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| HUMANI HERITAGE AND SMALL CENTRES TO DISCOVER |
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| Courmayeur | Sirmione | San Gimignano | Chiusdino | Sabbioneta | Tarquinia | Tivoli |
| Sperlonga | Pescasseroli | Alberobello | Isola d' Ischia | Capri | Matera | Arzachena | Siracusa |
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| COURMAYEUR |
Courmayeur is a small delicious commune with 3000 citizens in Valle d'Aosta. It is situated in the high valley called Valdigne, under the White Mountain and it's the last Italian town before France (a way to Chamonix).
It is an important touristic centre, famous for its winter sports and the river Dora Baltea which comes from a confluence of 2 ones, each of them crosses one of valleys Val Ferret and Val Veny. |
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| SIRMIONE |
Sirmione is a commune of the province of Brescia where the stoical centre rises on the peninsula that divides the lake of Garda. The famous castle of Sirmione is of the epoch of Verona and its inner harbour is in good condition.
A strong castle is absolutely banded by the water and has a portico behind of which there was a Roman and mediaeval cemetery; one stairs of the second wall, connected with a drawbridge, went to a communication trench on the walls: here there is a beautiful landscape. Inside of the town Sirmione there is also the most great and important aristocratic roman villa of northern Italy, called "Grote of Catullo".
It was built between I century b.c. and I century a.c., maybe it was a residence of a famous Latin poet Catullo. |
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| SAN GIMIGNANO |
San Gimignano is a Tuscan town with 7105 citizens situated in the province of Sienna. Thanks to its characteristic mediaeval architecture of the stoical centre UNESCO conferred it the heritage of the humanity.
The site of San Gimignano, in spite of some changes dated XIX-XX centuries, it still has an aspect of III-IV century and is one of the best examples in Europe of the organization of the city of the communal age.
San Gimignano is mostly famous for its 15 mediaeval towers which are still raising over the panorama of the town and which were called mediaeval Manhattan. In the golden period there had been 72 towers, in 1580 there had been only 25 and now there are only 14 great ones on the general plan of the city. |
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| CHIUSDINO |
Chiusdino is famous for its Sword in Rock (Spada nella roccia) sticked into the stone by Galgano Guidotti in Monte Siepi, in front of which the saint prays all his life, and for its fascinating and impressive Abbacy of San Galgano with its architectural gotico-cistercian characteristics. After a long period of luxury and richness began a decline that made it a ruin as it is now. These ruins however has a particular charm, surrounded by magic and miracles.
The remaining ruins charm and agitate the visitor with the Middle Ages characteristics which it had. We can say that not the ruins are interesting but the origin remained intentionally unfinished. The proportions, materials, absence of a roof, empty rose window, silence, the sky - all these attract and amaze.
Specially the absence of a roof, destroyed in 1768, that underscored the architectural articulation and elegance of lines that go into the sky, a hymn to the spirituality, united the abbeys of Melrose and Kelso, in Scotland, and the abbey of Cashel, in Ireland. |
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| SABBIONETA |
 Sabbioneta is a town with 4260 citizens in the province of Mantua. In 2008 Sabbioneta was called the heritage of the humanity together with Mantua. As per UNESCO Sabbioneta represents a perfect sample of an application of theories of Renaissance how must be projected an ideal town. The most prosperous period in the history of the town had been during its first years, with Vespasiano I Gonzaga, it had been his residence. The town, had been constructed on base of the principles of Renaissance of the ideal town, is well fortificated and has many monuments such as the Ducal Palace, today it's a municipality, the Theatre of Vincenzo Scamozzi, the Church and the Summer Palace with a wall painting of camps of Cremona. There is also a Hebraic ghetto dated by 1567. |
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| TARQUINIA |
 Tarquinia is a city with more than 16000 citizens in the province of Viterbo. Tarquinia had been one of the most antique and important Etruscan settlement. Till the very antique epoch, this city had been governed by the king from an Etruscan dynasty (Tarquinio Prisco, Servio Tullio and Tarquinio il Superbo).
The archeological interest is thank to existing here necropolis, specially the necropolis of Monterozzi, that hide a lot of tombs with rooms in the rock, where there is straordinary series of pictures, which represent the Etruscan art and is the most ancient document of all the antique art before the epoch of Roman Empire. |
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| TIVOLI |
 Tivoli is a city with 52853 citizens in the province of Rome. It is famous for Villa Adriana and Villa d'Este included into the humane heritage by UNESCO. Villa Adriana is a queen villa of imperial villas of ancient Rome and is situated on the plain lower than Tivoli and stands out thanks to its impressive grandiosity of the architecture.
It was built by the re Adriano, who controller the construction (118-138 a.c.), since restructuring of the previous republican villa. It's famous thanks to its monumental constructions, streets, mirrors of water, terms, bibliotheca, theatres, temples.
Villa d'Este was built in 1550 by the cardinal Ippolito II d'Este, a son of Lucrezia Borgia and Alfonso I d'Este.
The villa modified radically the performance with the change of land and of the urban structure which became strong during the Middle Ages. The architectural choice is inspired with a scenografic glorification of acting of water of numerous fountains which bring name from famous statues originally made only for the cardinal Ippolito d'Este, who wanted to amaze and surprise his guests.
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| SPERLONGA |
 Sperlonga is a littoral town in Lazio with 3247 citizens. It's a place of a summer holiday on seaside. On the territory there are traces of life since the Palaeolithic. As per the legend, in Sperlonga the town Amyclae was born, founded by Spartans. In the Roman epoch lots of villas were created on the territory, the most famous is that of the king Tiberius, which the natural grotto modified and decorated with a sculpture of Ulysses.
