01 Tuscan hill-towns • The campanile-spiked profile of a hill-town is what many people think of when they think of Italy. With Montepulciano, Montalcino, and San Gimigniano, Tuscany in particular has some of the most beautiful, if sometimes also most touristy, examples of ancient hill-towns in the world

02 Pompeii and Herculaneum • Probably the two best-preserved Roman sites in the country, destroyed and at the same time preserved by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79.

03 Food in Emilia-Romagna • This region is known as Italy's gastronomic heart, home to Parma ham, Parmesan cheese, balsamic vinegar, great stuffed pasta dishes and underrated wines like Lambrusco, all on view at Bologna's marvellous indoor food market.

04 Elba • This easily accessible, mountainous Tuscan island offers great beaches and some fantastic hiking opportunities.

05 Parco Nazionale d'Abruzzo • Italy's third-largest national park, and probably its wildest, with marvellous walking and wildlife.

06 Carnival • Venice's famous carnival is worth seeing for its costumes and crowds. But it's rather an exclusive affair, and events around the rest of the country – most notably in Verona, in the Veneto, and Viareggio, on the Tuscan coast – are more authentic and definitely more fun.

07 Truffles • The speciality of the region around Alba in Piemonte is the astonishingly expensive white truffle, shaved onto pasta and washed down with the excellent local Barolo or Barbaresco wine.

08 Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples • The finds from Pompeii and Herculaneum alone – including some erotic frescoes – make this superb museum worth a visit.

09 Duomo, Orvieto • One of the country's finest – and best-sited – cathedrals, with a marvellous fresco cycle by Luca Signorelli.

10 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.

11 Città Alta, Bergamo • Bergamo's medieval high town is an impossibly romantic spot to spend an evening.

12 Capitoline Museums, Rome • Separated by Michelangelo's elegant Campidoglio piazza, these make up the impressive home of some of Rome's finest ancient sculpture and paintings.

13 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.

14 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.

15 Shop till you drop in Milan • If you're fond of fashion, where better to flash the cash than in its commercial home, Milan.

16 Sardinia's beaches • There are plenty of places to sun-worship in Italy, but Sardinia's ranks among one of the most memorable coastlines.

17 Mount Etna • It's an eerie climb up the blackened lunar landscape of this smoking volcano, which dominates the landscape of eastern Sicily.

18 Gran Paradiso National Park • The first Italian national park preserves an Alpine region of deep valleys and beautiful mountains that is home to ibex, chamois, and golden eagles.

19 Centro Storico, Rome • There's so much to see in Rome that aimlessly wandering the city's fantastic old centre can turn up a surprise at every turn – whether it's an ancient statue, a marvellous Baroque fountain or a bustling piazza.

20 The Uffizi, Florence • Italy's greatest collection of art, and – in a city not exactly short on things to see – perhaps the most essential attraction of them all.

21 Skiing • Whether you opt for the Alps or the Dolomites in the north, or the Abruzzo or Aspromonte mountains in the south, you're never far from somewhere decent to ski in Italy.

22 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.

23 Mantua • The Mantegna frescoes of Mantua's Palazzo Ducale, and the works of Giulio Romano in its Palazzo Te, make a visit to this ancient and alluring Lombard city hard to resist.

24 Pizza • You can eat pizza all over Italy, but nowhere is it quite as good as in its home town of Naples, served sizzling hot straight from a wood-fired oven.

25 Ravenna's mosaics • Ravenna's Byzantine mosaics – in the churches of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo and San Vitale – are a stunning testimony to the city's ranking as the capital of Europe fifteen hundred years ago.

26 Cápri • Stay the night if you can, when the day-trippers have departed, to make the most of the island, with its stunning scenery and clifftop walks.

27 Gubbio • The best-looking of Umbria's medieval hill towns, and without Assisi's crowds and commercialism.

28 Sicily's Greek ruins • The ancient theatres at Siracusa and Taormina are magnificent summer stages for Greek drama, while the temple complex at nearby Agrigento is one of the finest such sites outside Greece itself.

29 The Palio, Siena • Perhaps the most fanatically followed and most violent horse-race in the world – an amazing spectacle and a true slice of Sienese life.

30 Certosa di Pavia • This Carthusian monastery is a fantastic construction, rising out of the rice fields near Pavia.

31 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.

32 Paestum • The majestic Greek temples of this Campanian site are the backdrop for a fine stretch of sandy beach.

33 Cappella degli Scrovegni, Padua • The chapel frescoes here, by Giotto, constitute one of the great works of European art.

34 Urbino • This so-called "ideal city" and art capital, created by Federico da Montefeltro, the ultimate Renaissance man, attracts people from miles around.

35 Duomo, Milan • The world's largest and perhaps most attention-grabbing Gothic cathedral.

36 Lecce • This exuberant city of Baroque architecture and opulent churches is one of the must-sees of the Italian South.

37 Basilica di San Marco, Venice • One of Europe's most exotic cathedrals, Venice's principal place of worship is a fabulous sight, with 4000 square metres of golden mosaics.

38 Vatican Museums, Rome • Put simply, this is the largest and richest collection of art and culture in the world. You'd be mad to miss it.

39 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.

40 Genoa • An old port par excellence, Genoa's rabbit-warren of medieval streets, revitalized harbour and first-rate museums and churches, make it one of Italy's most atmospheric cities.