In this post, I’m going to talk about the best places to visit in Italy. I learned about these places by watching various YouTube videos and traveling with my partner, whose been to Italy for quite a few times (and whose uncle gave like a list of 50 recommendations).

My trip to Italy was immensely enjoyable to say the least, and you should definitely travel there.

Instead of recanting my own experience, perhaps I can just deliver straight value to you by just recommending you the best places to visit in Italy. Keep in mind, the below are all places I’ve been and thus it isn’t some “top 10” list where I’m just plagiarizing from another blogger.

I’ll add to this post as I go to Italy again during other seasons.

This post was inspired by:

• My trip to Italy, which opened my eyes to why international travel is so crucially important to take advantage of as your lived experienced.
• Tim Ferriss’ 4 Hour Chef, where he talks about condensing information and providing one-pagers as a way to deliver high-quality information with good value.

The places listed below are a result of doing 23K steps a day on average, for 14 days, resulting in more than 100 miles walked (we also used public transport etc whose distance isn’t included in the 100+ miles).

Rome

One of the best places to visit in Italy due to its immense contribution to history and the amount of perspective and culture you get here.

Visit these places for food in Rome and you won’t go wrong:

• Da Gino: Authentic Italian food, for a reasonable price. House wine is delicious, yet very inexpensive (like 5 euros for half a liter, and it’s a very generous mezzo litro). Fills up fast. Tell your hotel or credit card concierge to help you book in advance.
• Trattoria Da Enzo al 29: I saw this in Luke Martin’s youtube channel. Pasta is ridiculously good, as is their desserts, as is everything else. Their osso buco is a culinary miracle; the meat’s so soft you can break the entire thing down with a spoon.. Seats are not reservable and fills up extremely quickly. Go 15 minutes before the restaurant opens and start lining up – there will usually be a line already.
• Enoteca a Taverna Capranica: Carpaccio is to kill for here. American carpaccio often has meat slices that are very thin. Here, their carpaccio is much thicker which provides a much more intense flavor and a much more satisfying texture. Their house wine is inexpensive, and their pasta’s ridiculously good. Not too full when I visited, so you should be able to walk in.

Do not miss out on these historical places when going to Rome.

• Colosseum. If you’ve seen gladiators, you’ll know what this is. Going there is like time-traveling and being gives you the feeling of being immersed in history. Just knowing what took place / how many people died during the 400-500 years that the Colosseum operated is quite overwhelming to take in.
• The Pantheon. The oldest and largest unreinforced concrete structure is here. It’s free (at least on weekdays) and is just an incredible architecture to witness. Built in ~115AD, being inside and staring at the concrete dome that’s been there for almost 2000 years really gives you a sense of perspective that is quite hard to put into words.
• The Vatican. Technically not in “Rome” but in its own country, the Vatican is a few stops away if you ride the metro in Rome. Ascend to the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica and witness an incredible view of Rome from its highest altitude. After you’re done, walk around the world’s largest church at ground level and enjoy the innumerable amount of insane workmanship details littered in every square inch. The enormity of the whole thing remarkable and life-changing. Pay to go climb up the stairs to the dome. Don’t pay to use the elevator, since it is more expensive and only takes you up halfway, if that. Go in the morning ~730AM to avoid the crowds and ascend St. Peter’s Basilica first. Enjoy it until the church opens and make your descent.
• Vatican Museum. School of Athens. Sistine Chapel. And a ton more. Be mindful of pickpockets while walking towards the museum.

Florence

I find this is the best place for me to visit in Italy because it’s not overwhelming and somewhat underrated. The old bridge is quite crowded, but compared to Rome it isn’t as crowded. Though a neighboring dinner

Eat at these places:

• Trattoria Osteria dall’Oste. There’s a lot of places that serve ‘florentine steak.’ This one’s the best in my opinion. Their tartare is generous and unbelievably flavorful. Book this beforehand. Other than their big steak and tartare, I wouldn’t get any of their other proteins as they’re not good at the other dishes.
• Trattoria Sabatino: Visited by Bourdain in his last episode, this is also my favorite restaurant in Florence, if not all of Italy. It’s not ‘fancy’ or anything. It’s nice, simple, Italian food with great service. It’s one of those restaurants where you can tell the ingredients are very simple, yet delicious. It’s hard for the brain to compute when you witness only a few ingredients produce such intensely astonishing flavors. This place feels homey and traditional. It’s a ‘hole-in-the-wall’, authentic Italian place, and I love hole-in-the-walls – prefer them, actually. You must go here. No need to book in advance as this place is underrated. I’d go as soon as they open though to avoid the lunch rush from locals at around 1230PM.
• Trattoria Za Za. Pasta to commit felonies for. Book in advance, or go as soon as they open.
• Il Profeta. OK, this might be my favorite all-time restaurant in Italy. Family-run and the owners are old, so you should go soon. Immaculate service and they check the quality of everything from their forks/knives to their cups. A single smear on the knives and they’ll take it away. Out of bread? They’ll refill your table with nice, fluffy, warm bread immediately without you asking. In most restaurants, they have some very great dishes and some mediocre ones. Everything I tasted here was magnificent and that’s an understatement. BOOK. THIS. IN. ADVANCE.

See these places.

• Ponte Vechhio AKA “Old Bridge”. Relish the classic Firenze view from this bridge. Enjoy and appreciate how the stores are incorporated into the bridge’s structure, and get a perspective on how short life is when you realize this bridge was built in 1345. And still standing today. Go in the morning to enjoy golden hour views and pictures. It’s quite magnificent and we took this year’s best picture on our phones here during the morning golden hour.
• Florence Cathedral AKA Santa Maria Del Fiore. Pretty much the world’s only church with very gothic, and somewhat disturbing paintings of demons eating babies and shoveling fireballs into sinners’ assholes. Great view on the top, but the paintings are my favorite for this church. Even with pre-bought tickets, you’ll need to line up ~15 minutes before it opens.

