Italy Travel Tips Archives

I can’t wait to get back to Florence. I think about it all the time.

If we are cleared to travel later this summer and my Glam Italia Tours are able to go, the first stop is Florence. I always arrive a couple of days before my first tour group, to get the final touches ready and to make sure I’m bright eyed and bushy tailed when the ladies arrive.

So I’ve been thinking about the evening I arrive back in Florence and what I want to do first.

APERITIVO TIME

My favorite time of day in Italy is aperitivo time, that glorious spell between late afternoon and evening when everyone congregates for an after-work or pre-dinner drink with snacks. This glorious combination of drink, snack and human interaction feels like the glue that holds everything together.

When you watch Italians doing aperitivo the first thing you notice is the interaction. No one is scanning the bar to see if there’s someone better to chat up, they’re not buried in their phones, instead they make eye contact, engage one another, participate in life. It’s just fantastic.

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I have my favorite places to enjoy an aperitivo in Florence. Sometimes I want a drink with a sunset view of the Arno. Sometimes I want a glass of wine from a boutique winery. Sometimes I want a spritz Campari looking out over the Duomo. Once in a while I want a cocktail, and when I do there is only one place I want to go.

MANIFATTURA

Manifattura is an incredibly chic, old school yet modern cocktail bar.

These days wherever you are in the world cocktail bars seem to be the same. They either go for a faux international theme or a faux American theme. It’s all very homogenized, you could be anywhere – there’s nothing about the experience that specifically dictates which country you are in. You could be in Boise or you could be in Berlin.

Florence, like any city suffering from mass tourism, has lost some of its bar integrity, some of the national identity given away to tourist demand for Long Island Ice Tea.

When I’m traveling I crave authentic experiences specific to the place I’m in, which is no doubt why I love Manifattura.

MADE IN FLORENCE

The décor is modern Italian meets 50’s retro bar. The bartenders wear crisp white shirts, the waiters wear suits. The drinks are old school, classic cocktails, all ingredients are strictly Italian. The underlying message here is Made In Italy. (Hence the name) It is fabulous.

The brainchild of co-owner Fabiano Buffolino, Manifattura is a celebration of Italy’s legacy of alcoholic drinks. Don’t expect to see bottles of Jack Daniels or Grey Goose on the shelves, every bottle is an Italian made product. Every drink is a classic Italian. And every drink is under 10 euros.

The bartenders and waiters are all extremely knowledgeable and will expertly guide you through ordering something specific to your taste as well as which foods to pair with it. Manifattura is not just a cocktail bar, it is an experience.

The drinks are named for famous Italians

A relative newcomer to the scene Manifattura only opened in 2017, but Fabiano has been mixing high end drinks in Florence for years. His pedigree drew the attention of major publications around the world, all of whom have written rave reviews.

For local Florentines it is a connection to their heritage. For travelers looking for a window into Italian drink culture and craving a non-tourist, totally authentic experience, you cannot get better than this!

Manifattura is located at Piazza di San Pacrazio, 1. This is about 5 minutes walk from Piazza Santa Maria Novella heading toward the river

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Whether your summer travel plans have been postponed by the Coronavirus, your kids are home all day and need new entertainment, or maybe you just want to relive a trip from the past, you can get yourself a little taste of Italy by exploring the museums that offer virtual tours.

Italy has sensational museums, many of which get missed while tourists wait in long lines to visit the main attractions. Here is your chance to explore ancient Rome and Renaissance Florence from your laptop with a virtual tour. Four of these museums are written about in detail in my book Glam Italia! 101 Fabulous Things To Do In Rome, giving you specific things to look for and fascinating stories behind the people and pieces involved.

1. The Capitoline Museums

Perched on the hill overlooking the Roman Forum with a view along the Fori Imperiali to the Colosseum, the Capitoline Museum is one of the greatest museums in the world. With so many treasures from Ancient Rome to be discovered you can lose yourself here for hours, whether in the real world or the virtual one. There is a well laid out floor plan and it is easy to find your way around the virtual tour. Check it out here

2.Trajan’s Market

Across the street from the Capitoline Museum and the Roman Forum you can see another massive forum complex, Trajan’s Forum and Market. This one was designed by Apollodorus of Damascus, (the same guy who designed the Pantheon) and inaugurated in 112 A.D.

Trajan was the Emperor of Rome from 98 A.D until 117 A.D. The Empire’s most expansive growth happened during his rule.

