei, a 15th century Palazzo in the center of Venice. The eclectic Mariano Fortuny was a painter, photographer, stage set designer, inventor and business man. With his wife Henriette Nigrin he founded Fortuny textiles. They used their home as a laboratory where local artisans would work in ateliers and on printing presses, turning the couple’s visionary designs into reality.   Eleonroa Duse and Isidora Duncan used to wear the Fortuny Delphos silk dress and Marcel Proust wrote about it In Search for ..read more

Art, theater, film – who doesn’t love a peak behind the scenes? Which is exactly what the Florentine museum Casa Buonarroti provides during the Artemisia Svelata (Artemisia Unveiled) restoration project. Artemisia Gentileschi achieved great success as a painter in her lifetime in the early 1600s—a rare thing for a female artist of her era. She became one of the most desirable portrait painters in Italy. Commissioned by the great nephew of Michelangelo, Artemisia Gentileschi’s ‘Inclination’ has been removed from the ceiling and is being restored at the museum where visit ..read more

How to help farmers grow ancient grain types Tuscany’s unsalted bread is not for everybody – some love it, some don’t. A new mill and bakery south of Siena is making everybody happy. The Mulinum Buonconvento encourages farmers to organically grow ancient grain varieties. The flour is then ground and transformed by the local Mulinum. You can order the Mulinum flour, bread, crackers, pasta and biscuits online or taste it in form of the locally produced bread or pizza at the mill near Buonconvento.  I tried a pane di segale (rye bread) this summer. It tastes great and keeps fresh for a ..read more

Have you ever noticed strange animal tracks on a Mediterranean beach? Along Italy’s shore, the sightings of sea turtles have become more regular in recent years. Caretta caretta, the protected loggerhead turtle, arrives at night looking for a place in the sand to lay her eggs. After depositing around 100 eggs, she uses her fins to cover the nest with sand. The procedure takes up to three hours. But by the early morning, the turtle is in the water again. I learnt about this while accompanying a friend on turtle track watch in the Maremma nature park. We left at dawn, as it is easiest to s ..read more

I am very excited about the launch of our Trust&Travel-Inside Italy app. The travel app takes our blog one step further and allows us to share all the Italy insight we have discovered over the years: the tiny vineyards, unknown artisans, quiet chapels, and family-run restaurants that make this country so special. Inside Italy is currently available in beta for download from the Apple Store and Google Play. You can use it on your phone or on your tablet while in Italy or as a resource while preparing your trip. Have a look, try it out and let us know what you think! The illustrations in ..read more

I am just back from the small town of Lubriano in northern Lazio. I went for the Infiorata, the flower carpet procession held for the Ascension. Food stylist and cook book author Alice Adams Carosi lives in Lubriano. I was lured there by her blog post about the Infiorata: “From the church of the Madonna del Poggio all the way to the end of the village, the road is covered with a myriad of petalled plots, some larger, others smaller, some intricate, others geometric blocks of colour and religious symbols, the velvety yellow of the Ginestra, poppy red, and a million hues of local roses ..read more

Halfway between Siena and Florence, there is a little farm that seems to have been sitting on its hill forever. Fattoria Corzano e Paterno produces excellent wine and olive oil, and a variety of Tuscan sheep cheeses that I can never resist. The history of the farm is interesting. It was founded by the Swiss architect turned farmer Wendel Gelpke in the early ‘70ies. Today Corzano e Paterno is run by two of his daughters, the sisters Sibilla and Arianna, his nephew Aljoscha and their respective families. I usually stop at the farm shop for the delicious Buccia di Rospo, but never manage to ..read more