Everything worth going for

Italy's home ground for metodo classico, the local answer to Champagne, with three anchor producers all within fifteen minutes of each other. Bellavista (the Moretti family, structured and long-lived), Ca' del Bosco (the most contemporary architecture, the Annamaria Clementi cuvée), Berlucchi (the largest, the historic name). Pre-book all three; weekday visits are quieter.

The price is fixed by the city: €90 for thirty minutes, €110 after 7 p.m., for up to six people. Worth doing once, on the small inner canals where the boats barely pass, not the chaotic loop in front of San Marco. Find a stand in San Polo (San Tomà) or Cannaregio (Santa Sofia traghetto). Ask the gondolier to take you into the rii, the narrow back canals, and skip the singing add-on (€40 extra and aggressively cheesy). Dusk is the moment.

A 12th-century Romanesque abbey in a field of cypresses south of Montalcino: pale travertine walls, three apses, an interior of austere columns and capitals. Founded by Charlemagne, legend has it. The hours are limited, so arrive late afternoon when the stone goes gold and the light cuts through the high windows. Free entry, and almost always empty in the late hour.

The David is over five metres tall, carved from a single block of Carrara marble. You know the photographs; they don't prepare you. The four unfinished Prisoners in the gallery leading up to it are almost as interesting: Michelangelo left them half-emerged from the stone, and no one has fully explained why. Forty-five minutes inside is enough; book ahead or queue an hour.

The other side of the Odle peaks: the same jagged limestone group as Seceda, seen from the north under Santa Maddalena church. A ten-kilometre loop through pine forest and meadow, steady but never steep. Trailhead at Zanser Alm or Ranui parking; the latter includes the famous church viewpoint. Far quieter than Seceda. Rifugio delle Odle midway is a strong lunch stop; order the schlutzkrapfen.

The Aeolians make sense from the water. A private gozzo (traditional wooden boat) charter from Lipari, 6–8 hours, takes in Salina (lunch in Lingua), Panarea (a swim off the cliffs of Cala Junco), and Stromboli at sunset. Roughly €450–650 for the boat, split among the group; the skipper does lunch on board if you want it. Don't book through aggregator sites; ask your hotel for a local skipper. Public hydrofoils between the islands are fine too, €15 a leg if a charter's outside the budget.

The trulli are the cone-roofed stone houses Puglia is sold on. Alberobello has 1,500 of them, packed into two districts, a UNESCO site that's now entirely a tourist economy: shops, queues, group photographs. Worth seeing once, but go before 9 a.m. or after 6 p.m. and stay 45 minutes. They also dot the surrounding countryside, where you can drive past dozens for free.

A volcanic basalt gorge cut into the Alcantara River, 25 metres deep, walls of hexagonal columns left by Etna's prehistoric lava flow. Walk down the staircase, wade into the river in summer (the water is icy year-round; thermal wetsuits available for rent). The Botanical Park entrance, a kilometre south, is quieter and prettier than the main one. Bring a swimsuit and water shoes.

An hour and a half on foot does the whole old town: the Bastioni Marco Polo at sunset, the cathedral, the narrow centro storico still speaking the 14th-century Catalan that gives Alghero its name. End at Cala Bona for a swim in the cove below the walls, then dinner at The Kings on the bastions. The most walkable old town in Sardinia, best done without an itinerary.

Europe's largest high-altitude meadow: 56 square kilometres at 2,000 metres, ringed by the Sassolungo, Sciliar, and Catinaccio peaks. The plateau is car-free 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in summer; you arrive by the Mont Sëuc cable car from Ortisei (€39 round trip) or by car if you're staying up top overnight. Walks are gentle to moderate, often flat, and beautiful in every direction. Sunrise at the Bullaccia viewpoint is the one to set an alarm for. Hire e-bikes at Compatsch to cover more ground.

Unmistakably local beach-resort wear, dressing Amalfi's regulars for half a century. Cotton, linen, embroidered kaftans, pieces that read as costume in New York and exactly right on a Praiano terrace. Open daily; get there before lunch or you'll wait.

The Antinori family has made wine in Tuscany since 1385, and their Chianti Classico estate is one of the region's boldest modern buildings: cut into the hillside, invisible from above, essentially underground. The tour covers the cellar, the architecture, and ends with a tasting of estate wines. Book the 10 a.m. slot.

Walk through the tunnel from Amalfi at 6 p.m., have a glass of wine in the piazza, watch the light turn the cliffs orange. The pebble beach is mostly empty by then. Twenty minutes here is worth two hours in Positano.

Every weekend from September to early December, a different Barbagia village opens its courtyards, cellars, and kitchens: porceddu cooked underground, Cannonau by the carafe, weaving and mask-making demos, the works. Mamoiada (the carnival-mask town) and Oliena (down the road from Su Gologone) are the two best dates. About the closest most travellers get to real Sardinian village life, and the off-season window when prices crash.

Reached by a 15-minute walk through pine forest from the parking, which does the filtering: it weeds out the impatient. The cove is small, the sand fine, the water steeply deep within metres of the shore. Named for the Ottoman landing here in 1480. Bring a towel; there's no lido, no kiosk, nothing to rent. Go before 10 a.m. in July or August.

Ballarò is the most chaotic of Palermo's three open-air markets: Albergheria district, daily except Sunday, running from a fish-and-produce show in the morning to a street-food alley in the afternoon. Walk it from the Chiesa del Carmine end, past the cluster of stigghiole grills, the panelle stalls, the fishmongers calling prices in Sicilian. End at Casa Stagnitta for an espresso. Cash only, small notes only. Vucciria, ten minutes north, is smaller, grittier, more nocturnal.

Bari is not what Puglia is sold on, and that's the appeal. The old town is dense, working-class, openly Italian, full of basilicas, fishermen, and pensioners playing cards on the corner. Walk Strada delle Orecchiette (the pasta street) in the morning, the seawall at sunset, and have dinner in any unmarked door past Piazza Mercantile. One day, no museums. Just the place.

The Giotto frescoes are why people come to Umbria. Two churches stacked on top of each other; the upper one has the famous St Francis cycle. Go first thing in the morning before the tour groups arrive. Free; modest dress required (cover shoulders and knees).

The Lecce Baroque masterpiece: 150 years of carved stone, gargoyles, griffins, and the most theatrical rose window in southern Italy. The interior comes as a calm after the façade, which is rather the idea. Combined ticket with three other Lecce churches and the underground Roman foundations beneath the cathedral. Skip the guided tour; the building does the talking.

Italian beach clubs are an institution: a rented umbrella, two loungers, a waiter with cold drinks and panini, sometimes a small restaurant for lunch. La Gavitella is the rare west-facing club on this coast, though sunbed service wraps at 7 p.m. (often before the sun actually sets in peak summer). Book the restaurant terrace for the final sunset from a table.

The one piece of logistics that makes Lake Como work. The three villages at the centre of the lake's Y connect by a 15-minute car-ferry circuit running every 30–60 minutes in season. Buy a daily pass and hop on and off across the three over a day: Bellagio in the morning (busiest), Varenna for lunch (quietest), Menaggio for the swim (best beach). Half the pleasure is the crossing itself.

Rolling hills, cypress alleys, ancient hill towns: the classic Tuscan landscape on an e-bike, with the gradient handled for you. Several operators run half- and full-day routes taking in wine tastings, picnic lunches, and stops at off-the-grid agriturismi. Beginner-friendly with the electric assist, and the routes mostly bend to what you want. Late spring and September are the windows.

A surreal sea cave where the water glows electric blue from sunlight filtering through an underwater cavity. Tiny rowboats, boatmen who often sing while you float inside, the whole thing over in about five minutes. Touristy, no argument, but the colour is real and there's nothing else like it. Go early or late to skip the queues.

The Medici's private garden: eleven hectares of formal Italian design with grottos, fountains, a Roman amphitheatre, and clear views across the city from the upper terraces. More interesting than the Pitti Palace interior, and much less crowded. The hidden Grotta di Buontalenti (1583) has sculptures emerging from artificial stalactites. Find it.

Bernini's Apollo and Daphne, Caravaggio in several rooms. The two-hour limit sounds punishing until you notice it's what makes the visit work: you leave before you're exhausted. Book weeks ahead, not days.

Lecce has a centuries-old papier-mâché (cartapesta) tradition little known outside Salento: saints, angels, and theatrical figures hand-shaped from paper pulp and painted with detail you have to see to believe. Claudio Riso is one of the city's most respected working artisans; his small studio is open to visitors, you watch him work, and you can take home a piece signed and dated like fine art. Small ones start at €50, the big ones run into the low thousands. About the most specific souvenir Lecce sells.

A full-day boat down the Brenta canal, the 18th-century waterway Venetian nobility used to reach their summer estates inland. Nine swing bridges, five locks (true 'water lifts' that raise the boat ten metres between Venice and Padua), and three guided villa stops: Villa Foscari 'La Malcontenta,' Villa Widmann, and the vast Villa Pisani at Stra, where Hitler and Mussolini once met. The pace is slow on purpose; the views are weeping willows, Palladian facades, and a slow-Veneto silence you won't find in the city. Nine and a half hours, lunch optional and not included. Occasionally cancelled when the Brenta runs shallow, so check the forecast.

