The Complete Italy Travel Guide

Italy became a single country only in 1861. Before that it was a collection of kingdoms, republics, duchies and papal territories that spent several centuries competing with one another, and the practical legacy of that competition is that provincial towns hold cathedrals and picture galleries that would be national treasures anywhere else. It is also why the food, the dialects and the architecture change every hundred kilometres, and why people identify with their city before their country.

The classic centre. Rome, Florence and Venice, strung along a high-speed line that connects them in under four hours end to end. Three completely different cities — imperial, Renaissance and maritime — and the most visited corridor in the country. Every one of them deserves its reputation and every one of them is crowded.

The industrial north. Milan, the lakes, Turin and Bologna: wealthier, faster, less picturesque and much less visited by foreigners. This is where the design, the opera, the car industry and arguably the best everyday eating in Italy are.

The mountains. The Dolomites in the north-east, where two-thirds of the population speaks German and the food is dumplings and speck. A completely separate holiday with its own two seasons — summer hiking and winter skiing — and dead months between them.

The Ligurian and Amalfi coasts. The Cinque Terre in the north-west and the Amalfi Coast south of Naples: two vertical coastlines, both UNESCO-listed cultural landscapes, both small, both under real pressure from their own popularity.

The south. Naples and the excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum, Puglia and Matera in the heel, and Sicily offshore. Cheaper, hotter, more layered and less polished, and the part of Italy where a second trip should go.

Italy has one of Europe's best high-speed rail networks and two operators — Trenitalia's Frecciarossa and the private Italo — competing on the same routes, which keeps advance fares cheap. Rome to Florence is 1h30, Rome to Naples 1h10, Milan to Venice 2h15. Booked two to six weeks ahead these cost a fraction of the walk-up price, and they land you in city centres rather than at airports.

Regional trains are slower, cheaper, unreserved and the way to reach smaller places — the Cinque Terre villages, the Tuscan hill towns, the Circumvesuviana out to Pompeii. Paper tickets for these must be validated in the platform machines before boarding; inspectors fine hard for it, and the fine is not negotiable.

A car is unavoidable for Tuscany's Val d'Orcia, Puglia, Sicily and the Dolomites. The trick is to hire it only for that leg. A car parked in Florence for three days costs money and achieves nothing, and in Rome, Venice or Naples it is worse than useless.

Ferries matter more than people expect: along the Amalfi Coast, where the boat is faster than the corniche road in summer; between the Cinque Terre villages; from Naples to Capri, Ischia and overnight to Palermo; and from Bari and Brindisi across to Greece and Albania.

And then there is the ZTL. A zona a traffico limitato is a camera-enforced restricted zone covering the historic centre of almost every Italian town, open only to residents and permit holders. There is no barrier, often only a small sign, and each camera you pass generates a separate fine that arrives months later through your hire company with an administration charge attached. It is the single most expensive avoidable mistake visitors make in Italy.

Italy runs 1,200 km from the Alps to within 150 km of Africa, so 'the best time' depends entirely on which Italy. Two windows work almost everywhere: April to early June and September to October.

Spring is the strongest season for the cities and the south. Rome, Florence and Naples sit between 18 and 27°C, the coast becomes swimmable from late May, and everything is open by Easter — which is itself the one very busy week, particularly at the Vatican.

July and August are the months to avoid almost everywhere. Rome, Florence and the south regularly pass 35°C, the archaeological sites have no shade, prices peak and crowding is at its worst. Italians take August off, so cities empty of locals and family restaurants close for two or three weeks around Ferragosto on 15 August. The Dolomites are the exception and are at their best.

September and October are arguably the best of all: the sea is still warm through September, the grape harvest and then the truffles arrive, the light is superb and the crowds fall away sharply after the first week of September.

Winter empties the coast and the islands — much of the Amalfi Coast closes from November to Easter — but the cities become cheap, quiet and walk-in. Venice in November fog and Rome in January are both better than their summer versions. The Dolomites switch to skiing, which is a separate and excellent trip.

The one place that inverts all of this is the mountains. The Dolomites have two seasons and two dead periods: lifts and mountain huts run roughly late June to late September and December to early April, and between those the cable cars stop and much of the accommodation closes.

Italy is more formal than visitors expect in some ways and more relaxed in others. La bella figura — presenting yourself well — is a real social value, and being slightly smarter than strictly necessary is normal in restaurants, in churches and on the evening walk. Beachwear stays at the beach.

Churches enforce a dress code. Shoulders and knees covered, for everyone, at St Peter's, Venice's Basilica, Florence's Duomo and most working churches. Guards turn people away every day. A light scarf in a bag solves it permanently.

Meals have a structure. Antipasto, then a primo of pasta or risotto, then a secondo of meat or fish with contorni ordered separately, then dolce. You need not order all of it, but a primo is not a starter and a secondo will not arrive with vegetables unless you ask for them.

Say buongiorno on the way in. Greeting people when you enter a shop, a bar or a small restaurant, and saying arrivederci on the way out, is close to compulsory and its absence reads as rudeness. The bill will never come unprompted, because hurrying a table is considered impolite — ask for il conto.

Regional pride is not a joke. Food is the main battleground: carbonara belongs to Rome, pesto to Liguria, cotoletta to Milan, orecchiette to Puglia. Asking what the local speciality is will get a far warmer response than comparing it to somewhere else's version.

Finally, take the passeggiata seriously. The evening walk before dinner, done by everyone in their good clothes, is the most reliable way to see a town as it actually is. Small towns do it better than big cities, and it costs nothing.