Beauty, road rage, and motorways: on the "road" in Italy.

Beautiful roads in Florence

They didn’t design Italian Roads for the feint-hearted. The country’s 130 km/h strade cut deep through snowcapped mountains and slice around valleys like al-dente tagliatelle. Drivers swap serene parmesan coated la dolce vita for cold-blooded fist-pumping automobile musical chairs as they race between Vespa-infested Renaissance cities.  

At least the landscape is nice.

In the bleak English mid-winter my girlfriend and I were craving sun, olive oil and Caravaggio so we impetuously hired a car and planned a route around the best sights of northern Italy. Our parents weren’t impressed. Neither was my driving instructor.

Armed with no more than a hapless TomTom and well-thumbed copy of Lonely Planet we headed off in search of Italy’s picturesque lifestyle. The plan was to sweep through alluring valleys and admire Leonardo da Vinci frescoes as we zipped along in our air-conditioned haven.

Our first impressions weren’t great. At the car hire desk in Verona Airport we were handed an A4 page of scratches, dents, and bumps already notched up on our new car by other wayward travellers. Our haven was more of a weathered Roman battle shield than a modern automobile. Clearly we would need the strength and protection of a Roman tortoise formation to survive the hazards that lay ahead. 

Getting inside the car didn't help to numb our sense of impending doom. While haphazardly attempting to change gear with my right-hand I continued to intermittently stall on an unfamiliar clutch. We bumbled out onto rain-soaked Veronese roads like naive teenagers on their first driving lesson.

Working out where to go next

Our previously unrealised ineptitude became apparent as we swung out of the airport car park and hit our first Italian motorway. I was still struggling with the inverted controls when the unfamiliar air-conditioning system burst into life and steamed up the windows.

A tight cobbled street in Verona

Unable to see anything other than my girlfriend’s fearful grimace, we careered onto the motorway and fumbled past several junctions before gingerly slipping into the city. My previous motorway experience mounted to less than 90 seconds on the M27 outside Southampton. This, coupled with self-induced myopia and a nagging urge to drive on left, made our journey into Verona as nail biting as watching your first child intrepidly saunter off on a stabiliser free bicycle.

Italy’s renaissance masters clearly weren’t thinking about practicality when they designed their stunning maroon tiled cities. The closely intermingled roads don’t leave much room for error and the labyrinthine modern one-way systems lead you through a seemingly endless web of spires, alleys, and cobbled streets.

When we finally brought our car to a halt at our first stop on the trip I felt like I’d completed a gruelling mountain stage of the Tour de France. Less than an hour gone, and with much tougher tests to come, it momentarily dawned on us that our parents weren’t only trying to frighten us when they had warned us about the difficulties of driving in Italy.

Razor tight streets and unfamiliar controls weren’t our only problems. Italian roads bust your wallet. Financed with a few hundred euros we assumed that we would easily eat in comfort three times a day and merrily drink the night away.

Venice: a good place to get a break from Italian roads

Not quite.

All motorways are toll-charged, which quickly eats into your pocket, and most other major roads curve around mountain passes, which quickly drains your petrol. 

Toll charges vary depending on the road and the length of your journey. (Our highest charge was €19 and lowest €3. ViaMichelin.co.uk allows you to calculate the toll charge for your route.) Italy is also one of the most expensive countries to fill-up your car in. While we were there one litre of unleaded petrol cost as much as €1.82. In England you are unlikely to be charged more than €1.40.

Getting petrol can be infuriatingly difficult to do. On Sunday most petrol stations are closed so self-service is your option. Try to fill-up your car on any other day to avoid a headache. There is also limited English translation at Italian petrol stations. What is "unleaded" in Italian? Me neither. It might be best to learn it if you want to avoid choking your car.

Beautiful carpark in Dolo

Food is undoubtedly one of Italy’s greatest charms and the country was the birthplace of the slow-food movement. Italians love to take life at a leisurely pace and fully appreciate the importance of a good meal. Lunch can take hours and daily tasks are undertaken without the red-faced fury of Britain's city-dwellers.

Not driving.

Once you arm certain Italians with a steering wheel and a half-decent gear-stick their inner racer takes over. It sometimes felt as if Italy’s entire road network was used as a training ground for budding Ferrari F1 drivers.

Perilously, these drivers specialise in high-speed straight line drives. Perhaps their driving test is simply a series of motorway speed tests. In the autostrade fast lane a towering Mercedes 4x4 would invariably race imposingly into the rear-view mirror. The driver would then swerve manically across the lane with lights flashing and arms waving until we respectfully vacated the space.  

One of Italy's challenging alternative routes.

On minor roads the fast moving car would attempt overtaking manoeuvres that would make Fernando Alonso proud. A tunnel? No problem. Blind bends? Perfect. A combination of the two? Ideal. Watching these drivers overtake was like watching kamikaze pilots setting off at the targets.

This blind courage in overtaking wasn’t always replicated in other elements of their repertoire. Drivers who flew along motorways bulked at the prospect of a roundabout and gingerly took the third exit at 10 km/h.

Merging wasn’t easy either. Getting onto a motorway was like trying to push into a queue at Waitrose. No one wanted you there. On one occasion we saw a line of five cars patiently queuing for an opportunity to get on the motorway as other cars streamed past and refused to budge. We normally threw ourselves onto the motorway and hoped the approaching driver slowed down or swerved out of the way. They normally did. Just.

Italian road are beautiful. Stunning in places. Jaw-droppingly serene. Unfortunately, there isn’t always time to appreciate them whilst you are dealing with the other hazards that obscure the view. But all the chaos is worthwhile when you do catch a glimpse of the epic landscape over the bonnet.