A fishing village where every house is painted a different brilliant colour, supposedly so fishermen could find them through the lagoon fog. Each colour needs a permit from the local government, which keeps the palette honest. The lace tradition is real but mostly displaced by imports now; the Museo del Merletto explains what you're actually looking at. Lunch at Trattoria al Gatto Nero (book ahead) for the risotto di gò. Half a day, easy.

The largest covered food market in Italy and one of the biggest in Europe, over two floors: fish on the ground, meat and produce upstairs. Cagliari's answer to Palermo's Capo: shouting, ice, bottarga in eight forms, sea urchins by the half-kilo (€10), and the pace of a real working market nobody has tidied up for tourists. Open until 2 p.m., Monday to Saturday. Don't eat breakfast first.

The most famous beach in Sardinia, reachable only on foot. A 3.5 km / 470 m-elevation trail from the Golgo Plateau down to a white-pebble cove with a 143 m limestone pinnacle and a natural arch. There's a 250-people-a-day cap and the €7 permit books out, so reserve via the official Heart of Sardinia app days ahead. The trail opens at 7:30 a.m.; arrive before 10 to make the day work. Closed-toe shoes mandatory, 2L of water minimum.

Sardinia's most photogenic winery: a modern glass-and-granite tasting room cut into a hillside between Porto Cervo and San Pantaleo, ringed by its own Vermentino vines. Tastings are €25–40 per person, three to six wines plus charcuterie, and the kitchen does a proper Sardinian lunch if you book it. Vermentino is the headline (Gallura is its heartland, the island's only DOCG), but the Cannonau reds are the sleepers.

Why you come to Spello. Pinturicchio's 1501 fresco cycle in a side chapel of the parish church: saturated colour, Renaissance landscapes behind the biblical scenes, the kind of detail you stand in front of for thirty minutes. Drop a euro in the light box. Worth the drive from anywhere in Umbria.

The Norman royal chapel inside the Palazzo dei Normanni, built between 1132 and 1140, with floor-to-ceiling Byzantine gold mosaics and a wood-carved muqarnas ceiling done by Arab craftsmen for the Norman king. A candidate for the most beautiful room in Sicily, and one of the few places you see the Norman, Arab, and Byzantine fusion working in one space. Go right at opening (8:30 a.m.) before the tour buses. Closed Sunday afternoons.

A 4×4 drive into the active marble quarries where Michelangelo sourced the stone for the David: chalk-white cliffs cut into geometric terraces, still being worked. The terrain is stark in a way nothing else in Tuscany is. Most tours include the quarry visit and a stop at the small mining museum; closed-toe shoes required. Pair it with lunch in Carrara town or seafood at Marina di Carrara on the way back.

The island's original perfumery, hand-bottling scents from local Capri lemon, wild fig, mint, and rosemary since 1948. The flagship on Via Camerelle is small, atmospheric, and run by people who actually know fragrance. Mediterraneo and Numero Uno are the signatures, both unmistakably island.

The Belmond Caruso runs a small Campanian cooking school in the historic palace kitchen: pasta-making with Mamma Carmela, small groups, hands-on, ending with lunch on the terrace.

The Belmond Caruso's spa has a heated pool with the same drop-off view as the famous infinity pool below. The pool is open to non-guests via the concierge.

A 1905 hilltop villa built by the English painter Robert Kitson, later inherited by his niece Daphne Phelps, who ran it as a salon for much of the 20th century: Tennessee Williams, Picasso, Bertrand Russell, D.H. Lawrence all passed through. Now Sicily's oldest house-museum, a UNESCO intangible-heritage site, holding the only surviving Frank Brangwyn-designed dining room in the world. Visit by guided tour only; book by email a day or two ahead. Daphne's memoir A House in Sicily is worth reading first.

Steaming, aquamarine pools cascading over travertine terraces, the photograph everyone has seen of Tuscany's wild thermal springs. Free, open 24/7, heated to about 37°C by sulphurous water from an extinct volcano. By 10 a.m. the crowd is dense; dawn or after dark is when it's actually worth it. Bring reef shoes, the rocks are slick, and leave the silver at home, the sulphur tarnishes it.

Frederick II's octagonal hunting castle, built in the 1240s in the middle of nowhere on a hilltop in the Murgia. Eight sides, eight towers, eight rooms per floor: the geometry is mathematical and faintly unsettling, and nobody fully knows what it was for. Forty minutes inside is enough. The drive across the Murgia, all stone walls and trulli and almond trees, is the better half.

Hand-painted Mediterranean ceramics in whimsical patterns, espresso cups from €20 to hand-decorated platters north of €300. The Ravello workshop has been in the same family for three generations. They ship internationally, so don't stress about luggage weight.

Capri's jewellery house, family-owned since 1947. The signature Campanella charm, a tiny coral or gold bell, has been worn by everyone from Jackie O to today's collectors. Each piece is handcrafted in Naples, and vintage capsule collections sometimes surface if you ask the archivist.

In Cisternino, several butchers (macellerie) double as evening grills. You walk in, pick from the meat counter (bombette, pork roulades filled with caciocavallo; salsiccia; lamb skewers), and they grill it on the spot. You eat at plastic tables on the street with house wine in plastic cups. €15 a head, transcendent. Zio Pietro and Ai Tre Punti both do it.

Hands-on Campanian cooking in a working family kitchen above Ravello. Lemon cake, pasta from scratch, eggplant parmigiana, end the morning eating what you made on a terrace with the gulf below. Mamma Agata started cooking professionally as a teenager; her daughter Chiara runs the classes now.

Armando and Rosalba's eight-course lunch is famous; the cooking class that precedes it is the more useful purchase. Three or four hours in the masseria kitchen learning orecchiette, taralli, and one slow-cooked secondo, ending at the long table with the wine they make on the property. Reserve weeks ahead. Vegetarians and chefs both come back.

Three hours from 9 a.m.: you meet the chef at Ortigia's daily market, shop for fish, vegetables, and bread together, walk back to a private kitchen on the island, and cook three Sicilian classics (a pasta, a fish, a contorno) to eat for lunch with wine pairings. The Sicilian Slow Food chapter runs a good version. €110–140 per person.

Cortina hosted the women's alpine events of the 2026 Winter Olympics, and Olympia delle Tofane, the women's downhill course, is one you can ski. The Tofana, Faloria, and Cinque Torri areas connect by shuttle (lift-linking is a future Olympic-legacy plan). 120 km of slopes, mostly intermediate, plus the Hidden Valley / Armentarola run off Lagazuoi: a 7.5-km off-piste descent with a horse-drawn tow at the end to get you back to Alta Badia. Famously surreal.

Villa d'Este's terraced Renaissance gardens: hundreds of fountains, cypress alleys, the Oval Fountain, the Avenue of a Hundred Fountains. An hour by regional train from Termini. Go on a weekday, and pair it with the Roman ruins at Villa Adriana if you want a full day.

The seat of the Venetian Republic for 700 years. Tintoretto's Paradise, the largest oil painting in the world, covers an entire wall of the Great Council Chamber. The Bridge of Sighs connects the palace to the old prison, where Casanova was held in the cells beneath. If you can, buy the Secret Itineraries tour (€32): it takes you through the prison, the torture chamber, and Casanova's actual cell. Otherwise the standard €30 ticket is plenty. Book the first slot at 9 a.m.

Nero's buried pleasure palace, directly beneath the Colosseum crowds. VR headsets rebuild the frescoed rooms as they looked at completion: gold leaf, painted ceilings, a rotating dining room. Eerie, fascinating, and usually emptier than it has any right to be.

The classic Umbria drive. Two hours each way, climbing from Spoleto into the Apennines. Stop in Norcia (the truffle and salumi town, rebuilt after the 2016 earthquake), then up to Castelluccio for the views. Eat lentils. Buy salami. Don't rush.

The oldest grocery in central Venice, open since 1948 on a calle that has housed spice merchants for six hundred years. The Mascari family (now Luciano's sons Gabriele and Gino) still works the trade: 50 kinds of honey, sun-dried tomatoes from the south, truffles, candied fruit, balsamics aged twenty years, and a separate wine room with 600-plus Italian labels. The smell when you walk in is the whole memory of Venetian trade routes packed into a doorway. Edible souvenirs that don't read as souvenirs: the saffron, the dried porcini, the chestnut honey. Closed Sundays.

The façade is one of the great Gothic frontages in Italy: striped marble, mosaics, sculpted bronze doors. Inside, Luca Signorelli's Last Judgement frescoes in the San Brizio chapel pre-date the Sistine Chapel by a few years, and Michelangelo definitely studied them. Pay the small chapel ticket; the rest of the cathedral is free.

