KATY CLARKE
Founder, Untold Italy. Host, Untold Italy Podcast. Italy obsessive since the 1990s.
Italy gets under your skin. For some people it happens on the first trip. For Katy it happened before she even arrived.
Renaissance history was the gateway. Growing up in Australia, Katy studied the history, art, the frescoes, the Medici and Venetian doges. By the time she landed in Europe, Italy was not a question. It was the destination. Her first stop was Lake Garda, and that was that.
She has been going back ever since. Trattorias with no website. Agriturismi run by the same family for four generations. Villages that do not appear in any guidebook.
She stopped counting the trips long ago. That depth of experience and a love for Italian people and culture is what Untold Italy is built on.
Built from the ground up since 2018
Katy launched the Untold Italy website in 2018, combining a career background in technology with a writer's instinct for the story behind the place. The site grew because the advice was specific and grounded in real experience. Not recycled from search results or a list of the same ten things everyone already knows.
In 2020 she launched the Untold Italy podcast. Not a great year to start a travel show but she published weekly episodes anyway, keeping the dream of Italy alive through two years when no one was going anywhere.
It turned out people needed it. The Untold Italy podcast has now been downloaded more than five million times and reaches over 80,000 listeners a month. It sits in the top 10 travel podcast charts in the USA, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.
The show is built around the people who know Italy best. Local guides, winemakers, historians, cooks, and storytellers from every region. Their knowledge, combined with Katy's, is what makes the advice on this site and our podcast different from anything you will find online.
In 2022 came Untold Italy Tours. Small groups, maximum 12 guests, traveling to the regional Italy most visitors never reach. Puglia, Sicily, Umbria, Piedmont, the Dolomites, Liguria, and beyond. The trips allow travelers to take part in Italy, not just see it, through the kind of experiences that do not appear in any brochure.
A year later, our Italy Trip Planning Services opened 60 years of combined Italy travel expertise up to travelers who want personalized guidance. And in 2025 the Untold Italy app brought it all together in one place.
Undeniably devoted to Italy since the 1990s
Based in Melbourne, Australia and the proud mother of twins, Katy has spent a significant portion of her life traveling in Italy or wishing she was.
She travels for particular moments. Thermal baths in towns that do not appear on any “must see” list. A cheese so local that the next village has not heard of it. A mountain hut in the Dolomites whose restroom was, inexplicably and memorably, better than most luxury hotels. That detail has become something of a legend among Untold Italy listeners.
When she is at home her coffee order is a short macchiato, she reads Elena Ferrante, gets genuinely excited about baby goats, and thinks about which Italian region she has not spent enough time in yet.
Her view on travel has not changed since that first trip to Lake Garda. There is no right way to do Italy. The only wrong move is following someone else's list.
The best way to get to know Katy and how she thinks about Italy is to listen to the podcast. Start with episode 212 — the full story of how Untold Italy began.