Italy illustrated map: From Milano (Milan) to Southern Italy

Capturing my surroundings and the meals we had in my pocket-sized sketchbook proved to be the best way to truly savour the moment.

Those quick ink illustrations allowed me to really “see” the details of the Italian culture. They also made me want to learn more about Italy’s rich agri-food landscape and the whole Italian lifestyle structured around it.

Married to an Italian gastronome also helped a lot in understanding certain details about the culture that only a local would know.

Today, my understanding of Italian regional food, local ingredients and the quality-control labels that protect heritage foods is all thanks to the sketchbooks I carried on that trip.

When we returned home, I created this Italy illustrated map, which is the first installment in a blog series dubbed, Illustrated Italy Culinary Tour. It includes culinary and architectural illustrations from the 15 cities and towns we had set foot in, for a night, or even a few hours.

These sketches are about the culinary experiences we had in Lombardia in the north, and Campania, Puglia, and Calabria in the south. Each region has its own food heritage, traditions, and characteristics. Ultimately, creating a lot of informative sketches about the four Italian regions we’d been to was like building a visual library about Italy – that I still go back to whenever I want to create a new illustration about this sunny Mediterranean country.

If travel teaches us anything, it’s how to live in the present moment. And how to notice, really notice, little experiences in new, uncharted waters. Or, in this case, places.

A delicious cup of coffee in the morning, the pleasantly brisk breeze that salutes you when you open the hotel door, and the discovery of small shops you never knew existed behind your favourite shopping street.

There is also the details, everywhere. The stone plant pot at the hotel’s entrance, the delicious dessert that turned out to be a traditional Italian classic, the ornamental Italian signage made out of wrought iron on every corner.

What better way to capture these marvellous details than carrying a sketchbook?

For the first time in my travels, I carried not one, but two, sketchbooks to try my hand at urban sketching. I also had a few waterproof ink fineliners and pens in different sizes to make my marks.

The large Hahnemühle sketchbook stayed at the hotel for me to make sketches of the meals we had at the end of day, while a smaller one stayed in my purse so as to create real-time urban sketches while on the bus, on the street, on a bench.

Little did I know at the time that this exercise would help take my illustration career to the next level. Returning back home from that trip, I turned my urban sketches into full-fledged travel illustrations with illustrated maps that celebrated Italian food and culture, using the same sketches (as is).

I then posted a series of travel illustrations inspired by that trip, on my old blog (that no longer exists). This in turn ended up attracting clients who commissioned me to create bespoke illustrated maps of Italy for their restaurants, hotels, and Made-in-Italy agencies – with focus on regional Italian food, lifestyle, and architecture.