Getting there

Book at the right time and flights with the low-cost airlines can leave you paying less than your cab fare to the airport. For the widest variety of destinations (and the most frequent online seat sales) try Ryanair, who now flies to Alghero (Sardinia), Brescia (Milan), Genoa, Pisa, Rimini, Turin and Venice. Go flies to the lively university town of Bologna, along with Naples, Milan, Rome and Venice.

Sovereign and Travelscene have packages to all the main Italian cities, including Rome, Verona, Florence and Venice. Sovereign has some special deals for travel up to the end of March.

• Ryanair (0870 1569569, www.ryanair.com) has returns to Italy from as little as £29 and Go (0845 6054321, www.go-fly.com) has returns to Bologna, Milan and Venice from £78 and Naples and Rome from £88. If you book before March 31, Sovereign (08705 768373, www. sovereign.com) has two-night packages to Verona and Bologna from £200 pp including return flights with British Airways and B&B hotel accommodation, Venice, Florence, Rome and Milan from £219-260pp. Travelscene (020-8427-4445, www.travelscene.co.uk) has a wide selection of weekend city breaks from £225pp.

The three As

Art, architecture and antiquities are combined in Martin Randall's spring programme to Rome. Forget trudging dutifully around the Colosseum and squeezing up the Spanish Steps, this escorted tour takes in many little-known Roman and Etruscan sites around the city and some of Lazio's most exclusive gardens and villas (such as Jardina di Ninfa, built around medieval ruins, admission by appointment only, and Villa d'Este in Tivoli). The tour is based in Viterbo (about an hour and a half from Rome) and Frascati, at a 17th-century villa, complete with original frescos .

Artscape offers painting holidays to Italy's Renaissance heartland. Based in the small town of Pienza, just outside Siena, the trip is open to artists of mixed ability, using a variety of mediums.

Run by archaeologists, Andante Travel has several trips including one visiting the abbeys of central Italy and tracing the rise of Christianity from its earliest days in Rome through to the middle ages.

• The seven-day Campagna Romania: Villas, Gardens and Estruscan Sites tour from Martin Randall Travel (020-874 23355) costs £1,090pp (based on two sharing) all-inclusive. Painting tours to Tuscany from Artscape (01722 743163, www.artscape.uk.com) costs £984pp including tuition, half-board accommodation and return flights. Early Christianity and the Great Abbeys of Central Italy, October 4-12, from Andante Travels (01722 713800, www.andantetravels.co.uk) costs £1,250pp, including full-board accommodation in converted monastery hotels, scheduled flights from Heathrow, transfers, admission fees and guides.

Foodie heaven

Italian Cookery Weeks begins its classes for 2001 on the Amalfi Coast, the heartland of Neapolitan cuisine. The course is based at a rustic inn overlooking the sea. Between morning and evening classes, there are excursions for shopping and sightseeing to Capri, Positano, Ravello and Sorrento.

If you prefer to leave the cooking to others, you can join Arblaster & Clarke's new gourmet tour of southern Italy staying in the Palazzo Belmonte in the heart of the Cilento National Reserve, with a final night in a five-star hotel in Naples. Visits include an organic water buffalo farm to see how mozzarella is made and sample the buffalo-milk ice cream, demonstrations of the Neapolitan art of pizza throwing, and a day out on a local fishing boat before dining on some of the day's catch.

• Italian Cookery Weeks (020-8208 0112, www.italian-cookery-weeks.co.uk begin on May 5, £1,249pp including everything: return flights, transfers, full-board accommodation, all tuition and excursions. Arblaster & Clarke Wine Tours (01730 893344, www.arblasterandclarke.com) Gourmet Southern Italy tour, April 30 - May 5, costs £1,499pp (based on twin-share), including half-board accommodation, transport, guide, transfers and return flights.

Walking

After a little more exercise than the nightly passeggiata around the piazza? Spring and early summer are the perfect time to lace-up walking boots and head into the hills.

How about a seven-day walk through classic Tuscan countryside, from the Etruscan town of Volterra, through the Chianti vineyards to Siena? Inntravel will take your luggage on ahead so you can concentrate, with the maps and notes, on the walk and lunch.

If you want to get away from the classic routes, consider walking the mountainous instep of Italy with Alternative Travel. Its escorted tour of one of Italy's most deserted regions begins at Terranova di Pollino culminating 55 miles of dramatic countryside later in Maratea.

Hotfoot it further south, to Sicily, where walking becomes something of an extreme sport. From May onwards, Explore Worldwide is taking a group tour to explore the steaming craters of Mount Etna, the lava-carved paths of Stromboli and the black-sand beaches of the Aolian island of Lipari.

• Inntravel (01653 629010, www.inntravel.co.uk) has a seven-night trip staying in three- and four-star hotels B&B from £679pp including return scheduled flights Gatwick-Pisa and rail and taxi transfers. The eight-day tour of Italy's instep from Alternative Travel (01865 315678, www.atg-oxford.co.uk) costs from £670pp, including full-board, transfers and guide. Flights are extra but can be arranged. Explore Worldwide (01252 319448) offers volcano hiking from £639pp including B&B hotel and full-board mountain hut accommodation, boat and ground transfers, return flights and guide.