At the end of his Forum stands the semi circular building of Trajan’s Market. This 170 room structure standing 35 meters above the level of the forum was actually used as offices and shops, nearly 2000 years ago! Part of the building is now the museum of Trajan’s Market and again, it is fantastic. You can take a virtual tour both of the museum and of the forum itself here.

Trajan’s Forum and Market are directly in front of one of my favorite places to visit in Rome, the Ancient Roman houses at Palazzo Valentini. This is an absolute must see when you are in Rome. You can read about it here.

3. The Ara Pacis

This is one of those fabulous secrets hiding in plain sight in the heart of Rome. Very few tourists seem to know about it, but once again it is one of my absolute favorites. Interestingly this is one of the few museums in the world dedicated to a single object, in this case a more than 2000 year old altar to peace.

The Ara Pacis in Rome. Augustus's altar to peace — The Ara Pacis in Rome

Augustus was the first Emperor of Rome. After centuries of war with other countries and decades of civil war at home he eventually brought peace to Rome. To celebrate this peace in 13 B.C. he built this huge marble altar. I wrote about it here and at length in Glam Italia! 101 Fabulous Things To Do In Rome. The altar originally stood in the Campus Martius, but when the Tiber River was expanded a few centuries later the Ara Pacis became submerged under 4 meters of mud, disappearing for 1000 years.

Now restored to much of its old glory and housed inside a modern Richard Meier building full of natural light, it is a pretty incredible museum to visit. Part of what makes the altar so amazing is the carvings that cover the marble walls around it. Again they are detailed in my book, but you can still enjoy meandering around inside the museum looking at thm with the virtual tour, here.

4.The Vatican Museums

The Vatican Museums virtual tour — The Vatican Museums

The Vatican Museums house some of the greatest collections (of pretty much everything) in the world. Unless you are in Rome in the off season it is impossible to see much in the museums, and in all honesty you really need multiple days there. But lucky for us the Vatican has created some wonderful videos of the most famous rooms across the various wings of the complex. You can spend ages wandering through the virtual tour here. Even if you have been to the Vatican Museums before you will really enjoy this!

5. The Uffizi

Uffizi Gallery Florence Virtual Tour — The Uffizi in Florence

Just a quick train ride from Rome or a mere mouse-click on your laptop and you are in Florence, the heart of the Italian Renaissance and home to the best collection of Renaissance Art anywhere in the world. Florence has a tremendous virtual museum offering through a website called Hyper Visions. It takes you though the different artworks in a variety of ways. be sure to click into the Factories of Stories section (my favorite). While on the Hyper Visions site be sure to look at the Pitti Palace section too. At this time the Vasari Corridor section isn’t showing the artworks inside, but do click around on it as well as the Boboli Gardens section.

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At the time of publishing this post the world is under a travel ban due to the Coronavirus pandemic. I have chosen to keep publishing stories about traveling to Italy for three reasons. The first is that one day hopefully sooner rather than later, the world will open back up to travel, making this a great time to learn about more places we want to visit and what to see when we get there.

Secondly I hope this will change the way we travel. Hopefully cruise ships and big bus tours and the mass tourism they bring will become a thing of the past, replaced by a more sustainable means of travel that involves smaller groups of people with a germane interest in discovering new places, rather than the masses descending on any city to check it off their bucket list. Third, in this time of crisis our minds need a place to escape to, even if only for a few minutes. So let’s escape to Italy together.

Ara Pacis

This is one of those completely fantastic secrets in Rome that’s hiding in plain sight. Even when Rome is bursting at the seams with tourists you will find very few people here. It is one of my absolute favorites and I wrote about it in detail in my best selling book Glam Italia! 101 Fabulous Things To Do In Rome. (Find it in the 13 Places To Discover Ancient Rome chapter)

The Ara Pacis was built around 13 B.C to commemorate Augustus’ victorious return to Rome. Rome had been mired in decades of civil war, and had spent centuries at war with other countries. Augustus ended all the fighting, bringing about the first time of peace in years at the same time becoming the most powerful man in history.

Originally it stood at the northeast corner of the Campus Martius. The altar was angled so that at sunset on Augustus’ birthday the shadow of the point of the obelisk in the Campus Martius would fall onto the Ara Pacis, symbolizing that he was born to bring peace to Rome. He really was a master of propaganda!

Centuries later the Tiber river was expanded and over time the Ara Pacis, in all of its white marble glory, became submerged in 4 meters of mud. It disappeared for more than 1000 years.