More Must See Tourist Destinations in Italy
If you are planning to go to Italy sometime soon — and, why not, millions of people do so every year already — you really need to update your social media “Must See” list. There were 26.89 million visitors to Italy in 2021, 49.81 million in 2022, then 57.25 million in 2023, a 127 percent increase from 2020. The overall numbers keep climbing annually, as do the top “Must See” sights. But you are in luck; as a recent visitor to Italy I have kindly added several new Must See destinations for you to enjoy.
For several weeks my significant other and I explored Rome, Venice, and Florence. Let’s start with Rome. The Top Ten list there includes the Colosseum, the Roman Forum and its ruins, Vatican City and St. Peter’s (both the Basilica and Museum), the Pantheon, Castello di Sant’angelo, and the Borghese Gardens. You could slide the Catacombs and the Appian Way on to that list instead, depending on your taste.
In 1960, a very innocent time as compared to today, film maker Federico Fellini made a motion picture that featured a scene at the Trevi Fountain in the Centro Historico. La Dolce Vita put Rome on the tourist list for the first time, at least for those people rich enough to fly overseas or take an ocean liner to Europe. There are several similar gorgeous fountains scattered around Rome, but the Trevi is located in what you may call the centre of town, convenient for those millions of people wanting to see the fountain and add their selfie to their Instagram account. So, this is how the current overtourism nightmare to Europe first started that has now spread all over the Mediterranean, with residents in dozens of towns and villages now begging the tourists to “stay home.”
The lineup to pose in front of the Trevi on a busy day in summer starts about a block away, with crowds pushing through the streets, elbows up, and selfie sticks used as cattle prods. Just a few blocks away the same situation prevails at the Pantheon, an incredible piece of perfectly designed architecture 2,000 years old. Clever folks buy a ticket well in advance and stand patiently in long lines for hours to get in. Others less prepared delusionally show up somehow expecting to somehow buy a ticket and get in. Good luck with that. There is also a machine that sells tickets via credit cards, but not every wannabe knows about that lineup.
Nosy parkers like me ask questions. Watching carefully, I quickly discovered there is a small door to the far left of the front of the building. If you stick your nose in there and ask nicely, it takes about 30 seconds to buy a ticket, cash only, and Bob’s Your Uncle! In you go, no waiting whatsoever needed! It’s like the Taj Mahal in India. The lineups there at the front door are hours long, but there is a side door that few people know about. Now that I have told you these secrets there will be a long line of people wanting to get in the side door at the Pantheon, Euros in hand, but as a travel writer constantly discovering new destinations it is my job to tell you such things and reveal the attraction. Yes, blame me. On a busy day, I help ruin everything I touch.
At the Vatican Museum, some employee with a sense of humour has posted a notice at the exit door asking for visitor photos. (i.e. “selfies.”) There is no mention of any prizes. Given that the museum may get a million visitors a week that means some poor employee has a lot of work to do viewing all those submitted photos. One wonders about possible categories. “Me and Suzie in front of the Egyptian statue thingee? With our new selfie stick?” One wonders if other museums, galleries and tourist attractions elsewhere do the same? Maybe they should.
I pose this question strictly because of our visit to the amazing Pantheon. The American space program put a man on the moon back in the day using pencils and slide rules. About 2,000 years ago the Romans built a perfectly symmetrical oval out of cement (Pantheon means a “tribute to the gods”) with a perfectly symmetrical circular opening in the roof, a building that remains as perfect today as the day it was built. Every visitor stands in amazement staring at the roof while trying to get a photo illustrating the amazing genius of its construction. Chiropractors back home get rich just from this phenomenon. Even my trusty Panasonic Lumix with its panorama capability and zoom lens couldn’t do it. Then I heard a shout.
