Rebecca Ann Hughes

White water rafting down one of the highest waterfalls in the world.

Puglia—the region occupying the stiletto of Italy’s boot—has acres of olive groves producing 40% of the country’s olive oil, idiosyncratic conical houses, and nonnas who make fresh pasta on the streets. It also has two long coastlines of contrasting character: the Adriatic side of sheer cliffs and giant rock pools and the Ionian stretch of paradisiacal beaches nicknamed the “Maldives of Italy.”

The region has long been a favorite getaway for Italians themselves, thanks to its hot, dry summers...

BARGA is a town in Tuscany of ochre-coloured houses with terracotta roofs and a Romanesque church shaded by cypress trees.
But as you wander through the narrow streets, you’ll spot Scottish flags fluttering outside windows, waiters with Glaswegian accents, a grocery shop selling Irn-Bru and the odd kilt-wearing resident.
The Tuscan community is dubbed “the most Scottish town in Italy” and earned its moniker after swathes of the population emigrated to Scotland in the early 20th century in sea...

It’s Saturday evening in the Piazza del Popolo, a stone-flagged square lined with ochre and yellow buildings, and people are gathering for the daily aperitivo ritual.
Groups sit around tables and sip on tangerine spritzes while waiters weave among them holding dishes of crisps and olives.
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It could almost be a scene from a Venetian campo, but for the fact that people are speaking in an accent belonging to Emilia-Romagna, the region directly to the south of Venice.
This is Ravenna, a ...

When Venice swarms with tourists, savvy travellers head for its outlying islands – just a waterbus ride away, and miraculously free of crowds and queues.
One such is Pellestrina, a strip of land seven miles long – and as little as 16ft wide at points – which forms a boundary wall between the Adriatic Sea and the Venetian lagoon. Activity here centres around fishing and market gardening, a slower side of lagoon life most tourists never see – and with a nature reserve, wonderful seafood restaur...

Stretching just over 32 miles in length from the foot of the snowy Alps to the sun-drenched Padana flatlands, Lake Garda is the largest body of water in Italy. Its extensive shoreline is a spectacular succession of Roman remains, medieval towns, ancient olive groves and grand villas. The lake has attracted tourism since the classical era, when wealthy Romans came to enjoy the salubrious thermal waters that bubble up along its edge. Today, Garda still exudes the languorous feel of a summery Me...

I’m standing at the summit of Uçhisar castle, the highest point in Cappadocia, Turkey, and reachable by climbing some 120 lung-busting steps.
Surveying the otherworldly landscape of conical rock towers and misshapen stone mounds below, it’s hard to believe this is fertile ground for growing crops.
But an underground natural water reservoir and ashy terrain from prehistoric volcanic eruptions mean fruit and vegetables have flourished here for millennia.
The area is one of the oldest in the wor...

I’m in the cacophonous kitchen of Trattoria da Noemi, a restaurant established in 1958 in the northern Italian city of Ferrara. Maria Cristina Borgazzi, daughter of the titular owner, is demonstrating how she prepares her pièce de résistance.
A thick layer of sweet pastry sits on a wide plate. As I watch, perplexed, Borgazzi deftly piles on cooked maccheroni pasta, bechamel sauce, meat sauce and truffle shavings, modelling it all into a hefty dome. She then takes another chunky sheet of sweet...

One of the most iconic Italian breads is not the traditional loaf you might think it is.

The rustic ciabatta loaf, known internationally as a quintessential Italian bread, looks like it could have crowded beside bowls of hearty stews and fresh farm-picked vegetables on trattoria tables since the Renaissance. But its artisanal appearance belies its surprisingly recent invention. As it became the favorite sandwich bread and a symbol of Mediterranean cuisine in the minds of consumers around the ...

Istanbul, a cacophonous metropolis that straddles East and West, is home to more than 3,000 mosques.
One of these, Hagia Sophia, is the city’s star attraction. It began life as a Christian church, was converted into a mosque in 1453, to a museum in 1935 and then again to a mosque in 2020.
Until this week, entry to the mosaic-spangled religious building was free. Now, authorities have introduced a €25 fee to help fund its conservation.
While Hagia Sophia, a microcosm of the city’s history, sho...

Italy's little-known Basilicata region lays claim to two coastlines, one on the Tyrrhenian Sea and one on the Ionian. You can drive between the two directly in around two hours, but the area has a knack for making travellers pause, stop, detour and digress.
Over two languorous, sun-drenched days, I meandered my baby blue Fiat 500 between the region’s black beaches, cliff-clinging villages, Greek temples and cities of caves. I drove along roads from sweeping highways with sea views to tight sw...

I’m standing at a scrubbed wooden table grating cucumber for tzatziki with a view of a manicured vegetable plot and a soundtrack of bleating goats.
It’s probably not the image that typically comes to mind when you think about a holiday on the Greek island of Mykonos.
The Cycladic hotspot is renowned for its buzzing beach clubs of bacchanalian festivities and jam-packed, whitewashed town centres.
But many local residents and businesses in the hospitality industry want to change what tourism lo...

Residents of Ferrara dine like 16th-century dukes.
Every morning by 3 a.m., at his shop in the northern city of Ferrara, Italian baker Sergio Perdonati recreates a Renaissance bread. Using a 90-year-old starter (which his father managed to save after the bakery was bombed during World War II), he rolls two lengths of dough, one beneath the palm of each hand, until they begin to curl. He then presses the two pieces together at the middle to form an “X” and pops it on a tray with a dozen others...

Budapest, dubbed the Paris of the East, is Hungary's beautiful, bohemian capital. It is well known for its chic cafes and buzzing bars, and these are now helping boost the profile of little-known Hungarian wines.
In the 1990s, Hungary's wine-making scene finally came out from behind the iron curtain after the country's communist regime collapsed.
Tokaji, a sweet white wine, has managed to claim its space on international shelves, but most Hungarian wines remain unheard of outside the country....

White truffles are becoming even more of a rarity as global warming damages their habitat.
Editor’s Note: this story was originally published in The Industry Issue of Life & Thyme Post, our exclusive newspaper for Life & Thyme members. Subscribe today.
As fall brings damp mists and dropping temperatures to the northwestern Italian region of Piedmont, white truffle hunters set out with their dogs into the woods around the city of Alba. Hidden beneath the wet earth are knobbly beige tubers that...