They couldn’t keep it up

Surely one of the shortest lived museums of all time, the Museum of Erotic Art in Venice (Museo d’Arte Erotica) to give it its Italian sobriquet fell foul of the all-powerful Catholic Church and a certain prissiness by the Venetian authorities. Now there are sex museums all over the world, including the Museum of Sex on Fifth Avenue in New York City, Berlin’s Beate Uhse and St Petersburg’s sex museum, which boasts the mummified penis of Rasputin. Many mainstream collections, such as the British Museum, have their own ’secret’ collections of erotic arcana, for which you need speical visiting rights. This is even the case of Italy, where the Naples Archeological Museum (the Museo Archelogico Nazionale Napoli) has the Secret Cabinet, a collection of erotic Roman art.

You’d think Venice would be the ideal place, with so many erotic writers being associated with the place - Casanova comes to mind, as do Pietro Aretino, Veronica Franco and Giorgio Baffo, who specialised in bawdy sonnets. But Venice appears to wish to live down its sexy past, with both the city and region tourist bureaux having refused to give the museum any publicity. When it finally closed in December 2006 after just ten months, the Church nodded its approval, saying the museum had been an assault on the ‘dignity’ of the city.

 

A few days in Sicily

Just back from five days in Taormina, having caught the end of a heatwave that had even Sicilians mopping their brows in distress. 38 degrees of dry heat on touching down at Catania’s Fontanarossa airport, of the type that makes you lean onto and then very swiftly lean away from the metal stanchions on the bus stop. Fontanarossa itself is a contemporary marvel of grey concrete, marble and tinted glass, a pleasantly uncrowded and slick little airport.

What had been a seamless journey from south London, through Gatwick, via the much-missed BA (why does anyone ever travel with Ryanair … ah yes, it’s because it’s a fraction of the price), and a matter of minutes through passport control and customs, then ground to a halt in the face of Sicilian public transport. Anybody who says the Italians are noisy gesticulating moaners should have seen the stoic and ever-growing band clustered in the limited shade of the bus shelter as the 12:45 to Taormina resolutely refused to arrive. And we could tell them from the English as they weren’t the pink sweaty ones wearing socks with their trainers.

And here is where foreigners come up against that very Italian habit of trying to keep you happy by saying … well pretty much anything. ‘The bus is on its way’; ‘the driver was sick’ and ‘it will be here in five minutes’, then became ‘there has been a crash which held up the bus’. At 13:45 a bus arrived - the 13.45 - leading experienced travellers in Italy to infer that there probably never had been a 12.45.

 

The true cost of living in Italy

Many Britons are seduced by the dream of a simple life in rural Italy. But, as Barbara McMahon reports, the reality can be less appealing.

 

Tips from the readers

The Travel Guardian is an invaluable resource for Brits travelling or thinking of travelling to Italy - its strong suit is that, being aimed at Guardian readers, the choices tend to be a little more idiosyncratic. And while the seeking after unspoiled authentic Italy can get a little intense (cue fevered discussion on where to holiday to taste the best wild aspargus and orechiette) it does throw up some interesting angles. The fact that readers get to suggest their picks enlivens things, though we would say beware some of the hotel suggestions - discussion boards are notoriously susceptible to spamming. Treat with caution anything that says ‘we found this lovely little hotel in Amalfi, just €90 per night with breakfast, here’s the phone number of the place, all major credit cards accepted’. Some nice pieces currently showing include a feature on the truffles of Piemonte, a celebration of 60 years of the Vespa, a National Geographic photo tour of Rome, and a group of women on an escorted shopping weekend in Florence.

 

Other Italian theme parks

Further to the piece about Mirabilandia, Nick has been in contact asking for a pointer to other theme parks in Italy. If you want to write it Nick! Seriously though, this IS a thing I want to put together. In the Ravenna/Rimini area alone there isn’t just Mirabilandia but Italia in Miniatura and a number of others (not all Alton Towers/Thorpe Park quite stuff, but very useful for parents tearing their hair after a week or so in an Italian hotel or campsite). So watch this space and if there are any suggestions please let me know.

 

Mirabilandia

There comes a time in every family holiday when you just want to pour the kids into some readymade fun and sit with a coffee. If you’re holidaying on the Italian Adriatic coast around Rimini (as many thousands of Italians do each year) then you’ll find Mirabilandia, one of Italy’s biggest and best theme parks, a godsend. There are three genuine white-knuckle experiences for the older ones (teenagers may sneer, but Thundering Sierra, Katun and Columbia & Discovery are all the stomach turning we’ll ever want to experience). There are some charming rides for younger children with The Friendly Whale, Crazy House, Fantasyland and a host more. And there’s all-round family fun with Ghostville, Las Vegas, London Bus and a couple of dozen more. It’s pretty impressive actually, and rather more affordable than UK theme parks at least.

We won’t attempt to give a definitive guide to Mirabilandia and its prices here, best to go to the official site, which rather cleverly automatically loads in English if you’re going from www.google.co.uk or www.google.com. But speaking as a parent who has felt his bank account whimper at the very thought of Alton Towers, Legoland or Thorpe Park, we’d have to say Mirabilandia is superb value for money. A standard two-day ticket is €25 (this doesn’t give access to the beach but you aren’t going there to use the beach are you?) Most children pay €19 for a two-day ticket and the smaller ones go free.