Northern Italy is a land bounded by the Mediterraean Sea, with its Italian Rivera coastline, and by the Adriatic, whose historic ports include the Byzantine jewel of Venice threaded with canals and the Hapsburgian Trieste, a hard-working port wedged against the seldom-explored Slovenian border. The region's northern reaches — where Italy meets France, Switzerland, and Austria — are rimmed with more Alps than you can shake a ski pole at, and to the south Italy's delights continue into the Arcadia of Tuscany (but that's a different book).

In between all this lies the Piemonte wine country south of Turin. Milan is Italy's bustling industral and fashion capital, but less than an hour north of it sits a string of gorgeous deep blue pools of water lined with sumptuous villas and small villages that make up the Italian Lake District. The fertile Lombard and Veneto plains stretch past great cities of art and culture — musical Cremona, home of Stradivarius, Padova with its Giotto frescoes, and Verona, where Romeo wooed fair Juliet.

From the castle-bedecked (and culturally Austrian) South Tyrol to the Frenchified Valle d'Aosta dominated by Monte Cervino (the Matterhorn) and Monte Bianco (Mont Blanc, Europe's highest peak), Northern Italy is full of variety and surprises.

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