A group behind us was doing what appeared to be the rain dance, passing a cellphone back and forth. Being the intrepid reporter that I am, I went and inquired what they were celebrating. One of their group, an obvious cellphone expert, had somehow managed to arrange his group in a circle, place their hands in a special way, and taken a photo of the circle in the roof that looked like his group was holding it up. This was selfie genius in action, I thought, and took a photo with my Lumix of their photo. The Pantheon should post a sign promoting that fantastic photo while urging other visitors to come up with other brilliant photos ideas. This would ensure even longer lineups to get in, while breaking all records for creative use of a phone camera posted on social media. Remember, you heard it here first.
Aside from selfies, perhaps you have heard of this new phenomenon known as “global warming,” caused in part by hundreds of millions of tourists flying around the world at 33,000 feet in giant planes that emit copious amounts of greenhouse gases into the stratosphere? Things are really heating up. If you go anyway, in the summer enjoy the very long lines at St. Peters and the Vatican in the blazing heat. If you are the type of traveller who never does any advance research, expect to bask in the summer sun for a few hours only to be told at security that women are not allowed to enter if they are half naked (even bare shoulders will get you turned away) while on the other hand men must remove their hats (but nothing else). Don’t show up in short shorts like a Parisian male basking in a bikini on the beach. The day I was there the ground temperature over at the Colosseum was 50 degrees Celsius (122 F for the great unwashed), hot enough to bake a potato. You have been warned.
All the Top Ten attractions in Rome have long line-ups for that all-important selfie for your Instagram account that one day will make you rich. There are now even lineups for new attractions that don’t really belong on any list, but already are social media hits. Take for instance, The Mouth of Truth (in Italian Bocca della Verità), an ancient Roman marble mask that stands against the left wall of the portico of the Santa Maria church at the Piazza della Bocca, once the site of the ancient Rome cattle market. According to enduring medieval legend, it will bite off the hand of any liar who places their hand in its mouth, or, alternatively, anyone who utters a lie while their hand is in the mouth. No, you won’t see The Donald (The Mouth That Roared) in the line-up, but you will see a long line of selfie seekers who have somehow heard about the line-up and have added The Mouth to their social media “must see” list
Like every tacky tourist attraction, there is a way to avoid the Bocca line-up, if you know what that solution is. After sticking their hand in the mouth, selfie seekers must exit by entering the church and then doing a right turn back out the front door. However, when the exit door opens, you can simply step inside in front of the mob and quickly take a photo. Not, not of yourself you dummy! Take a photo of whatever dolt is risking his her or her hand in order to prove you have personally been there yourself. Quickly dart back into the church before someone in the long line-up threatens to bite your own head off.
Nearly everyone lining up for the Bocca takes a selfie and simply leaves, but by doing so they miss another new attraction I am just now creating this exact minute for your own personal benefit. My significant other was mainly in Rome to visit every church, art gallery or museum ever built, a heroic attempt that would take several lifetimes. We had a quick boo at the inside of Santa Maria church, which I think may have boasted a wooden ceiling as opposed to the painted ceilings of many other churches and basilicas that have created increased income opportunities for chiropractors back home, but that’s neither here nor there.
We wandered to the back of the church and forked out a few Euros to descend down into the crypt to see the tomb of some saint or other. There are more saints in the churches of Rome than there are tourists dodging the suicidal local motorcyclists, insane nutbars who behave as if they are practicing to go compete with their insane brethren in the streets of New Delhi, where the only rights pedestrians have is to pray they don’t get killed while crossing the street. But some churches have surprises that need to be shared, as I am doing now for your behalf.
I always love a good crypt keeper whenever I meet one, and the guardian of this particular tomb responded to my smile to him with a smile back of his own, and also a question. Did I know who St. Valetine was? I responded in the negative. I was well aware of Valentine’s Day, a mercenary opportunity for Hallmark and other companies to extort disproportionate amounts of money for overpriced greeting cards on a supposedly romantic occasion. The holiday is conveniently held every year on February 14th, after the Christmas gift giving season is over, credit cards have been paid off, and before Mother’s Day shopping kicks in. But what I did not know was that St. Valentine was in fact patron saint of this very church, and his skull was preserved in a (golden) box above an alter for all to admire, but of course only if you knew where the box was located.
