In Italy, almost everywhere you look there’s a beautiful monument or building, combining the old with the new, or the extraordinary with the mundane. As well as big cities like Rome and Milan that are world-renowned for their cultural scenes, many smaller towns have excellent art galleries and cultural gems to unearth. If you’re not sure where to start on your search for art and culture in Italy, read on to find out.
To view some of the best street art in Italy, head to Sardinia. Reminiscent of early 20th-century Spanish murals, the street art in Orgosolo, a two-hour drive away from Alghero, is certainly not what you’d expect to find adorning an isolated small town’s walls.
They are stunning, and demonstrate that not all of Italy’s art and culture has to be steeped in the history of the Rennaissance or further back in time.
Venice is spoilt when it comes to beauty. Vivaldi lived, composed and taught here, while Casanova spent most of his life trying to get back to the city that had expelled him. The haunting beauty of the crumbling palazzos overlooking most of the canals can be breathtaking. Yet, if it hadn’t been for Venice’s colonisation of Crete and trade with Turkey, St Mark’s wouldn’t be as fascinating, the Doges wouldn’t have become so wealthy and Venice quite possibly wouldn’t be so beautiful.
The Venice biennale, the international art festival, is just one occasion in this extraordinary city where the beauty of a very old city operates as a canvas for the very new. The same can be said for the Venice Film festival which is rated as highly as those of Cannes or Berlin, where innovation and originality are warmly commended.
You only have to look at the films of 1960s master Fellini to see how the history and art of Italy works as a magnificent backdrop for contemporary films. More recently, the Robert Downey Jnr film Only You used Positano as its setting – and the list continues.