The original Roman road, largely car-free on Sundays, lined with pine trees and ancient tombs for miles. An e-bike covers a lot of ground without the suffering: the catacombs, the Circus of Maxentius, the tomb of Cecilia Metella. EcoBike Roma, the official park-services operator inside the Appia Antica gate, runs guided rides and rents by the hour; self-guided works too if you've mapped it.

Le Sirenuse's in-house boutique on Via Cristoforo Colombo, the most thought-through shop in Positano: embroidered shirts, tailored linens, hand-blocked kaftans from the line Carla Sersale founded, now designed by her niece Viola Parrocchetti. Resort wear with real taste, the kind of pieces you keep wearing ten years after the trip.

The way to do Etna if you've only got one afternoon. A half-day 4x4 up to 1,900 m (the Silvestri craters, the 2002 lava flow, the old quarries on the north side), then back down to one of the volcano's natural-wine producers, Pietradolce, Passopisciaro, or Tenuta di Fessina, for a sunset tasting. Looser, slower, and more honest than the summit hike, and you can drink at the end of it.

The Etna DOC is one of the most exciting wine regions in Europe right now: old-vine Nerello Mascalese on volcanic soil at 800 m, making reds that taste like nothing else. Three to book a tasting with: Passopisciaro (the Andrea Franchetti pioneer), Pietradolce (the Faraone family's estate, top-rated reds), and Tenuta delle Terre Nere (Marc de Grazia's flagship). Each €25–40, two hours including a barrel tasting. A half-day with a driver is how to do it.

The full ascent: cable car from Rifugio Sapienza to 2,500 m, then a 4x4 bus to 2,900 m, then a 90-minute guided walk to the active craters. The summit is at 3,357 m, and reaching it legally requires a certified volcanological guide (solo above 2,900 m is not permitted). Half-day from Catania. Bring layers; even in July the summit drops below 10°C and the wind cuts.

Two seasonal anchors. EuroChocolate runs the second half of October in Perugia, when the centro storico is given over to chocolate makers from Italy and beyond. The Acqualagna National Truffle Fair runs three straight weekends from late October into early November, over in the Marche. If you're here in autumn, build the trip around one or the other.

Fabriano has made fine paper since the 13th century; much of what Michelangelo, Raphael, and the Vatican used came from this town. The Museo della Carta runs working presses and a small atelier where you can try the cotton-rag technique yourself. Email ahead to reserve the workshop; standard entry is walk-in.

A micro-jungle of mossy rock, cascading streams, and freshwater pools under ancient chestnut trees, under thirty minutes inland from the coast. The counterpoint to the cliffside glamour: cool, green, slow, almost nobody. Bring a swimsuit and reef shoes; the lower pools are worth a swim.

Italy's most international performing arts festival, running every summer since 1958. Opera in the Roman amphitheatre, theatre in cloistered courtyards, dance, contemporary music, visual arts. World-class programme in a hilltop Umbrian town. Tickets €25–€60 for most events; book by April when the programme drops.

A narrow inlet between two cliffs spanned by a single road bridge, with a pebble beach below reachable by stairs. One of the most photographed spots on the coast and almost always less crowded than its reputation suggests. Go before 11 a.m.

Rem Koolhaas designed the campus; Miuccia Prada commissioned the foundation. Contemporary art in a converted distillery, including the gold-leafed Haunted House. Bar Luce (Wes Anderson) is downstairs. Allow three hours minimum; locals come for the day. The Osservatorio outpost at Galleria Vittorio Emanuele runs separate exhibitions.

The Franciscan basilica nobody queues for, which holds two of the great altarpieces in Western art: Titian's Assumption of the Virgin (1518) above the main altar, and his Pesaro Madonna in the left nave. Titian himself is buried inside. So is Canova, in his own pyramid tomb. Cold stone, brown brick, candle-smoke smell, and a Donatello wooden John the Baptist that almost no one looks at. €5 is the best art-to-euro ratio in the city.

The main Umbria art museum, inside the 13th-century Palazzo dei Priori on Perugia's main pedestrian street. Pinturicchio, Perugino, Gentile da Fabriano, Piero della Francesca's Polittico di Sant'Antonio. Allow two hours. Closed Mondays.

The finest collection of Venetian painting anywhere: Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto, Tiepolo, in the deconsecrated complex of Santa Maria della Carità. Veronese's vast Feast in the House of Levi was painted as a Last Supper until the Inquisition objected to the dwarfs and dogs. Less crowded than the Doge's Palace, and easier to actually see the paintings. Two hours is enough. Free the first Sunday of the month.

East of the Arsenale, Castello stops being a tourist neighbourhood and turns back into a working Venetian one: laundry strung between windows, kids in the campi, residents stopping to talk in the middle of the calle. Walk from San Zaccaria east toward Via Garibaldi and the Giardini. There's nothing to 'see,' which is exactly why you go. Eat at El Refolo or Local. End at the Sant'Elena park, the only real green space in central Venice.

An orange grove on a hilltop above Trastevere, with the skyline arranged in one take: St. Peter's, the Trastevere rooftops, the Palatine, all of it at golden hour. Tourists mostly haven't found it, a collective failure of imagination that works entirely in your favor. Go at 6:30 p.m.

Italy's most historic porcelain house, founded by Marquis Carlo Ginori in 1735 outside Florence (part of the Kering group since 2013). The Rondinelli flagship is more cabinet of curiosities than store: rooms arranged like museum installations, plate patterns layered against painted ceilings. Even if a €600 espresso set isn't in the plan, walk in and look.

The long, low island across the Giudecca canal, historically the working-class side of Venice: shipyards, factories, the original Stucky flour mill (now a Hilton). Walk the fondamenta west to east for the best view of Dorsoduro and San Marco from across the water. Palladio's Il Redentore anchors the middle. Stop at La Palanca for an affordable lunch on the water. The Cipriani sits at the eastern tip if you want to see what €2,000 a night looks like from outside.

The Longo women have run this hat shop, a minute from the Rialto bridge, since 1901. Giuliana is usually behind the counter; she's been at it since the late 1970s, and travels to Ecuador every year to buy the Cuenca and Montecristi Panamas by hand. The shop is closet-sized, walls floor-to-ceiling with hand-blocked felts, woven straws, gondolier caps, fascinators, theatrical Carnival pieces. Go in for the gondolier hat (the traditional bareteri, woven straw with a double satin band) or a foldable Panama you can pack. Closed Sundays.

A limestone gorge 500 metres deep, walls of sheer rock the height of skyscrapers on both sides, often called Europe's Grand Canyon and not entirely wrongly. The Genna Silana trailhead is the standard way in: a 2–3 hour scramble down, then back up, the canyon floor opening into pools clear enough to swim in. Bring a packed lunch and sturdy shoes. A full day's hike, and the antidote to a week on the beach.

A natural limestone sinkhole full of seawater, ringed by archaeological ruins and Messapian inscriptions older than the Romans. You climb down the rocks and jump in. The water is clear, deep, cold, and connected to the sea through underwater channels. Skip the paid pool next door; the free natural one is the whole reason you came. Go early; after 11 a.m. it gets dangerously crowded.

A sea cave where sunlight passing through underwater openings makes the water glow green. Less famous than Capri's Blue Grotto and considerably less of a circus. Boat access from Conca dei Marini, or descend the elevator from the SS163. Twenty minutes inside.

Three kilometres of karst caves under the Murgia, including the Grotta Bianca, pure white alabaster stalactites lit from below. The 70-minute full tour goes deep; the shorter 50-minute version skips the Grotta Bianca, the best part. It's a steady 15°C year-round, so bring a layer. Booked online same-day is usually fine outside August.

A vast cave system in central Le Marche, one of the largest in Europe. The standard tour is 75 minutes through the Grotta Grande del Vento; the 'Avventura' tours go further, with helmets and ropes, and need booking weeks out. Cold inside, a steady 14°C, so bring a jacket.

The other way to see the Baunei coast: 8 hours, three coves, snorkelling stops, and a boat-only view of Cala Goloritzè you can't get otherwise (boats can't dock, but you can swim from 200 m out). Stops take in Cala Mariolu, Piscine di Venere, Grotta del Fico. Skippered boats start at €60; rent your own Zodiac (no licence needed under 40 hp) from around €200 a day.

The Pirelli Foundation's contemporary art space, in a former locomotive factory in northeast Milan. Anselm Kiefer's seven monumental towers (The Seven Heavenly Palaces) are installed permanently, worth the journey on their own. The rotating exhibitions are consistently world-class. Free entry. Twenty minutes by tram from Garibaldi.

Small-group horseback rides through Chianti vineyards and wildflower meadows; most stables run one- to two-hour beginner-friendly trips, some longer with wine tastings or lunch. The slower pace gives you the cypress alleys and stone farmhouses at a different scale than the SS222 drive. Spring and autumn are the seasons; summer afternoons get too hot.

A sunrise float across vineyards, olive groves, and the cypress-lined hills of the Val d'Orcia: about an hour airborne depending on wind, capped with a prosecco-and-pastry breakfast in a field on landing. Weather-dependent and not cheap, but the photographs are the photographs. Book directly with a regional operator (Firenze Mongolfiere is the established name) rather than through a hotel concierge; same price, more give on rescheduling.

