Dubbed the world's 'living art gallery', Italy has more culture than you can shake a paintbrush at. In fact it's fair to say that if something can be painted, played, eaten, sang, sculpted or written about, the Italian's had a hand in elevating its appreciation to the highest art form.

The world has much to thank the Italians for Writers from Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Livy and Cicero to Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Ficino, Mirandola and Vasari all sprang from Italian loins. Modern literary Italian appeared in the 13th and 14th centuries, developing out of its Latin heritage, the country's many dialects and the works of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, who wrote chiefly in the Florentine dialect Dubbed the world's 'living art gallery', Italy has more culture than you can shake a paintbrush at. Whether it's a broken pillar rising up through the linoleum floor of a train station or a baroque church overlooking a cracked antique pediment in the Forum, history and culture surround you.

Outside there are Etruscan tombs, Greek temples, cat-infested Roman ruins, Moorish architecture and statue-filled baroque fountains to gawp at; inside, you can swoon to Roman sculptures, Byzantine mosaics, beatific Madonnas from Giotto to Titian, gargantuan baroque tombs and trompe l'oeil ceilings. More...