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MOVING TO ITALY

Eight of the best books to read before moving to Italy

If you’re planning on upping sticks and moving to Italy, there are some reads that can help you get a useful insight into the nuances of life in the country. Please tell us your own recommendations.

Published: 1 April 2024 09:01 CEST
Updated: 6 April 2024 07:44 CEST
Book, Venice, library
A woman reads a book in Venice’s famous Acqua Alta library. Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

If you’d like to leave your own recommendation please tell us in the comments section or via the survey at the bottom of the page.

Il Bel Centro: A Year in the Beautiful Centre

Il Bel Centro (‘The Beautiful Centre’) is a journal-format account of American author Michelle Damiani and her family’s life in the small hilltop town of Spello, Umbria for a year.

The book gives a unique glimpse into what living in rural central Italy is like, exploring local customs, culinary traditions and community lore.

READ ALSO: Nine things to expect if you move to rural Italy

There are also details about the challenges faced by Damiani’s family, ranging from red tape and queues at the local post office to language difficulties and tough decisions about her children’s education.

Living In Italy: the Real Deal

This is an engaging and insightful account of Dutch author Stef Smulders and his partner’s relocation to the countryside south of Pavia, Lombardy.

It paints a vivid picture of the joys and challenges of life in northern Italy, including some amusing anecdotes and observations about experiencing the country as a straniero.

READ ALSO: ‘How we left the UK to open a B&B in a Tuscan village’

For those interested in buying property (and setting up a B&B) in Italy, it stores useful information and lots of practical advice along the way.

La Bella Figura: A Field Guide to the Italian Mind

In La Bella Figura (‘The Good Impression’) author and journalist Beppe Severgnini chooses to do away with idealised notions of Italy, giving a witty tour of the country and of Italians’ subconscious. 

The book explores some of the most paradoxical Italian habits, touching on the places where locals are most likely to reveal their true authentic self: airports, motorways and the office.

As Severgnini puts it, the book is an insight into how life in Italy can “have you fuming and then purring in the space of a hundred metres or ten minutes”.

The Sweetness of Doing Nothing

This book from Rome resident Sophie Mincilli explores the Italian philosophy of finding pleasure in small things, whether that be basking in the sun while sipping on a coffee, being immersed in nature…or simply being idle.

Rome cafe

A waiter serves coffee to customers at a cafe in Campo dei Fiori, central Rome, in 2009. Photo by ALBERTO PIZZOLI / AFP

The book shares suggestions and advice to help you savour life’s ordinary moments the Italian way.

Four Seasons in Rome

This is an account of US author Anthony Doerr’s full year in the Eternal City after receiving the Rome Prize – one of the most prestigious awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

READ ALSO: Six things foreigners should expect if they live in Rome

The book charts the writer’s adventures in the capital: from visiting old squares and temples to taking his newborn twins to the Pantheon in December to wait for snow to fall through the oculus.

There are also very amusing details about Doerr’s interaction with local residents, including butchers, grocers and bakers.

Italian Neighbours: An Englishman in Verona

Manchester-born author Tim Parks wrote Italian Neighbours in 1992, but many, if not most of his observations about the delights and foibles of small town life in northern Italy are just as valid today as they were over 30 years ago.

The book chronicles Parks’s move to Montecchio, in the Verona province, and how he and his Italian wife became accustomed to the quirky habits of their new neighbours.

Parks is also the author of other bestselling books about life in Italy, including An Italian Education, which recounts the milestones in the life of the writer’s children as they go through the Italian school system, and Italian Ways, a journey through Italian culture and ways of life based on experiences made while travelling by train.

Extra Virgin

Originally published in 2000, worldwide bestseller Extra Virgin is an account of author Annie Hawes and her sister’s move to a rundown farmhouse in Diano San Pietro, a small village deep among the olive groves of Liguria’s riviera. 

The book is a fascinating tale of how the two British sisters adjusted to life among olive farmers and eccentric card-playing locals and a window into Liguria’s culinary and social traditions.

READ ALSO: Interview: ‘Having an olive grove takes a lot of guts, but it’s worth it’

Burnt by the Tuscan Sun

In Burnt by the Tuscan Sun (a play on bestselling book Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes) American blogger Francesca Maggi offers a series of humorous essays delving into some of the trials and tribulations of daily life in Italy. 