Rural retreats

Long Travel has a wide range of properties in central and southern Italy offering an undiluted flavour of the countryside. Try Villa Magnolie, near Loreto Aprutino, half an hour from the Adriatic coast. Set among 6,000 olive trees, this family-run farm has won a coveted DOP ranking for its olive oil, one of only 28 in the whole country. The farm is a good base for exploring the seldom-visited Abruzzo region which boasts the highest concentration of national parks in the country.

The highlight of the Abruzzo year is the Processione dei Serpari in the town of Cocullo on the first Thursday in May when its patron saint, San Domenico, receives the dubious honour of a live snake-draped effigy processed through the streets.

Further south, Calabria is home to some of the best beaches in Italy, and some truly rural retreats. Italian Breaks offers self-catering accommodation in a converted farmstead outside Lamezia, where guests can pick their own ingredients for southern Italian suppers.

• Long Travel (01694 722193) offers half-board at Magnolie farm, in Abruzzo, for £39pp per night. Flights and car hire can be arranged. Italian Breaks (020-8660 0082, www.italianbreaks.com) has self-catering farmhouse apartments, sleeping two, in Calabria for £240 per week plus car. Flights are not included but can be arranged.

Musical chairs

This is an important year for Italian opera with next month's centenary of Giuseppe Verdi's death and November's bicentenary of Vicenzo Bellini's birth. Travel for the Arts has put together a special three-day tour starting March 16 with a visit to Verdi's birthplace in Parma followed by a performance of Bellini's Norma at the Teatro Regio and La Traviata at La Scala in Milan.

Florence's early-summer festival of concerts, ballets and operas including Handel's Tamerlano and Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, runs from May 6-June 30. Liaisons Abroad can arrange packages and concert tickets .

• Travel for the Arts (020-7483 4466) Verdi and Bellini trip, March 16-18, costs £950pp, based on twin-share and includes flights, B&B hotel accommodation, transfers, guided sightseeing and top-category tickets for both operas. Liaisons Abroad (020-7376 4020, www.liaisonsabroad.com) can arrange a three-night package to Florence for £390pp based on two sharing, including B&B at the Maggio hotel and a premier opera ticket. Flights are not included, but Ryanair (0870 1569569, www.ryanair.com) flies Stansted to Pisa, a short train ride from Florence, from £80 return.

Parlare Italiano

Euro Academy, with bases in Siena, Florence and Rome, combines language tuition with special-interest courses such as cookery, wine, art history, and Italian cinema. The courses are suitable for all levels and age groups, including intensive courses for business travellers. The tuition can be taken one-on-one or in groups, and home-stay accommodation is available.

• Euro Academy (020-8686 2363, www.euroacademy.co.uk) charges £235 for a two-week course in Siena, including 20 hours of language and culture classes, plus £335 for half-board accommodation with an Italian family. Flights are not included.

Festivals

You have to book now for the Venice Carnival (February 16-27) as hotels are filling up fast for the last word in pre-Lenten indulgence. Venetians don bauto (hood and cape) and tabarro (cloak) and take to the waters for a firework-illuminated extravaganza of gondolas, street theatre and costumed bacchanalia, recalling the grand festivals of the 18th century. Citalia still has availability for packages throughout the carnival.

The Festa di San Gennaro in Naples is held three times a year (first Sunday in May, September 19 and December 16) when the faithful gather in the Duomo to see if the blood of San Gennaro will liquefy. If it does, the fortunes of the city are assured, or so the legend goes. Packages are available from Magic of Italy.

• Magic of Italy (020-8939 5453, www.themagictravelgroup.co.uk) has three-night packages to Naples during May from £384pp, including four-star B&B accommodation at the Hotel Mediterranean and return flights, based on twin-share. Citalia (020-8686 5533, www.citalia.co.uk) has three-night packages to the Venice Carnival, including return flights from Stansted with Go and B&B accommodation in the three-star Hotel Hette, two minutes from Piazza San Marco, from £311pp, based on twin-share.

Doing it in luxury

Naomi Campbell, Tom Cruise and Nicole have all been spotted recently strolling through the cobbled streets of Capri or sipping a bellini in the Piazzetta, a miniature town square. A stunningly-beautiful island, but no beaches, it is 40 minutes from Naples by hydrofoil (or luxury yacht) and boasts views over the bay of Naples, chic shopping and great nightlife. Take your credit cards and close your eyes when you get the bill.

• Exclusive Italy (01892 619 650 www.exclusivedestinations.co.uk) offers three nights' B&B at the Quissisana Hotel, Capri, for £590pp or the Capri Palace and Spa from £650, both including return flights from Gatwick to Naples and private transfers.

Beaches

Forget Rimini, Amalfi or the Gargano peninsula; the best beaches are off the mainland in Sardinia. Among several new properties in its 2001 brochure, Voyages Ilena is offering early-season deals on the stylish three-bedroom apartment Casa Stefania on the south coast near Pula and the Roman town of Nora. The terracotta-tiled, natural stone apartment is a short walk from the beach and the lagoon at Nora, a protected habitat for rare birds.

• From 19 May, Voyages Ilena (020-7924 4440, www.voyagesilena.co.uk) is offering seven nights at Casa Stefania for £435pp including direct flights from Heathrow, car rental and travel insurance.