Of all European nations, Italy is maybe the toughest to assort. It is a modern, industrialized country. It is the harbinger of style, its designers leading the direction with each season's fashions. But it is as well, to an equal degree, a Mediterranean country, with all that that implies.

Agricultural land covers much of the country, a lot of it, especially in the south, yet possessed under almost feudal terms. In cities and villages all over the state, life grinds to a halt in the centre of the daytime for a siesta, and is strongly family-oriented, with an accent on the customs and rituals of the Catholic Church that, notwithstanding a growing scepticism among the state's youth, still dominates people's lives here to an immediately obvious degree.

Above all Italy arouses reaction. Its people are volatile, rarely apathetic to anything, & on one & the same day you can encounter the kind of disdain dished out to tourist masses worldwide, and an hour afterwards be handled to embarrassingly generous hospitality.

If there is a single national feature, it's to embrace life to the full: in the hundreds of local fetes taking place through the country on any given day, to celebrate a holy man or the local harvest in the importance placed on good food in the obsession with clothes and image& above all in the daily domestic ritual of the collective evening stroll or passeggiata - a social affair celebrated by young & old similar in every city & village across the country.

You can visit Roman ruins, gawk at Renaissance art, stay in tiny mediaeval hill cities, go skiing in the Alps, search the canals of Venice and gaze at beautiful churches. Naturally you may also indulge in the pleasures of la dolce vita: good food, good wine & improving your wardrobe.