Various Catholic churches I have visited over the years like to display some bones for the edification of the seekers. In particular I recall a church in southern Arizona (San Xavier del Bac Mission in the Diocese of Tucson) set within the Tohono O’odaham Nation “ministering” to Native Americans whose philosophies needed rectifying. There was some geezer priest about 400 years old preserved in a small wooden box complete with glass panels for all to see, not something you want to observe just before lunch. I remember he himself looked a bit peckish. St. Valentine’s skull at the Santa Maria church was even less photogenic, but I took a photo anyway to assist aspiring selfie seekers to add it to their growing list when visiting Rome.
While you are in this neighbourhood, you might want to walk up Aventine Hill to have a look at the great view of the city below. Wealthy folks have always shown a predilection for living in places where they can look down on the proletariat. Atop the hill there is an orange grove — actually a civic park and an oasis of tranquility — with an excellent view of the city to the west, well above the insane hubbub below. Just south of that attraction is yet another huge basilica, if you are a collector of basilica photos as I was rapidly becoming. But don’t stop your perambulations there. There is another selfie opp yet to come, an essential component of any social media photo collection of Rome.
Walk a bit west. One of Rome’s most evocative and unusual views can be admired through the keyhole of Number 3 Piazza Cavalieri di Malta. Yes, a keyhole. At all hours of the day or night, Romans and tourists queue up to the door of the Magistral Villa, the institutional seat of the Sovereign Order of Malta. Through the keyhole you can enjoy one of the most intriguing views of St Peter’s Basilica seen in the far distance. Framed by a thick laurel hedge, the dome designed by Michelangelo Buonarroti gives the illusion of being larger and therefore closer viewed through the keyhole. While we were there the line wasn’t very long, but I enjoyed the sight of a limo and its well-dressed driver patiently waiting for his wealthy customer to have a glance through the hole. I hope you can find the time to visit the keyhole and add it to your growing collection. I will wait here for you.
There are other quirky photo opps from my lengthy time in Rome I could share with aspiring photographers, just so they could add them to their own social media files, but we only had a month to explore four different cities in Italy. So, if you are in Florence, do make an effort to walk over the Arno River to the south and enjoy a lunch in the Sancto Spirito market. Crossing back across the Arno, you can get a photo opp of the famous Ponte Vecchio bridge that the Nazi’s refused to bomb when they retreated in the late stages of WW Two because the bridge was so lovely. Its not so lovely today due to the tens of thousands of tourists who trudge across it trying to find a non-existent spot for a selfie. Don’t bother. There isn’t one.
While in Florence you can visit any of the churches open to the public, making sure to take a photo of the ceiling, because there is a church every 50 metres or so. But the keen-eyed photographer who keeps his or her eye at street level may notice an attraction that previously in the western world could only be found in Greyhound bus stations. I am referring, of course, to what can best be described as a “photobooth,” where you slide your coins into a hole and grin for the camera and retrieve four photos from the slot that you can later laugh at. Don’t try submitting one of these with your passport application. I was stunned to see lineups at every photobooth I passed, all of them young women and some dressed in a fashion that would not gain them admittance to St. Peter’s.
Moving on, Venice may be the most visually attractive and fascinating city on the planet. It may also be the top tourist attraction in the entire world, aside from Disneyland and the less said about that fabrication the better. At one time Venice was a real city, although due to its being built right on the water with canals taking the place of streets you could never call it “typical,” but over the past few decades tens of thousands of its residents have departed due to the humungous and irritating increase in tourists. Whereas in the past Venice was a wealthy city of traders and merchants, today the only remaining industry is tourism. There are ten times more tourists than there are citizens, and the fantasy land that the city has become is starting to wear more than a tad thin.
