One of the great romantic ideas in life can be the dream of a trip to Italy by themselves. We are the star of our movie, we are drifting through the sun-filled scenery on a Vespa, we find an anonymous trattoria in one of this little alleys, we have the final moment of enlightenment, contiguity with a Renaissance masterpiece. It is an adventure and self-discovery in equal parts. Yet, the truth, as any wanderer of the mid-2020s can testify, turns out to be very much a rude awakening. This dream can turn becoming a nightmare so fast when confronted with the sheer and overwhelming demand of modern mass tourism. Finding a way through the choking tourist hordes around the Colosseum on your own, trying to squeeze yourself into the corner of a restaurant where you can sit and eat a meal on your own else having the feeling of being lost and alone, in the melee of the St. Marks Square in Venice, is frightening and a very lonely experience. It makes you tend to question whether Italy in its present-day and condition is even okay by the solo adventurer. I am going to tell you, each fibre of my being that the answer is a yes, yes, yes. As a matter of fact, I think that Italy is even one of the most sublime places on earth in which to make a single trip, provided you are prepared to pass one condition, namely — to be very careful not to see the Italy of the post cards, but to ensure that you get at the less noisy, more spiritual type of country which is just beyond the radar-scope of the populace. The fact that you are a single traveller does not work against you in this quest, it is your one and only superpower. It gives you freedom, nimbleness and openness needed to discover an Italy which is personal, authentic, and completely unforgettable.
The initial one is to liberate the freedom that travelling by yourself gives you. You are not at the mercy of compromise, and you do not have to do any bargaining over itineraries or please anybody in the world but you. This liberty is the key to opening a decongested Italy. Groups are heavy footed and predictable whereas you could be quick and unpredictable. You can wake up and unless you choose to do it, get on to a local train to a place you have never heard about, because this name sounds so good. You can dash to pieces a day of planning to read in the sun-patched piazza that has got possession of you the afternoon. This gives you flexibility to operate what I may term as one step over rule with ease unsurpassed. Rather than fighting the traffic and the tour buses of the Amalfi Coast, you can use with ease the local bus and ferry system to get the peaceful Cilento Coast to the south and receive back the hospitality and the solitude of small fishing villages like Acciaroli or Santa Maria di Castellabate. Another way is to avoid the crowds on a group tour of Tuscany and arrive by quiet train to the centre of Umbria, staying in one of the small towns such as Spello or Bevagna, and spending your free days walking through antique olive groves and fields of vines at your own speed. This tactic is strengthened a hundred times when strategic timing is added into it. The idea of not being disturbed by people is not that you get on holiday on the shoulder time in spring or autumn; as a solo traveller it is about making a connection. In May or in October the local Italians are more relaxed, less hustled by the summer crowds. The small cafe owner can afford to engage you in conversation about what is happening in the area, the craftsman can happily tell you about his skills in his workshop and it is not the exact replica of a mass tourist prospectus, you are not that sort of tourist, you are an individual, a different person, someone more interesting to ask and tell. This leaves room to the sort of honest human communication that is the real gold of any solo trip.
However, of all the decisions you can make that will shape your solo experience, the one you make concerning accommodation may be the most important because choosing the wrong place may mean that you spend your evenings in an impersonal vacuum or in a home-like atmosphere. This is the reason why the Italian agriturismo is a heavenly present to the solo traveller. Agriturismo is even a farm that also houses people and gives them a room to sleep in, but it is more than that. It is a call into family life and into the land. Then think of spending a week in an olive farm in the hills of Puglia. You wake to the sounds of countryside, a breakfast of homemade bread, jam made of their fruit trees and cheese made by a neighbour. This will be taken care of by the owners who are mostly resident in the premise treating you not like a customer, but a guest in their house. They offer an excellent security and a friendly and carefree atmosphere. Several agriturismi provide family dinners, at long tables, with the family members and other guests, telling amazing stories, and sharing fantastic home-made food. These dinners are the best remedy to possible loneliness on the part of a solo traveller because they can find instant community in the most natural way conceivable. This spirit is much recaptured in the family-grown pensione or guesthouse in the towns and smaller cities. Should you go with one of these, instead of a giant, soulless hotel, or some sterile Airbnb apartment, you get an individual touch. The owner will know your name, make sentiment suggestions about where to go so as to go to their favourite local places, will give you a tender feeling of supervision and attention, which is so endearing when you are moving alone through a new place. To the more contemplative nature a stay in a monastery is a one of a kind and most peaceful type of retreat to a sure and clean quiet room within a perfectly calm building that is surrounded by centuries of history and calm.
