Top and best 30 places to visit in Italy part 1

1- Turin

OF THE GREAT Italian cities, it is Turin of which the visitor has fewest expectations. I had cumulatively spent over a year in Italy before my first visit in 1973; Hugh Roberts, with whom I was travelling across northern Italy, wanted to spend four days, rather to my surprise. How right he was. Until the age of the railway, Turin was the first Italian city most English or French tourists saw. Although some crossed the high passes to the Val d’Aosta with its bristling castles, most would have taken the Mont Cenis and thus descended to Susa, pausing perhaps to see the well-preserved Arch of Augustus, and then continued on the successor of the Roman road, passing beneath the spectacularly sited abbey of San Michele della Chiusa. The natural capital of Piedmont, Turin is set on the flank of a productive plain above a bend of the river Po as it circles the north-western edge of the Monferrat range. Turin had been a major Roman city, as the gaunt Porta Palatina still attests. In 1280 it passed to the house of Savoy; and the city’s enduring fascination is inextricably linked with the course of that dynasty, counts and, from the fifteenth century, dukes of Savoy. Exiled in 1536, the Savoys returned in 1559. Their political acuity in dealing with both France and neighbouring Italian states consolidated their power. Vittorio Amadeo II inherited in 1675. His role in the War of the Spanish Succession, in which his kinsman Prince Eugène distinguished himself as the Austrian commander while Turin itself almost miraculously defied the French siege of 1706, led to his elevation as the King of Sicily in 1713 and, after the loss of that island to the Bourbons, King of Sardinia in 1720. He died in 1730, by when he had transformed his capital.

2- Varallo

THE RIVER Sesia carves a circuitous course to the south-east from the flank of the Monte Rosa. Varallo has long been the principal town of the Valsesia. It is best approached by the old road from the south, which passes the still isolated porticoed Cappella della Madonna di Loreto, with a beautiful external frescoed lunette of the Adoration by Gaudenzio Ferrari. High above the main piazza, from which it is approached by a picturesque ramp, is the Collegiata di San Gaudenzio, with a notable polyptych of about 1516–20 by Gaudenzio. Below are the narrow curving streets of the ancient town, whose charm has not been reduced by recent prosperity. A short, but by no means direct, walk leads to the Pinacoteca with half a dozen pictures, including two of David with the head of Goliath, by the most forceful artist of Counter-Reformation Piedmont, Tanzio da Varallo. The impact of these masterpieces is diminished by an irritatingly theatrical display, from which the museum’s exemplary collection of maiolica is happily spared. A few dozen metres beyond the Pinacoteca, you reach the limits of the original conurbation. To the left is the house identified as that of Gaudenzio, who is the subject of a nearby statue of 1874 by another local artist, Pietro della Vedova. This is eloquent of the high place that the greatest master of the High Renaissance in Piedmont held for the generation of Giovanni Morelli and Sir Charles Eastlake. Behind the statue is the great Renaissance conventual church of Santa Maria delle Grazie. The nave is dominated by the arcaded west wall with Gaudenzio’s prodigious frescoes of the life and Passion of Christ. Executed in 1513, the series evinces that narrative instinct and sense of objective realism for which Gaudenzio was so remarkable: he leaves us in no doubt that the Bad Thief was bad and the Good Thief repentant. The frescoes, which are enriched by sections of stucco, demand patience and field glasses, and are best seen without artificial light on a clear morning when Gaudenzio’s disciplined use of colour tells to particular effect. Santa Maria delle Grazie was founded by Bernardino Caimi, as was the Sacro Monte for which most visitors come to Varallo. Caimi returned from the Holy Land in 1481 and determined to replicate the pilgrimage route of Jerusalem. After his death in 1499 impetus was lost, but in 1517 the project was revived. Gaudenzio understood exactly what was required of him, but once again momentum faltered. After another long pause, the Sacro Monte found in 1565 a determined advocate in the Archbishop of Milan, Carlo Borromeo; and a series of additional chapels were designed by one of the most consistently rewarding Italian architects of the period, Galeazzo Alessi, who had been brought up in Perugia in the shadow of Perugino and Raphael but is perhaps best known for his Genoese palazzi. Momentum was maintained, and major Lombard and Piedmontese painters and sculptors were called in. The high bluff of the Sacro Monte hangs over the town. Although you can drive and there is a funicular, it is best to walk up the steep path above Santa Maria delle Grazie. The last two bends are marked by chapels and the pilgrim then reaches the Sacro Monte.

