Italy Review Blog: Tuesday 20th April 2021

Good morning on Tuesday 20th April. Football continues to hog the headlines in Italy with lots more conjecture about the planned breakaway league while more meetings are planned to combat the Coronavirus pandemic. 

The Italian government and the different regions will decide on the best way to ease the current measures today and it is hoped that by Monday next week, twelve regions will be able to enter the yellow zone of reduced restrictions. The really big change there is that in the yellow zones it will be possible to move between regions; unless of course they're really crafty and put yellow regions next to red ones which would be like a really big game of Connect 4!

Yesterday in Italy there were 8,864 new cases of Covid-19, a small drop on the same day from the previous week and in general things are heading in the right direction. For the first time in a long time the number of cases in the previous seven days dipped below 100,000 and the overall number of people currently infected dropped below half a million. The remaining testing and vaccination stats are all on the home page. 

As the rest of the news today is mainly political or in the case of the football, international, I'm going to skip straight on to the weather. Rome was covered in a blanket of white yesterday after a fierce hailstorm and this is very much indicative of the unseasonal conditions we're currently experiencing. It will at least be sunny today though with Catania the warmest at 17° Celsius and Turin up to the dizzy heights of 9° C.

Today's photos come from Tuscany and a series of hill towns just to the north of Siena. The most famous of all the Tuscan hill towns is San Gimignano, dubbed the Medieval Manhattan. It earned that moniker for its skyline of medieval towers of which there are 14, although there were once 72. San Gimignano is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site, largely for retaining its historic appearance. One of the major sights in the town is its main church: the Collegiata di Santa Maria Assunta with its incredible collection of frescoes and there are numerous other churches around the town that can boast similar mastery of the art form. 

Despite the town being relatively small and the main sights all being within a short walk of each other, you do still need a full day to see everything. In fact there's a good deal more to see in the local area with nearby towns including Volterra, Colle di Val d'Elsa and Monteriggioni. San Gimignano is a popular day-trip from Siena which is a 45 minute drive away. 

That's all from me today, I'll be back with more tomorrow.

​Ciao.