A contemplative wintry misty autumnal drive two years ago that remains in my heart. I love where I live. New England. My region in Massachusetts and the very nearby surrounding towns and villages. Covid lockdown for several months compounded with 2 and a half years of grief makes me long for long drives and photo walks again. Stay tuned.
photography
custom travel itineraries to italy
CUSTOM TRAVEL ITINERARY TO ITALY – click here!
($200 for a basic TRAVEL ITINERARY)
CUSTOM TAILORED ITINERARY:
$300.00 – 5 days / $600.00 – 10 days / $900.00 – 15 days
(other prices can be customized in choose your own package, contact me at: rebecca@romepix.com)
A custom Itinerary: example: 5 days / $300 : Multiple cities, resorts, hotels, any time frame, focus on specific interests and pursuits, tailor made precisely to your tastes and desires. One hour phone or Skype consultation is available by request, but there are unlimited email questions and requests which tend to satisfy most trip goals. Whatever you prefer. I can design your DREAM TRIP TO ITALY. (Rome – with Daytrips).
(including the general:) cross section travel itinerary for Italy including Rome, Florence, Venice, Capri and Amalfi Coast, Naples and Campania and Sorrento, and 4 day trips per city!
What to do, see, eat, drink, and where to stay on trips designed for: 24 hours, 1-2 days, 3 days, 5 days. 7 days, 10 days, 2 weeks, and longer.
Art and museum and architecture recommendations: what villas, buildings, and churches to visit for architecture, art masterpieces like Caravaggio and less well known works, Latin masses, Byzantine decor, choral recitals, special holiday galas, masses in a variety of languages, hidden histories of patron saints, churches built on top of ancient Roman and Etruscan ruins, Gothic churches, and major pilgrimage sites.
How to get past ALL the lines in Rome and Florence for museums.
The five museums in Rome you cannot skip!!
Best times to visit the cities versus the seaside spots.
How to walk the 3000 year old pathway of Classical Antiquity in one day in Rome.
The BEST ROMAN (AND GREEK!) RUINS in ITALY (especially in Rome) in fascinating, historical detail with maps, and a clearcut and fascinating set of walking tours through Pompeii!
Secret spots of Roman Emperors on beautiful islands.
For every budget: Hotels, air bnbs, apartments, rental villas, convents and monasteries for pilgrims, and hostels!
Slow Food Italy: eat authentic Italian cuisine by region, eat seasonally, what wines to drink where and when, the best gelato, cocktails in Rome and Naples, the best cafes in Rome, Florence, and Naples. Best seafood, best chocolates, top ten tea rooms in Italy. How to drink Italian wine and order any local dish with confidence in Rome. Shopping for deals for made in Italy bonafide artisan goods, olive oils, spices, pastas, and more. The best desserts and the best pizza in Napoli. How to get Neapolitan pizza in Rome cooked in a 500 year old oven. The local watering holes and bookshops and supermercatos – for half the cost of tourist spots. How to break your cafe bill in half like a local. FRUGAL BUDGET TRAVEL that is elegant and authentic!
30 best spots to photograph Romantic Rome and top five spots to watch the sunset. Photography tips for capturing the beauty and color of Rome. Swimming day trips from Rome and Naples. Shopping artisan goods: gourmet foods, wines, liquors, sandals and shoes, fashion, hand painted tiles, coffee beans, art, perfume, monastic and convent handmade products, spice markets, cooking schools, souvenirs and mementos. Limoncello and vineyard visits.
Easy to follow, informative, beauty-focused historical art walks of Italy.
Literary and cinematic fun and glamorous mini-tours of Rome, Florence, and Campania.
Top ten in depth profiles of the best villa art museums with museum cafe reviews and garden walks.
Top ten fountain hopping romantic walks at night in Rome.
Tons of events and easy to navigate for mums and dads with babies and children in the Family Guide To Italy.
A respectful and realistic guide to traveling in style and comfort in Italy with physical disabilities.
The Elder guide to traveling in Italy during your Golden Years.
How to see Italy solo (safely and with fulfilling solitary and group ideas).
