Country guide

Italy

Slow mornings, long lunches, golden light

Italy rewards the unhurried. It is a country best measured in long lunches, evening passeggiate and the quiet joy of a piazza at dusk — and it is remarkably gentle on families, with children welcomed at every table.

May – June & September

The Amalfi Coast

Pastel villages above a turquoise sea

The Amalfi Coast is a place that seems designed for lingering. Thirteen towns cling to the cliffs between Sorrento and Salerno, each one a cascade of pastel houses, lemon groves and bougainvillea, with the Tyrrhenian Sea glittering far below. Positano is the postcard, but the quieter villages — Praiano, Ravello, Atrani — are where the coast reveals its softer side.

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May – June & September – October

Tuscany

Cypress roads and farmhouse suppers

Tuscany is the Italy of the imagination: rolling hills stitched with vineyards, cypress-lined gravel roads and honey-stone farmhouses that have watched the seasons turn for five hundred years. It is also, quietly, one of Europe’s easiest places to travel with children — space to run, animals to meet, and a table culture that treats a toddler’s bedtime as a flexible concept.

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April – June & October

Rome

Ancient stones and the evening passeggiata

Rome is a city where twenty centuries lie on top of one another — a Baroque piazza on a medieval lane on an ancient ruin, all of it lived in, noisy and impossibly beautiful. It is a marvellous city for children: ruins to climb, fountains to marvel at, pizza at every corner, and a culture that treats ice cream as one of the major food groups.

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May – June & September

Cinque Terre

Five pastel villages on the Ligurian coast

Cinque Terre is a string of five pastel villages clinging to the cliffs of the Ligurian coast — Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore — linked by ancient footpaths and a little train through the vineyards. There are no cars in the villages, and the pace is set by the sea, the boats and the bells of the churches.

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