In the scenario of dining alone is one of the biggest fears of most first-time travellers going alone. This can be especially intimidating in such a social and food-oriented culture as the Italian one is. However, dining alone in Italy does not necessarily need to be a lonely experience but it can be as well a silent observation, a gastronomic breakthrough, or an unexpectedly social occasion. It is all about where and how to consume foods. When you just want a simple lunch then find a tavola calda or a rosticceria. They are noisy, casual dining facilities offering cafeteria services of hot, tasty and home-cooked locale. You just point to what you think is nice, be it some roasted vegetables, piece of lasagna or grilled chicken and pay by weight or by the item. It has no fancy waiters, no stress and you can experience the most delicious, authentic food, surrounded by the locals during their lunchtime, with just a few euro in your pocket. The other one of your favorite friends is the sacred tradition of the aperitivo. All restaurants and bars in Italy start a deal that starts approximately since 6 PM; when you purchased a drink, which can be a glass of wine or Aperol Spritz, you get allowed to visit a buffet of snacks. In others, it may be so large, including pasta salads, cured meat, cheeses, and little pizzas, that it can be used as an easy dinner. It is a vibrant lively social setting where you may stand in the bar or sit on a table-for-one with nary a glance so as to absorb the local flavor and get your low-cost meal. Go to a restaurant with care when you really feel like a sit-down dinner. Stay away of big tourist oriented venues in the central piazza. Rather, take a few blocks off and go down a small, little used side street and seek out a tiny, intimate trattoria with a hand written menu in Italian. Enquire whether you can eat there in case they have a small bar. Take some book or journal. Do not use the time to feel awkward, use the time to taste each morsel of food you put into your mouth, use the time to listen to tones to the language you hear and use the time just to be there. Spending a day or two in a small town you may even turn into a regular, who would find recognition in the smiling face, as to leave a solitary dining off the menu and make it a welcome item of your daily routine.
Further than the logistics of accommodation and meals, a true solo trip in Italy can be characterized by activities you decide on, many of which are well matched (and better) to the situation of loneliness. The natural geographies of Italy provide an ideal scenery to traverse on its own. A hike on its own, on marked paths in the Dolomites or on the hilly landscape of the Tuscan countryside is perfect. The ability to walk as slowly as you want, to pause at any point to enjoy the view and the calm sense of walking alone in the wilderness can be most restful. The next and a great tip concerning the solo traveller is to base your trip on something new you can learn. As soon as you sign up for a week-long language course in a place like Lecce or Bologna you have a daily schedule, a little community of other learners and a talent that will enrich your attachment to the country beyond measure. In the same way, a practical cooking lesson, a ceramic workshop in a place such as Deruta or a watercolour painting course enables you to experience the culture with a different kind of participation where the difference in the cultures is based on joint interests. The utmost solo of all, perhaps, is the lovely, artistical knack of doing nothing. There is a chair to be found in some lovely, out-of-the-way piazza, maybe Piazza Santo Stefano in Bologna, or Piazza dei Signori in Verona. Sit, down with a coffee, open your journal, or leave it altogether. Just watch. Look at the nonnas talking on the benches, look at the children running after pigeons, look at the beautiful locals taking the evening exercise, the so-called, passing. This is not a loss of time; that is exactly what your trip is all about. It is a kind of active listening, cultural immersion, in which you take in the more hidden subtleties of everyday life that often goes by in a blur on the way to the next monument. There is nothing so good to enjoy but without being encumbered by the fellowship of a friend, and so be it a silent conversation betwixt yourself and the soul of Italy. This is the Italy that you can find on your own which is not similar to the one that you have observed in the flossy magazines. It will be less noisy, less assertive and much more personal. It will be tasted in the form of a tomato that is picked up by the farmer and handed to you at an agriturismo, in the laughter at an unfamiliar face at a local festa, in the eerie silence of a mountain passageway and in the silent joy of finding your own way through an unknown city. The mob will be a far-away rumour, an alternate parallel, which you have sexily dodged. What you will have instead is space, bonding and an Italy that seems all yours.
