Autumn in Italy is What Summer Should Be

This past September, and what foretells to be October, are the Italian summer as I remember it from my Roman childhood.

Mornings are bright and fresh; the day is spent in a T-shirt or dress or bathing suit; and evenings may call for longer sleeves, or perhaps a light sweater — or perhaps not.

Those who associate Italian September and October with a fossilized image of true autumn are not up to date on what two of the nicest months of the year are like here. If the best figs, the best swimming without crowds, the most beautiful light, the thinning of crowds in every museum in Italy (and sometimes a fabled painting or sculpture all to yourself) are not enough, consider the lower hotel prices, the proliferation of extraordinary seasonal sagre — cultural, agricultural, and food festivals — and more relaxed Italians. Those remarkable Italians,  the friends and colleagues I weave into every one of your Plans — Insider’s Italy guides, artisans, drivers, hotel concierges and owners, restaurant owners, waiters, and many more — at last have time to breathe again after an Italian summer that never relented.

Mushrooms are on the menus, as are the early white truffles, but the juiciest and most intensely flavored cantaloupes are too. The grapes are at their best, and to miss the opportunity, as an Insider’s Italy guest, to join in an Italian harvest is to miss one of the richest experiences that early October can offer.

The early olive harvest is on too, in Sicily, and friends will draw you into the experience — and the tasting — of the green, intensely flavored olio novello, with its pepperiness and balanced bitterness, its notes of green olives, fresh herbs, and tomatoes.

To spend a morning exploring some of the finest Greek temples anywhere in southern Europe…

to swim for hours on a beach that is almost entirely your own…

and to return to a feast of the best of summer — every vegetable that the Italian south produces…

accompanied by oil that is only a day old — really, can this be the Italian autumn?

For every region of Italy, I can develop an itinerary that celebrates this season: an autumn-that-is-perfect-summer, drawing into it all of the discoveries I have made during a lifetime of travel and research.

These photos are just a sampling of what Insider’s Italy travelers, and we, have enjoyed this month and will enjoy next month.

Before you begin to plan a June-to-August holiday for next year in Italy, follow the Insiders : let me plan something unforgettable for you for next September and October — something that dances in the mild summer sun.

www.insidersitaly.com