18 DAYS
Milan / Stresa / Turin / Genoa / Parma / Bologna / Verona / Padua
One of the most beautiful landscapes on Earth, with lights that seem to be created especially to illuminate its palaces, squares, hills and rivers.
The northern of Italy is largely a fertile plain occupied by the Po basin and its tributaries, valleys and slopes. Culturally rich, with a light that seems especially created to illuminate its palaces, squares, hills and rivers, it is also the most developed and industrialized region in the country, where 60% of the population is concentrated. Large urban centers, small towns and charming villages are only a few kilometers away, separated by lakes of sublime beauty, green hills, fields and rivers.
The various Indo-European populations that inhabited the region ccomprisedCelts, Etruscans, and Gauls, but all of them inevitably fell under Roman power. Cities like Milan or Ravenna became capitals of the Empire after the division into western and eastern halves. Assets of power became very important religious and political centers. But the prosperity of the Italian north collapsed with the Germanic invasions and the settlement of various Goth or Lombard peoples. During the long period of the Middle Ages, Padua and Mantua were counted among the cities that could be organized as autonomous communes. The mercantile power conflicted with the Holy Roman Emperor to maintain its rights and privileges. This is the case with the mighty Republic of Genoa. Bologna, meanwhile, was under the pontifical domain. In all these cities, commercial and cultural activities flourished thanks to the ambitious politics of the local dynasties, the role of the religious and the active influence of thinkers and artists. Architects and urban planners accompanied the growth of the cities, which as they prospered and grew, they were transformed into seats of opulent Renaissance courts, as is the case of Parma. After Florence, the northern region of Italy was the first important center of Italian art during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. With the beginning of the Modern Age, all these city-states lost their independence and fell under Spanish or French domination. It was not until the second half of the 19th century that nationalists and monarchists allied under the House of Savoy promoted the unification of the Kingdom of Italy. Turin, the political enclave of Piedmont, naturally became the new country’s capital.