Tuscan beauty: looking out at San Gimignano from the car. 

Even the motorways are spectacular. The monotonous out-of-town shopping centres and roadside Holiday Inns that pepper Britain’s monochrome motorways are replaced in Italy with sweeping bends over thick forests and searing mountain passes that match anything inside Florence’s Uffizi gallery.

The stretch of the A1 autostrada between Bologna and Florence should be on any Italian roadtip itinerary. Watching the country shift from Emilia-Romagna’s Apennines to the rolling hills and gentle olive groves of Tuscany is an edifying way to spend two hours of your life. It’s a sharply twisting road so watch out for the 110 km/h bends. It’s easy to miss a braking point when admiring one of the many hilltop churches. It happens to everyone. 

Sundays are a good day to tackle the A1 or similarly beautiful motorways. Lorries and HGVs are banned from these roads on Sunday so your drive won't be interrupted by the thundering approach of a 40 tonne truck. 

Another beautiful section of road can be found between Florence and Pisa on Tuscany’s western fringe. Leaving the A11 around Pistoia, head up the spiraling S66 and enjoy the undulating mountain roads before hitting the equally magnificent S12, which leads you straight down into the historic town of Lucca. The route takes less than 2 hours and features a delectable tasting platter of Italian scenery and engineering.

Misty twilight in Emilia-Romagna

Italy’s lakes are also fertile ground for mesmerizing drives. Lake Garda is a stunning mass of water circled by towering mountain ranges. One solitary road lines the edge of the water and meanders through the idyllic towns dotted across the hills. For the best views, tackle the roads clockwise. This ensures you are on the side of the road closest to the water –you will appreciate this when sat in the thick traffic that inevitably clogs the lake’s main artery.

Italy is a mountainous country rich in beautiful roads. Heading off on a detour away from the toll-charging motorway can be a good way to save money for focaccia whilst also finding a few of the country’s hidden gems. Do, however, be skeptical about what your map or satnav considers a road. ‘Unnamed road’ is a synonym for no road.

When attempting to find a beautiful scenic route between ancient Bobbio and tiny Morfasso in Emilia-Romagna our satnav directed us towards a tractor path you might hesitate to walk on. We doggedly clung to the satnav's promise and tackled the jagged ‘road’ but when it descended into an oblique track through a farmer’s estate we knew we were out of luck. The bemused look on the tractor-driving farmer’s face said all we needed to know about the likelihood of our Renault Clio successfully navigating the rest of the ‘road’.

We tentatively turned back but remained determined to press-on down a different path and not retrace our steps. Big mistake number one. We found ourselves on a road littered with more rocks, shingle, and pebbles than you would find on Brighton beach.

On the S12 heading to Lucca.

The car gently skidded down the rocks, and the engine revved and skipped at every attempt to keep it under control. We bounced along as stones smashed against the underbody of the car. I hit the brakes in an attempt to bring the ordeal to a halt. Big mistake number two. We skidded. The car slid chaotically down the rest of the hill before we ground to a halt on an equally unpromising stretch of stones. We were lost. The car was probably dead.                  

After we had recovered our nerves we gingerly headed off again in search of a viable way home. We spotted a promising road at the bottom of a hill and braced ourselves for another bumpy downwards slide. Rollerblading infants would have been more secure than the two of us hurtling down this forgotten corner of the Italian countryside. The car survived and we clattered onto a two-lane road. Other drivers kept a wide berth as the car screeched and puffed more heavily than an out-of-shape jogger at the end of a gruelling run.

Was it worth the trauma? Ancient Bobbio

We pressed on. We were paranoid and convinced the car would spontaneously combust as we tip-toed along the roads. It didn’t. We made it home but never trusted the satnav again.

It’s not really fair to blame the satnav. Italian signs are misleading at best and non-existent at worst. Understanding Alex Samond’s alternative currency proposals is easier than deciphering Italy’s roadside signposts. They’re a mess of contradictory advice and unclear directions.

Finally reaching a junction doesn't provide much salvation. Motorway slip roads twist around each other like dancing lovers. Successfully navigating your way off the motorway takes the precise skill of a bobsleigh team and the blind courage of a ski jumper.

As we headed home, the final stretch of our journey gave us a reminder of every characteristic that makes an Italian roadtrip such an agonizing and exhilarating experience.

One of Italy's gentler spiral junctions. 

When sweeping down the mountain passes and surveying the rolling hills and distant Alps you would be hard pushed to find a more beautiful stretch of road in the world. Hitting the motorway tells you the other side of Italy’s motoring story.

The tussle to Milan is as fierce as any Mafia brawl. Lorries fight for space in the outside lanes, while slick city drivers balance reading the newspaper and sucking on a cigarette with intimidation and harassment. It’s a magnificent mess, but when we hit the indicator for the final time I was glad to be leaving it behind. For now at least.

Driving back through England’s always green and sometimes pleasant land made me realise that I had become used to the erratic driving of my impetuous Italian friends. Joining the comparatively slow-moving and cautious fellow Brits was a relief. 

Vespa-infested renaissance cities. 

A fifteen-day crash course in Italian motoring had steadied my nerves and nullified the hazards of English roads. My ex-driving instructor would have been proud. I was overjoyed: nobody was kissing my bumper, gesticulating at me, or insatiably flashing me until I pulled over to make way for them. The serenity was in the mind but not in the landscape. Perhaps that is the real dolce vita.

Well, on the roads at least.