Travel
Italy Revisited—Italian Africa
TN the eighteenth century, Italy was the climax of the grand tour. Again, the visitor to Rome can scarcely fail to experi- ence unique impression of contact with stupendous achieve- ment and nearly thirty centuries of historic tradition. The decade of Fascist rule has made Rome once more the heart and brain of the nation. Between 1870 and 1920 she was in name the capital of Italy ; but provincial and local patriotism was strong : to many Italians, Rome was merely a place to which deputies and deputations went—and came away as soon as possible. Today, metaphorically speaking, all roads lead once more to Rome.
The railway reductions for a return ticket to Rome amount to 70 per cent. of the fare from the frontier station. This " cut" lasts until the end of the Fascist Exhibition in April, when one of 50 per cent. will take its place. The visitor to the Exhibition is entitled to a similar 70 per cent. reduction if he goes on to Naples. Half-fare rates are now obtainable for travellers from this country to all places in Italy.
Sun and blue sky, with air and scenery perhaps unrivalled in Europe, are cheap to buy. No doubt, travel conditions have improved everywhere during the_past ten years. But in no country has the change been more remarkable than in Italy. Whether he sympathi: es with Fascism or no, the traveller will owe gratitude to the Fascist Government for the enormous improvement it has made. Trains are clean and punctual, runny lines have been electrified, gone are most of those smoky tunnels between Genoa and Spezia. Beggars are few. Hotel proprietors show -a general readiness to make reduced terms for English visitors.
This season, Sestri?res has come to the fashionable forefront of winter sport. Oxford and Cambridge matches have taken place there. The place is easy to reach : it lies near the main line by the Mont Cenis route and close to the Franco- Italian border. You can leave London at eleven o'clock one morning, be on the ski-fields at Sestriires the next and lunch later at an altitude of 8,000 feet, a height which, some of us arc glad to know, may be reached by funicular railway.
But those of us who want culture and the South will not stop long so near to the frontier of fairyland. There is the armoury- at Turin to be seen. It ranks with those of Madrid, Vienna, Stockholm and perhaps Valetta as the finest in Europe. There is that astounding group of buildings at flu —Tower ; Baptistry, Cathedral and Campo Santo,—there are the Romanesque churches at Lucca with that strange picture of the Holy Face by which William Rufus swore, there is the necropolis of the Tarquins antlir one travels by Florence–. the cathedral of Orvieto, built to honour the miracle of Corpus Christi, te be seen on the way to Rome. In the capital city itself much has 'changed during the pk,st ten years. The change' has been for the good-. -Without any sacrifice of charm, a great road has been constructed between the Colosseum and the Vittoriano. It links these two immense monuments of the Old and the New Rome. On either side of this- Imperial Way squalid hou3es and alleys have been cleared away and the relics of clagsica14-RoMe exposed in majesty. The trams 1 ay.': gone and traffic noise at night, though certainly not by day, has been subdued. In the Vatican City there are papal stamps and papal money in cir- culation. An electric railway and a fine road, lit at night with fairy lights, links Rome to Ostia and the sea.
Italy lacks coal. This factor has accentuated the electri- fication of the railways, an innovation especially welcome to the traveller in a country with very many tunnels. The new line from Rome to Naples is electric. Shorter than its "pie- deeessor, it misses the great Benedictine Abbey at Moine Cassino and the baroque palace of the Neapolitan • Kings at Caserta. These should be seen on one journey.
Naples is the centre for a Most attractive neighbourhood : Pompeii and Herculaneum, the coast drive from Amalfi- to Sorrento and the inevitable visit to Capri. There is quite a good hotel at the Central Station and a firm determination to go there should carry the foreign visitor past the battalion of rival porters at the station gates.
Beyond Naples is Sicily. Too few make the journey on_ to what is perhaps the loveliest part of European Italy. The journey, with 50 per cent, reduced fares during the -.Sicilian spring is cheap and the new motor-vessels of the Tirrenia line, which sail between Naples and Palermo, are very comfort- able. Moreover they give you two vistas of unforgettable beauty, those two ports from the sea. The voyage is preferable to the journey by land, especially as the express 'trains to Sicily run at night, apparently because the tunnels are many and inconvenient, so that there is nothing to be seen of the beautiful Calabrian coast. -Palerine and Monreale,---Cefalu. Girgenti (now called Agrigento), Taormina and Syracuse are well known as " alpha " places. To them must now be added Enna where from the dining-room of the new hotel more than three thousand feet above sea level, one has a wonderful and immense view, with Etna in the background.
Until recently the Italian journey ended inevitably with Sicily. But now there is an Italy in Africa, -Libya the greatest Italian colony. By a,ir, the journey from Rome to Tripoli can be accomplished in a day. By sea, the Tirrenia line makes the journey from Syracuse in thirty hours with a six-hour halt at Malta to divert the passengers. Once the most barren and backward part of North Africa; Libya has developed wonder- frilly in its short period of Italian rule. Grass grows where it never grew before, there is a first-class hotel at Tripoli and plenty of good small houses throughout the colony. But Libya is more interesting than any other part of the North African coast in so far as it is a recent conquest. The Tripoli Arabs are not sophisticated like thoSe of Tangier and Tunis. They have learnt much in ten years, but they are only recently in touch with Western civilization. The country is full of interest as a study of primitive life and it 'is safe, though the aid of the Italian military authorities must be sought by travellers who wish to go to the far south, the Sahara., Rail- ways are as yet few, but they enable one to reach the Roman ruins at Sabratha and the cliff dwellings at Carian. Leptis Magna may be reached by 'bus. Already, it is perhaps the finest ruin of the Roman Empire—and only one-tenth of the city has, as yet, been excavated. During the spring season, motor-coach excursions run much further south and reach Gadames, where the veiled Tuareg come- in from the desert and, occasionally, the caravans arrive with ivory and ostrich: feathers from the unknown depths of Africa. M. M.
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