Francesco's Italy: Top to Toe - The Land of My Mother

Francesco da Mosto travels the length and breadth of Italy. He visits the south and Sicily, home of his mother's family for more than 500 years. Easter celebrations in the south involve the streets running red with celebrants' blood and the locals indulge in frantic dances to ward off the threat of the tarantula. On Sicily, the brooding majesty of Etna terrifies Francesco as he stares into the volcano, but there's beauty and art at the Villa Bagheria and at Noto an explosion of baroque decadence.