Venice is not a city, it’s a maze, a labyrinth of tiny lanes and alleys that veer off in many directions, none of them where you want to go. All guide books warn you about getting lost, but in fact that’s half the fun. You won’t wander more than five minutes without wondering where the hell you are. Without Google Maps you will never find your destination. So it was with no surprise that I accepted the fact that, once again, we had no idea where we were going and had to stop and get our bearings. That’s when we discovered Libreria Acqua Alta and the long line-up leading to the building.
Full disclosure: I love book stores (because they sell my books) but I had never heard of Aqua Alta, which means “high water” (ha ha) in Italian. I have made special trips to world famous City Lights in San Francisco and specialty book stores in London and Portland, Oregon but Aqua Alta had somehow escaped my attention. Its main claim to fame is that the bottom floor floods at high tide, which is bad for books because they get soaked and no one wants to buy a book that looks like a big blob of bathroom tissue. However, big soaked books may be the main reason why Aqua Alta has become so famous. The staff have removed many large and soaked books and stacked them up in the back lane, where they form a mountain with a series of steps leading up to a ten-foot-high wall, and on the other side of the wall is parked a gondola for those who like to climb over walls to get in a boat for their next destination.
Somewhere lost in the mists of time some travel writer or reviewer mentioned this hill of books to be a great place for a photo opp and wrote a review on TripAdvisor. The idea caught on. As of this writing there are currently 2,717 reviews of Aqua Alta on TripAdvisor. This is not a typo. If you take the time to read some of them, you will find most of the comments to be unfavorable. One positive sample? “The books at Libreria Acqua Alta are stored in bathtubs, rowboats, canoes, and most famously, a gondola. In addition, it’s home to plenty of fluffy cats (once strays, now adopted), which animal lovers consider a huge bonus to visiting the store. You’ll find cats napping on piles of books, staring you down at the register, sunning themselves out front, and just about anywhere else they want to go.” Yes, there are cat lovers everywhere, even in bookstores, and they cannot be be denied.
On the other hand, there are more accurate and negative comments of the store. “This was on my top 5 things to do in Venice. Imagine my disappointment when I arrived the queues were out the door. But that wasn’t the problem. The staff were soooo rude. I got told off several times for going in the wrong direction and shouted at for having my backpack on the wrong way. Was also told this shop was only for buying. Then going up the book of stairs I was so rushed and told to keep moving on so didn’t even get a photo.”
There is more: “Well, be warned. The place is a sea of books EVERYWHERE… but you can’t stop to look at anything. There’s a lady shouting for you to keep moving in Italian and English. Go early or be prepared for a cattle-call of girls being yelled at to expedite their ducklip photos at an elevated angle by staff that clearly hate their job.”
I was ignorant of these essential facts before entering the store. I had no idea what to expect but was very curious as to why there was a huge lineup to get in. A book signing by a famous writer? The line moved ahead slowly while a staff member did indeed scream “keep moving” every few seconds. There were literally hundreds of people in the line and no one showed any interest in any books, or even looked at the cats. The line was there for only one reason and that was to replicate the famous pose atop the mountain of books in the back to post on Instagram. I kept on my own backpack (held carefully on the front because of pickpockets) and followed the crowd as we inched ever closer. It wasn’t until I arrived at the back of the store that I learned about the famous photo opp.
There was something of a shouting fit going on, both staff and customers, and lots of pushing, so I scooted up the ladder of books quickly when the opportunity arose, posed grimly for a split second, and jumped down before any fist fights broke out. It was impossible to exit the store out the front door so I followed the crowd into a side room and we all somehow escaped into the fresh air, if you can call the ever-present odour emanating from the canals to be “fresh.” I still marvel that for some people this bookstore was “among their top five reasons for going to Venice.” In retrospect, I think perhaps it was actually the cats. Myself, getting hopelessly lost in the endless maze of lanes and alleys and then suddenly coming across a lovely little café filled with actual locals talking to each other was enough reason to visit Venice. To each their own, I guess. Watch out for the cats.
The above chapter is excerpted from the upcoming book Italia! The Agony and the Ecstasy; A Heretic’s Tour of Roma, Florence, Venice and Assisi. It will be available on Amazon this fall.