If you thought the only way to learn about Italy’s history was through books or in a museum, think again. Set off on an active walking holiday across the Italian landscape, past castles and monasteries, through medieval villages and across well-trodden terrain, and discover a treasure trove of stories that transport you through recent history all the way back to ancient civilisations. Better still, you get fit at the same time!
But it’s not just about keeping active. Unravelling history on a walking holiday in Italy embodies all the best bits of slow travel, encouraging you to pause, stop and notice things that might otherwise pass you by. And as you walk, stories take on context and meaning, connecting the past with the present, clarifying the role of buildings along the way and even explaining contemporary culture.
With plenty of guidance and the freedom to stop and explore, those fortifications and frescoes suddenly make perfect sense when compared with the often abstract and disconnected history lessons of your youth.
How Italy’s Landscape Shaped Its History
Before you get to the history lesson, take a look at Italy’s geography. Italy is hugely affected by a terrain that veers from mountains and volcanoes to long coastal stretches, as well as its climate.
When you walk through any of its mountain ranges – the arc of Alps across the north of the country, the Dolomites, and the Apennines which form the spine of Italy – you start to understand how they might shape communication and trade and thus influence the country’s agriculture, politics and economics.
Climate also plays its part: the harsh conditions experienced by those who lived in the south, the ‘Mezzogiorno’, contributed to mass migration and a massive divide between northern and southern Italy.
See Italian History in Context
One of Italy’s most distinctive features is its strong regional differences. Each region also has its own unique historical imprint, so fans of ancient history can explore Bronze Age treasures in Sardinia, or, in central Italy, walk along sunken Etruscan roads and through Etruscan settlements such as Orvieto and Civita di Bagnoregio.
In the Italian Alps, history enthusiasts can follow in the footsteps of Roman armies and medieval pilgrims, visit Aosta’s Roman amphitheatre, and even take the route used by Victor Emanuel II, the first King of Italy, in the 19th century.
But wherever you walk, you can’t help but notice several major influences. The first is probably religion – evident in the pilgrim trails, churches and monasteries along the way. The other is the country’s military history. While the Roman Via Appia and Via Flamina reveal how armies and goods were moved across the Roman Empire, several routes in the northern Italian Alto Adige and Veneto regions illustrate the tensions of World War I.
Understand How Ordinary People Lived and Worked
One of the great joys of walking through the countryside is the deep dive it allows you to take into local culture. As you walk, it’s not hard to imagine how ordinary people lived and worked. Shepherds’ trails, mule tracks and abandoned farmhouses plunge you straight into everyday history rather than the big events.
The mountain trails and paths we follow today were essentially economic lifelines, created to ease seasonal migration and transhumance, and some of Italy’s most historically significant routes are still walkable. The most famous is the Via Francigena, once a pilgrimage route linking Rome and northern Europe, but subsequently a major trade corridor used by pilgrims, merchants, clergy and nobles. The Salt Roads (Vie del Sale) which connected the Ligurian coast to Piedmont and France, are a series of mule tracks which perfectly demonstrate how mountain economies functioned.
A special place for me is the tiny remote alpine village of Elva, with its stone houses and 15th century church, in the Val Maira, a part of Piedmont that falls within the huge historic region of Occitania. The village has an extraordinary museum, the Museo dei Cavié, or Hair Museum, which tells the story of the men from Elva who survived in the 1800s by buying hair from women in local villages, bundling and grading it by colour and length, and then covered enormous distances to sell it on to wigmakers who supplied the Paris fashion houses.
The Role of Fortifications, Monasteries and Other Buildings
You can also find that architecture and buildings take on a new significance when you walk through the landscape. Italy’s iconic hilltop towns were surrounded by defensive walls that protected their inhabitants from invasion for good reason!
San Gimignano in Tuscany is a classic example, fortified with solid stone walls punctuated by towers and gates. Its tall stone medieval towers (thought to at one point number 72 and reaching up to 50 metres), reflect not only the town’s conflicts with neighbouring Siena, Florence and Volterra, but also the existing inter-family rivalry.
As you walk, you’ll also come across bridges, gardens, theatres, abbeys, cloisters and, of course, imposing castles and palaces that each reveal riveting stories. A visit to the imposing ruins of Rocca Calascio in the Abruzzo or King Victor Emmanuel II’s former hunting lodge in Piedmont adds layer upon layer to Italian history.
Explore How Diets Today Are Shaped by History
But exploring a country’s history also helps us understand its contemporary culture, and in Italy, food certainly plays a big part in that culture. Characterised by distinctive regional differences, Italian gastronomy is partly shaped by its geography and climate, but also by its history.
Northern Italy favours dairy, meat and rice-based dishes and from the 16th century, polenta, while Tuscany and Umbria in central Italy were traditionally big wheat producers, hence the popularity of pasta, along with olive oil and grapes for wine. But in southern Italy and Sicily, dishes involving seafood, sun-ripened tomatoes and durum wheat for pasta are prevalent and Greek, Arab and Spanish conquests had a big influence.
This was particularly the case in Sicily where you’ll find Arab influenced couscous, ‘agrodolce’ flavours and widespread use of almonds in desserts.
What Else Do You Notice as You Walk?
There’s so much to take in as you walk. Perhaps the first step is switching off from everyday concerns and tuning into your surroundings. Once you relax, you’ll start to notice little details that may pique your interest. It may be the use of dialect or even another language on signposts around border towns. Or a communal bread oven, millstone or washhouse along the road or tucked into a village square.
And however interesting a guide or history book may be, it’s these tiny details that help us truly understand local culture, the many micro layers of history that make up a community, and the incredible resilience of past generations.
Let’s Talk:
Do you enjoy learning about history on your holiday? Do you read up on the history of a region or country before you visit? Is there anywhere you’d recommend for a step back in time?