After far too long a break, we found ourselves back in Sprezzatura’s spiritual homeland this week. After a couple of years in which travel has been difficult, we spent a few days in Bologna – and much good it did me. It was my fourth visit to the city, which is rather overlooked in comparison with Florence, Venice and Sienna. A business centre it may be, but in some ways all the better for it. Unlike the honeypots, the city is not drowning in tourists, and you do feel as though you are seeing something close to the real place rather than a pastiche put on for visitors. You don’t hear very much being spoken in the streets other than Italian.

While it perhaps lacks the top-division attractions of those other cities, it has plenty of very attractive quarters, and is also a great place just for wandering. Many of its streets are lined with colonnades which make walking a pleasure, shielding both the summer sun and winter rain. And there is an infinite supply of entrancing shops and bars just asking to be sampled. A visit had to be made to the local branch of Boggi, albeit for only a small treat…

It is home to the oldest university in the world, and also some of Italy’s best food. And it has an airport that is a mere 30 minutes away by shuttle bus.

Equally welcome was the fact that despite the current sterling-Euro exchange rate, Bologna is still affordable – again it escapes the ritual milking of the tourist market.

We rented a small but nicely contemporary apartment in a small street right in the centre; the nearest espresso was about 30 seconds away. We were also spoilt for eateries within about a ten minute walk, and just around the corner were the entertainingly chi-chi boutiques of the Via San Felice. Within about five minutes’ walk was the Mercato delle Erbe, an indoor market where cheeses, hams, bread, fruit, vegetables fresh pasta and just about every other culinary product of Italy could be bought – useful for ad hoc lunches.

Most of the sights can be covered on foot in a couple of hours – but the good thing about Bologna, as previously mentioned, is that it is just a great place for hanging out, wandering and people-watching. You don’t really need to be doing very much at all: the free show of great style and the natural vigour of Italian street life are entertaining enough on their own. You can be pretty sure that every classic image of Italian life will come by within a few minutes….

On our second day, we caught the train to Parma, a place to which a pilgrimage has been long-overdue. The hour on the regionale cost a mere £11 return. We were surprised at how low-key Parma is too: another (smaller) very attractive town, but seemingly mostly still ‘owned’ by its locals, with only relatively restrained evidence of its exquisite culinary wares. Nonetheless, insalata parmenese was an indispensible choice for lunch…

You can pack a good amount into a mere three nights away, and the trip proved to be an excellent tonic after the trials of the past two years. And the temperatures still in the low thirties in mid September were welcome too, though we are feeling unseasonably chilly now back home…

It’s always very difficult to know how accurate an impression one is getting when visiting foreign places, and it is all too easy to draw inaccurate conclusions from what are inevitably generalisations, and perhaps not fully realistic ones either. Italy has many difficulties, but its general deficit vis à vis the U.K. has clearly shrunk in recent years: much work has been done to tackle the decline I saw when I first visited in the late ‘80s. Even the trains are much less clapped out than they were, and while I hesitate to admit this, the wider presence of English does make functioning easier than it used to be, when one hadn’t a hope against the torrent of Italian one generally received in return for venturing even a little in their own language…

I wouldn’t dream of living in most cities in Britain: despite their own good progress, they are too often too large, too characterless and too suburban to be pleasurable, with the good bits being out of the reach of ordinary mortals. By contrast, Italian cities throb with down-to-earth vitality, no doubt in large part due to the fact that many people do still live right in the centre. Many of the same urban pressures must exist in Italy too, and yet they still manage to produce places that are chaotic, intense and immensely vibrant, where one could easily imagine living. And it is that verve for everyday good living, rather than its organisational abilities, that makes Italy simply a fantastic, inspirational place.