A tiny rocky island joined to the mainland by a sandbar that appears and disappears with the tide, owned by the Englishwoman Florence Trevelyan in the late 19th century, later a small private nature reserve. The pebble beach on either side of the sandbar is Taormina's swim spot. Get there before 10 a.m. (busy by noon) and book a sunbed at Lido Mendolia or Lido la Caravella for €25–40. The cable car from Taormina town runs every 15 minutes, €3 each way.

A sleek white-on-white wellness space inside one of Capri's best small hotels. Bespoke treatments, a private hammam, lymphatic drainage, aroma facials, island-sourced scrubs. The volcanic-stone detox ritual is the local specialty. Open to non-guests on availability; book a few days ahead in summer.

A wholly different Venice: paddling a sea kayak through the rio behind San Marco at 6:30 a.m., when the city is empty and the only sound is your own paddle. Laguna Kayak runs small-group tours through hidden canals, salt marshes, and lagoon islands most visitors never see, including a loop around the back of Murano and the abandoned plague island of Poveglia. Take the sunrise slot: the light is unreal and the canals are yours. Tide-dependent, so they'll move your booking if the water's wrong.

More than 60 islands and islets in all, seven of them main (La Maddalena, Caprera, Budelli, Santo Stefano, Santa Maria, Spargi, Razzoli), protected as a national park. The kind of water that looks unreal in photos and unreal in person. The ferry from Palau to La Maddalena takes 20 minutes; from there, charter a small boat for the inner-archipelago route (Spargi, Budelli, Razzoli) or join a full-day cruise from Cervo or Santa Teresa. Budelli's famous pink beach is fully off-limits: walking on the sand and swimming in the protected waters within 70 m are both banned (fines run into the thousands). View it from the boat at the buoy line. The water between Spargi and Razzoli is the headline.

Beneath Catania's Piazza del Duomo, a daily fish market centuries old: swordfish split open on marble counters, tuna heads on ice, octopus still moving, fishmongers shouting in dialect. Go at 7:30 a.m. when the boats have just unloaded, walk the perimeter, watch them work, take coffee at Caffè del Duomo on the corner. Then lunch at Antica Marina, which sources from this market an hour earlier.

If Barumini is too far south, La Prisgiona is the island's second-best Nuragic complex, a 20-minute drive from the Costa Smeralda. Excavated village, central tower, and the giants' tomb at Coddu Vecchju nearby, a megalithic burial site for the same people who built the towers. The Arzachena Archeological Park combo ticket covers both. Worth a morning on a beach week.

The Instagram lake. Emerald-green, wooden rowboats lined up on a pier in front of a sheer cliff, yes, that one. Walk the 3.5-kilometre shore loop (45 minutes, flat, easy), rent a rowboat from the dock for an hour (€32 for 30 min, May–Oct), and get there by 7 a.m. or after 5 p.m. to dodge the crowds. Mid-July through mid-September you must pre-book a parking time slot online: no booking, no entry by car. The park-and-ride shuttle from Dobbiaco works if you miss the slot.

A turquoise glacial lake at 1,925 metres at the foot of the Sorapis massif, Gatorade-Glacier-Freeze blue, the colour everyone Photoshops except here it really looks like that. Trail 215 from Passo Tre Croci (a 15-minute drive from Cortina): 13 km round trip, 380 m of gain, four hours total, with a couple of exposed sections protected by cables. Not for vertigo. Worth every step. Pack lunch; Rifugio Vandelli at the lake is small and busy.

The cove at the foot of Polignano's old town, framed by the Roman bridge above and the white cliff houses on either side. The water is cold and the pebbles hurt your feet. It is also one of the most photographed beaches in southern Italy and you will understand why within thirty seconds. Arrive before 9 a.m. or after 6 p.m. Mid-day is unbearable.

Lecce is the Florence of the south, except the stone is honey-yellow Lecce limestone and the style is full-blown Baroque rather than Renaissance. Start at Piazza Sant'Oronzo with the Roman amphitheatre, walk to the Basilica di Santa Croce (the most ornate façade in Italy, bring a neck rub), then loop through Piazza del Duomo at dusk when the stone glows orange. Two hours, no entrance fees, all the joy.

Limoncello on the coast is made from sfusato amalfitano lemons. Done well it's a digestif; done badly it's syrup. Skip the gift shops and book a producer tour instead: Villa Massa in Sorrento walks you through the lemon groves and the production, then a tasting on a terrace over the Gulf of Naples.

The three white towns of the Itria Valley, none more than 25 minutes apart. Locorotondo is the most photogenic and the most touristed: circular streets, geranium balconies. Cisternino is the easygoing one, with the famous butcher-shop street food. Martina Franca has the Baroque palazzi and the best aperitivo scene. Do them as a half-day, in that order, by car.

Hand-embroidered linens, monogrammed tablecloths, and nightwear that has dressed Italian aristocrats since 1967. The boutique on Via delle Belle Donne is small, quiet, and uncompromisingly elegant; the staff still wrap purchases in tissue with wax-sealed ribbon. Madonna and Jane Fonda have been clients. The hand-stitched monogrammed tablecloths make extraordinary hostess gifts, and ship internationally.

The Renaissance city walls run 4.2 kilometres of intact rampart with trees planted on top; you rent a bike at the gate and cycle the full circuit in forty minutes. Below sit medieval towers, the outline of a Roman amphitheatre, churches with Romanesque facades. Lunch at Buca di Sant'Antonio (open since 1782), back by 5. Underrated as a day trip.

Next door to MMM Corones, the sixth and last of Reinhold Messner's mountain museums: 1,800 square metres of mountain-photography history inside the old cable-car station on top of Plan de Corones. Built for non-mountain people too. AlpiNN restaurant (the casual Niederkofler project, see Where We Eat) shares the building, so combine them. Cable car from Bruneck, Riscone, or San Vigilio; last car down at 5 p.m.

A small fishing beach tucked between two cliffs. Wooden boats pulled up on the pebbles, two trattorias above, and one of the cleanest swim spots on this stretch. Easier to reach than Furore's beach and almost as photogenic.

A 165-metre Roman-engineered waterfall, the highest man-made falls in Europe, channelled by the consul Manius Curius Dentatus in 271 BC. The water is released on a published schedule (mornings and afternoons in season), so check the website. Walking trails run from short to multi-hour.

A working tuna-fishing village on the southeast tip of the island, its 17th-century tonnara (tuna factory) turned into a small piazza of seafood restaurants. The Tonnara di Marzamemi is the working-museum bit; lunch is at Taverna La Cialoma on the main piazza (book ahead in season). After, drive the back roads through the Pachino tomato fields. Half-day from Noto.

Technically not Puglia (it's Basilicata), but most Puglia trips fold it in, since it's an hour from the Itria Valley and there's nowhere else like it. The Sassi, cave dwellings cut into a limestone canyon and lived in for 9,000 years straight, are now a UNESCO site and, in part, luxury hotels. Walk both Sasso Caveoso and Sasso Barisano, lunch at L'Abbondanza Lucana. Full day.

Cross the wooden footbridge from Burano and you're on Mazzorbo, the quietest inhabited island in the lagoon. The Bisol family rescued the Dorona grape here in 2002 (the native Venetian variety, nearly gone after the 1966 flood) and now make a few thousand bottles a year in this walled vineyard. The Michelin-starred restaurant takes the lunch trade, the casual osteria takes the rest. The vineyard tour is the pick if you don't want a tasting menu.

Perugia's daily covered market: small, central, walkable in half an hour. Cheese, salumi, fresh pasta, the kind of pecorino aged in walnut leaves you don't get at home. Mornings only, closed Sundays. Buy a picnic and eat it on the steps of the Duomo.

Bari's fishermen sell raw seafood straight off the boats at the molo, eaten standing with lemon and Coca-Cola: red prawns, sea urchins, octopus, allievi (baby cuttlefish), and the local specialty, raw mussels. It's about as Pugliese as food gets. It's also raw shellfish from a port, so know what you're doing or don't. Cash only. Done by 11 a.m.

Florence's biggest weekly market: two kilometres of stalls in the riverside park, everything from Tuscan cheese and salumi to leather goods, clothes, and plants. This is where Florentines from every neighbourhood shop, not tourists. Take the C1 tram to Cascine and arrive by 9, before the produce runs low. The cheese counter at the far end is where you buy for the afternoon.

Florence's locals' food market, on the east side of the center near Piazza Ghiberti. Inside: cheese, salumi, butchers, fresh pasta vendors, the trattoria stalls. Outside: produce stalls and a small clothes market. Half the tourists of San Lorenzo, twice the produce, mornings only. Get a porchetta panino and eat it on a bench in the piazza. The atmosphere before 10 a.m. is one of the best things in Florence.