This villa is also known as the Grotto of Tiberius. Villas were the centres of fishing industry (baths for upbringing). The ruins of the imperial villa were used as a shelter in VI century, but the town was developed arround the castle on the headland of San Magno (65 meters above-sea level), a spur of the mountain Aurunci, to protect from the sea raids of Saracens, it brings the name from the numerous natural cavities of the zone (speluncae). |
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| PESCASSEROLI |
 Pescasseroli is a town with 2204 citizens in the province of Aquila. The territory belongs to Community Montana Alto Sangro and Altopiano delle Cinque Miglia and is famous as a climatic health resort, place of rest in summer and winter and as a principle centre of the National Park of Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise. In the town there is a museum and a centre of visits with some samples of native-born fauna, among the marsican bear, there is also the tomb of a woman who lived in that zone in VI century b.c. In the historic centre there is a Sipari Palace (Palazzo Sipari) (built in 1839), the administration of Foundation of Erminio Sipari, a deputy and founder of the Park, whereas here a philosopher Benedetto Croce was born on February 25, 1866. The Abbacy of Santi Pietro and Paolo is famous, it was founded in 1100. |
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| ALBEROBELLO |
 Alberobello is a town with 10930 citizens in the province of Bari, famous for its characteristic houses called trulli included into the humane heritage by UNESCO in 1996 in Valle d'Itria. The history of these particular houses is connected with a government of the Naples that in XV century subordinated each new settlement.
The counts Conversano, owners of the territory where nowadays there is Alberobello, imposed peasants to built their houses without a maltha, as temporary houses easy to demolition. So, they had to utilize only stones, the houses have a round form with a roof in form of self-bearing cupola, made of laid stones, the configuration simple and solid. The roofs of trulli are decorated with steeples with mystique and religious elements. They were made by groups of craftsmen and are very handicraft. |
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| ISCHIA ISLAND |
 Island Ischia is an Island in the Tyrrhenian Sea in the northern end of golf of the Naples. With its 60.335 citizens it is the more populated Island in Italy, after Sicily and Sardinia.
The island is famous not only for its beauty but also for its thermal waters used since ancient times. Greek used their thermal waters to strengthen a body and a spirit and used for a war wound healing using water and steam. Romans used them for relax and care organizing the public Thermae and using numerous springs in the island.
The decline of the Roman influence coincide with an abandonment of baths: in fact, there are no traces of water usage in the Middle Ages. In times of the Renaissance the terms and thermals became famous again. |
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| CAPRI ISLAND |
 Island Capri is an island in the golf of Naples. Situated in front of the peninsula of Sorrento had been famous for it beauty since the Roman Empire. The island is karsts, in contrast to Ischia and Procida. In the beginning it was united with the peninsula of Sorrento, but in the following it was separated from the dry land by the channel nowadays called Bocca Piccola.
Capri is a complex of morphological structure with the peaks of medium height and long plateaus among them the most famous is "of Anacapri". The coastline is indented with numerous grottoes. The grottoes, hidden above the rocky shore, had been used in times of the Roman Empire as temples of wonderful villas which had been constructed here in the times of the Empire. The most famous is the Blue Grote (la Grotta Azzurra), with its magic effects of light, it was described by any writers and poets. The characteristic of Capri are also Faraglioni, small rock islands not far from Capri which make a particular landscape. |
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| MATERA |
 So-called stones of Matera (Sassi di Matera) create a historical centre of a town Matera. Rocks of Matera (Sassi di Matera) were included into the humane heritage by UNESCO in 1993. It was done thanks to its no ordinary urban ecosystem able to perpetuate from the prehistorical past the modes to live, from caves to modern times. Sassi di Matera is an excellent example of the accurate usage of natural resources: water, soils, energy.
The "city of stone" a historical centre of Matera behind a ravine, had already been populated since Neolith: some exhibits have 10000 years old and some houses in the limestone had been populated without interruption of bronze century (with some exclusions of 50th last century). The first definition of "Sasso" as a region of stone comes to a document dated 1204. In about 1000 Matera was filled with monks who brought the religious and artistic experience from Anatolia and Syria. |
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| ARZACHENA |
 Arzachena is a town with 13000citizens of the province Olbia-Tempio, situated at 83 meters above-sea level.
After Olbia and the Temple Pausanias it is a most populated centre of Gallura, a historic region of North-East of Sardinia and it is a capital of Esmeralda Coast (Costa Esmeralda). It has an economic importance for Sardinia because together with Olbia it is very dynamic, specially from the point of view of tourism. Porto Cervo is a fraction of the commune: though it's a principle centre of Esmeralda Coast it has only 420 citizens, but during summer the population increases incredibly when thousands of vacationists occupier its beaches, streets and squares.
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| SYRACUSAE |
 Syracuse is a city with 123494 citizens. It was characterised by Ceceron "the most great and beautiful Greek city" in 2005 together with a rock necropolis of Pantalica was included into the humane heritage by UNESCO. The name Syracuse comes from Syraka (abundance of water) tank to the marshlands. Both in Greek and Latin it is a plural Siracusae because the city founded by Archia, a noble from Cornito, in 733 b.c. became after some years a powerful city-state Pentapoli and other 4 cores were jointed in following: Acradina, Tiche, Naples and Epipoli.
The cathedral of Syracuse is connected with the Greek history when the polis commanded over the seas attempting the force of Carthaginian and Romans. |
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