One of the many certainties of travel is that a trip to Rome or Venice will have you negotiating your way through crowds of other travellers, competing with them for accomodation and queueing behind them to enter museums and other historic attractions. This is to be expected, of course, given the world-renowned status of these cities.

After a while, however, the throngs of people wear you down, and the sheer business of tourism takes much of the authenticity away from these cities. Is it possible to see a piece of historic Italy without having to share it with thousands of other alien invaders like yourself?

Perhaps it might be worth putting Genoa on your itinerary, and bypassing the larger towns, as recommended in this article.

Located on the Italian Riveria, not far from the French border, Genoa has a history old city, parts of which are recognised on the UNESCO World Heritage List. With a population of only around 600000, it is not a large city by world standards, and doesn’t get anywhere near the amount of tourist traffic seen by its more popular Italian siblings, which makes it ideal for a relaxing trip.

Genoa is served by several InterCity rail routes: Milan (1.5 hours), Turin (1 hour 50 minutes), Florence/Pisa (3:20/2:10), and also by international trains from Nice (3 hours) and Zurich (6.5 hours). Additionally, there are overnight services to Naples and Palermo.

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Continuing the theme we started last week with our look at Venice, we’ll do a round-up of the various articles on Italy that have been cropping up in the print media over the last few weeks. The Melbourne Age has no fewer that four stories on Italy this month, starting with a look at cycling through the hills of Tuscany, moving to the other end of the country to try out some of Sicily’s delicacies and then heading north to a health resort on Lake Garda.

And if that wasn’t enough for you, consider having a look at the new couples obsession in Rome: chaining padlocks to metal posts on Ponte Milvio.

The New York Times checks out the sulfur baths near Viterbo, and later visits Sardinia’s port city of Cagliari. Returning to Tuscany, we have two articles, one from Canada’s Globe and Mail and the other from the UK’s Independent.

In the blogosphere, the Vancouver Sun has been tracking the progress of Stephanie, in Me and my Euro Summer; her Italy coverage starts at day 29, in Florence. Episode 102 of the Amateur Traveller podcast focuses on the Cinque terra and Lake Como.

To round things off, there’s a wonderful photo of Vernazza, from the Why Go blog.

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The world’s oldest film festival, the Venice Film Festival is less than two weeks away, so it’s a good excuse to see what the area has to offer the independent traveller.

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The Sydney Morning Herald has a good article on Herculaneum the ancient Roman city which was, like Pompeii, was destroyed in the 79AD eruption of Mr Vesuvias.

Herculaneum is on Line 1 of the Circumvesuviana metropolitan railway between Naples and Sorrento. The journey takes approximately 20 minutes from Naples, and 50 minutes from Sorrento.

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The New York Times spends 36 hours in Milan.

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