The covered food market in Testaccio is the best introduction to Roman ingredients in the city. Cheese vendors, supplì stalls, fresh pasta, produce. Locals come on weekday mornings, tourists mostly don't come at all. Go between 8 and 11 a.m. before the stalls start packing up. Walk to Flavio al Velavevodetto afterwards.

One of Italy's most exclusive spas, set in the vaulted cellars of a 17th-century convent. Treatments use Santa Maria Novella products; the thermal suite runs a steam cave, hydrotherapy pools, and a vaulted-ceiling tepidarium. Day passes are limited, so reserve ahead. This is not a walk-in.

Twelve minutes in an open single-seater chairlift gliding silently above lemon trees, vineyards, and villa rooftops. The 360-degree view from the top runs from Vesuvius to the Faraglioni to the open Tyrrhenian. Late afternoon for the softest light. The hike up is also possible if you've earned the calves.

Glass has been made on Murano since 1291, when the Republic moved the furnaces off the main islands to cut fire risk. The good furnaces are still here. Skip the 'free demonstrations' that hard-sell you afterward; the legitimate showrooms (Venini, Seguso, Berengo) charge nothing and aren't pushy. Walk the Fondamenta dei Vetrai, lunch at Trattoria Busa alla Torre, and look for the Vetro Artistico Murano trademark on anything you buy.

The museum that holds the original sculptures from the Duomo complex: Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise panels, Donatello's Mary Magdalene, the Pietà Michelangelo began at 70 and couldn't finish. The least crowded major museum in Florence, and arguably the best Gothic and early-Renaissance sculpture in the city. Nobody talks about it enough.

In 2001 the Faggiano family started a plumbing repair in their townhouse and turned up 2,000 years of Lecce underneath it: Roman cisterns, medieval frescoes, a Knights Templar passageway, Messapian tombs. They made the whole building a privately run museum you walk self-guided in forty minutes. The owners are usually around and will fill in the details if you ask. Five euros, and one of the most surprising small museums in Italy.

The most layered urban walk in Italy. Spaccanapoli is the dead-straight line that bisects the old city: markets, shrines, palaces, churches stacked on older churches. End in the Sanità, once Naples' rough heart and now its most interesting block.

Norcia is the town that gave Italy its word for a butcher (norcino). Several salumerie run guided tastings (Norcineria Ansuini and Brancaleone da Norcia are the names) through prosciutto di Norcia IGP, capocollo, ciauscolo, and the local pecorino. Combine with a truffle stop next door. Norcia was hit hard by the 2016 earthquake and is still rebuilding, so supporting local producers matters.

Noto's main street is really two, running parallel along the Baroque axis, with the cathedral, half a dozen palazzi, and three churches lined up like a stage set. The honey-coloured limestone the whole town is built from glows orange at sunset, the right hour for a passeggiata and a granita. The cathedral collapsed in 1996 and reopened in 2007; the interior is sparser than the exterior promises, but the climb up the bell tower is the photograph.

Documented since 1221, opened to the public in 1612, and among the oldest pharmacies in the world. The Dominican friars of Santa Maria Novella started with medicinal herbs; their successors are still making the same products eight centuries on. The frescoed sales room is the most beautiful retail space in Florence. The cult picks are the Acqua di Santa Maria Novella (originally made for Catherine de' Medici), the Pot Pourri, and the Acqua di Rose. Entry is free; you don't have to buy anything.

A working masseria in the Parco Agricolo degli Ulivi Secolari outside Ostuni, in the Rodio family for over 200 years. The tour crosses their olive grove (including 'il grande vecchio,' a 3,000-year-old tree still fruiting), drops into an underground Roman-era oil mill cut into the bedrock, and ends with a blind tasting of three of their extra virgins. About an hour, €10–12 per person. Corrado Rodio, the owner, often runs it himself in good English. About the most specific olive-oil hour in Puglia.

Cross the Ponte Vecchio first thing, before the jewellers open and the tour groups arrive, and walk south into the Oltrarno. Piazza Santo Spirito has a market most mornings. Via Maggio is Florence's antique-dealer street. The leather workshops between Pitti and the Ponte Vecchio open to visitors who ask. This is the everyday Florence, one bridge from the famous one.

A mountain village an hour into the interior, with 150-plus political murals painted onto the houses since the 1960s: anti-fascist, anti-NATO, pro-shepherd, pro-resistance. The most photographed walls in Sardinia, and a slow afternoon's worth of them. Walk the streets on your own or book a local guide to translate the dialect graffiti underneath. Lunch at a village trattoria after; Ai Monti del Gennargentu is the call.

A 75-minute guided tour through a fraction of the 1,200 Etruscan caves and wells that honeycomb the tuff beneath Orvieto. Wine cellars, olive presses, columbaria for pigeons (a Renaissance protein source). The English-language tours run twice a day in season; book online to skip the queue.

The white city on the hill above the olive groves: every building washed in lime, every alley a switchback, the cathedral at the top with a 24-spoke rose window. The walk from Piazza della Libertà to the cathedral takes 20 minutes if you don't stop, two hours if you do. Avoid Saturday nights in July and August unless you came for the nightlife. Wednesday is market day in the lower town.

A 17th-century princely palazzo on Palermo's seafront, restored by the Valsecchi family (collectors and dealers from Milan) and reopened as a private foundation in 2021. Three floors of contemporary art against original Baroque ceilings, a library of rare books, and a sunlit rooftop looking across the Foro Italico to the sea. The most interesting cultural stop in Palermo, and one plenty of Palermitani haven't got to yet.

Federico da Montefeltro's 1460s ducal palace, the Renaissance ideal turned into architecture. The gallery inside holds Piero della Francesca's Flagellation and Raphael's portrait of a young woman. Allow two hours minimum. The studiolo, the duke's tiny study inlaid with trompe-l'œil intarsia, is the room you can't miss.

Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo, the Spanish-born painter, photographer, set designer, and fashion innovator who invented the pleated silk Delphos gown in 1907, lived and worked in this Gothic palazzo from 1898 until his death in 1949. His widow Henriette gave the house to Venice in 1956, and it reopened as a permanent museum in March 2022 after restoration from the 2019 acqua alta floods. The interior hangs exactly as Fortuny left it: his paintings, his lamps, his theatrical sets, the workshop where the Delphos was dyed, the photographic archive. Painterly, dim, deliberately moody; bring a phone with a good low-light camera. Closed Tuesdays. The piano nobile is the room.

A 15th-century Renaissance palazzo that hosts Florence's most consistently good contemporary art and historical exhibitions. Past shows: Marina Abramović, Olafur Eliasson, Donatello, Anselm Kiefer. The courtyard is open and free; the exhibitions are ticketed and worth checking before the trip. The smartest stop in the city for anything from the last 600 years that isn't strictly Renaissance.

Italy's largest opera house and one of the largest in Europe, built in 1897 and the one Coppola filmed for The Godfather Part III's climactic scene. Even if you're not an opera person: the architecture tour (45 minutes, daily 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., €12) is worth the visit alone. If your trip overlaps with a performance, the cheap seats are €30 and the building does most of the work.

There's something surreal about soaring over Europe's largest alpine meadow, especially in the golden hour when the Sassolungo turns pink and you're 800 metres above it. Tandem flights from Tandemfly with certified pilots: 15–20 minutes airborne, 90 minutes door to door. Best in summer, when the thermals are clean. Book ahead; they run only six tandems a day and they sell out. Not for the wind-shy.

A purpose-built cooking school in the Oltrarno running small-group classes in fresh pasta, sauce, and tiramisu. Modern kitchen studio, professional Italian chefs, wine pairing throughout. Private classes available; book a couple of weeks ahead. The pasta technique they teach actually translates back to your own kitchen, which most travel-cooking classes don't.

A small, hands-on class: make fresh pasta by hand, then sit down and eat what you made. Two we'd send you to: Pastificio Faini near Termini, which can also handle gluten allergies (rare for a pasta class), and Enjoy Cooking near the Colosseum, for a pasta and tiramisù class. Reserve ahead for either (enjoycooking.com).

Peggy Guggenheim lived in this unfinished one-storey palazzo on the Grand Canal from 1949 until her death in 1979. Her collection (Pollock, Picasso, Magritte, Ernst, who was her husband, Brancusi, Calder) hangs in her actual rooms, with the terrace onto the canal and Marini's bronze horseman pointing across the water. The most personal museum in the city. Open Wednesday to Monday, closed Tuesdays. In the back garden, Peggy and her fourteen dogs are buried.

Two kilometers of white sand and shallow turquoise water on the Ionian side, near Italy's heel. The nickname is overused but the water genuinely does look Caribbean. Pay €15–25 for a lido (sunbeds, umbrellas, bar) or walk further down to the free public stretch. Bring nothing you can't carry back. The drive from Lecce takes an hour; do it once.

A high plateau at 1,300 m in the Monti Sibillini national park. From late May into early July the wildflower bloom, the fioritura, turns the plain into stripes of poppy red, cornflower blue, mustard yellow, and lentil green. The most photographed landscape in Umbria, and most travellers still miss it. Drive up from Norcia.

