Italy

Italy occupies the Italian Pennisula that juts out from the southern middle of Europe into the Mediterranean Sea. The capital of Italy is Rome, and this magnificent city contains a plethora of historical sites. The most famous of these sites is The Colliseum, the ancient site where early Romans watched the spectacle of the gladiators. Rome contains a multitude of museums and galleries; among those sites are the Galleria Borghese, the Palazzo Doria Pamphili, the Capitoline museums, the Museo Nazionale delle Terme, the Galleria Colonna, and the National Gallery of Antique Art.

Traveling north from Rome, northern Italy contains the cities of Venice and Florence. Venice is a city built on wooden piles on a series of mud flats and islets. The center of Venice is The Grand Canal, which winds through the city with over 300 palaces on the sides of the canal. The best art galleries in Venice are the Accademia, the Galleria Giorgio Franchetti, and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. Florence is the capital of Tuscany, a province located in northern Italy. Florence is the birthplace of Renaissance architecture, and contains a number of excellent examples of this style of architecture. The Pazzi chapel in the church of Santa Croce, the Laurentian Library, and Brunelleschi's Ospedale degli Innocenti are all examples of this type of architecture. Southern Italy is not without its tourist sites; among those sites are Pompeii and Herculaneum. Pompeii was destroyed in a volcanic eruption in the year 79 AD, and the city has since been preserved to show what life was like at the time of the eruption.

 The city was a place where many wealthy Romans had holiday villas, and both Aristocrat and slave died when the city was destroyed by the volcanic eruption. The city contains many public and private frescoes that give the visitor a taste of what life was like during the time of the eruption. Herculaneum was a Roman resort town on the Bay of Naples. Herculaneum is point of interest because it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and it is an excellent example of what Roman life was like at an upscale seaside resort.