WORDS BY JAMES KNIGHT
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOE HADDOCK

At some point in your three years of minimal activity and maximum sloth you will want to explore the wider world. This will be an urge stronger in those who didn’t spend a year dicking about in Guatemala after their A-levels. For all those who want to recreate the Grand Tour or pretend they are George Orwell, here are a few of the less obvious attractions that the wonderful countries of Europeland have to offer.

ITALY
Forte Prenestino, Rome
Travelling all the way to the home of Roman civilisation to visit a squat may seem odd, but you have to take into account that this is the biggest squat in Europe, and is therefore of interest, especially if you like squats. The Germans think they have the whole squatting thing on lock with their organic beer made from grass and their violin-toting punks who do interpretive ballet set to Wagner, but
Forte Prenestino is the real deal. The Italians call squats centro sociali, which sounds far more romantic than plain old squat, but the same thing that goes on in abandoned warehouses in Peckham goes on here on a grander and generally more productive scale.
It’s basically a 19th century fort full of people putting on fantastic parties, concerts and exhibitions, and it makes London’s anarchocrusty sit-ins look half-arsed.

The Vittoriale degli Italiani, Gardone Riviera
Imagine if, in the early 20th century, the state gave almost unlimited funds to a daredevil fascist poet, allowing him to expand his lakeside villa at will, merely to keep him from interfering with the government. Well, that’s exactly what the Italian government did. The fascist poet Gabriele d’Annunzio’s monumental folly on Lake Garda, northern Italy, was built to insane proportions, and successfully kept the busybody wordsmith out of the way. His work is widely credited with inspiring Mussolini and Italian fascism, and there happens to be a battleship in his garden.
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