3- Vercelli

VERCELLI advertises itself as a ‘città d’arte’ with some reason. It boasts one of the great Gothic churches of northern Italy, and gave birth to a significant school of Renaissance painters. And although the town has grown considerably, there are still places from which the towers of Sant’Andrea can be seen across fields of waving maize. It is at Sant’Andrea that a circuit should begin. Although much restored, this remains the quintessential Italian statement of Cistercian austerity. The deep rust of the brick contrasts with the warm stone of the windows and other elements, and the towers are striking. The church, more impressive than lovable, is perhaps seen to best advantage from the adjoining cloister. Much of the fabric of ancient Vercelli survives: a medieval core round the arcaded Piazza Cavour; the massive brick castle of the Savoys, now the Palazzo del Giustizia; palaces that are less numerous and ambitious than those at neighbouring Casale Monferrat – so loved by my old friend Giovanni Tadini, who had the advantage of knowing about their inhabitants, past and present; a scattering of good neoclassical buildings; an appropriately eclectic synagogue of 1878; and the industrial Gothic of the Mercato Pubblico of 1884. But the sightseer has come for other things. Some way east of the Piazza Cavour is the Museo Borgogna, housing the collection left to the city by Antonio Borgogna (1822–1906) and the municipal holdings. The most distinguished of Borgogna’s early Italian pictures was a tondo of his Sienese period by Sodoma, who was born at Vercelli. The collection of pictures by painters who, unlike Sodoma, remained at Vercelli is comprehensive, with an unrivalled group of altarpieces and smaller works by Defendente Ferrari, a touching artist who learnt much from northern pictures, as well as the vacuous productions of his follower Girolamo Giovenone and panels by the grand protagonist of the Piedmontese school, Gaudenzio Ferrari, and by his able successor Lanino. The upper floors house more of Borgogna’s pictures. The star is Hans Baldung Grien’s Charity, which with the Dürer Adoration in the Uffizi is one of the finest German Renaissance pictures in Italy; Borgogna bought it from the Manfrin collection at Venice, where once it kept incongruous company with Giorgione’s Tempesta. Borgogna was also interested in some aspects of contemporary painting. He bought pictures of historical and Arab subjects; he owned Gaetano Chierici’s La buona matrignana, showing a hen protecting her chicks from rats, and, less expectedly, a triptych of 1885 by the Bruges painter Edmond van Hove which reinterprets the art of Quentin Massys with an almost pornographic intensity. Leave till last the noblest achievements of the Renaissance in Vercelli, Gaudenzio’s frescoes in the church of San Cristoforo. In 1529–30 he painted the Madonna del Melarancio for the high altar; the enlargement of the choir means that this is now placed much higher than the artist intended. Commissions followed for the frescoes in the chapels on either side of the presbytery. Work began in that on the right, dedicated to the Magdalen. On the east, altar, wall, is the prodigious upright Crucifixion, the lower part of which is unfortunately covered by a later altar, so that, for example, we cannot see the hands of the dice-playing soldiers. The drama is concentrated. The Virgin swoons; the Magdalen is seen from behind in profil perdu; a white horse returns our gaze. This and the equally original compositions on the right wall were delivered in 1530–32. The balancing frescoes of the Chapel of the Assumption are of 1532–4. The iconography of the Assumption of the Virgin allowed less scope for diversion than the Crucifixion. On the lower tier of the side wall are the Birth of the Virgin and the Adoration of the Magi, between which are introduced portraits of kneeling donors in fixed profile who seem oddly less palpable than the kings and their attendant dwarf and pages.