The Oltrarno's neighbourhood square market: produce, local vendors, a few street-food stalls, the basilica facade as backdrop. The products are nothing special, but the atmosphere before 10 a.m. is about as close as you get to the city without tourists. Have a coffee at the corner bar and watch the piazza wake up.

Every travel writer has sent you here, which is why you're skeptical, which is why you should go anyway. The view (Florence below, the Duomo, the Arno, the hills) is the one that changes how you see the city. Walk up from San Niccolò about 30 minutes before sunset; the kiosk sells a serviceable Aperol Spritz. Pair it with San Miniato vespers above for a full hour and a half.

Milan's great public collection: Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus, Mantegna's Dead Christ, Raphael's Marriage of the Virgin, all in one wing. Less queue-heavy than the Vatican or the Uffizi for a set of paintings just as good. Pair a morning here with a long lunch at Ratanà or Silvano.

A two-hour skiff or gozzo out of Cala Porto, threading the limestone grottoes north and south of town: Grotta Palazzese, Grotta delle Monache, Grotta Azzurra. The water turns electric blue when the sun is over the boat. The captain stops to swim. Book a small-group operator, not the megaboat, and go in the morning before the wind picks up.

Pompeii is the one everybody names, and the heat, crowds, and sheer scale make it a slog without a guide. Herculaneum is smaller, better preserved, and a fraction of the visitors. Pair either with a half-day on Vesuvius and a stop in Naples for pizza.

A 14th-century aqueduct-bridge across a wooded gorge, 230 metres long and 80 metres high. The view from the Rocca above is the best in town. Walking across it closes periodically for restoration, so check before you go. The forest walk along the gorge is open year-round and worth the hour.

Rome's great Sunday flea market: vintage clothing, ceramics, old prints, furniture, real finds mixed with outright junk (the ratio improves the earlier you arrive). Come before 9 a.m., bring cash, and hold no particular agenda about leaving with something.

Primitivo di Manduria is the same grape as California Zinfandel, grown here in red iron-rich soil and aged differently: denser, riper, more brooding. Negroamaro is the other Salento grape, leaner and more savoury. Visit one estate per region. Felline (Manduria) and Conti Zecca (Leverano) both do excellent guided tastings of three or four wines with a charcuterie board.

Eight hours, your own captain, the route shaped around what you want: Capri grottos, quiet coves, lunch at Da Adolfo or Lo Scoglio. Lucibello has been the established operator on the coast for almost eighty years. If you do one thing on this coast, do this.

If you're staying on Capri or in for the day, hire a small boat at Marina Piccola for two hours (about €200) and circuit the island: the Faraglioni rocks, Grotta Bianca, swim stops in coves the ferries don't enter. The Blue Grotto queue is brutal in summer, and the other grottos are nearly as good and almost empty.

François Pinault's contemporary collection inside the triangular 17th-century customs house at the very tip of Dorsoduro, where the Grand Canal meets the Giudecca canal. Tadao Ando renovated the interior in 2009: pristine concrete, original brick, almost no signage. The shows rotate; the building is the constant. The view from the steps at the tip is one of the great ones anywhere, San Marco to the left, the Salute behind you, Giudecca opposite. Combined ticket with Palazzo Grassi.

If Pescoluse is the Maldive comparison, this is the case for it. White sand dunes, no buildings, shallow water that turns from clear to turquoise to navy within fifty meters. The protected coastal park keeps it relatively undeveloped. Pack a beach umbrella, water, and a sandwich; the lidos here are sparse and the parking is informal. About 40 minutes from Lecce.

A near-perfect Baroque hill town: Ibla is the lower, older half of Ragusa, rebuilt after the 1693 earthquake and clinging to a sandstone ridge above a gorge. Walk down from Ragusa Superiore via the 242 steps of Santa Maria delle Scale at sunset. Locals treat it as the dinner destination, and you'll know it from every Inspector Montalbano episode. Book Ristorante Duomo (2 Michelin stars, Ciccio Sultano) if you can, one of the great restaurants of southern Italy.

The Pescheria is the oldest continuously operating food market in Italy; fish has been sold on this exact spot since 1097. The fishmongers shout in Venetian and break apart at 1 p.m. sharp. Closed Sundays and Mondays. The Erberia produce market alongside sells the rare lagoon vegetables: castraure (baby artichokes from Sant'Erasmo), bruscandoli (wild hop shoots), radicchio di Treviso. Go at 7 a.m. for the spectacle, not the shopping.

A 7-km coastal walk through a protected reserve between Scopello and San Vito Lo Capo, the stretch of Sicilian coast saved from a planned 1980s highway by protest. Limestone cliffs, seven small coves with turquoise water, no cars, no concessions. Park at the southern (Scopello) gate, walk in to the first three coves, swim, walk back. €5 entry. Bring water, there's nothing inside. April through October.

Combined ticket with the Colosseum, but honestly better than the Colosseum. The Forum at 5 p.m. in golden light is one of the most beautiful places in Rome. The Palatine Hill above it has unobstructed views over the whole complex. Buy the ticket online, skip the walk-up line entirely.

The cantina that put Sagrantino on the international map. Marco Caprai's 25-Anni cuvée is the benchmark. Tours and tastings need booking ahead; the standard one runs 90 minutes through five wines, including the structured Sagrantinos. Pair the tasting with lunch on the terrace if it's offered.

Salina grows the best capers in the world (Pantelleria's claim is also legitimate; Sicilians will fight you on this) and Malvasia delle Lipari, a honey-coloured dessert wine made from sun-dried grapes. Visit Hauner (the oldest producer, on the slope above Lingua) or Caravaglio (younger, organic, in Malfa) for a 90-minute tasting with bread, capers, and three or four Malvasias. €35–50. Book by email a week ahead; not a walk-in.

A 30-minute drive across the green Aeolian island, from the granita-and-lighthouse village of Lingua at one end to Pollara (the cove where Il Postino was filmed) at the other. Stop at Lingua for granita at Da Alfredo, the lighthouse, the salt lake at the village edge. End at Pollara for sunset, with a swim if you're up for the steep walk down. Rent a Vespa in Santa Marina Salina, €30–45 a day; the road is what you came for.

Two sites, fifteen minutes apart. The Gothic abbey of San Galgano is roofless, its walls and arches open to the sky, grass where the floor used to be. The Eremo di Montesiepi above it houses a sword embedded in stone, the actual Arthurian-legend version (more or less), left there by the 12th-century knight-turned-hermit Galgano Guidotti. Mythic, raw, and usually empty. Detour country between Florence and the coast.

The island-monastery directly opposite San Marco, designed by Palladio in 1566. Climb the bell tower (lift, €8) for the one view of Venice with San Marco itself in the frame. The Tintoretto Last Supper inside the basilica is free. The Fondazione Cini takes the rest of the island and rotates contemporary shows, usually free and often the best in the city. Five minutes on the #2 from Piazza San Marco, and almost nobody comes.

A Romanesque basilica on the hill above Piazzale Michelangelo: older than the Duomo, quieter than any museum, and free. The monks sing Gregorian vespers at 5:30 p.m. on weekdays; arrive at 5:15. Every guidebook lands on the late-afternoon light through the marble facade, and they're right.

The granite village above the Costa Smeralda, gathered around its little stone church. The Thursday open-air market is the local event: Sardinian linens, ceramics, baskets, vintage everything, and a crowd that runs from shepherds in for the day to people who keep boats in Porto Cervo. Lunch at L'Assaggio in the square after. Come at 9 a.m. to beat the heat; by noon it's a scrum.

Twenty minutes by vaporetto from Fondamente Nove lands you on a long, flat island where Venice grows its vegetables: castraure (the prized baby artichokes), the local Sant'Erasmo wine, herbs, garlic, asparagus, salad. The whole island is about ten kilometres around, flat, nearly carless, mostly farms with stone wells and abandoned watchtowers. Rent a bike at Lato Azzurro (the inn near the vaporetto stop), pack a picnic from Rialto market the day before, and ride the perimeter in a slow loop. There's a small sandy beach at Punta della Vela on the lagoon side, so bring a towel. Few services, almost nobody else doing this. Best April through October.

A leather school inside the Basilica di Santa Croce, founded in 1950 by Franciscan friars and the Gori and Casini families to teach the trade to WWII orphans. Today it runs as a workshop, retail space, and informal school: visitors walk the working area, watch artisans tool leather by hand, and buy bags, belts, and stamped notebooks made on-site. Monogramming on the spot.

The saw-toothed ridgeline that's the trip's photograph. Take the Ortisei–Furnes–Seceda cableway up (two cars, transfer at Furnes), walk ten minutes to the viewpoint, then carry on along the ridge as far as you like. From summer 2026 the cableway runs on timed entry, so book online ahead; tickets sell in 30-minute slots, and turning up without one may leave you stuck. Afternoon light is better for the photo, morning better for the hike (cooler, emptier).

The coast's signature hike. Seven kilometers of clifftop trail, mostly downhill if you start in Bomerano, with views across the entire coast that no road can match. Three to four hours at a slow pace. End in Nocelle, take the bus down, swim. Best mid-morning, after the first wave of group hikers and before the heat.

