Our slow travel expert finds the perfect excursion for winter days when daylight hours are short, leaving the Austrian capital just after dawn and reaching the Adriatic port at dusk Vienna is Europe’s best-connected capital city, at least in terms of rail links. Weekly direct services to Minsk and Monaco slipped from the departure boards during the pandemic, but new services over the past couple of years include direct trains to Paris, Amsterdam, Genoa, Split and Trieste. As the Habsburg empire’s main Adriatic seaport, Trieste had good rail services to Vienna, but after the first world war, po ..read more

The city’s top pizza makers put their name, heart and, most importantly, their hands into what they make, says guidebook author Domenico Mazzella For the past three years, the best pizza in the world hasn’t come from Naples, but from the town of Caserta, about 20 miles north, where Francesco Martucci’s I Masanielli – on an unprepossessing main road just outside the town centre – has hung on to top billing in the listings of authoritative guide 50 Top Pizza, run by influential wine and food journalist Luciano Pignataro. But if you’re in the birthplace of pizza, how do you choose from the thousa ..read more

A snowy cross-country walking break is even more beautiful – and fun – when you combine the hiking with tobogganing I have invented a new sport, one that will almost certainly catch on and become a Winter Olympics classic. And it is one in which Team GB can narrowly grab fourth place, over and over again. It is wonderful to leave something behind, a legacy that will benefit humanity. It is called “bogganeering”. It begins with a trip to Italy, the German-speaking part. That is an important factor. Südtirol has not always been an enthusiastic member of the Italian republic. Tucked up in the ext ..read more

Food and wine critic Andrea Grignaffini reveals his favourite haunts in his home city – a gourmand’s delight with wine bars galore Food in Parma is all about our unique products – parmesan cheese, Parma ham – and the way we prepare them, as antipasti or as fillings for pasta. The best quality is found at the traditional salumerie and cheese shops on Piazza Ghiaia. Cibivari, half a mile away on Strada XXII Luglio, is a bakery and deli recently opened by the dynamic Roberta Boni, using local, seasonal produce in simple home cooking – focaccia, aubergine parmigiana. Take it away for a picnic or e ..read more

Peter Mills on his hopes for an appearance as an unintended background extra in the TV series I read your various articles on The White Lotus with interest; I had never heard of the show until we visited Taormina in Sicily, where the new series is set, at Easter. Filming was in full flight, as was the drone that buzzed across the town every morning, presumably collecting establishing shots of the area. It regularly settled above the terrace of our flat, directly behind the San Domenico Palace hotel. I was out each morning starting the day with an espresso or two and developed something of a re ..read more

The second series of HBO’s hit drama has moved from Hawaii to the Italian island. What has filming meant for the town of Taormina? It must have been like manna from heaven when, in October 2020, HBO decided to locate its new hit drama, The White Lotus, at the Four Seasons on Maui, Hawaii. The luxury resort had been closed since the islands locked down in late March, but this meant suites could be reopened for filming and furloughed staff brought back to work. Now it’s the turn of another Four Seasons hotel, the San Domenico Palace in Taormina, Sicily, to be the star turn for the second series ..read more

This region of north-west Italy is brimful of brilliant small food producers. Meanwhile, a British-born artist has slapped a wodge of vivid colour onto its bucolic scenery It’s brown, muddy-looking and could make your breath a bit stinky, but for lovers of the pungent and salty, bagna càuda is glorious. The recipe is simple: sliced garlic (a whole head per person!), olive oil and anchovies, cooked slowly to a sticky sludge into which diners dip potatoes, peppers (roasted or raw), celery, spring onions and, in Piedmont especially, cardoons – a thistle-like artichoke relative. With good friends ..read more

City food guide Marco Romeo on the sardines, spumante and street dancing that give the Sicilian capital its distinctive vibe There are two parallel culinary worlds in Palermo: traditional home cooking and street food ..read more

If you can catch your breath, the Maratona in Italy’s Dolomites is the world’s most beautiful bike race Don’t forget to look up,” says Miguel “Big Mig” Indurain, the great Spanish cycling campeón, to the massed ranks of nervously fidgeting riders. We all laugh because how could anyone forget to notice the stunning sweep of the Dolomites unfurling above the forested valley behind him. But we know he’s right. Because for the next eight hours or so, most of us will be lost in a world of self-inflicted torment as we pedal agonisingly up vertiginous hills, only to plummet with our hearts in our mou ..read more

11 August 1972: The panorama of chestnut groves and vineyards stepping down to the sea seemed a paradise, but traditional hill farming is in decline ELBA: With a deft blow of the hoe, the small, nut-brown man broke the earth bank. The water trickled from the mountain stream into the channels he had prepared between the beans and tomatoes growing on the tiny terrace, spilled down among the pumpkins and finally to the vines on the lower slopes. He straightened up, returned my greeting, agreed that with the morning cloud covering Monte Capanne it would be a hot day. I asked him why so many terrac ..read more