Italy travel guide: choosing regions and city bases

The short answer

Plan Italy by city, not by region. A region such as Tuscany or Campania is too large to be a base, and the sites that make a trip are in particular towns. XTOUR plans Italy around city destinations: Rome, Florence, Venice, Verona, Milan, Naples, Bologna, Palermo, Genoa, Bolzano, Pisa and Siena.

Start from what you want to see and work back to the base. The catch is that some major sites are not inside the nearest big city. Pompeii and Herculaneum are not part of Naples. Hadrian's Villa and Villa d'Este are in Tivoli, not Rome. St. Peter's and the Vatican Museums are in another country altogether. XTOUR has no routing provider, so it gives no travel times between any of these places.

Regions are names, cities are bases

Italy's national tourism portal, italia.it, presents the country region by region, from the Aosta Valley to Sicily; Lombardy, Veneto, Tuscany, Lazio and Campania are among its entries.[1] Regions are useful for reading a map. They are not places to stay.

XTOUR's reading is that a region name works best as a filter and a city as the decision. XTOUR has no region pages: it records cities, and it records each site under the place it is actually in. A site that a city is only a base for, such as Pompeii for Naples, is described as reached from that city, never as inside it.

The Italian food guide covers Italian food region by region and explains what the DOP and IGP labels on products mean.

Rome

Italy's tourism portal calls Rome the capital of Italy and presents it under Lazio.[1] For a visitor, much of the heart of ancient Rome is one managed park: Rome's official tourism site says the Colosseum Archaeological Park includes the Colosseum, the Roman Forum and the Palatine.[2] The Colosseum, Roman Forum and Palatine ticket guide explains how entry to that park works.

The Historic Centre of Rome is a World Heritage property that the World Heritage Committee extended in 1990, at the joint request of the Holy See and Italy, to take in the Holy See's extraterritorial properties in the city and the Basilica of San Paolo fuori le Mura.[3] St. Peter's and the Vatican Museums are a different matter: XTOUR treats Vatican City as a separate country and does not list its sites under Italy, and the Vatican City and Rome explainer sets out the sources.

Not every Roman site is in Rome. Lazio's regional tourism site places Villa Adriana (Hadrian's Villa) and Villa d'Este in the town of Tivoli.[4] The guide to Rome's ancient sites beyond the Colosseum separates what is in the city from what is outside it.

Florence, Pisa and Siena

These are three different Tuscan towns, not three districts of one place: Tuscany's regional tourism site lists the historic centre of Florence, Pisa's Piazza dei Miracoli and the historic centre of Siena as separate World Heritage sites.[5] Which of them to stay in is the question the guide to choosing between Florence, Pisa and Siena answers, town by town. In Florence, the Gallerie degli Uffizi's visit page covers the Uffizi Gallery, Palazzo Pitti and the Boboli Gardens.[6] The Uffizi, Pitti and Boboli guide explains how they differ. The guide to Pisa's Piazza del Duomo covers that square's monuments and tickets, and Is Tuscany a city? explains how the region relates to the towns in it.

Venice

Italy's tourism portal files Venice and its lagoon under Veneto, as a World Heritage site since 1987, and describes the city as spread over 118 islands in the middle of its lagoon. The portal names Murano and Burano among the lagoon's islands.[7] XTOUR treats the historic centre as the base and those lagoon islands as separate places reached from it.

For St Mark's Square, the guide to the Doge's Palace, St Mark's Basilica and the civic museums sets out what each of them is and who runs it, with its sources.

Verona

Italy's tourism portal also files Verona under Veneto, and says the city's Piazza delle Erbe largely overlaps the Roman forum.[8] The portal describes the city's Arena as a Roman amphitheatre built for public spectacles, especially gladiatorial combats and animal hunts.[9] Today the Arena is both a monument and a stage. Verona's official tourist board says tickets to visit the monument are sold at the entrance at gate 5 or online through the Civic Museums' booking site.[10] The Fondazione Arena di Verona stages its summer Opera Festival there, and its FAQ refers questions about visiting the monument to the City of Verona.[12][11] The tourist board says Verona's historic centre has been a World Heritage site since 30 November 2000.[13] The Verona Arena guide separates the monument visit from an opera night and points to the Roman city around it.

