It is often difficult to really comprehend just how many key moments in western civilization have flowed through this relatively small peninsula. It would be very easy to  spend all our travels just in Italy and never come close to exhausting the wonders this country has to discover. Start with  archeological digs for pre-Roman civilizations, advance to to Roman structures, some of which are still incorporated into inhabited buildings today, then on to medieval churches where the first stones were laid before 1000 A.D., and lastly the glorious art and buildings of the renaissance.