Good morning to all of you as we wake up to the New Year! 

This has always been a time of year when people start to think about their summer holidays after the Christmas festivities are out of the way so why not use Italy Review to help with those plans?

Over the past 6 months the website has undergone a huge amount of work with much better content, navigation tools, new photos and lots of new features to help you make the best of your trip to Italy. 

We'll be posting more regular updates this year and to start things off, here's a selection of beautiful photos from last year's travels to help forget those January blues. 

As a bit of fun, how many of these places can you name before we label them?

Hello! Well it's been a busy old time since my last post back in June. It's always been more difficult to update the blog during the summer as my time is filled with running the Ischia Review website. Up until July things were much quieter than usual due to the ongoing restrictions in place to deal with the pandemic but then it all started to change for the better. 

At first it was just the Americans, Canadians and Japanese that were able to travel but most European countries followed soon after and eventually, UK citizens were also able to travel to Italy. Whilst it was all a long way short of what you'd expect from a typical summer, things really did start to pick up in September which felt as normal as any time since the pandemic started. As a very rough estimate, we probably saw around 50% of the pre-pandemic levels of traffic on the website, emails and general interest. 

This was all a far cry from summer 2020 where the numbers were closer to 5 or 10 percent at best. So we're now at another troublesome stage of the year which we've all become accustomed to: the winter. A time of year that's now synonymous with rising case numbers and all of the negative consequences that follow. However, I personally feel a great deal of optimism for 2022; I don't think the pandemic will suddenly just disappear but I think we'll more and more learn to deal with it and not let it stop us doing the things we want to do quite so much.

I really don't want to dwell too much on the pandemic though; yes it's important and the travel restrictions need to be kept up to date with, but the reason you're reading this in the first place is that you're interested in Italy. So, future blogs will of course keep up to date with any important travel information, but the main thrust will be to explore the country and all its beauty. 

For today I'm going to leave you with some photos of Gubbio in Umbria. I visited Gubbio for the second time this summer as I didn't really get a good chance to explore it the first time. Plus, I was able to get some much better photos this time as it was a beautiful, sunny day. 

I've been writing a great deal of new content on the website and with Gubbio I wanted to try and improve the reader's experience by making a few changes to the format. I'd be interested to hear what you all think of the slightly new layout. For example, I've included an itinerary, a more in-depth look at the places nearby and also tried to break up the text with more photo intervals. 

Aside from the Gubbio page, the website has seen an enormous amount of work this year: every single page has been improved in some way but there is a lot more to come on each one still. One of the major developments has been to create a page for every single ferry route originating from Italy and hopefully that will prove to be a useful tool for travellers for years to come. 

I would love to hear from you all with your thoughts about the year ahead, how things might pan out or what plans you may have for next year. So either drop me a line or add a comment to one of the social networking pages if that's where you're reading this from. Take care, a presto. 

Dion Protani

​Thursday 4 November 2021

Good morning on Monday 31st May. It's been a few weeks since my last update and quite a lot has changed in that time. The situation with the Coronavirus pandemic in Italy has improved somewhere between significantly and dramatically. Yesterday there were fewer than three thousand new cases announced and the daily average for the last 7 days was 3,248 per day, down from 4,566 per day for the previous seven days. 

This in some part is down to the continued vaccine rollout but in my opinion, the warmer weather has played a much greater role, just as it did last year. The difference between this year and last year is that we have the vaccines and by the end of the summer, everyone should have been vaccinated and the case numbers reduced to negligible levels. 

A number of restrictions have been or are about to be eased; from tomorrow 1st June it will be possible to eat both indoors and outdoors in the regions marked as yellow zones. As it stands, all but three regions are classified as yellow with the main restriction being the overnight curfew between 23:00 and 05:00. That curfew will be completely scrapped on 21st June. 

However, it gets better; as of today, the three regions of Molise, Friuli Venezia Giulia and Sardinia have been classified as white zones where there is no curfew in place. In those white zones, the only obligations are to wear a mask inside shops or other indoor environments, and outdoors in crowded public spaces. I believe there is a general misconception that you have to wear a mask at all times while you're outside but that's not the case and absolutely impossible to enforce anyway. This particular rule is largely down to common sense and whilst the virus still hasn't completely been eliminated, it makes sense to continue to exercise a little bit of caution in every situation. 

Whilst there are just three regions classified as white zones today, a series of others are set to follow suit next Monday if they continue to follow a similar trajectory. 

I think it's fair to say that things are really looking positive in Italy at the moment; unfortunately there's still a great deal of uncertainty elsewhere, particularly in the UK which was leading the way a few weeks ago but now wrangling with the so-called Indian variant. There's a hope that with the vaccination programme in the UK having reached around 75% of the population with one dose and almost half with both doses, that the effects of this latest variant can be kept at bay.

In the last few weeks we've been seeing an increasing number of American tourists flying in on the daily Covid-free flights to Milan and the thrice-weekly services into Rome. The initiative seems to be working really well so far and is helping to kick-start the summer season after so many difficulties. 

Below is a full summary of the latest restrictions.

Last updated: Sunday 30th May 2021 at 18:19 CET

Key: Purple shows an improvement and orange a deterioration

Number of new coronavirus cases in Italy today: 2,949 ​- decrease of 1,045 from equivalent day last week (Sunday 23rd May - 3,994)

Number of people currently infected in Italy: 238,296 (decrease of 3,670 compared to previous day)​
​

Weekly Comparison

Total number of new cases in the last 7 days (24th - 30th May): 22,737

Total number of new cases in previous 7 day period (17th - 23rd May): 31,962

Weekly difference: decrease of 9,225
​

Average New Cases Per Day

Average number of new cases per day in last 7 days (24th - 30th May): 3,248

Average number of new cases per day in previous 7 day period (17th - 23rd May): 4,566


R number (rate of transmission)

Latest R number as of Friday 28th May: 0.72

Previous R number: 0.78

Colour-Coded Zones with rules for each Region in Italy

As things stand today, Italy is split into four areas, colour-coded according to the prevalence of the virus in each region. 

Overview of Current Restrictions

Curfew between 23:00 and 05:00: applies to regions in red, orange or yellow zones but will be scrapped on 21st June

Green certificates: available to people who have had both doses of a vaccine or the single shot J&J vaccine, people who have been infected with the virus and recovered or anyone who can provide a negative test taken in the previous 48 hours. The vaccination element of the certification is valid for 6 months after the date the full vaccination status was achieved. ​

Colour-Coded Zones

Red Zone: Restaurants and bars closed except for takeaways and home deliveries. Non-essential shops closed.

No regions currently in the red zone

Orange Zone: Shops can open but restaurants and bars must remain closed except for takeaways and home deliveries. Non-essential shops can open. 

No regions currently in the orange zone

Yellow zone: Shops, bars and restaurants can open for outdoor and indoor service. All shops can open. Movement between regions permitted without the need of a green certificate. 

Abruzzo
Basilicata
Calabria
Campania
Emilia Romagna
Lazio
Liguria
Lombardy
Marche
Piedmont
Puglia
Sicily
South Tyrol Province
Trentino Province
Tuscany
Umbria
Valle d'Aosta
Veneto

White zone: No restrictions (except for social distancing and face masks in shops, restaurants and crowded public spaces)

Friuli Venezia Giulia
Molise
Sardinia

On my last blog I spoke a little bit about some of Italy's quirky towers; for today I'm going to leave you with some images of the country's most beautiful cathedrals. Let me know which are your favourites!

​Back with more soon.