Italy Guide
Things not to miss
1 Sardinia's beaches
There are plenty of places to sun-worship in Italy, but Sardinia's coastline ranks among one of the most memorable.
2 Matera
• A truly unique city, sliced by a ravine containing thousands of Sassi – cave dwellings gouged out of the rock that were inhabited till the 1950s.
3 Ravenna's mosaics
Ravenna's Byzantine mosaics – in the churches Sant'Apollinare Nuovo and San Vitale – are a stunning testimony to the city's ranking as the capital of Europe fifteen hundred years ago.
4 Bologna
Bologna is known as Italy's gastronomic heart and is home to some of the country's finest restaurants.
5 Pompeii
• Probably the best-preserved Roman site in the country, destroyed and at the same time preserved by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79.
6 Duomo, Florence
• Florence's cathedral dome is one of the most instantly recognizable images in the world – and one of its most significant engineering feats.
7 Aeolian Islands
These volcanic islands off the north coast of Sicily are a relatively undiscovered gem.
8 Urbino
• This so-called "ideal city" and art capital, created by Federico da Montefeltro, the ultimate Renaissance man, attracts people from miles around.
9 Parco Nazionale d'Abruzzo
• Italy's third-largest national park, and probably its wildest, with marvellous walking and wildlife.
10 Giotto's frescoes, Padua
• Giotto's frescoes in Padua's Cappella degli Scrovegni constitute one of the great works of European art.
11 Elba
• This easily accessible, mountainous Tuscan island offers great beaches and fantastic hiking.
12 Pizza in Naples • You can eat pizza all over Italy, but nowhere is it quite as good as in its home town of Naples – some of the best is served at Di Matteo.
13 Mantua
• The Mantegna frescoes of Mantua's Palazzo Ducale, and the works of Guilio Romano in its Palazzo Te, make a visit to this ancient and alluring Lombard city hard to resist.
14 Hiking in the Dolomites
• The spiky landscape of the Dolomites is perfect hiking country and is covered in dramatic long-distance trails.
15 Duomo, Orvieto
• One of the country's finest – and best-sited – cathedrals, with a marvellous fresco cycle by Luca Signorelli.
16 Montepulciano
• Perhaps the most classic example of a Tuscan hill town.
17 Duomo, Milan
• The world's largest and perhaps most attention-grabbing Gothic cathedral.
18 Basilica di San Francesco, Assisi
• The burial place of St Francis and one of Italy's greatest church buildings, with frescoes by Giotto, Simone Martini and others.
19 Lecce
• This exuberant city of Baroque architecture and opulent churches is one of the must-sees of the Italian south.
20 The Last Supper, Milan
•Leonardo da Vinci's mural for the refectory wall of the Santa Maria delle Grazie is one of the world's most resonant images.
21 Siena Palio
• Perhaps the most fanatically followed and most violent horserace in the world – an amazing spectacle and a true slice of Sienese life.
22 Cinque Terre
• These five fishing villages are shoehorned picturesquely into one of the most rugged parts of Liguria's coastline and linked by a highly scenic coastal walking path.
23 Piazza San Marco
• Crowded or not, this is one of Europe's grandest urban spaces and home to Italy's most exotic cathedral.
24 Amalfi Coast
• The views on the road that snakes along the Amalfi Coast, connecting the resorts of Positano, Amalfi and Ravello, can hardly be bettered anywhere in the world.
25 Siracusa, Sicily
• The ancient theatre at Siracusa is a magnificent summer stage for Greek drama and one of the finest such sites outside Greece itself.