07 Jul 2019

Souvenir d’Italie for Conde Nast Traveller

Few months ago the magazine I usually work for, Conde Nast Traveller, called to assign me a gig consisting in a “tour d’Italie” with a brand new car, the BMW X7 divided in 7 itineraries, 7 like the number in the X7. The bottom line is to build a special issue, sponsored by BMW of course, where I’ll show a less known Italy trough pictures, taken from any point of view, even using drones and any situation of light. It will be an heavy 15 days journey where I will drive, stop, take pictures and again rolling on the same routine everyday. So, after a stop over at the BMW Italian headquarter in San Donato Milanese, near Milano, to pick up the car, I choose to start my trip from Southern Italy since in the Northern part, at that time, bad weather was striking hard. We are in the month of May and, according to the analysts, we weren’t experiencing such a bad weather in the month of May since 62 years. In fact, in spite of my attempt to escape rain, cold and clouds starting from Southern Italy, I did find violent rain, like in Urbino and even 2 meters of snow around me driving in the Alps where, normally, in this period of the year, I should have found green grass and colorful flowers all over. Anyway, you play the cards you’re dealt, there is no other way. But this journey gave to me the chance to discover new places as well, some of them quite astonishing, like the waterfalls of Varone, Tenno, few kilometers away from the shores of Garda lake. Just to mention one! At the end of the two weeks I finally end up in Milan, final destination of this journey, where I drop off the car, now pretty easy to drive compared to the first days where the gigantic size gave me goosebumps every time I had to park or drive in a narrow alley even though heavily assisted by the futuristic technology. The following pictures are a short sample of this exploration on wheels whose outcome is out now, with the monthly issue of Traveller Summer, a special issue about the beauty of Italy. By the way, the magazine cover is a photo of mine as well, taken in Vulcano, at the Therasia Resort at sunset. And many other pictures about Italian locations in the main issue, are from my trip with the Bmw X7. At the end of this post, you can see a picture of all the covers and issues of this month