Being in Italy is one thing and making it yours is another. It is one thing to be in a corner which is peaceful and quiet and another thing to start creating a story which is uniquely yours in the ancient fabric. It is a way of how to make your journey not be based on a list of places that you have to visit but on being a journey of self exploration, a story, which you yourself base on a series of curiosities that you have. It is a form of travel that can remain almost unique to the solitary adventurer, as it needs the type of concentration and conjuncture that hardly can be obtained with a companion. In place of a walk-around-and-see-what-there-is-to-see visit to Tuscany, you could have an architectural vacation to see the genius of Andrea Palladio, parading his villas through the Palladian region of Veneto. This search would not take you to urban centers, which are characterized by large concentrations of population, but on rural paths where you can decorate your days with more fulfilling endeavours than tourism. You would simply start viewing the scenery as not only beautiful, but as a practical component of an architectural design. Or, you might trace after the path of some author, in case you are a lover of literature. Think walking in the footsteps of Elena Ferrante in Naples with her fiery, colourful neighbourhoods or the places which inspired D.H. Lawrence in Sicily. This gives the sense of story enterprise to your experience, making all the streets and vistas in it a page of a book you loved and read multiple times, and giving depth to your travels.
This narrative style may also be a culinary style and this is where the solo traveller can give his best. You can give yourself a micro-quest, a quest to the best exemplar of just one Italian speciality; instead of simply trying to find good food in general. Consider going to Sicily to search for the best cannolo just to have a pleasurable journey with the sole reason of seeking the best cannolo. The adventure would take you deep away the main tourist spots, to little bakeries in the secluded hilltop villages where you would have never gone without trying to find the bread. It would compel you to interact with the locals, to request of their advice, to understand why ricotta, candied fruit, crispy shells differ in one village to the other. You would not only be eating, but you would also be having delectable research and each conversation would guide you on your treasure map. Likewise you might follow the history of a particular wine, in our case, the noble Nebbiolo grape of Piedmont. The solo traveller has a chance to go to small and family wineries that would not be able to host large numbers of people. You can go into the winemaker, someone who has been managing the same vineyard as his grandfather, and listen to his tale. This turns the basic act of wine tasting into the rich cultural exchange. It is a lovely way of organizing your days and it assures you above all that you will be directed onto this journey by a passion that will bring you to the most authentic, and uncrowded corners of the country naturally.
More than establishing their own personal quest, the most profound aspect of authentic solo travel in Italy is figuring out how to attune to its interior ciclicity, the most dominant of which is to attune to the art of il dolce far niente (the sweetness of doing nothing). It is not laziness, but in fact a very deep and thoughtful participation in observing and being present. A single traveller gets the ability of time freedom that is not burdened by the necessity to entertain or feed other people. You need to be able to use this time not only to get to see more things, but more intensely. This implies spending a whole afternoon in one, small piazza. You do not just go through it You live in it. You purchase some newspaper which you cannot read in full, you order some coffee and watch how the life of the square plays around you. What time of day you spied the old men assemble to their card game, how the light fell on the facade of the church, what the sound of the swallows was in the dusk. You blend with the scenes and in the process you divulge the secrets of the scenes. This is applied to even adopting the Italian daily routine as opposed to fighting it. You will soon find that most shops shut down towards 1 PM to 4 PM in the afternoon to have a long lunch break, or riposo. It can be viewed not as an inconvenience, but as an invitation. Here you have a chance to eat a long, luscious lunch yourself, to go back to your room and have a nap, or to read in a shady park bench. When we attune ourselves with this rhythm, the frustration dissolves and one feels the feeling of peaceful integration.