How to see the big things in Rome and throw in a few off the beaten path sightseeing (and eating) without exhausting yourself.
The honeymooners and lovers romantic itinerary.
Students in Italy (how to get cultured and still have fun AND stay safe while you study in the beautiful country of Italy).
Green eco travel! Hikers and swimmers and nature lover things to do and experience.
(Major and minor) food allergies and sober travelers: the most in depth guide you can find on how to eat and drink beautifully and healthfully in Italy in any city or town without getting sick or centering a trip around alcohol. Support group meetings, 12 steps, and recovery guides, medical contacts, recommended doctors and psychologists and help lines in Italy.
Historical Italy: Etruscans, Romans, Middle Ages, Renaissance, Baroque, Counter Reformation, Romantic Poets and Artists Era, Victorian, Fascist Era, 1950s/1960s renaissance, Modern 21st Century Italy.
Holidays in Rome.
Seasonal delights and attractions.
The most up to date information on Holidaying in Rome.
Pilgrimages. Sojourns. Art meccas. Study art in a workshop at the Florence School of Academic Art. Take a cooking class. Go to a vineyard and attend a wine tasting. Attend a classic music concert on a rooftop designed by Borromini, overlooking the Bernini fountains and cupolas of the ancient Piazza Navona or attend an intimate opera performance in a room full of Caravaggios. Follow the footsteps of the English and German Romantics. Take architectural walking and driving tours.
Maps and many images to utilize to make your holiday to Italy fun, easy, off the beaten path, and unforgettable!
And much much much more! email rebecca@romepix.com for questions.
Autumn In Rome, Italy.
Autumn In Rome, Italy.
Persimmons and Cupolas.
Church bells ringing in your ears awaiting the final hour.
The sun turns steeples and domes from cream-cracked marble to a slow-burn deep gold.
Everything shines in this orange hour, a last flash in the pan, you want this fire and this flame, you want the flush and the heat before stillness and sleep… and indigo creeps in and this gold turns orange, turns pink, … turning into navy and finally violet skies before disappearing into black velvet.
The shadows of the city reappear out of the cracks and crevices and pockets like Victorian roustabouts on a silent crawl looking for trouble, somewhere, anywhere, always, trouble waves them over since time immemorial.
The outline of the city is a different joy to behold in the evening.
Families make way for the lovers under the gas and electric lamps.
The Eternal City never feels the same way twice in a night where life is always on the cusp of being tasted, of being taken. Roma feels like ten centuries in one burst, a slow, deep, long kiss before dying.
“Chasing Beauty In Italy”
My “Chasing Beauty In Italy” BOOK
(The Second Edition, 2019 is available now!)
purchase here:
THIS IS MY LOVE LETTER TO ITALY
(& to beauty, art, history, architecture, nature, slow travel, cuisine, & Romanticism!)
My bestselling travel book “Chasing Beauty In Italy” …
NOW THE UPDATED SECOND EDITION FOR 2019 WITH 50 ADDITIONAL PHOTOGRAPHS, MEMORIES, MEMORIAL STORIES, ROMAN AND ART HISTORY, (CAFÉ, RESTAURANT, and ROMANTIC WALKS OF Rome GUIDE), EXPANDED MUSEUMS GUIDE, CINEMA AND TV IN FLORENCE, AND MUCH MUCH MORE.
THE TYPE SETTING AND THE ART AND DESIGN OF THE BOOK HAS BEEN COMPLETELY REVAMPED TO FEEL LIKE AN ART BOOK GUIDE TO ITALY.
ALL BOOK PURCHASES WILL COME WITH AN EBOOK COPY AND A PDF.
PREVIOUS PURCHASES WILL BE SENT THEM THIS WEEK.
PLEASE NOTE: THE BOOKS SECOND EDITIONS ARE AT THE PRINTERS AND WILL BE SHIPPED OUT LATE NEXT WEEK FROM THE PUBLISHERS.
