The Mediterranean
Italy
A country invented in 1861 out of places that still think of themselves first.
- Capital
- City
- Destination
- Italy
Italy holds more UNESCO World Heritage sites than any other country and treats most of them as ordinary streets. It became one state only in 1861, and the food, dialect and civic pride still change every forty kilometres — the pasta shape tells you where you are. The Alps in the north are as serious as Switzerland's; the south is Greek, Arab and Norman by turns.
Getting around
Frecciarossa and Italo make Milan–Rome three hours and compete on price. Regional trains are cheap and reach hill towns. Driving into historic centres is restricted by ZTL cameras and the fines arrive months later, abroad.
When to come
April to June and September to October. August is hot, and Italians themselves leave the cities for the coast, closing half the restaurants you wanted. The Dolomites have a separate July-September walking season and a December-March snow one.
Worth knowing
- Coperto is a per-person cover charge and is legal and normal; a tip on top is not expected.
- ZTL zones in historic centres are camera-enforced — never drive in without a hotel permit.
- Churches enforce covered shoulders and knees, including in high summer.
At the table
- Pasta by region — trofie in Liguria, orecchiette in Puglia, carbonara only in Rome
- Coffee standing at the bar, and never a cappuccino after breakfast
- Wine by the region it is drunk in: Barolo north, Chianti centre, Etna south
Travel regions
5 editorial regions, each opening onto its cities.
Region
Rome & Lazio
Three thousand years stacked vertically, and the hill towns and lakes around it.
Region
Tuscany & the Centre
The Renaissance where it happened, plus Siena's rivalry and the hill towns between.
Region
The North & the Dolomites
Venice and its lagoon, Milan's money, the lakes, and limestone towers on the Austrian border.
Region
Umbria & the Marches
The green middle: hill towns without Tuscany's traffic, a saint who changed the church, and the best-preserved Renaissance court in Italy.
Region
The South & the Islands
Naples, Pompeii, the Puglian heel, and Sicily's Greek temples under an active volcano.
Popular destinations
The destinations we have written most about, which is not the same as the ones most people go to — and is the only ranking we can honestly compute.
Rome
A city where an insurance office sits on a temple and nobody comments, with the best street-level food in Italy.
Florence
A banking city that funded the Renaissance and kept nearly all of it inside a twenty-minute walk.
Venice
A city on wooden piles in a lagoon, with no roads, fewer than 50,000 residents left, and no equivalent anywhere.
Naples
Loud, dense, Greek in origin, with the best pizza and the best archaeological museum in the world.
Palermo
Norman, Arab and Byzantine in the same building, with the best street food in Italy underneath.
Bologna
Forty kilometres of porticoes, the oldest university in the world, and the best eating in Italy.
Experiences here
A sample of what is listed across Italy.
Testaccio, where Rome eats
The market and the streets around it are where Roman offal cooking survives; go at one, order what the sign says.
The Appian Way on a Sunday
The road is closed to traffic on Sundays: basalt paving from 312 BC, catacombs, aqueducts and countryside, inside the city.
Vespers at San Miniato
Gregorian chant in an 11th-century church above the city, at 17:30, free, and almost always uncrowded.
The 666 arches to San Luca
Four kilometres of covered walkway climbing out of the city, built so a procession would never get wet.
Round the walls on a bicycle
Four kilometres of Renaissance rampart, planted with plane trees in 1818 and used as a promenade ever since.
Cicchetti and an ombra
Small plates and a small glass of wine at a bàcaro, standing, moving on after one — the Venetian version of an aperitivo.
A night in a rifugio
Dinner at seven, lights out at ten, and the Enrosadira — the pink glow on the rock at dawn — from the door.
Vermouth where it was invented
Carpano started here in 1786. The historic cafés still serve it the way it was drunk: cold, alone, with a small plate.
Journeys through Italy
Atlantic to the Mediterranean
Across Iberia and along the coast
Camino & Sacred Europe
Six places people have walked to for a thousand years
The Classical Mediterranean
Greek and Roman cities, on both shores
The Mediterranean Arc
Barcelona to Athens along one sea
Arctic to Mediterranean
The full length of Europe, 69°N to 38°N
The Adriatic Run
Venice to Dubrovnik the long way round
The Alpine Grand Tour
Six valleys, four countries, one mountain range
The Journey Planner holds all 25 of these destinations and the real distances between them. It opens on 40 days, which is the shortest stay this atlas records for each of them added up — change the length, the month, the budget or the pace and build it again.
Fixed points in the year
The record
What we hold about Italy, where each figure came from, and when it was last checked. The score says what this country is for, not how good it is — it is useful once you are already interested and is not a reason to be.
- Capital
- Rome
- Currency
- EUR — euro
- Languages
- Italian, German (South Tyrol), French (Aosta), Sardinian
- Population
- 60,297,396 (2019) — Natural Earth 1:50m admin 0 countries
- ISO codes
- IT · ITA
- Time zone
- CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2)
- Membership
- European Union, Schengen area, Uses the euro, European Economic Area
- Typical day
- €70–175 per person
- Best months
- May, June, September, October
- Quieter months
- April, November
- Facts checked
- not verified why this matters
Europe Experience Score
How this is calculated — derived from our own tagging, not from measurement. It says what a place is for, not how good it is. The tick on each bar is the median across the whole Atlas, so a bar short of it is a dimension this place is not for.