Italy by Rail

A Saturday in February, at the Gare de Lyon. The idea is simple: to reach Sicily without ever boarding a plane, chaining trains from one end of Italy to the other.

The Alps behind us, the Lombard plain, then Pavia, once capital of the Lombard kingdom. In the courtyard of its university, one of the oldest in Europe, Alessandro Volta watches over the students; the brick Romanesque churches hide vaults painted with stars, and the Ponte Coperto spans the Ticino in the low winter light.

A few minutes north by train, and the charterhouse rises out of the fog. Founded in 1396 by Gian Galeazzo Visconti as his family’s mausoleum, it unfolds a wealth of marble and frescoes beneath its starred Gothic vaults; in the small cloister, a fountain murmurs in the monks’ silence.

The train to Rimini, then the bus climbing towards Mount Titano. Clinging to its cliff, San Marino calls itself the oldest republic in the world; its three towers, the Guaita, the Cesta and the Montale, keep watch along the ridge. At night the ramparts light up and the wall walk leads to the Guaita; in the morning, mist swallows the walls and the snow-covered Apennines.

Back down to the coast by bus. Out of season, Rimini belongs to its monuments: the Bridge of Tiberius, completed in AD 21 and still open to traffic, glows over the canal, and the Castel Sismondo, the Malatesta fortress, fades into the evening mist.

The longest day: the train to Rome, then the whole length of the boot to Villa San Giovanni, at the tip of Calabria. There the train does not stop: it is split into sections that roll onto the rails of a ferry, and we cross the strait to Messina in the belly of the ship, carriages and all.

The train follows Sicily’s northern coast to Palermo. At the heart of the city, the Pretoria Fountain and its marble nudes, carved in Florence in the 16th century; above the rooftops, the red domes of San Cataldo and the majolica of San Giuseppe dei Teatini. In the streets, smoke from the grills, market stalls at the foot of the churches, and a stormy sky over the mountains.

In the 12th century, the Norman kings of Sicily set Byzantine, Arab and Latin craftsmen to work side by side. In the Palatine Chapel, golden mosaics answer a wooden muqarnas ceiling; King Roger’s Room is covered in lions and palm trees. The cathedral, the Martorana and the red domes of San Giovanni degli Eremiti complete this World Heritage ensemble.

On the hill above Palermo, the cathedral begun by William II in 1174. More than 6,000 m² of golden mosaics tell the Bible, up to the Christ Pantocrator opening his arms in the apse. In the cloister, the paired columns are inlaid with mosaics, each one different.

A day’s train journey across the interior of the island to Agrigento. Along the ridge, Greek temples of the 5th century BC line up facing the sea: the Temple of Juno, and above all the Temple of Concord, one of the best preserved in the Greek world.

Back to Palermo on the same line: the journey ends here, at the end of the rails, more than 2,000 kilometres from the Gare de Lyon.

September 2010. From the top of Brunelleschi’s dome, then Giotto’s bell tower, the roofs of Florence stretch away to the hills. Below, the Ponte Vecchio over the Arno, Cellini’s Perseus beneath the Loggia dei Lanzi, the nave of Santa Croce; at dusk, San Miniato looks down on the city as its lights come on.

April 2011. Venice in the golden hour: the palaces of the Grand Canal, the arcades of the Ca’ d’Oro at blue hour, gondolas beneath the arches of bridges. From the bell tower of San Giorgio Maggiore, the campanile and the Doge’s Palace stand out against the lagoon.

Across the lagoon by vaporetto. On Burano, the fishermen’s houses compete in colour along the canals, beneath a leaning bell tower; on Torcello, almost deserted, the cathedral keeps a vast Byzantine mosaic of the Last Judgement.

August 2012. Light falls through the oculus of the Pantheon, the vault of Sant’Ignazio opens onto the sky in trompe-l’œil, and Bernini’s Ecstasy of Saint Teresa seems to float in the marble. In the Forum a Vestal still keeps watch; Trajan’s Markets blaze in the golden hour.

Michelangelo’s Pietà behind its glass, the dome seen from below, Bernini’s Glory in the apse; in the museums, the gilded vault of the Gallery of Maps. Then the climb up the dome: St Peter’s Square opens beneath our feet, and in the evening the dome stands out at the end of Via della Conciliazione.

August 2015, the mountains on the Italian side. Monviso, 3,841 metres high, towers over the Cottian Alps; the Po rises at its foot. High lakes, dawn on the ridges, snowfields beneath towers of red rock, and families of ibex watching us go by.

December 2023, a weekend in Bologna, the city whose porticoes are a World Heritage Site. A tightrope walker crosses the sky between the medieval towers; the Two Towers, Asinelli and Garisenda, lean over the crowd. At the Archiginnasio, the wooden anatomical theatre and vaults covered in coats of arms; in the evening, Piazza Maggiore and San Petronio turn to blue.

December 2024, back in Venice on a day of acqua alta: St Mark’s Square becomes a mirror for the Doge’s Palace. In the basilica, golden mosaics and the bronze horses; in the palace, the Scala d’Oro; at San Zaccaria, the flooded crypt doubles its columns in the water.

A short vaporetto hop to Murano, the glassmakers’ island since the 13th century: the glassblower turns his pipe in the mouth of the furnace, and the molten glass takes shape in a few movements.