CHASING BEAUTY IN ITALY:
129 PAGES,
RICH COLOR PHOTOGRAPHS OF ITALY AND ITALIAN CULTURE:
LANDSCAPES, CAFES, RESTAURANTS, HOTELS,
SCENIC VIEWS AND HISTORICAL WALKS,
LITERARY SPOTS,
CLASSICAL ARCHITECTURE,
AND SHARP ART REPRODUCTIONS
ALONG WITH TRAVEL ITINERARIES,
HISTORY, STORIES, MAPS,
AND A CULTURAL GUIDE OF OFF THE BEATEN PATH RECOMMENDATIONS –
IN BETWEEN MUSINGS AND MEMORIES OF ITALIA.
Read BOOK SAMPLES AND EXCERPTS: https://www.romepix.com/blog/
My first novel length book on Roman Italy; exploring 20 years of love, passion, art, and loss chasing beauty in the eternal city and (all over the cultural hot spots of Italia).
ORDERS DO SHIP OUTSIDE THE US!
SHIPPING IN USA $5.00
Canada and Mexico FOR $7.00 SHIPPING FEE
EUROPE / AUSTRALIA / NZ / THE WORLD: $10.00
See and read MORE BOOK SAMPLES AND EXCERPTS here: https://www.romepix.com/blog/
for daily European Art History & Western Culture: follow me on twitter: @romepix
for more ITALY photos and books: romepix.com
Capaccio, Salerno, Italia and her Grecian Marble of Paestum, a Greek colony of temples predating the Roman Empire
Capaccio, Salerno, Italia and her Grecian Marble of Paestum, a Greek colony of temples predating the Roman Empire
CLICK THIS LINK ABOVE FOR MANY MORE IMAGES AND VIDEOS OF PAESTUM.
I have selected several images from the original post on my other site, romepix.com.
The hamlet of Capaccio, found in the region of Salerno, located far down the boot in Campania, (about two hours or so from Sorrento), is a charming little town near the Greek ruins of Paestum.
There are silent stone churches with slants of light pouring into the shadows through stained glass and open windows shaped as doves and olive branches, each path of gold against black an evocation for peace in an undiscoverable darkness. Silence except for birds and echoing footsteps accompany you a foreigner in a foreign place. The solitude is universal in its unspoken language. You are welcome to sit and contemplate, or walk softly in cold corners under towering stretchs of wood and stone, somehow cradling us in its distance. A transitory connection to prayers whispered in the heart, undecipherable to human ears. How many gods have been called in how many temples on these grounds? Hera, Ceres, Athena, Poisedon, Christ, the Lord Himself, or the Madonna? Outside, a rush of sunshine, warmth on the skin, a grumbling in the stomach, a need to affirm we are still among the living. Fruit and pizza and coffee beckon across the way, and in a little shop in Capaccio we find local juicy figs floating in local honey, and figs woven together stuffed with regional almonds, in beautiful little packages we later brought home with us.
Just recently I gave Rian’s brother that last bundle we had been saving for the holidays… Rian would have wanted him to savor the taste of Italia, a place he’s never been, a place he never fell in love with as Rian and I had twenty years ago, and kept returning to. I gave it to him with Barolo and dark chocolate and champagne, I wanted him to taste a small glimpse into this magical world we had so long found ourselves enchanted with. He loved them. I thought of Rian smiling somewhere as if he could watch us somehow.
Bringing what we loved about this country is something we both so long felt driven to do. He would bring endless bags of chocolates and special Sicilian cookies for his friends at his office, and for family and close friends, after each trip back. Sometimes I would bring wines difficult to find in the states, or handmade liquers, and serve them at the holidays we hosted together for so long.
To share with others even a spark or a glimpse of the reason for our longing and our love for an otherworldy place, combined with tales of what we experienced and learned, kept us going until the next return. One day I suppose I shall return too, without him beside me as I wish, but with his ashes, with his memory, and with his energy still felt in the world, and set the remains afloat in the seas and lands he loved so deeply he broke through the mystery of Italia better than I ever could. And he took that mystery with him beyond. And here I am, as ever, in love with beauty I cannot dissect or take into me, I can only love from afar… as if in a dream. Perhaps life is the dream, and death a waking up? A return to the fold of everything seen and felt here through a veil.