4- Genoa

SO LONG the maritime rival of Venice, Genoa, which cleaves to hills that descend abruptly to the Ligurian coast, remains a major port. It also remains a place of contrasts, as anyone who strays from the Strada Nuova with its astonishing procession of palaces will find if he takes the narrow salita downwards to the appropriately dedicated church of the Magdalen: even on a Sunday morning whores stand in wait. But that should not deter the sightseer, for there is much to be found within the tight confines of the medieval town. Genoa rewards the patient walker who disregards fixed itineraries. Genoa had become a significant Mediterranean power by the eleventh century, contributing to the success of the Crusades yet eventually helping to undermine the Frankish kingdom of Jerusalem. The wealth of the Genoese republic is implied by the great Romanesque cathedral of San Lorenzo; the campanile is the most splendid among several in the city, while the treasury still boasts such prized relics as the cup which Christ used at the Last Supper and a chalcedony platter thought to be that on which the head of the Baptist was delivered to Herod, with a beautiful fifteenth-century enamel head of the saint. Equally remarkable is the large silver-gilt reliquary of the saint made in 1438–45 by Teramo Danieli in collaboration with Simone Caldera. Near the site of the original castle is a secular counterpart to the campanile, the tower of the Embriachi, whose most ambitious fortification was the castle of Jebail in what is now the Lebanon. The significance of Genoa as intermediary with the East is expressed also in artistic terms, most notably in the Last Judgement at the west end of the cathedral, which is by a major master of towards 1300 from Constantinople. Parallel ties with the north are expressed in the exquisite fragments of Giovanni Pisano’s tomb of the wife of the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VII, Margaret of Brabant, who died at Genoa in 1313; these are now divided rather perversely between the new museum of Sant’ Agostino and the Palazzo Spinola.

5- Pavia

PAVIA’S RISE was due to her position near the confluence of the Ticino with the Po and at the junction of major Roman roads. Conquered in 572 by the Lungobards, or Lombards, she became the capital of their kings. The Visconti established their signoria in 1359 and founded the university two years later. Already overtaken economically by Milan, Pavia was nevertheless of continuing strategic importance, and it was outside the walls that King Francis I of France was captured in 1525 by the forces of Emperor Charles V. Spanish rule was followed by that of Austria, and it is to Empress Maria Theresa and her son Joseph II that the neoclassical university buildings are due. Pavia is visibly prosperous. Public buildings and private palaces abound. Of the churches two, both Lungobard foundations, are of particular interest. San Michele, facing a small piazza 200 metres north of the Ticino, was reconstructed after 1117. The sandstone façade is a masterpiece of controlled decoration. Across the town, near the angle of the city walls, is San Pietro in Ciel d’Oro, which was reconstructed in 1132. The west front follows that of San Michele, but was more ruthlessly restored in the nineteenth century. Behind the high altar is the Arca di Sant’Agostino, in which the relics of Saint Augustine of Hippo were placed; the sculpture blends Pisan and local influence. To the east of the church, also restored, is the enormous brick castle begun by Galeazzo II Visconti in 1360–65. The north side of the quadrangular structure was destroyed in 1527, but the vast porticoed courtyard still testifies to the resources of the dynasty. Interesting as the city is, Pavia’s outstanding monument is the Certosa, some nine kilometres to the north. From a distance its pinnacles strike a defiant note across the level plain. The foundation stone was laid by Gian Galeazzo Visconti in 1396, but his death in 1402 interrupted work. This was resumed and given further impetus by Francesco I Sforza, ruler of Milan from 1450. Successive architects, Venetian and Milanese, were called in. The façade was designed by the sculptor Giovanni Antonio Amadeo, but its upper half was only completed in the sixteenth century. The reliefs, so typical of Milanese Renaissance taste, are by Amadeo and his associates, while the portal of 1501–6 is largely by Benedetto Briosco. The interior is of equal magnificence. Some pictures have gone – including the main tier of Perugino’s altarpiece, which is now in London – but nowhere can Milanese sculpture of the Renaissance be studied more comprehensively, and much glass of the period survives. So do the fine choir stalls designed by Ambrogio da Fossano, il Bergognone, the one major Milanese painter of his generation who did not allow himself to be unduly swayed by the example of Leonardo. His frescoed Ecce Homo in the north transept, framed by trompe l’oeil architecture, shows how moving an artist he could be. Leave from the south transept, pausing to examine the delicate door-case by Amadeo, to the small cloister (1462–72). The arcades are decorated with terracotta. The luxuriant green of the enclosed garden contrasts with the varying hues of the brick of the walls and the vertiginous pinnacles of the southern flank of the church. A passage leads to the enormous Chiostro Grande, its outer wall with the twenty-four cells of the monks. The eye, lifted upwards in both church and the small cloister, is here drawn horizontally. The decoration is less sumptuous, for we are now in a world of silence and devotion.