The trail that connects Maiori and Minori through working lemon groves. Far less famous than the Path of the Gods and the more direct route into how the region actually grows its food. Stone-walled terraces, some 800 years old.

The stretch of Via del Governo Vecchio between Campo de' Fiori and Piazza Navona rewards an unhurried hour: vintage shops, independent bookstores, a few genuinely good ceramics dealers. Walk the side streets too, and buy nothing on Via del Corso.

The Piazza del Campo is the most beautiful civic space in Italy, shaped like a shell, paved in herringbone brick, and surrounded by Gothic palaces that haven't changed since the 13th century. Walk the medieval center, climb the Torre del Mangia for the full panorama, drink coffee at Il Magnifico on Via dei Pellegrini, and be done by early afternoon.

Sirmione sits on a peninsula in southern Lake Garda over a natural sulphur hot spring, Roman-era thermal water bubbling up at 69°C. The Aquaria spa spreads it across pools at several temperatures, with lake views. Open year-round; the evening sessions are the ones to book (lake under stars, fewer people, romantic). Combine with the Roman ruins at Grotte di Catullo at the tip of the peninsula.

A two-hour guided snowshoe trek through powder-deep larch forest and silent meadows from Pederü, ending at Rifugio Fanes (same valley network as Lavarella, a slightly different hut). Strudel, schnapps, sometimes a full Ladin lunch. Equipment rental from €15, guided tours from €60. Book the lunch and the hut ahead (the rifugio takes overnight stays too if you want to commit). The most photogenic winter thing in the range that doesn't require skiing.

A 14th-century village Cucinelli has spent 40 years restoring as a working 'humanistic capitalism' project: a Renaissance theatre, the Forum of the Arts, a philosophers' garden, and the flagship boutique inside a restored palazzo. Walkable in an hour. Free to visit; ask at the boutique about a tour of the theatre and library.

A pebbled cove under the Monte Conero cliff, 20 minutes south of Ancona. The water is the clearest on the Adriatic: chalk-cliff turquoise, almost Mediterranean blue. Park up top, walk down. Bring water. Lunch at one of the beach trattorias. Closed in winter, perfect in June and September.

One of three working squeri left in the city, where they still build and repair gondolas by hand using techniques unchanged since the 16th century. You can't go inside, it's a working workshop, but you can stand on the opposite bank of the Rio di San Trovaso and watch the masters at it. Each gondola takes about 500 hours to build, weighs 700 kg, and uses eight different woods. Best in the morning, on a weekday.

8,000 square metres of gold-ground mosaics inside a Byzantine Greek-cross plan with no equal in Europe. The bronze horses in the upper loggia were looted from Constantinople in 1204; the originals are inside, the outdoor ones copies. The Pala d'Oro, a gold-and-enamel altarpiece studded with 1,927 gemstones, costs €5 extra and is worth it. Pre-book the €6 priority entry online or you'll queue an hour. No bags, no shoulders, no shorts.

There is a lift. There is always a queue. The view at the top is exactly the one you've seen a thousand times, and it's still worth seeing once: terracotta roofs all the way to the Dolomites on a clear winter day, the whole lagoon mapped below you. Galileo demonstrated his telescope from this tower in 1609. The bells still ring, so wear earplugs if you go on the hour. Book the first slot at 9:30 a.m. and skip the worst of the line.

Two narrow streets in Bari Vecchia where local women, most over 60, sit at folding tables outside their doors shaping orecchiette and cavatelli by hand with a knife. They've done it for decades. Watch from a polite distance, buy a bag (€5–8 of fresh pasta), don't photograph without asking, and don't film TikToks. These are people's homes. Mornings, before noon.

One of Europe's most continuously active volcanoes, erupting every 10–20 minutes since 1932. The hike up to 400 m (the Sciara del Fuoco viewpoint, where the lava streams visibly down the north slope into the sea) is the standard climb: leave around 4 p.m., reach it at sunset, watch the eruptions in the dark, headlamps for the descent. Higher hikes to 900 m closed after 2019 activity and remain restricted as of 2026. Confirm with a Stromboli-based guide on arrival.

The most complete Nuragic complex on the island: a UNESCO-listed Bronze-Age stone fortress built around 1500 BC, its central tower originally about 19 m, four subsidiary towers, and a village of circular dwellings outside the walls. Older than the Iron Age, older than Rome. Sardinia's defining cultural site, and the one to see if you see only one. Guided tours only; book ahead in summer.

The most photographed view in Sicily: a 3rd-century-BC Greek theatre carved into the cliff, Etna framed in the missing back wall, the Ionian below. Still a working venue (the Taormina Film Festival in July, classical concerts all summer). Visit at golden hour, an hour before sunset. Buy tickets online to skip the line; the on-site queue can run 45 minutes in season.

An organic buffalo farm that produces some of the most respected mozzarella di bufala in Italy. Tour the dairy, see the buffalo, watch the cheese being made, eat it within an hour of production. Pair with the Greek temples at Paestum next door. Worth the day.

A Phoenician city, later Roman, on a peninsula above two beaches: temples, tombs, a still-standing forum, and one of the better places on the island to feel the layered Mediterranean history without a crowd. Pair it with the Cabras civic archaeology museum nearby, which holds six of the Mont'e Prama giants (Nuragic 6.5-foot stone warriors dug up in 1974). A long lunch on Tharros's San Giovanni beach after.

Between Monopoli, Fasano, and Ostuni, the back roads cross fields of olive trees 1,000 to 3,000 years old: gnarled, monumental, protected by regional law. Some carry plaques. Drive slowly with the windows down, ideally an hour before sunset, when the light turns the trunks copper. There's no stop to reach; the driving is the whole of it.

A hedge-framed keyhole at the gates of the Knights of Malta frames the dome of St. Peter's exactly: centered, composed, surreal. No ticket, no museum, and on a good morning no queue. It costs nothing, which feels like an oversight.

Three islands in the middle of Lake Maggiore, ten minutes from Stresa by public boat. Isola Bella is the one everyone knows: the Borromeo family's 17th-century palazzo with terraced baroque gardens, statuary, and the original peacock walk. Isola Madre has the older botanical gardens. Isola dei Pescatori is a working fishing village of fifty people; eat the lake-fish lunch at one of the trattorias on the only street.

The most local bar-walk in Venice. Start at Al Timon (boat seating on the canal), drift two doors to Vino Vero (natural wine), then back across to Paradiso Perduto for the late shift. The whole strip, about 600 metres, runs along the Fondamenta della Misericordia, where Venetians actually come out to drink. Order a glass of Raboso, a few cicchetti, and move on. Just keep walking. Best Thursday to Saturday from 6 p.m.

Three churches contain five Caravaggios between them. No tickets, no timed entry, no queue. San Luigi dei Francesi has the Matthew cycle. The Cerasi Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo has the Conversion of Saul and Crucifixion of Peter. Sant'Agostino has the Madonna di Loreto. All free. Most tourists walk straight past the signs.

The word 'ghetto' was coined here in 1516, when the Venetian Republic confined the Jewish community to this small island in Cannaregio, gated and locked at night. Five synagogues remain, three still active, and the museum tour is the only way to see the interiors. The square is quiet, residential, and one of the few places in Venice where the city's complicated history is laid bare. The bakery on the campo (Volpe) still makes traditional Venetian-Jewish pastries.

Leonardo's 1495–98 mural, in its original refectory wall. Fifteen-minute timed slots, 30 visitors maximum, climate-controlled entry. The single hardest ticket to book in northern Italy. The reservation system opens roughly 4 months ahead and sells out the same day for spring/summer. Set a calendar reminder.

Now requires a timed ticket, which has made it noticeably better. Go early, before the tour groups. The oculus has been doing the same job for 2,000 years and the building still refuses to make sense by modern standards. There is nothing else to say.

Above Piazza del Popolo, the Pincian Hill terrace gives you a north-facing panorama across Rome that most visitors don't find. Less crowded than the Janiculum, more unexpected than the Aventine. Walk up through Villa Borghese from the north entrance. Bring something to drink.

The full skiable circuit around the Sella massif: four high passes (Gardena, Sella, Pordoi, Campolongo), four valleys (Val Gardena, Alta Badia, Arabba, Val di Fassa), 26 km of skiing in one day. Pick a direction (orange clockwise or green counterclockwise) and start by 9 a.m.; if you're not back at your starting lift by 3:30 p.m., you'll be sleeping in another valley. Intermediate level, all blue and red runs, no blacks required. The Dolomiti Superski pass (€80–95/day) gets you the whole network.

The wine road running south from Florence through the Chianti hills to Siena, the defining Tuscan drive. Stop in Panzano (Dario Cecchini's butcher), Greve (Tuesday market), and Radda (enoteca in the main piazza). The road itself is the draw: cypress alleys, stone farmhouses, harvest signs in September.