There is that charming church write about above in the heart of the town of Salerno, and also a large cloistered monastery and cathedral, long with a fascinating museum of Clasiccal Antiquity, mostly containing the remnants (some vey much intact) of Paestum, a Greek colony in Italia pre-dating the founding of Rome. It is located on the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea in Magna Graecia (southern Italy). The ruins of Paestum are famous for their three ancient Greek temples in the Doric order, dating from about 600 to 450 BC. It was named Poseidonia (Ancient Greek: Ποσειδωνία) but was was eventually conquered by the local Lucanians and later the Romans. The Lucanians renamed it to Paistos and the Romans gave the city its current name.
The Paestum, or “Pesto” temples are some of the most intact ruins on the mainland of Italia, and their being Greek in nature only lends to their charm and mystery. The pastoral setting of Paestum leads one to get a feeling for the atmosphere of another era, millennia ago. Everything is beautiful in the town and most especially in the large park where the Grecian marble stands against all odds of weather, war, and time. One can find shade under tall olive trees and smell hints of lemon trees in the air as they walk among the dead and the stone of a culture and a people who no longer exist, and yet we feel some mysterious connection to, even to this day.
TO VISIT PAESTUM (with stops along the way in the city centers)
click here: http://www.museopaestum.beniculturali.it/i-templi/?lang=en
PAESTUM IS LOCATED AT Via Magna Graecia, 918, 84047 Paestum SA, Italy
Opened: 1952
Hours: Opens 8:30AM (VARIES) to sunset, with special evening extended openings to view the ruins at night.
Below is the Aerial view of Paestum, looking northwest; two Hera Temples in foreground, Athena Temple in background, and a Classical Antiquity museum on right. The first Temple of Hera, built around 550 BC by the Greek colonists, is the oldest surviving temple in Paestum. The second Temple of Hera was built around 460–450 BC, is found just north of the first Hera Temple. At a short distance and height from the the Hera Temples, and north of the center, is the Temple of Athena, built around 500 BC. In the center of the complex is a Roman Forum, perhaps built on the site of a preceding Greek agora. North of the forum is a small Roman temple, dated to 200 BC, and dedicated to the Capitoline Triad, Juno, Jupiter, and Minerva.
To the far north-east of the forum one sees an amphitheater, recently many parts of Paestum have been reopened so vistors can wander through these structures and lands, even walking withing the open aired temples. It’s a wonderful experience.
Source: Wikipedia & me.
VISIT THE PAESTUM MUSEUM SITE FOR ALL THE ARCHEOLOGICAL INFORMATION AND IMAGES.
http://www.paestum.org.uk/museum/
Additional Cultural and Architectural and Art History and Archeological sources:
CLICK HERE:
https://www.romeartlover.it/Paestum5.html
(The Museum of Paestum with images of the artifacts and art.)
CLICK HERE:
https://www.romeartlover.it/Paestum.html
(Paestum – The Temples)
CLICK HERE:
https://www.romeartlover.it/Paestum2.html
(The Walls of Paestum)
beautiful and inexpensive art prints of italy
Interested in buying any of my images of Rome or in Italy?
The site sends professional lab large prints or posters direct to you.
You can make cards & books too. http://romepix.smugmug.com
Don’t see an image you wanted? Let me know, I add daily. rebecca@romepix.com
Have a poster printed of the Eternal City Rome. The Ruins and the Roman Forum shot on fine art portra 400 film with cupolas and marble and a sweeping view of Roma. Frame or tack up a stunning 16″x 24″ inch poster at the incredible price of a mere $79-$95!
Beautiful 12″x18″ Fine Art Roman Print of Venus / Aphrodite at the Vatican Museum. This is a GORGEOUS statue. 12″x18″ Glossy Shiny Kodak Endura professional paper finish, brighter than Matte only $40 PERFECT for framing or hanging on its own as wall art.
Beautiful 8×12 Portra Fine Art Film Print of Capri from the ruins of an Emperor’s palace. 8×12 Metallic – lustrous Kodak Endura professional paper – only $18.00 or rich 8×12 Lustre, Glossy, or Matte $17-$17.50
a valentine “aphrodite / venus” book
I’ve designed, printed, and hand wrapped an amazing Romantic Valentine’s Bundle deal that lasts a lifetime for your beloved.
