This Beautiful Country: How Italy’s Nature Shaped Its Culture and Civilisation
Italy is celebrated for its art, architecture, food and history, but This Beautiful Country asks readers to look beneath all of this to the natural world that helped shape it. Edward Cutler’s ambitious book traces 300 million years of Italy’s geological, ecological and human history, revealing how deeply the country’s landscape is intertwined with its culture and civilisation.
An art historian who has lived in the country for more than 15 years, Cutler approaches the subject as an enthusiastic outsider, taking the reader on a first-person journey through what he calls Italy’s “geological madness”. The book begins by laying geological foundations, explaining the formation of Italy’s mountains and rock types and how these materials have subsequently been used by people. From there, the narrative moves through volcanism, earthquakes, glaciations and dramatic events such as the Messinian Salinity Crisis, while also exploring palaeontology and palaeoclimatology.
The story comes to life through a series of fascinating examples. The remarkable dinosaur fossils of Ciro, including some of the earliest evidence of soft-tissue preservation, provide a window into Italy’s palaeontological past, whilst also touching on fossil trafficking under the country’s antiquated cultural heritage laws. Volcanism has also left its mark on human history, from ash preserving evidence of some of the earliest hominin movements, to the fertile soils that have helped shape Italy’s agricultural traditions. The varied geological environments support equally remarkable wildlife, from convergent evolution on its islands to the olm—a blind, lungless salamander that can survive for a decade without food in caves—adding biological colour.
This relationship between geology, life and people becomes particularly apparent in the discussion of the changing landscape. The degradation of Italy’s landscapes is traced from deforestation since Roman times to modern agricultural overmanagement, alongside efforts to restore polluted rivers and the growing interest in rewilding. Climate change also comes into focus, with retreating ice creating new refugia for species struggling to adapt. Throughout, the book considers how these landscapes have shaped local cultural identity and rural heritage, showing that Italy’s natural world is deeply embedded in its communities and traditions.
At times, the movement between geology, biology, history and culture is eclectic, but this is also what gives the book its character. Technical terms occasionally appear that an ordinary reader may not immediately understand, but their meaning can generally be grasped from the surrounding context. And there is plenty of humour. I have never had a geoscience book make me laugh out loud before, but Cutler’s description of the lifecycle of the unfortunate Italian brook lamprey did exactly that.
The geological history of Italy is told almost like fiction: evocative, witty and wonderfully engaging. Cutler makes the country’s complex natural history feel like an unfolding story, creating an accessible introduction to geology for the non-specialist while offering plenty of intriguing connections for those with a scientific background.
The book ends with a call for children to learn about the natural world from an earlier age—not simply to appreciate it, but to become its custodians. Cutler also revives the idea of an Apennine Park running along Italy’s mountainous spine, a decades-old proposal that could unite conservation with the protection of the country’s natural and cultural heritage.
This Beautiful Country is ultimately a celebration of the connections between rock, landscape, wildlife and people; it is an invitation to see Italy’s extraordinary natural heritage as inseparable from the culture built upon it.
Review by Hannah Bird
DETAILS
BY: Edward Cutler (2026) Chelsea Green Publishing UK, 272 pp.
ISBN: 9781915294760
PRICE: £22, available from Geoscientist’s bookshop