Where there's no bridge, locals cross the Grand Canal standing up in a stripped-down gondola called a traghetto. Two euros, two minutes, and you're over, mostly used to skip a fifteen-minute walk to the nearest bridge. The Santa Sofia crossing (near Rialto Market) and the San Tomà crossing still run most mornings. Stand if you're brave, sit if you're not. Cash only, exact change appreciated.

A prehistoric Nuragic village built inside the collapsed crater of Monte Tiscali: stone dwellings standing in a hollowed-out mountain cave, hidden so well from Roman patrols that the locals held it for centuries after the rest of Sardinia fell. A two-hour rocky hike each way through the Lanaittu Valley to reach it, scrambling over limestone in the last stretch. Indiana-Jones-coded. Pair with a night at Su Gologone.

The lagoon's first settlement, founded in the 5th century and largely abandoned by the 12th, to malaria, silting, then plague. The Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta (founded 639) holds a Byzantine Last Judgement mosaic on its west wall that's as terrifying now as it was a thousand years ago. Climb the bell tower for the view across to the Adriatic. The whole island has perhaps thirty residents and one open restaurant. Twenty minutes from Burano on the vaporetto.

A 1,200-hectare protected marine and wetland reserve with one of the cleanest beaches on the Adriatic and trails through Mediterranean macchia and old olive groves. The water stays unspoiled because it has to: no roads, no car parks, no lidos near the beach. You walk in fifteen minutes from the visitor centre. Bring water. The bike rental at the gate is a good shout.

The signature Dolomites hike. Ten kilometres around the three limestone spires (Cima Grande, Cima Ovest, Cima Piccola) at around 2,300 metres, four to five hours at a normal pace, moderate but not technical. The toll road from Misurina up to Rifugio Auronzo costs €30 a car, open end of May to end of October. Go counterclockwise, which turns the best view into your final approach. Lunch at Rifugio Auronzo or Rifugio Locatelli mid-loop. Start by 9 a.m. to beat the bus tours coming up from Cortina.

Acqualagna produces two-thirds of Italy's truffles. A morning hunt with a local trifulau and his dog runs 2–3 hours through the oak forest, ending with a tasting of what you find (or, more honestly, what they've planted). Several outfits in town run them; book through Acqualagna's tourism office. White-truffle season is October–December; black truffles year-round.

Giulio and his dog Edda run small-group truffle hunts in the wooded hills outside Florence: white truffles in autumn and winter, black in summer. The hunt is about three hours through the forest, and the morning ends with a multi-course truffle lunch at his family farmhouse, estate wine and olive oil included. No gimmick; Giulio knows the actual ground. Rain or shine.

The great collection of Renaissance painting, full stop. Botticelli's Birth of Venus and Primavera are here, and so is everything else: Caravaggio, Titian, Raphael, Michelangelo drawings. Two hours minimum, four if you're thorough. Book the 8 a.m. slot and have the first rooms to yourself before the tour groups arrive at 9:30.

The Catacombs of San Callisto are among the most extensive in Rome: 20 km of tunnels, 500,000 burials, early Christian art on the walls. Tours run every 30 minutes with a guide; no self-guided access. The Catacombs of Priscilla (north Rome, less visited) trade the crowds for stranger frescoes.

Pienza is a Renaissance town built to order by Pope Pius II in the 1460s, an urban-planning experiment in miniature ringed by a UNESCO-protected landscape. Drive the Strada della Bonifica for the cypress-lined hill views, then go to Montalcino for Brunello from a producer you can't find elsewhere: Poggio di Sotto, Cerbaiona, Ciacci Piccolomini.

Eight Greek temples along a 3 km ridge facing the sea, built between 510 and 430 BC, the most complete Doric temple group outside Greece itself. The Temple of Concordia is the headline, almost intact and almost 2,500 years old. Go at 7 a.m. for the heat and the empty olive groves, or at sunset for the golden hour. The Garden of the Kolymbethra, run by FAI, is a separate ticket and worth it for the orange-grove walk below the temples.

The best €9.50 you can spend in Venice. The #1 is the slow boat: it stops at every palazzo, every bridge, every twist of the canal between the train station and San Marco. Board at Piazzale Roma or Ferrovia, stand at the back in the open-air section, and ride the full route around 6 p.m. when the light goes copper. Better than a gondola, cheaper than dinner, with locals commuting next to you. Buy a 24-hour pass for €25 if you'll repeat it.

The 1st-century Roman amphitheatre stages a summer opera season (June–September) in its original tiered seating: 15,000 capacity, perfect acoustics, the stage rebuilt fresh each year. The easiest opera-and-lake combo in Italy. Train from Desenzano del Garda (35 min) or direct from Milan (1h 10). Wear closed shoes for the stone steps, and bring a cushion.

The 'spur' of Italy's boot: a forested mountain peninsula almost nobody puts on a first Puglia trip, which is exactly the argument for it. Vieste is the main town: white limestone, dramatic cliffs, the Pizzomunno monolith. Drive the coast road to Peschici and stop at the trabucchi (wooden fishing platforms on stilts) for lunch. Two days minimum if you go, and skip the Gargano altogether if your whole Italy trip is only a week. The spur's geography makes it an impractical add-on for short itineraries; it pays off on 10-day-plus trips with Puglia as the centrepiece.

Vietri is the ceramic town of the Amalfi Coast; the brightly painted tiles on every dome and stair riser are made here. The main street is a half-day in itself: dozens of workshops, real artisans, prices a fraction of what the same pieces cost in Positano boutiques. Most ship internationally.

The small boating lake inside Villa Borghese: rowboats for rent, the temple of Aesculapius reflected in the water, nobody in a hurry. Pair it with the Borghese Gallery on the same morning and the day mostly plans itself.

The Terrace of Infinity is the most photographed spot in Ravello: a marble balustrade lined with classical busts, opening onto a thousand-foot drop. Get there before 10 a.m. or after 5 p.m. for a clean shot. The gardens take an hour to walk.

An 18th-century villa on a wooded promontory at the southwest tip of the Bellagio peninsula, run by the FAI (Italy's National Trust). Reached only by boat or a half-mile walk through the woods. The gardens are the headline; the interior contains explorer Guido Monzino's Everest and polar expedition collections. Casino Royale and Star Wars: Attack of the Clones filmed here. Closed Mondays and Wednesdays.

A 4th-century Roman hunting villa with the largest, best-preserved Roman mosaics anywhere: over 3,500 m² of them, including the famous 'bikini girls' mosaic of female athletes. Buried under a 12th-century mudslide, rediscovered in the 1950s, UNESCO since 1997. Two hours inland from Catania, an hour from Ragusa; drive, there's no train. A walkway runs above the mosaics; bring a hat for the summer heat.

The other great Ravello garden: 13th-century, two terraces, an Arab-Sicilian cloister. The Ravello Festival (early July to late August) stages orchestral concerts on a platform built out over the cliff at the lower terrace. Buy festival tickets months ahead.

An early-20th-century villa-turned-museum built by Swedish doctor Axel Munthe on the ruins of a Roman site. Roman antiquities, perfumed gardens, and a shaded pergola overlooking the gulf that's quite possibly the best photograph spot on Capri. Pair with the Monte Solaro chairlift, which leaves from the same village.

A steep 45-minute hike up the rim of Vulcano's main crater, climbing through coloured sulphur deposits to a 360° view across to Lipari and Salina. The mud baths at the foot of the volcano (Pozza dei Fanghi) are the other draw: sulphurous, smelly, and sworn by locals to fix every skin condition. Closed for a year after 2021 gas-vent issues, now reopened. Bring water and an old swimsuit; the sulphur stains.

After dark the Tiber embankment empties out. Both banks lit, bridges glowing, the river traffic gone, the city quiet enough to hear your own footsteps. Start at Castel Sant'Angelo and walk south toward Trastevere. Takes about an hour if you stop twice.

The most talked-about winery on the coast. Vines are grown on terraces above the cliff at Furore, producing Costa d'Amalfi DOC whites from native grapes (fenile, ripoli, ginestra) and reds (tintore, piedirosso). The Fiorduva is the flagship, an extreme-terroir white that routinely tops the critics' scorecards.

A sit-down tasting in a private studio minutes from the Colosseum: Italian wines, poured and explained by people who take it seriously without making it precious. Small groups, a real cellar, no rush. You leave ordering differently for the rest of the trip.

A converted theatre near Santa Maria Novella, now the most design-minded yoga studio in Florence. Vinyasa, kundalini, yin, and ashtanga, taught in Italian and English. Drop-in friendly, mats for rent. Useful when the museum days and the dinners catch up with you and you want a real reset rather than another hotel-spa hour.

The long, sunlit fondamenta on the south edge of Dorsoduro, facing the Giudecca canal. The widest sidewalk in Venice. Joggers, students, dog-walkers, gelato eaters from Nico's at the western end. The Punta della Dogana sits at the eastern tip. Walk the full length around 6 p.m. when the sun sets behind Giudecca's Redentore church. Sit at any of the floating café-pontoons for a Spritz with your feet over the water.