Italy
Suggested Booklist
The Birth of Venus: A Novel by Sarah Dunant
Novel of a teenage girl thrust into the politics and passions of Renaissance Florence, with real artists, places and incidents woven into the fictional story
A Room With A View by E.M. Forster
Coming of age novel about a young English tourist staying in a Florentine pensione and her struggles between repression and romance
Renaissance Florence: The Invention of A New Art by A. Richard Turner
Accessible text about 14th and 15th century Florentine art in its social, cultural, political, economic and religious setting
The Agony and the Ecstasy: A Biographical Novel of Michelangelo by Irving Stone
Novelized story of the life of Michelangelo, from boyhood to the time of his greatest artistic achievement
A Rich Full Death by Michael Dibdin
Quirky historical mystery set in 1855 Florence, featuring the poet Robert Browning as an amateur sleuth
Art for Travellers Italy: The Essential Guide to Viewing Italian Renaissance Art by Ann Morrow and John Power
An informative guide to the major artists, paintings and sculptures of Renaissance Italy
Dark Water: Flood and Redemption in the City of Masterpieces by Robert Clark
Story of the disastrous 1966 flood in Florence and the people who worked to save and restore the art works, from the perspective of today
Death at La Fenice by Donna Leon
First of a series of contemporary Venetian mysteries, all of which focus on a commissario of the police and his family who live and work in Venice
In the Company of the Courtesan by Sarah Dunant
Novel of a courtesan and her companion, a dwarf, who flee the sacking of Rome in 1527 and set up business in Venice
The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt
Focuses on Venice in the days, weeks and months after the opera house La Fenice burns to the ground under mysterious circumstances
Shylock’s Daughter by Erica Jong
A time-traveler novel, with a contemporary actress suddenly finding herself in the time of the Merchant of Venice
Miss Garnet’s Angel by Salley Vickers
Novel about a retired school teacher who comes to Venice and becomes enmeshed in the story of the art objects being renovated in a neighborhood church
Venetian Dreaming by Paula Weideger
Travel narrative of an American who settles into a Venetian palazzo for a year and takes us along as she explores her adopted home