I haven’t done a lot of World Heritage chasing this past year. None, in fact. All of my trips have been to places where easy-to-reach WH sites were already part of my roster. UNESCO did me a small favor by inscribing in July two serial properties that I could claim to have visited, but no other additions to my list took place.
So I planned one journey specifically with expanding my WH coverage in mind. The northern regions of Italy – Piedmont, Lombardy, Veneto – are home to 25 inscribed sites in total. I’ve been to these regions on more than one occasion before and have visited many already. But there was scope for nearly a dozen more to be explored.
In the end, practical considerations of the cumulative driving time and limited November daylight reduced my aggressive plans to only 6 sites. They were supplemented by a 24-hour stay in one of my favorite cities in the entire world, Venice; a couple of less-taxing repeat visits to places like Verona and Bellagio; and time set aside for reacquainting with Milan. Nothing mind-blowing, some old, some new, almost all of it pleasant and worthy of time spent.
Plenty of pictures will come in due time. For a teaser, the village of Barbaresco in the heart of Piedmont wine country.
