Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 8: Italy, Sicily, and Greece, Part Two

This is time travel in essay form. Here are some of the 19th century's finest minds wandering through the Italy and Greece that no longer exists: Charles Dickens threading through Genoa's warren of cramped, colorful streets, where beauty and squalor live side by side; Hippolyte Adolphe Taine standing transfixed before Milan's marble cathedral, that impossible Gothic jewel suspended in light; guides to Pisa's leaning tower and beyond. These are not tourist brochures but full-bodied encounters with cities that still pulsed with history when these writers arrived. You will read observations that have dated charmingly and others that cut straight through the centuries. For anyone who has stood in these places and wondered what they once were, or for anyone who simply loves the genre of travel writing at its most literary, this collection offers a Grand Tour without leaving home. The Europe it captures is gone forever, which is precisely why it matters.