Italy Itineraries

Italy is, by most objective measures, the country with the greatest density of cultural treasures on Earth. It holds more UNESCO World Heritage Sites than any other nation, and its influence on Western art, architecture, music, food, and fashion is almost impossible to overstate. Unified as a modern state only in 1861, Italy retains profoundly strong regional identities — the languages, cuisines, and landscapes of Sicily, Tuscany, and the Dolomites feel like different countries, and in many ways were until relatively recently. Rome, the capital, deserves weeks. The Colosseum, Roman Forum, Palatine Hill, Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, Piazza Navona, Spanish Steps, and Vatican City (including St. Peter's Basilica and the Sistine Chapel) anchor a city where you stumble across ancient Roman ruins while walking to lunch. Rome's neighbourhoods — Trastevere with its narrow cobbled lanes, Testaccio with its offal-heavy Roman cuisine, the Jewish Ghetto with artichokes the Roman way — reward repeat visits. Florence, the birthplace of the Renaissance, packs an extraordinary density of art into a walkable centre: the Duomo with Brunelleschi's dome, the Uffizi Gallery holding Botticelli's Birth of Venus, the Accademia with Michelangelo's David, the Ponte Vecchio spanning the Arno. Tuscany beyond Florence offers the hilltop towns of San Gimignano, Siena, and Montepulciano, the landscapes of Chianti and Val d'Orcia, and some of the world's greatest wines. Venice remains the improbable miracle it has always been — a city built across 118 small islands, with no roads, navigated by foot and boat, from the grandeur of St. Mark's Square to the quiet canals of Cannaregio. The Italian Lakes — Como, Maggiore, Garda — sit in the northern foothills of the Alps with villages like Bellagio and Varenna. The Dolomites offer some of the world's most spectacular mountain scenery, with jagged peaks, Alpine meadows, and serious skiing. Milan is the fashion and design capital, with Leonardo's Last Supper, the gothic Duomo, and the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II shopping arcade. South of Rome, Naples is chaotic, passionate, and home to the world's best pizza, with the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum nearby. The Amalfi Coast — Positano, Amalfi, Ravello — tumbles down cliffs to the Tyrrhenian Sea. Puglia in the deep south-east offers trulli houses, olive oil country, and whitewashed hill towns. Sicily, the largest Mediterranean island, is practically a country of its own: Greek temples at Agrigento, mosaics at Monreale, Baroque towns in the Val di Noto, and food influenced by millennia of Arab, Norman, and Spanish rulers. Italian food needs little introduction, but rewards travellers who learn regional specialities — ragù in Bologna, pesto in Liguria, risotto in Milan, cacio e pepe in Rome, arancini in Palermo. The country is easy to travel by train and remarkably walkable.