Nicky Swallow

A one-time classical musician, Nicky started her writing career reviewing hotels for the Charming Small Hotel Guides and then as a fact-checker on the first Time Out Florence guide. She was soon writing hotel and restaurant reviews for Time Out contributing to their guides to Florence, Tuscany, Venice and Turin. She edited the very last Time Out Guide – to Naples.

Other guide books followed for Cadogan, Frommer’s, the AA and Compass Guides (for whom she wrote a mini guide to Cape Town).

Magazine and newspaper work also followed, as she became a regular contributor to the Guardian, The Telegraph, Conde Nast Traveller, Travel & Leisure, and Departures.

Nicky specialises in travel throughout Italy with particular focus on Tuscany, Naples, Amalfi Coast, Venice and Sicily.

Nicky moved to Florence in the 1980s when she got a job playing the viola in the opera orchestra. She became a committed Italophile early on, seduced by the art, the climate, the lifestyle, the food and wine and realised she was in for the long haul.

She started writing hotel reviews early on, mainly as a way to travel, and when she left playing after a 20-year performing career, there was time to pursue this second career.

Her adopted country of Italy – and the extraordinary variety that is to be found within its regions from north to south –continues to be a source of endless fascination and ‘divertimento’.

She now lives in Florence, spending most of her time with her partner in their olive grove just outside the city centre.

To live in Venice for several months, to return to Connemara (on the West coast of Ireland), to eat at three-Michelin starred Osteria Francescana in Modena, to see Giotto’s frescos in the Scrovegni chapel in Padua.