Books by Luigi Giorgio Barzini

6. There is a great deal of available trip prep material for Italy in the form of movies, fiction, and history.  Most of all, however, you should focus on using picture books to have an advance sense of the art and architecture.  The classic book on Italy, Luigi Barzini’s The Italians , is still worth reading.  And often the postwar fiction, or even Manzoni , are better trip prep than the very famous classics such as Dante and Petrarch (though you should read them anyway, but for other reasons).