6- Milan

OF THE GREAT Italian cities only Milan has been comprehensively cut off from its hinterland by modern building. So it is reassuring to ascend the campanile of the cathedral on a clear winter’s day and see the Monte Rosa gleaming on the horizon. Milan has a complex past – Roman, Byzantine and Lungobard – and has long been the dominant city of Lombardy. Power passed in the twelfth century from the archbishops to the commune, and in 1277 the Visconti established their signoria. Their duchy was taken over in 1450 by Francesco I Sforza, whose younger son Ludovico il Moro is celebrated not least as the patron of Leonardo. The French endeavoured to secure Milan, but on the extinction of the Sforza line in 1535, this passed to Spain and, in the early eighteenth century, to Austria. The French invasion of 1796 led to the creation of the Cisalpine republic, of which Milan was the inevitable capital, and its successor, Bonaparte’s kingdom of Italy. The Austrians recovered Milan in 1814, retaining it until 1859, when it was absorbed in the new kingdom of Italy, of which it was to become the financial powerhouse. The Stazione Centrale – as good a place to arrive as any – is a gargantuan statement of Italian ambition. Designed in 1906, this took a quarter of a century to build. And later you may wish to linger in an earlier and more engaging statement of national confidence, the cruciform Galleria, with its patriotic dedication: ‘A Vittorio Emanuele II dai Milanesi’ (To Vittorio Emanuele II from the Milanese). This most spectacular of shopping arcades, off the Piazza del Duomo, was begun in 1865, and like the station remains close to the pulse of Milanese life. Even a brief study of a map shows how Milan grew: the clearly marked line of the later walls, the names of whose gates survive, and the roughly oval circuit of streets that marks the earlier walls with which the massive brick Castello Sforzesco was associated. The Piazza del Duomo lies at the geographical centre, presided over by the unhappy façade of the Duomo itself. It is within that the great building asserts its magic, the tall columns soaring to the vaults. By day the Renaissance stained glass deserves study; at night, as candles glitter, one is lost in a primordial forest of stone. The decoration is rich, and there are two exceptional masterpieces. The Trivulzio candelabrum in the north transept, with its monsters and humans emerging from trailing fronds, is a prodigy of Norman medieval metalwork, so it is disgraceful that the tourist is now denied access to it; while the tomb of Gian Giacomo de’ Medici of 1560–63 in the south transept is arguably the masterpiece of Leone Leoni. Milan is famous for its churches. The Basilica di Sant’Ambrogio, dedicated to the patron of the city, was the seminal building of the Lombard Romanesque; while in Santa Maria delle Grazie to the north-west, the domed crossing and choir added by Bramante to the late Gothic nave represent the consummation of late fifteenth-century Milanese classical architecture. The church and its cloister are visually more compelling than the abused ghost of Leonardo’s Last Supper in the refectory nearby. If you want to escape from fellow tourists there is a particularly satisfying walk from the Piazza del Duomo. Take the Via Torino and pause at the first church, set back on the left, San Satiro, where Bramante’s ingenious trompe l’oeil treatment of the choir disguises the constraints of the site. Further on, to the right, is San Giorgio al Palazzo, with a chapel decorated in 1516 by the most consistent Milanese painter of the period, Bernardino Luini, whose altarpiece of the Deposition is beautifully complemented by his frescoes. Head on for the Porta Ticinese, but stop at San Lorenzo, set behind a row of sixteen Roman columns that were pillaged from earlier buildings and re-erected as part of the portico of the basilica. Much of the original structure, datable about ad 400, survives. The scale of the building is impressive, but inevitably it is overlaid with much later work. Further south, just before the gate, is Sant’Eustorgio, another early foundation, rebuilt in the late eleventh century, but with an elegant campanile of 1297–1309. The church itself is fine. But it is for the Cappella Portinari, to the east of the choir, that one returns. Pigello Portinari ran the Milanese branch of the Medici bank and called in a fellow Florentine, Michelozzo, to design his chapel. The frescoes of 1466–8 are, however, by the outstanding Lombard master of the time, Vincenzo Foppa. Nowhere is the sobriety of the man more eloquently expressed. In the chapel is the fourteenth-century arca of the Dominican Saint Peter Martyr by the Pisan Giovanni di Balduccio and his assistants, which demonstrates that Portinari followed in a long tradition when he employed Tuscans in Milan.