Venice

One of the most novel places to visit in Italy (or the world), and the best place to take tons of pictures. You go here and can spend the whole day marveling how in the hell they were able to build a city on water in 5^th century AD and have it still standing today.

Eat these things at Venice:

• Trattoria Al Gazzettino. Great food, with large quantities. Seemingly with every 4-5 bites, a server will toss another plate of free food at you for you to eat. In our case, off the top of my head (not exhaustive), they let us try for free: risotto, squid ink pasta, crab with dipping sauce, and a platter of desserts. The hands-washing room has a lot of mosquitos on the ceiling which is gross, but I can overlook it and would go again. Book in advance.
• Osteria alle testiere Venezia. Seafood here’s delicious. Meryl Streep visited before. I know because they have a newspaper clipping of her visiting. That’s all you need to know, really. Book in advance.

Go see these things in Venice:

• St. Mark’s Square. First, go up the Campanile tower to see great views. When you’re done, literally take a 30 second walk to St. Mark’s Basilica and witness a church whose surfaces are almost entirely lined with gold mosaics. At scale, the golden church looks very shiny and is an extremely impressive site. Even more impressive when you consider all these heavy structures are built on top of water.
• Walk around town. The whole town is floating on the sea, with a lot of interconnect bridges. Every corner is a staggering photo opportunity. Walk around the waterfront and feel a sense of overwhelm and appreciation of how you’re even standing on such a freaking engineering marvel. Look upon the adjacent islands from the seafront which looks like massive, floating buildings. And reflect on the fact that Venice started construction in 5^th century AD and was mostly built by the year 828. This means most of everything you see is ~1200 years old.
• Travel to Murano. Enjoy more insane engineering marvels of buildings floating on top of water. And upload a few hundred images on Instagram because the buildings there are super colorful.

Go ASAP:

• You should go ASAP because global warming is causing water levels to rise. When I went, high-tide water level is basically starting to flood the shore. I don’t know how many more years until the high-tide results in daily flooding of the city. And I don’t know when the city will become permanently submerged in water.
• And you should go ASAP because Venice will start having tons of restrictions to travel there soon. So to minimize hassle, you probably want to go sooner than later.

Lake Como

This is where George Clooney has a house overlooking the lake.

And this is where you can ride a boat to visit Villa del Balbianello (in some seasons). This Villa is where some scenes from Daniel Craig’s Casino Royale is filmed. Parts of Attack Of The Clone is also filmed there, because it’s beautiful.

Eat these things:

• Osteria Del Gallo. So good we went twice. Everything’s super affordable and very yummy. Both times I ate there until I almost passed out. Book in advance.
• Crianza. Pasta’s amazing here. The routine of “rip up the bread to mop up every last drop of pasta sauce” applies here more than anywhere else. The interior decoration is quite amazing and is a nice, fancy (yet not too expensive) restaurant.

Most things were closed the season I went to Lake Como (October), so I can’t recommend too much to do here for now.

Milan

This is one of the best places to visit in Italy if you’d like to go shopping.

Milan is great for shopping due to massive selection. Though to be honest, Rome and Venice are my preference for shopping as they’re less crowded.

Eat these things:

• Papa Francesco. Amazing, affordable risotto. And in near diabetic portions. If you can eat carbs, you absolutely must go. No need to book as it was fairly empty there when we went; just go when they open.

What Milan is good for / not good for:

• Don’t go here if you don’t like shopping. With some exceptions (below).
• Milan is a great place as an ‘exit portal’. For example, we landed in Rome and traveled to Milan to fly out back to the States. It’s a good exit portal because their COVID tests turnaround are fast.
• Milan can also be a great ‘entry portal’ if you just want to window-shop. You don’t want to start your trip by shopping because you’ll just have a bunch of extra luggage to haul around for the rest of your trip. Using Milan as an entry portal means you’ll leave Italy in Rome or some other hub.

I prefer not to shop in Milan:

• Nowadays, Milan is fairly crowded which makes it very hard to shop when compared to Rome, or Venice.
• And even when it isn’t crowded, you have a lot of Chinese merchants that are shopping for their clients in China. They webcam their clients; their clients pick out clothes; the Chinese agent buys the clothing in Italian prices and sells it back to their clients at a marked up price. This causes unnecessary waiting and congestion, even in super high-end / luxury stores, which I don’t like. If I’m paying luxury prices, why should I wait?
• Likewise, if a Chinese whale comes in with the promise to buy tons of clothes, none of the other salespeople will bother dealing with you. Nothing like going into a luxury store and be treated like garbage.

Contrast this shopping experience in Venice or Rome, where salespeople come up to you and treat you like VIP – even if the store isn’t a luxury good’s store.

COVID Testing Upon Returning To The United States

Milan has a great COVID turnaround time, but we used a service called Navica. You download the app and purchase the kits before you depart the USA. Within 72 hours of your return to the USA, you can use the Navica app to do a live COVID test through your webcam. Some underpaid Filipinos will witness as you pick your nose with a cotton swab and tell you you’ve got a negative test result. You upload the results to the United app’s portal and you’re good to go back to the States. This whole process took 20 minutes and was done in the comfort of our Milan hotel.

But in case this doesn’t work, you can use Milan’s COVID services as a backup.

In Sum

Above are places I think are the best to visit in Italy, in condensed form. Hopefully, I can add to this as I can more opportunity to go in the future. And perhaps newer / better places will de-throne some items in this list in the future so I can maintain a fairly short form travel guide for all of Italy.