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Italy
Travel Information |
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Before you leave, it may be worth calling the Italian State
Tourist Office (ENIT, www.enit.it ) for a selection of maps and
brochures, though you'll have to be persistent to get through on
the phone and bear in mind that nearly all of the same bumph can
easily be picked up in Italy.
Useful internet addresses
Italian Web sites have proliferated in recent years and provide
a wealth of information; we've listed a few of the more useful
ones here. For the Internet addresses of the major travel and
accommodation organizations, see the relevant sections.
Football www.football.it League tables, news and links.
In Italy www.initaly.com Travel tips, campsites, services and
etiquette.
Italian Ministry for Arts and the Environment
www.beniculturali.it Museums, temporary exhibitions,
performances and so on - in Italian language only.
Italian State Railways (FS) www.fs-on-line.com Timetable
information in Italian and English.
Italian Yellow Pages www.paginegialle.it Online phone book.
Italian National Parks www.parks.it Contacts and wildlife
information.
Italytour 68 www.italytour.com Shopping, fashion, trains and
hotels.
Museums www.museionline.it Links to museums and exhibition sites,
dates, events.
Opera www.operabase.com Listings and contact details for the
country's major venues.
Venere www.venere.it Probably the best site for accessing the
Web pages of those hotels that have them - and booking rooms
online.
Weather www.meteo.it Forecasts - in Italian, but with self-explanatory
symbols.
Tourist offices
Most Italian towns and main city train stations and airports
have a tourist office , usually known as an APT ( Azienda per Il
Turismo ) or just ufficio turistico , and signposted by the
standard "i" symbol. Note that not all places with the symbol
are impartial information offices, however, and that not all
information offices are called APTs; there are any number of
acronyms, including EPT ( Ente Provinciale per il Turismo ); IAT
( Ufficio di Informazione e Accoglienza Turistica ); and AAST (
Azienda Autónoma di Soggiorno e Turismo , a smaller local outfit).
When there isn't one of any of these, there will sometimes be a
Pro Loco office, usually run by businesses in smaller villages,
which will have much the same kind of information but generally
keep much shorter hours. All of these vary in degrees of
usefulness, and apart from the main cities and tourist areas the
staff aren't likely to speak English. But you should always be
able at least to get a free town plan, a list of accommodation
and a local listings booklet in Italian, and some will reserve
you a room and sell places on guided tours.
Opening hours vary, but larger city and resort offices are
likely to be open Monday to Saturday 9am to 1pm and 4 to 7pm,
and sometimes for a short period on Sunday mornings; smaller
offices may open weekdays only, while Pro Loco times are
notoriously erratic - some open for only a couple of hours a day,
even in summer. If the tourist office isn't open and all else
fails, the local telephone office, most hotels, and bars with
phones should all have a copy of the local Tuttocittà (a
supplement to the main telephone directories), which carries
listings and phone numbers of essential services, adverts for
restaurants and shops, together with indexed maps of the
appropriate city.
Italian state tourist offices abroad
Note: ENIT is on the Web at www.enit.it
Australia : contact the consulate, Level 45, 1 Macquarie Place,
Sydney 2000, NSW (tel 02/9392 7900).
Canada : 1 Place Ville Marie, Suite 1914, Montréal, Québec H3B
2C3 (tel 514/866-7667); 175 Bloor St East, Suite 907, South
Tower, Toronto, ON M4W 3R8 (tel 416/925-4882);
www.italiantourism.com .
Ireland : 47 Merrion Square, Dublin 2 (tel 01/766 397).
New Zealand : apply to the embassy, 34 Grant Rd, Thorndon,
Wellington (tel 04/473 5339).
UK : 1 Princes St, London W1R 8AY (tel 020/7408 1254). USA : 630
5th Ave, Suite 1565, New York, NY 10111 (tel 212/245-5618;
brochure requests tel 212/245-4822); 500 North Michigan Ave,
Suite 2240, Chicago, IL 60611 (tel 312/644-0996; brochure
requests tel 312/644-0990); 12400 Wilshire Blvd, Suite 550, Los
Angeles, CA 90025 (tel 310/820-1898; brochure requests tel
310/820-0098); www.italiantourism.com
Maps
The town plans we've printed should be fine for most purposes,
and practically all tourist offices give out maps of their local
area for free. However, if you want an indexed town plan, Studio
FMB cover most towns and cities, and Falk and Touring Club
Italiano (TCI) also do decent plans of the major cities. The
clearest and best-value large-scale commercial road map of Italy
is the Michelin 1:1,000,000 one; Michelin also produce 1:400,000
maps covering the whole of Italy, including Sicily and Sardinia,
which are equally good value. There are also the 1:800,000 and
1:400,000 maps produced by the Touring Club Italiano, covering
north, south and central Italy, although these are a little more
expensive; TCI also produce excellent 1:200,000 maps of the
individual regions, which are indispensable if you are touring a
specific area in depth. Alternatively, the Automobile Club
d'Italia issues a good, free 1:275,000 road map, available from
State Tourist Offices. Local tourist offices also often have
road maps of varying quality to give away.
For hiking you'll need at least a scale of 1:50,000. Studio FMB
and the TCI cover the major mountain areas of northern Italy to
this scale, but for more detailed, down-to-scale 1:25,000 maps,
the Istituto Geografico Centrale series covers central and
northwest Italy and the Alps; Kompass also publish these areas
to the same scale. The Apennines and Tuscany are covered by
Multigraphic (Firenze), easiest bought in Italy, while Tabacco
produce a good series detailing the Dolomites and the northeast
of the country. In Italy, the Club Alpino Italiano is a good
source of hiking maps; we've supplied details of branches
throughout the Guide.
Bookstores and map outlets
To begin, select a topic in the navigation bar to the left
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