US Edition For more general advice on booking a holiday in Italy, see our Italy summer holidays guide. Our guide features expert recommendations for city, beach, villa, culture, food and drink and activity holidays.
1. Desinare, Florence
When is a cooking school not just a cooking school? When it’s part of the magical world of Riccardo Barthel, Florentine antique-chic home interiors guru. Opened at the beginning of 2014, this intimate foodie haven – more friends’ kitchen than culinary laboratory – occupies two rooms on the first floor of Barthel’s warren of a showroom-workshop in Florence’s artsy-crafty Oltrarno quarter. But style goes with substance here: the lessons and demonstrations given by chef Arturo Dori and other bilingual teachers will help you to master a repertoire of Tuscan classics like cantucci biscuits or hand-rolled strozzapreti pasta in ragù sauce. With five people or more, the course becomes a demonstration rather than a hands-on lesson.
Day courses (10am-3pm) from £180 a head based on two people (Desinare, Via dei Serragli 234r; 00 39 055 221 118; desinare.it). Lee Marshall
2. Olive harvest, Liguria
What would Italian cuisine be without olive oil? Many Italian regions claim to be the place for extra virgin production: Liguria – with its distinctive taggiasca olive variety – ranks high on the scale of excellence. The newly pressed liquid gold is celebrated over a long weekend in November, in the OliOliva festival in Imperia-Oneglia, where Ligurian growers meet with counterparts from around the Mediterranean, chefs feed the crowds with local oil-laced specialities, and stands sell olive oil cosmetics, olive oil unguents, traditional olive oil medicines and much else. Also here is the Museo dell’Olivo, which celebrates the tree and its fruit year-round; next to the museum, an olive press opens its doors to the public during the pressing season. To experience the beauty of the region’s olive groves, follow one of the walking routes detailed on the terrediriviera.it website.
OliOliva is held in mid-late November; the Museo dell’Olivo (00 39 0183 295 762; museodellolivo.com) is open Mon-Sat. LM
3. Two great Puglian trattorias
Pressed for time? Then why not build a short weekend in Puglia around two really special lunches? Aim to arrive at Bari airport on Saturday in time to pick up a hire car by midday. Then drive to Antichi Sapori, where almost everything comes from owner-chef Pietro Zito’s farm. The simplest dish – like pasta al pomodoro – is revelatory. After lunch, make the short drive to Castel del Monte – Emperor Federico II’s majestic but mysterious empty castle. Then head towards the coast, aiming for delightful Polignano a Mare (hometown of Domenico Modugno, who wrote Volare). Stay at cute centro storico b & b Dimora Santo Stefano, then head back to Bari the next day via Rutigliano, where the fixed lunch served up by agriturismo Lama San Giorgio – which includes a carafe of delicious Primitivo di Manduria wine – is one of Puglia’s best deals.
Antichi Sapori (Montegrosso, near Andria; 00 39 0883 569 529; antichisapori.pietrozito.it); Dimora Santo Stefano (santostefano.info), doubles from £58; Lama San Giorgio (Strada Provinciale Rutigliano-Adelfia, km 8.7; 00 39 348 334 2889; lamasangiorgio.it), fixed lunch £20. LM
4. La Tavola Marche, Le Marche
Cooking schools that reconnect you with real food through home-grown, farm-to-table, organic and zero-food-miles produce have mushroomed in Italy over recent years, but ones that extend the philosophy to butchery are rare. Slow Food-inspired New York chef Jason Bartner does just that at La Tavola Marche cooking school, in his pretty stone farmhouse in the central Marche region. There are half-day and day-long lessons (including one in whole-hog butchery) after which students consume what they have whipped up. Or you can make a holiday of it, taking one of the five guest apartments and following a more varied course which might include foraging for wild edibles, making sausages, exploring local markets or savouring ales at a local microbrewery.
From £90 for a half-day course, £145 for a whole day (00 39 331 525 2753; latavolamarche.com). LM
5. Tenuta San Francesco, Campania
Take the mountain route inland from Maiori, on the bumper-to-bumper Amalfi coast road, and within a few minutes you’re away from the crowds in a rural landscape of olive groves, chestnut woods and vines. Some of the oldest of the latter can be seen at Tenuta San Francesco, a family-run winery in the village of Tramonti that recently took a qualitative leap. Don’t miss the wine-tasting lunch, which takes in a bevvy of excellent wines, including our favourite, delicate, fragrant white Per Eva.
