Articles

The only landlocked region in Italy, Umbria is located almost dead center of the country. There are no metropolitan cities in the region, but the lack of industry is made up for ten-fold by the natural beauty of the countryside and the preservation of early architecture, buildings dating from the Medieval period dotting the landscape throughout the area.

The island region of Sardinia offers up some of the most interesting and unique history in Italy’s already culturally diverse repertoire. From very early on, Sardinia has been a location of sustained and indeed thriving human settlement, and the plants and animals nurtured there for centuries remain staples of the contemporary Sardinian table.

The island region of Sicily is one of Italy's most recognizable names. It's impossible to turn on a television without finding a movie or a show that makes reference – though sometimes skewed and occasionally disturbing – to the closeness and familial nature of Sicilian culture.

From antiquity forward, people have been drawn to the Lazio region because of the prospect of work in or near its most important city, Rome, which has almost always been seen as a place where the poor might be able to change their fortunes. As people migrate to an area, they bring their tastes in food with them, helping to shape the local palate.

The coastal region of Liguria forms a long narrow crescent along the Ligurian Sea towards the northern part of Italy. Four provinces – Imperia, Savona, Genoa and La Spezia – are arranged in a linear fashion along the crescent, each with similar lengths of coastline. A wide swath of mountains protects the area from severe weather, lending to the region’s year-round mild temperatures and plenty of rainfall.

Located at the upper western corner of northern Italy, the autonomous region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia shares its north and east borders with Austria and Slovenia. The region is separated into four provinces: Pordenone in the west, Udine covering the center, with Gorizia and Trieste to the east. Though the province of Trieste is the smallest in the region, it nonetheless houses Friuli-Venezia Giulia’s capital city of Trieste.

The second-smallest region in Italy, Molise was until the early 1960s considered part of the region of Abruzzo. Bordered on the east by the Adriatic Sea, Molise shares the rest of its newly defined borders with the regions of Campania, Lazio, Puglia and Abruzzo. The terrain of Molise rolls gently from seascape to plains then sharply upward into its hilly inland, offering a rich variation of landscapes and food production conditions in a relatively small area.

Located on the southeastern coast of Italy along the Adriatic Sea, the region of Puglia (or "Apulia" in English) makes up the "heel and spur" associated with lower Italy's distinctive boot shape. Now a hearty farming region producing most of the olive oil consumed in Italy, Puglia's food reflects a rustic ingenuity born of a frequently poverty-stricken history.

Basilicata

Home to Monte Vulture, a magnificent dormant volcano, the region of Basilicata (long known as Lucania) lies at the southeastern "instep" of Italy's boot-like southern base. Though the terrain is largely mountainous and forested, Basilicata is home to two brief coastlines on the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Gulf of Toranto. The pastures in the area have benefited from proximity to the volcano, the fertile richness of volcanic soil legendary for making crops thrive.

Calabria

If Sicily is considered the "football" of Italy, then Calabria is the toe of the boot. Since only a thin sliver of water separates these two regions, their histories are closely entwined. Their landscapes and crops are similar, and everything from architecture to cooking methods has been shaped by this area's contact with conquering cultures.