Italy isn’t one country. It’s twenty — stitched together in 1861, still arguing in dialect, still cooking like they’re separate nations. The north eats rice and butter. The south eats tomatoes and olive oil. Walk ten kilometres in Puglia and the trulli change. Cross the Straits of Messina and you’re somewhere else entirely.
This is a guide to all twenty of them — the regions, the cities inside them, the people who shaped them, and the meals you should make a point of eating before you leave. I’ve been doing this a long time. ItalianVisits started as a classic travel guide in the early 2000s, and the bones of it are still here: the hilltop town in Basilicata where someone built a 21-metre statue of Christ the Redeemer because Rio had one; the Roman ruins at Carsulae that never made the itinerary; the garden tours of the Villa d’Este; the bicycle routes through Chianti. What’s new is everything around them — modern prices, current booking links, photos taken this decade.
Start with a region
The fastest way to use this site is to pick a region and read its hub page. From there you’ll find the cities and the towns, the food that region is famous for, and whatever is genuinely worth your time. No "top 50 things to do" padding.
- Abruzzo — mountain villages and the Adriatic coast
- Basilicata — Matera’s Sassi and the Maratea coast
- Calabria — the toe of the boot, wild beaches
- Campania — Naples, Pompeii, the Amalfi Coast
- Emilia Romagna — Bologna, Modena, Parma, the food heartland
- Friuli Venezia Giulia — Trieste and the Alpine northeast
- Lazio / Rome — the capital and its region
- Liguria — Genoa, Cinque Terre, the Italian Riviera
- Lombardia — Milan, Lake Como, Mantova
- The Marche — Urbino and the Adriatic midlands
- Molise — Italy’s least-visited region
- Piemonte — Turin, the Langhe wine country
- Puglia — trulli, olive groves, the Adriatic heel
- Sardegna — the island, its beaches and nuraghe
- Sicily — Palermo, Catania, Taormina, the temples
- Trentino / Alto Adige — the Dolomites and South Tyrol
- Tuscany — Florence, Siena, San Gimignano, Chianti
- Umbria — Assisi, Orvieto, Perugia, Bevagna
- Valle d’Aosta — the Alpine corner, Mont Blanc
- Veneto — Venice, Verona, Padua, the Dolomites
- Vatican City — the world’s smallest country
- San Marino — the third-smallest country in Europe
Or by theme
If you already know you’re going but you’re looking for an angle — what to cook, who to read about, where to drive — these sections cut sideways across the regions:
- Food and wine — regional dishes, DOCG wines, cooking courses that are worth the flight
- Tours — wine tours, cooking classes, cycling, walking, driving
- Famous Italians — Saint Francis, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Perugino — and the places that shaped them
- Interesting places — the Carsulae ruins, the Via Flaminia, the ones that don’t make most guidebooks
- Driving tours — routes that reward slowing down
- Gardens and parks — villa gardens, botanical sites, the formal and the wild
- Italian Lakes — Como, Garda, Maggiore, Iseo, and the ones nobody talks about
- Amalfi Coast — Positano, Ravello, Amalfi, the hamlets between
- Chianti — the wine country between Florence and Siena
How to use this site
Every region page is a real guide, not a summary. Read it. Follow the links to the cities and the towns. The booking links go to Viator, GetYourGuide, and Booking.com — I use them to pay for the hosting and the image licences. If a tour or a hotel is on the page, it’s because it’s worth being on the page. If it isn’t here, it’s because I haven’t written about it yet — come back, because I will.
If you want to get in touch, the simplest way is through the contact page. For an itinerary you want built out, same place.