Auxiliary to this art of doing nothing, is the art of the conversation. A simple human interaction can be the best moment of the day of the solo traveller. You have to make your mind forget that conversation is a means, but a goal. You are lonely and that is good because people will hear your story (you are an interesting subject). Take advantage of this. You should ask a shop-keeper the direction even when you are aware of the direction. Comment to an old lady to some beautiful flowers that she has in her balcony. In an unbig city your honest interest in their house meets in great warmth and pride. It is these little, courageous links which come to bind a person with the social life of a place. This applies to even the manner of eating. You will find out that the so called table-for-one is not an indicator of loneliness but a place of power. In an overcrowded trattoria you can sit you more easily, and maybe at a small corner table where you can enjoy the spectacle of the kitchen and dining room drama. You will get to know how to be a transient regular at a neighborhood coffee bar. The first day has you as a stranger. The second deserves the nod. On the third day, the barista may already know your order, the ‘cappuccino e cornetto’, and be calling out to you, as you enter the door to say, ‘Il solito?’ (The usual?). This basic line is a gift. It is sense of belonging to something and is what can turn a solo traveller feel home too, even though he/she is thousands of miles away.
To the genuine and avant-garde traveller who wants to leave the throng well behind, the road has to arrive finally at the far south and the lost islands, the ultimate borders of crude, untouched natural beauty, Italy itself. And they are no places of smooth comfort, but are lands of deep history, fierce pride and an almost overpowering sense of hospitality. Travel to Calabria which is the toe of Italy boot which has a rugged mountainous interior and is lined with an awe inspiring coast which is called the Coast of the Gods. You will find here some villages dating to ancient times whose inhabitants still speak a dialect of Greek, or the weird and wonderful.
There is less infrastructure, a slower pace of travelling but, the gains are immense. As a solo traveller you will be accosted with equal measures of curiosity and extreme generosity, a guest to be honoured. Travel off the blingy Costa Smeralda into the heart of Sardinia. This is the land of shepherds, archaic stone villages that look like a dry stone fortress the Nuraghes, the occasional pastoral nuragic village, and a sensibility that seem to make this island different than the rest of Italy. You are able to stroll dawn the wild green slopes of the Gennargentu National Park, or the deserted the beaches of the western Costa Verde. This island belongs to self-reliance of spirit, a land which pays off self-sufficiency in immeasurable privacy.
Then come islands that are really remote, locations that you need to invest in just to have access and so they may be undefiled as of yet and not trampled with hoards of tourists. forget the noisy boat-traffic of the Gulf of Naples and turn your eyes toward Pantelleria. Not only is it a rugged volcanic rock island but it is black, and as such is nearer to Tunisia than it is to Sicily and is reflected in the culture. There is the possibility of staying in a traditional dammuso, or stone building with a domed roof which is built to capture rain water, and passing your days in natural hot springs, local Passito wine and experiencing strong African breezes. Or maybe the Tremiti Islands in the Adriatic, a small group of islands with amazing cliffs and luminous waters, the place where snorkellers, divers, and relaxation enthusiasts visit to get the exact peace. To go to these locations-solo, is a sign of commitment. It entails meticulous planning and adventure-spirit. English speakers will be reduced, transport will be less common and there will be reduced creature comforts. The payback is however immeasurable. Here you will find an Italy that is totally unrelated with tourist trail and your experiences here are surely to be yours. These relationships will be stronger because this might be the result of a need to connect and, importantly, of the sincere interest in beforehand unknown people. The tranquility and the scenic beauty will be more startling. Here at last, in these unnoticed retreats, these final and faithful remnants of wild Italy, this is where the journey of the solo traveller hopes to achieve its greatest and most complete fulfilment in terms of the idea of authenticity. This is not only an escape that will break you out of the crowds, it is also a discovery of a world you never thought existed and this will be with you long after you are back home.