There are details about Italy’s notorious bureaucracy, bad drivers, quirky local habits and superstitions, and even the beloved mamma of every Italian household.

Which other essential reads would you recommend? Let us know in the comments section below or via the survey.

 

Member comments

  1. I also recommend Jhumpa Lahiri’s In Other Words / In Altre Parole, which tells her story of learning Italian. The book is written in both Italian and English, presented on opposite pages, so it’s also a nice learning tool!

  2. Highly recommend Jan Morris’, “Venice.” A personal view, beautifully written. Per Goodreads: “The classic evocation of Venice, acclaimed as one of the finest books ever written about the city…’Entertaining, ironical, witty, high spirited and appreciative . . . Both melancholy and gay and worldly, I think of it now as among the best books on Venice; indeed as the best modern book about a city that I have ever read.”

  3. Highly recommend the “A Rosie Life in Italy” series by Rosie Meleady, the delightfully written true story of an Irish couple’s move to Italy, purchase of a home, the process of rehabbing it, and their life near Lago di Trasimeno. Available on Amazon.

  4. La Bella Figura: A Field Guide to the Italian Mind was published in 2007, Have things changed much since then, or is it still an accurate reflection of the Italian character?

  5. I recommend two British writers:
    Eric Newby –
    ‘A Small Place in Italy’, about buying, renovating and living in a small cottage in Tuscany.
    Newby was a British soldier captured in Italy by the Germans in WWII, recounted in his ‘Love and War in the Appennines’, about his escape aided by local partisans, including a girl, Wanda, who became his future wife. A beautiful story.
    Tim Parks –
    ‘Italian Neighbours: An Englishman in Verona’ – many simpatico insights into small-town Italian life.

  6. The Dark Heart of Italy by Tobias Jones is excellent – twenty-odd years old but the essential truth of it hasn’t changed.

  7. I thoroughly enjoyed Graham Hoffman’s “Lorenzo’s Vest”. Laugh out loud funny. He’s got a few more titles to add to the collection.

  8. Thin paths by Julia Blackburn

    Julia Blackburn and her husband moved to a little house in the mountains of northern Italy in 1999. She arrived as a stranger but a series of events brought her close to the old people of the village and they began to tell her their stories. Of how their village had been trapped in an archaic feudal system and owned by a local padrone who demanded his share of all they had, of the eruption of the Second World War, of the conflict between the fascists and the partisans, of death and fear and hunger of how they hid like like foxes in the mountains. ‘Write it down for us,’ they said, ‘because otherwise it will all be lost.’

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TRAVEL NEWS

What’s the deal with passport stamping in Italy?

There are clear guidelines in place about who should have their passport stamped when they enter or leave Italy - but the letter of the law doesn't always seem to be applied on the ground. Here's what you need to know.

Published: 20 May 2024 12:56 CEST
What's the deal with passport stamping in Italy?

When you pass through an Italian border control post, officers will check your passport and – in some cases – stamp the date of your entry or exit of the country onto one of the blank pages in the booklet.

Although the system should be clear and simple, it becomes complicated when conflicting information is given on the ground.

Here’s what the rules say, and whether it’s really a problem if your passport is incorrectly stamped.

Who should be stamped?

The purpose of the date stamps for entry and exit is to calculate how long you have been in Italy, and therefore whether you have overstayed your allowed time – whether that is the time allowed by a short-stay Schengen visa or the visa-free 90-day allowance that certain non-EU nationals benefit from. 

Those people who are exempt from 90-day restrictions should therefore not have their passports stamped.

EU passport – people who have an EU passport should not have it stamped, because they have the right to unlimited stays due to EU freedom of movement.

Dual nationals – people who have passports of both EU and non-EU countries should not be stamped when they are travelling on their EU passport. However, because the passports of dual nationals are not ‘linked’, those travelling on their non-EU passports will be stamped, unless they have other proof of residency.

READ ALSO: Can I use my Italian carta d’identità for travel?

Italian residents – the passports of non-EU citizens who have a residency permit in Italy (carta di soggiorno) should not be stamped, because they have the right to stay in Italy for as long as their permit is valid. The passports of UK citizens covered under the Brexit withdrawal agreement should also not be stamped provided they can show some kind of official proof of pre-Brexit Italian residency; in practice, this is often ignored by border agents (see below).

