This personal travel book about Italy is written by the author of the prize-winning "Allegro Postillions" and "The Strangers' Gallery". The author's travels take him to an Italy of neglected grandeur, hidden beauty and preposterous paradox - where the past lies in wait for the present and where history is never far away. The book looks at a magician's cave in Piedmont, Chinese mummies in Umbria, Tuscan nightingales and bumps in the Venetian night.