Italy has a special place in our heart. When we moved from New York City to begin our adventure, we chose Milan as our home-away-from-home. As a result, Italy is the country we know the best; the breadth and depth of Approach Guides themes with applicability to Italy demonstrate our love for la dolce vita. The food, culture, art, architecture, and history make Italy tough to beat for any culturally-oriented traveler. Buon divertimento!

TRAVEL. DRAW CONNECTIONS.

Buon Appetito! Italian Food Guide

One of the joys of traveling to Italy is experiencing the traditional local cuisine. Unlike America, the cuisine of Italy changes as you move from region to region (even sometimes, from city to nearby city), with each area having unique recipes, specialties and culinary traditions. Our Approach Guide to Italian Food takes you beyond the culinary experience of the typical tourist and gives you the information you need to order like a local. Buon appetito!  Learn more about the typical foods of Italy…

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Salute! Italian Wine Guide

Italy produces excellent wine at amazing prices; however finding that perfect bottle can sometimes be tricky, even for the most knowledgeable connoisseur. Our Approach Guide to Italian Wine invites you to explore Italian wines by helping you quickly and easily choose the best wines at the best prices.  Rather than just tell you what specific bottle of wine to purchase, we give you an approach to finding the best wine based on your own preferences. Salute!  Learn more about the wines of Italy…

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Approach Guides Wine: iPhone App. Approach Guides Wine is the first app that provides a strategy for choosing wines, focusing on what is most important when picking wines (regions, appellations, grape, and vintages). While it works great at home, this guide makes for a great travel companion, informing you of the best local wines in each location (best of all: since it does not use an internet connection, you don’t have to worry about expensive data roaming charges).

The Architecture of Venice

Venice is one of the most architecturally rich, varied, and exceptionally well-preserved cities in the world. Through its position as the maritime trading gateway to the East, Venice made lasting connections with the Byzantine and Islamic empires, giving them exposure to architectural and artistic styles that influenced their own. In this ApproachGuide, we take travelers beyond the guidebook to discover the true treasures of Venice.  Learn more about touring the architecture of Venice…

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Last Supper Frescoes of Florence

The presence of large number of Last Supper frescoes (called cenocoli in Italian) in Florence’s historical city center allows visitors to view several sites over a few hours or a few days, giving them a brief but complete lesson in comparative art history. In this travel guide, we highlight the best of the Last Supper frescoes of Florence (spanning 1335-1645) and look at how they relate to Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic depiction in Milan (1496-98). Learn more about Last Supper frescoes in Florence…

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The Romanesque Churches of Puglia (Apulia)

This travel guide provides detailed reviews of churches in many of Puglia’s most famous towns, including Trani, Troia, Manfredonia, Bitonto, Ruvo di Puglia, Molfetta, and Bari. The Puglian Romanesque architectural style contains many elements of the traditional Italian Romanesque style; however, due to political, cultural and historical factors unique to South Italy, the Romanesque architecture of Puglia is decidedly different: it is less conventional and more tied to the Eastern Christian architectural tradition. Read more about touring the Romanesque churches in Puglia

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The Italian Baroque

The emotionally charged Baroque style first emerged in Rome and then spread throughout the Italian peninsula, with each location bringing to the movement unique architectural elements and sculptural style. Whether you plan to visit Rome, Venice, Naples, Sicily, Torino or Puglia, this guide will draw you into the action as you visit each site.  Learn more about the Baroque sites in Italy

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Ancient Mosaics of the Mediterranean

Because mosaics are a part of a site’s architecture and cannot travel to museums, viewing them is unique to travelers. Mosaic art began as a long-lasting (not to mention an easy-to-clean) floor covering in Mediterranean cultures. Although the first use of mosaics was in the 10th century BCE in Mesopotamia (Turkey), the art form was perfected under the Greeks who created beautiful, highly realistic mosaics that imitated paintings. Some of the world’s greatest ancient mosaics can be viewed in Italy (Sicily, Venice, Ravenna, Rome and Naples) and other areas in the Mediterranean. Learn more about ancient mosaic sites in the Mediterranean…

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Mosaics of ITALY ONLY: Price $9.99 – 43 pages

Buy the Complete Set (Italy, Istanbul & Middle East) for $11.99- 60 pages

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East-West Trade Connections

By the dawn of the 13th century, Venice was the principal Mediterranean link in the Far Eastern spice trade, controlling nearly 70% of the spice market. Although fundamentally economic in orientation, this worldwide trade network spawned vast cultural, artistic and religious exchanges. Use this Approach Guide to discover these exchanges, which served as the underlying (and often overlooked) inspiration for many of the world’s greatest cultural landmarks. Learn more about the cultural connections that you will discover on your trip…

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The Evolution of Christian Architecture

If you plan on entering a church during your next trip to Italy; this is the travel guide for you. This ApproachGuide gives travelers a quick reference guide that complements their travel guidebooks. Now, when a writer identifies a church as the perfect example of, for example, Gothic architecture, the reader can quickly flip through this guide to find the defining characteristics of that style and how it relates to other architectural styles. Read more about the churches you will encounter on your trip to Italy…

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In the heart of every man … there is one small corner which is Italian, that part which finds regimentation irksome, the
dangers of war frightening, strict morality stifling, that part which loves frivolous, and entertaining art, admires larger-
than-life-size solitary heroes, and dreams of an impossible liberation from the strictures of a tidy existence.
-Luigi Barzini “The Italians”

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Note that free previews reveal only a small, yet representative, portion of the content available in the complete Approach Guides document. All images and photos in these Approach Guides and on www.approachguides.com were taken on location by David and Jennifer Raezer.

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