Visa holders – people who have a long-stay visa or a short-stay visitor visa should not be stamped, because they have the right to stay in Italy for as long as their visa is valid. 

Tourists/visitors – people making short visits to Italy who do not have a visa should be stamped, with the stamps keeping track of their 90-day allowance. Visitors from nationalities who do not benefit from the 90-day rule (e.g. Indians) are also stamped.

Most tourists and visitors travelling to Italy will have their passports stamped. (Photo by Filippo MONTEFORTE / AFP)

Travel practicalities

When crossing an Italian border, you should present your passport along with other documents – visa or carta di soggiorno – if relevant. Don’t wait for border guards to ask whether you are a resident.

It should be noted that as a non-EU national, neither your carta d’identità Italian ID card nor your carta di soggiorno are travel documents and they cannot be used to cross borders, not even internal Schengen zone borders. The only valid travel document for a non-EU/EEA citizen entering Italy is a passport. Any other forms of ID – driving licence, residency card etc – cannot be used for travel purposes.

Border problems

While the rules on stamping are simple in theory, many readers of The Local have reported having their passports incorrectly stamped at the border, particularly UK citizens who have been legally resident in Italy since before Brexit and have the right to permanent residency under the withdrawal agreement.

READ ALSO: What to do if you lose your passport while travelling in Italy

Travellers are also often given incorrect information by border guards – for example being told that only holders of the post-Brexit carta di soggiorno elettronica, or post-Brexit residency card, are exempt from stamping, that all non-EU nationals must have their passports stamped, or that only being married to a Italian national exempts you from stamping.

None of these are correct, and Italy is one of a handful of “declaratory” countries in the EU where getting a post-Brexit residency card was optional, rather than compulsory.

In practice, the British government has long recommended that British nationals who were resident in Italy before Brexit should obtain the card as it’s the easiest way to prove residency rights and avoid delays at the border.

It’s also sometimes the case that people whose passports should be stamped – tourists, visitors and second-home owners who don’t have a visa – do not receive the stamp. For frequent visitors this can be a problem because it looks as though they have had a long stay in Italy, due to their exit not being recorded.

The system of stamping itself is also a bit haphazard with stamps scattered throughout the passport book in random order, so border guards sometimes make mistakes and miss an entry or exit stamp and therefore think that people have overstayed when they haven’t.

So how much of a problem actually is it if your passport is wrongly stamped?

It’s one thing to know the rules yourself, it’s quite another to have an argument with a border guard, in Italian, when a long queue is building behind you. Numerous Local readers have reported feeling that they had no choice but to accept a stamp when an implacable guard insisted upon it.

But is this really a problem?

One thing is clear – if you are a resident of Italy then you have the right to re-enter, and your proof of residency (visa or carta di soggiorno) takes precedence over any passport stamps. So it’s not a question of being barred from the country – it can, however, be inconvenient as it might lead to delays at the border while your passport record is queried.

Meanwhile people who did not receive correct exit stamps can be incorrectly told that they have over-stayed and even be liable for a fine. 

Will the new EES passport control system improve this?

Theoretically, the EU’s new Entry & Exit System – which does away with the manual stamping of passports – should get rid of these problems.

However, as we have seen, theory and what actually happens on the ground are two different things.

READ ALSO: How will the new app for Europe’s EES border system work?

The EES system, due to come into effect later this year, brings in two main changes: it makes passport checks more secure by adding biometric data such as fingerprints and facial scans, and it does away with manual stamping of passports and replaces it with scans which automatically calculate how long people have been in Italy.

You can read full details of how it works HERE. 

So that should eliminate the problems of unclear stamps, stamps being read wrongly or passports not getting the stamps they need.

Residents of Italy – carta di soggiorno and visa holders – are not required to complete EES checks and should have a separate system at ports, airports and railway terminals.

However, at present it’s pretty common for border guards to give incorrect information to non-EU residents who are resident in the EU – let’s hope that they are properly briefed before EES is deployed.

Have you had problems with passports being incorrectly stamped? Please share your experiences in the comments section below

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