Italy is an historical country, where the past is always present. This is well illustrated in the rural interior style, which borrows and adapts from other eras and places, editing and refining as it goes, but culminating in a look that is chic, original, and always easy to live with. In Italian Country Living, Caroline Clifton-Mogg explores the essential ingredients of the style, taking in color and texture—the distinctively clear but subtle palette — before looking at the mixture of simplicity and comfort evident in furniture and fabrics, and going on to admire the innate gift of the Italians for living outside with the same panache as they do indoors. Caroline then looks in more detail at individual country houses. Whether Rustic, Contemporary, Eclectic, or Traditional in character, these homes offer myriad ideas for interior decoration that are easily translatable into other lives and cultures. • Stunning photography by Chris Tubbs.