Tenuta San Francesco, Via Sofilciano 18, Tramonti (00 39 089 876 748; vinitenutasanfrancesco.it). You can sign up for a six-hour tour from Positano to the winery with Swirl the Glass. It costs £130 per person (swirltheglass.com). LM
6. Regaleali, Sicily
Tasca d’Almerita is known the world over as one of Sicily’s top wine producers. But they’re also at the forefront of Sicily’s sustainable food movement. The company’s Regaleali estate, amid the sweeping agricultural vistas of the island’s central region, is not just a historic winery but a working farm with an extensive kitchen garden and several heritage fruit trees (tascadalmerita.it). Fabrizia Lanza runs a well-regarded cooking school here, which focuses on locally sourced ingredients (many from the farm itself) and Sicilian traditions. If you don’t have time to take one of her five-day courses, come for an overnight stay in the charming 19th-century baglio (farm villa) at the centre of the estate where the cost of a room includes dinner, breakfast and a morning cooking course with Fabrizia.
From £200 (annatascalanza.com). LM
7. Emilia food tours
The historic cities of Bologna, Modena, Reggio nell’Emilia, Parma have enough cultural sights to fill a month of Sundays, but as often in Italy, culture is not confined to art and architecture. This is an area where food reaches Sistine Chapel levels of refinement – as anyone who has tasted the miracle that is real, traditional Modena balsamic vinegar will know. Operated out of Bologna by Alessandro Martini, Italian Days Food Experiences organises day trips (7am-4pm) that take in a Parmigiano Reggiano factory, a family-run balsamic vinegar concern, and a fragrant Modena ham workshop. Extensive tastings are included.
Tours from £110 (00 39 338 421 6659; italiandays.it). LM / Nick Trend
8. Taste Florence
Trust stylish Florence to showcase the gastronomic scene with such flair. Organised by Pitti Immagine – the people behind the city’s fashion shows –Taste brings 300-odd niche producers of some of Italy’s finest foodstuffs (plus a handful of others from further afield) to the Leopolda, a strikingly converted railway station in the centro. Elsewhere, the city buzzes with many more “Fuori di Taste” side-events. Dedicated foodies time their Florence visits to coincide with the spring festa, where everything can be sampled and bought, but only in the supermarket at the exit, meaning that there’s no pesky hard-sell as you make your way around the stalls.
One-day tickets from £12 (pittimmagine.com). LM
9. Wines of South Tyrol
It’s perhaps not surprising that the partly German-speaking region of Alto Adige, aka Südtirol, has the best-organised wine tourism initiatives in Italy. The Wine Road or Strada del Vino meanders through 16 wine towns in the upper and lower Adige valley, home to a myriad of small producers, many engaged in heroic winemaking on steep but scenic plots. For an overview, sign up for a Wine Safari at the Strada del Vino HQ in Appiano (Eppan): they take place on the first Friday of each month, or on other days by request for groups of 10 or more, and take in vineyard and cellar visits, wine tastings, and lunch. During the Vino in Festa festival, (dates yet to be confirmed) a month of wine-related events culminates in an open-cellar night, when the organisers thoughtfully lay on a free shuttle bus for tipsy revelers.
Wine Safari £80 a head (00 39 0471 860 659; suedtiroler-weinstrasse.it). LM
10. Umbrian Cookery School
Tasting Places is one of the longest-established companies offering Italian cookery classes, and has responded to changes in demand from visitors by offering an increasing number of flexible tailor-made trips for small groups (minimum two people). Its courses in Umbria are especially tempting, partly because of the region’s cuisine – even by Italian standards it boasts a wealth of unusual specialities: truffles, spelt, crayfish, lentils, rare mountain hams and cheeses – and partly because lessons are from a native Umbrian and take place in a charming hotel (the Villa Pambuffetti) in one of the region’s loveliest little hill-towns, Montefalco.
Tasting Places offers Single lessons, with lunch, from £170 per person. Four-day residential course with three mornings of tuition from £512 (tastingplaces.com). Tim Jepson
For our other expert holiday selections in Italy see our top 10 villa holidays in Italy, beach holidays in Italy, activity holidays in Italy and cultural holidays in Italy.