7- Saronno

BECAUSE OF the activity of the Arundel Society Saronno was less unfamiliar to a Victorian audience than it is today. Too close to Milan for comfort, the town itself has no claims on the tourist. But on its northern fringe is one of the most beautiful sanctuaries of northern Italy, the Madonna dei Miracoli. A miracle of 1447 led to the construction of the church, begun in 1498 to the design of the versatile Giovanni Antonio Amadeo, whose scheme for the sanctuary itself was realized. Work on the church followed, and the subtle classical west façade projected by Pellegrino Tibaldi at the behest of San Carlo Borromeo was only completed in 1612. But satisfying as the building is, it is for the frescoes by Bernardino Luini and Gaudenzio Ferrari that this is most remarkable. Pass through the church to reach the sanctuary. On the cupola Gaudenzio painted a Concert of Angels in 1534–6, a swirling interwoven composition, the unceasing movement of which seems almost deliberately to challenge the more static mode of Luini, who had died in 1532. On the left is the Cappella del Cenacolo, for which Andrea da Milano supplied an effective and characteristically Lombard polychrome group of the Last Supper. Beyond, at the entrance to the Anticappella, are frescoes of four saints by Luini, finished in the year of his death. More remarkable is Luini’s work in the Anticappella, with large compositions of the Marriage of the Virgin and Christ among the Doctors. Luini was aware that these would be seen laterally by pilgrims bound for the Cappella della Madonna beyond. Here the painter pulls out every stop. The lateral murals, the Circumcision of 1525 – in the background of which the Holy Family sets out for Egypt passing an accurate representation of the sanctuary and campanile from the east – and the Adoration of the Magi, whose train winds down through the landscape, are projected though arches which are shown from a position just within the chapel; there are Sibyls in the spandrels of the arches and in the lunettes above, and on those of the other walls the Evangelists are paired with the Doctors of the Church. Wind may ruffle the palm tree in the Circumcision yet Luini’s dignified classicism is immutable. This and his discursive narrative taste help to explain why the Arundel Society went to the not inconsiderable expense of reproducing the Saronno frescoes. The very sobriety of Luini’s types reminds us that he was an early exponent of the ‘Lombard realism’ that some seventy years later would be the springboard for the artistic revolution wrought by Caravaggio. Luini responded to the challenge of the commission, but may have found it more congenial to paint the less orchestrated lunette of the Nativity in the cloister. In the words of a wise fellow guest to whom I once showed these, the murals at Saronno are indeed ‘perfectly marvellous’.

8- CASTIGLIONE OLONA

THE ROAD from Saronno to Varese leads through a distressing sequence of overgrown settlements. These do nothing to prepare us for the charm of the old town of Castiglione Olona, scarcely half a mile off to the left, on a spur above the wooded valley of the Olona. Castiglione was held from early medieval times by the Castiglioni family. Branda Castiglioni (1350–1443) had a successful career as Bishop of Piacenza, as Legate to Hungary and, from 1412, as Bishop of Vespré. Like other churchmen the cardinal, as he became in 1411, knew he had to build within his lifetime, but as he died in his nineties he had more time than could rationally have been anticipated to make his mark at Castiglione. The road descends to the triangular central Piazza Garibaldi. On the east, set back, is the cardinal’s palace, Casa Castiglioni. On the ground floor is the small chapel, with rather worn murals by the Sienese master Vecchietta. The main stair mounts to a loggia with views out over the town and vestigial decorative frescoes, including a relatively unusual compartment with covered jars. Off this is the large hall, from which a door opens to the bedchamber, with contemporary murals of putti among trees by a local artist. Beyond is a further chamber with a remarkable panorama by the Tuscan master Masolino da Panicale, whom (with Masaccio) the cardinal had previously employed at San Clemente in Rome, showing his see in Hungary, a sizeable town in a valley between steep bare hills, some of which are crested with castles. Across the piazza a road rises, passing the church of the Santissimo Corpo di Cristo completed between 1441 and 1444, which has been attributed to Vecchietta. The chaste classicism of the pilastered walls affirms the cardinal’s interest in contemporary Tuscan taste. The road climbs up to the gate of his most ambitious foundation, the Collegiata. Castiglioni himself is seen kneeling before the Madonnna and Child in the lunette of 1428 above the main door. The imposing brick church represents the moment when the late Gothic melts into the early Renaissance; and to experience the processional subtlety of the building (which is now entered by a side door), you should walk to the west entrance before approaching the apse. The decoration is a further affirmation of the cardinal’s leanings. The outer arch was frescoed by a lesser Florentine, Paolo Schiavo, while the vault and the upper and part of the lower register of murals are by Masolino, from whom Schiavo took over in the Stoning of Saint Stephen. The rest of the altar wall and the fictive architecture and marbling below are by Vecchietta, as is the trompe l’oeil portrait. Masolino is at his most lyrical in the narrow triangular compartments of the vault, notably the Annunciation and the centrally placed Coronation of the Virgin, with their sinuous elongated figures. The cardinal’s tomb is on the left of the choir.