A sleek soft bedside or coffee table book, each book contains 38 pages printed edge-to-edge on 100% recycled photo-paper, perfectly bound in a soft matte cover.
I’ve filled with the A LOVE LETTER TO ROME aesthetic of classical and Renaissance art details, paintings of Aphrodite and Venus, photographs of art, Roman ruins, the Pantheon, sculptures, columns, the Tyrrhenian Sea on Capri where the Roman Emperors lived and holidayed, images of cupolas among the ancients, images of beauty, sensuality, and Eros. It’s an elegant gift for a lover or Classical Antiquity or Italy or ART enthusiast. It’s gorgeous and romantic! BUY HERE only $50. See the site for deals as low as $5
- 38 pages of full-bleed photos.
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- comes with Tea or coffee, Perugia Italian Chocolates, and a blank Valentine Card
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- shipping worldwide!
A Love Letter To Rome … Italy photo & book shop is online now! I ship worldwide! Beautiful images of Italia in handmade packaging & surprise gifts.
My labor of love has come to fruition. Off the beaten path and iconic fine art film and hi res digital images of Italy are available at my online shop.
Prints, postcards, books, and more!
High quality museum reserve paper and books, made in the US.
I also make custom bundles and prints and books: a Rome theme, an Amalfi Coast, an Art / Architecture theme, a Church / pilgrimage theme, a Pagan gods and goddesses theme, Florence, Naples, Capri, La Dolce Vita / Cafe mix or a Mix of Italia theme… or any personal requests. Romepix.com/prints
Ten dollars off (12) mini Prints ($10) or (9) Postcards ($20)! Special includes hand made packaging with special surprise gifts and souvenirs of Italy inside until Jan 31!
Perfect as souvenirs of your favorite country or for a dream board of future destinations. The sweeping views of Italy, the beauty of the Eternal City of Rome. The ruins. The art. The cafes. Getting lost in the moment under the Italian sun.
Shipping worldwide! romepix.com
Postcards can be used as photo art or real mailing postcards. Designed and printed in the USA on 50% recycled, Museum reserve high grade photo lab paper with a light UV gloss ink. Shot in Italy on fine art portra and velvia film and high res digital.
Made by a “local” artist who loves Italy
I ship worldwide!
shop here Romepix.com
Thanks, Rebecca ❤️🏛
Rome laid out before you from far far above the rooftops
Take an elevator ride on the “wedding cake” and see the Roman gods’ view of the Eternal City. 
The ruins are laid out before you betwixt cupolas and Renaissance rooftops of villas and apartments like dollhouses.
Hints of the past stir some ancient feeling in you you never knew you possessed until you saw Rome from a mount.
The sign of greatness and the sign of a fall and all around you the beautiful noise of life that will not stop long enough to extinguish itself into the remains of dust it lives among.
Rome lives among the shadows and the bones and the blood and the ghosts and the stone and the picked away marble because it is the heart and the remnants of the past are the nervous system which still courses with life from that heart center of a slowly dying immortal, entombed in the blessing and the curse of a memory which feels like a dream.
Church bells ring and ring through the city when the golden hour colors everything and there’s time for one last sun-glow walk and one last smile exchanged like kisses on the mouth, not the cheeks.
I will remember you even if the imprint of my self is swallowed up in the city of too many stories and too many lights and too many songs to find a memento mori for me in some nook or cranny when I’m gone.
And so I have Rome written on my soul should I be able to take it with me.
Bury me not in the earth of the place I love but burn my ashes to the sky so I may float like some augur of another time, a shadow to pass over a new face with her own love flashing on her face as she falls in love with the Roman sky at sunset, as she dreams to be remembered somewhere somehow in the eternal city, to leave her mark somewhere and to be known and felt by some future stranger intoxicated by the same love for the same city and the same ringing of bells and the orange becoming purple and the golden lamps flickering on and the smiles becoming kisses, not on the cheeks, but on the mouth.
a love letter to rome 