28 places worth the trip in Italy, grouped by what they are. Every guide explains what to see, the best time to go and the practical details, checked against official sources. Best time to visit Italy: Apr–Jun, Sep–Oct.
The Flavian Amphitheatre and the neighbouring Roman Forum and Palatine form one archaeological park, where you walk among the arcades, temples and triumphal arches of imperial Rome.
ExploreA Roman temple rebuilt under Hadrian and consecrated as a church in 609, the Pantheon is famed for its vast unreinforced concrete dome and open oculus.
ExploreA remarkably preserved medieval city whose streets converge on the fan-shaped Piazza del Campo, stage of the twice-yearly Palio horse race. UNESCO-listed since 1995.
ExploreA graceful city on the Adige whose Roman Arena, built around AD 41-42, still hosts summer opera, set among medieval squares, Scaliger monuments and Juliet's balcony.
ExploreThe excavated streets, houses, temples and theatres of a Roman town frozen by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, with the volcano still rising behind the ruins.
ExploreTwo ancient districts of cave houses, churches and stairways carved into the side of a limestone ravine, crowned by a Romanesque cathedral and inhabited for thousands of years.
ExploreWhole districts of trulli, round whitewashed houses with grey conical roofs built from dry stone, make this small Puglia town look like nowhere else in Italy.
ExploreTuscany's capital and the cradle of the Renaissance, where Brunelleschi's red-brick dome rises over a compact, walkable historic centre listed by UNESCO in 1982.
ExploreA city without roads, spread over 118 islands in a shallow lagoon, where boats replace cars and Byzantine, Gothic and Renaissance palaces line the Grand Canal.
ExploreLong, elegant Piazza Navona keeps the shape of an ancient stadium, with Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers and Borromini's church at its centre and old-town lanes all around.
ExploreRome's characterful quarter 'beyond the Tiber': ochre houses, cobbled alleys, medieval churches and a buzzing evening scene centred on Piazza di Santa Maria in Trastevere.
ExploreOne of Europe's oldest continuously inhabited city centres, where the Greek grid of Neapolis still shapes lively streets lined with churches, palaces, crib workshops and pizzerias.
ExploreThe world's smallest state holds the Vatican Museums' vast papal collections, Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel and St Peter's Basilica with its colonnaded square.
ExploreHome of the Islamic Cultural Centre of Italy, Rome's main mosque was inaugurated in 1995 and blends Islamic and Roman architecture; visits are by prior arrangement.
ExploreMilan's spired marble cathedral, begun in 1386, and Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper in the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie, a UNESCO site viewed in timed 15-minute slots.
ExploreVenice's cathedral, known as the Church of Gold for its 8,000 square metres of gold mosaics, faces the city's grandest square beside the Campanile and the Doge's Palace.
ExploreA dramatic stretch of Campania's coastline where pastel villages cling to the Lattari Mountains above the Gulf of Salerno, protected by UNESCO as a cultural landscape since 1997.
ExploreA rural Tuscan landscape of soft hills, farmhouses and cypress avenues south of Siena, inscribed by UNESCO in 2004 as a cultural landscape shaped in the Renaissance.
ExploreFive cliffside villages - Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore - linked by trails and a coastal railway in a UNESCO-listed national park.
ExploreShaped like an inverted Y, Lake Como stretches about 46 km between steep green mountains, with Bellagio on its central promontory and villas such as Balbianello and Carlotta on its shores.
ExploreA theatrical Baroque fountain filling a small piazza, where Oceanus rides a shell chariot over cascading rocks and visitors toss a coin to return to Rome.
ExploreA walled lawn in Pisa holding four medieval masterpieces: the cathedral, the Baptistery, the Camposanto and the famous Leaning Tower, built from 1173.
ExploreThe Grand Canal curves through the heart of Venice past centuries of palaces; at its midpoint, the stone Rialto Bridge (1588-1591) is the oldest of the four bridges that cross it.
ExploreTwo of the Dolomites' most famous views: the three rock towers of the Tre Cime di Lavaredo and the tilted grassy ridge of Seceda above Val Gardena, both within the UNESCO World Heritage site.
ExploreTaormina's ancient theatre frames one of Sicily's most famous views: the Ionian coast below and the smoking cone of Mount Etna, a UNESCO-listed volcano, on the horizon.
ExploreTwo islands in the northern Venetian lagoon: Murano, home of glassmaking since 1291, and Burano, known for its lace and its rainbow of painted fishermen's houses.
ExploreA small, steep island off the Sorrentine Peninsula with dramatic sea stacks, Roman imperial ruins, chic little piazzas and the luminous sea cave of the Blue Grotto.
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