9- ISOLA BELLA

ISOLA BELLA seems to float upon the waters of Lake Maggiore. From Stresa the ordered terraces defy the drama of the hills beyond. The brief crossing conveys us to the landing stage near the palace conjured into existence for Count Carlo III Borromeo from 1631 onwards, but only completed in 1958. The palatial interior houses part of the remarkable collections of the Borromeo, rich in Lombard works both of the Renaissance and later periods; it is not difficult to understand why Mussolini arranged for the Stresa Treaty between Italy, England and France to be signed here in 1935. The grand baroque and neoclassical rooms on the piano nobile are perhaps less memorable than the sequence of rooms on the ground floor, grottoed chambers decorated with stucco and marbles and pebbles that catch light reflected from the water. Among the objects that have come to rest in these rooms are such rare survivals as horse trappings from the time of Cardinal Federico Borromeo. To the south of the palace is the garden, also begun in 1631. The count and his architect, Angelo Crivelli, exploited a natural hill, which was partly cut away and then built up with substructures supporting ten superimposed terraces. The resulting rectangular ziggurat dominates the island. On the upper terrace, some thirty-three metres above the lake, is the theatre, presided over by the heraldic unicorn of the family. Carlo III’s third son, Vitaliano VI Borromeo, who succeeded in 1652, continued the project, calling in Carlo Fontana and Francesco Castelli; he died in 1690, the year in which the Dutch painter Gaspar van Wittel, known in Italy as Vanvitelli, prepared the studies on which his views of the island were based. The terraces were originally planted with cypresses, citrus trees, box and vegetables. Later generations have enriched the planting, but the design of what is in effect a baroque answer to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon is unimpaired. Wandering up and down the terraces, not all of which are accessible, we are almost uncomfortably aware that we are in a garden like no other, a statement of patrician control over a once untamed landscape.

10- COMO

COMO, at the southern end of the eponymous lake, is the successor of a significant Roman town and indeed retains much of its plan. After a ferocious struggle with Milan in 1118–27, Como remained independent until 1335 when it was taken by the Visconti. Thereafter the city was under Milanese control. The Piazza del Duomo, far from the port, lay at the centre of both civic and religious life. The Broletto was built in 1215, while the cathedral beside it was only begun in 1396. Como had a remarkable tradition of masons, supplying craftsmen to work throughout Italy, but the cathedral is their most impressive achievement. The early Renaissance façade with its profusion of sculpture repays close attention, but it is easier to access the key figure, Tommaso Rodari, in the Porta della Rana on the north front. The space within is unexpectedly dark, and it takes some time to adjust the eye to survey the tapestries suspended between the columns of the nave, many of which were devised by Giuseppe Arcimboldi. The altarpiece of the fourth chapel on the right is by Luini. He also painted the inside shutters of the Sant’Abbondio altarpiece, representing the two Adorations, which with Gaudenzio’s later Flight into Egypt and Marriage of the Virgin of the outer sides now flank the third altars on both sides of the church. As at Saronno, Gaudenzio emerges as the more inventive artist.