Milan

Milan is the base for Leonardo's Last Supper. Italy's tourism portal, which files Santa Maria delle Grazie under Lombardy and Milan, says the painting is in the refectory of the convent beside the church, and that the church and the Last Supper were recognised as World Heritage in 1980.[14] XTOUR treats seeing the painting as a separate museum visit, not part of a visit to the church; the Last Supper guide explains the difference. The Milan Cathedral guide separates the parts of a Duomo visit, from the church to its roof terraces.

Naples, Pompeii and Herculaneum

Italy's tourism portal files Naples under Campania.[16] The Historic Centre of Naples is a World Heritage property in its own right, inscribed in 1995; the committee's decision calls it one of the most ancient cities in Europe, whose urban fabric preserves the elements of its long history.[15] Pompeii and Herculaneum are different places with different managers: Pompeii's archaeological park says that in 2017 Herculaneum became an archaeological park independent of Pompeii.[17]

Naples can be a base for both, but neither is inside it. The Pompeii, Herculaneum and Vesuvius comparison sets out who runs each site and where to read the current visiting rules, and the Vesuvius and Etna explainer covers who decides access to the crater. In the city itself, the guide to Naples' Archaeological Museum and Capodimonte explains which of the two museums holds which collection.

Bologna and Genoa

Italy's tourism portal files Bologna under Emilia-Romagna, calls it the region's capital, and says the city's porticoes have been regulated since 1288.[18] The World Heritage Committee inscribed the Porticoes of Bologna in 2021 as twelve components selected from the city's 62 kilometres of porticoes, in both central and outlying areas.[19] For XTOUR's purposes that makes the porticoes a city-wide feature of Bologna rather than one site to pin on a map. The guide to Bologna's porticoes, towers and Archiginnasio sets out what the listing covers and what a visitor can enter.

Genoa's World Heritage listing is a street system rather than a single building. The committee's 2006 decision describes Le Strade Nuove as an urban ensemble of aristocratic palaces from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and records that in 1576 the Republic of Genoa set up a legal list, the Rolli, of the most outstanding palaces for lodging distinguished guests.[21] The guide to the Palazzi dei Rolli and Strada Nuova explains which of those palaces a visitor can enter.

Palermo and Sicily

Palermo is the base for most of the Arab-Norman World Heritage property, on the northern coast of Sicily. The committee's 2015 decision lists nine religious and civic structures from the era of the Norman kingdom of Sicily: seven in Palermo, plus the cathedrals in the municipalities of Monreale and Cefalù.[20] The Arab-Norman Palermo explainer names the nine, and the guide to Sicily's Greek and Norman sites covers the Greek sites elsewhere on the island, which are not Palermo sites.

Bolzano and the Dolomites

Bolzano is a city, not a mountain area: South Tyrol's tourism site calls it the largest city in South Tyrol.[22] The Dolomites are not one place either. The Dolomites UNESCO Foundation describes the World Heritage property as nine mountain systems separated by valleys, rivers and other mountain groups.[23] It also says administrative and management powers stay with the provinces and regions involved, while the Foundation coordinates.[24] The guide to the Dolomites and South Tyrol reports the access rules XTOUR has read, for Lake Braies and the Tre Cime di Lavaredo, and what it has not.

The bases at a glance

What XTOUR does not tell you

XTOUR does not publish travel times, train or road routes between these cities, because it has no routing provider. It does not publish opening hours, prices or booking windows on this page; each site's own operator publishes those, and the decision guides linked above say where. It does not rank the bases. Which one suits a trip depends on which sites matter to you, and that is the decision this page is built to support.