🇮🇹 Europe
Rome, Venice, Florence and Tuscany: Italy is history, Renaissance art, dream coastlines and the best food in the world.
Italy has more World Heritage Sites than any other country — 61, ahead of China — and you feel it as you walk around: there are Roman ruins under the bars, Renaissance frescoes in neighbourhood churches and entire medieval villages half an hour off the motorways. For Latin American travellers there is also a personal tie no other European destination has: millions of Argentines, Uruguayans, Brazilians and Venezuelans are descended from Italians, and a good share of these trips includes a stop in a great-grandfather's village, in Calabria, Piedmont or the Veneto.
From north to south the country reads like three different ones. The north is alpine and prosperous: Milan, lakes Como and Garda, the Dolomites, Turin and food-loving Bologna. The centre is postcard Italy: Rome, Florence, Siena, the hills of Tuscany and Umbria. The south is louder, cheaper and more intense: Naples and pizza, the Amalfi Coast, Pompeii, Puglia with its trulli, and the islands of Sicily and Sardinia. The Trenitalia and Italo high-speed trains link Milan, Bologna, Florence, Rome and Naples in a matter of hours, and that backbone lets you put together a very packed trip without driving.
What sets it apart is not only the art: it is that Italy is eaten and lived in the piazza. The cooking is fiercely regional — a Roman dish does not exist in Bologna and the other way round — and the ritual matters as much as the plate: the espresso standing at the bar, the seven o'clock aperitivo, the long dinner. It is a country that demands a bit more planning than Spain (named tickets, compulsory bookings, access fees, tickets you have to validate) and that more than repays anyone who puts in the work.
The local currency is the euro (EUR). Bring some cash, tell your bank before you travel and check the day's exchange rate.
Full converter for EUR →Rome Fiumicino (FCO) and Milan Malpensa (MXP) take the direct flights from Latin America. The Leonardo Express links Fiumicino with Termini station in a little over half an hour, and the Malpensa Express drops you at Cadorna or Centrale in about fifty minutes; Ciampino and Bergamo-Orio al Serio, used by the low-cost airlines, have buses into the centre. Between cities, Trenitalia (Frecciarossa) and Italo compete on the same high-speed line: Rome–Milan takes about three hours, Rome–Florence an hour and a half and Rome–Naples a little over one, and buying ahead cuts the fare a lot. Regional trains are cheap and slow, and on several of them you have to validate your ticket before boarding. Sicily and Sardinia are reached by plane or ferry, and the train to Sicily still crosses the strait loaded onto the ferry. One warning if you plan to drive: almost every historic centre is a limited traffic zone (ZTL) and the fines arrive in the post months later.
April to June and September to October are clearly the best windows: mild weather, long daylight, prices below peak and manageable queues at the big museums. July and August concentrate the fierce heat in Rome, Florence and the south — where it regularly goes past 35 degrees and many cities have no shade — packed beaches and the highest prices of the year. August also has a local quirk: around Ferragosto, on the 15th, a good part of Italy goes on holiday and neighbourhood restaurants and shops close in the cities, while the coast is bursting.
Winter has its own logic. Rome and Florence in January or February are a different experience: cold but bearable, museums with no queues, flights and hotels clearly cheaper. Venice adds two things of its own in low season: the risk of acqua alta between October and January, when you walk on raised walkways, and the February Carnival, which fills it up again. The Dolomites and the Alps work for skiing from December to March. One practical planning note: Venice's contributo di accesso applies only on specific days in spring and early summer, so if you travel outside that window you will not pay it.
There is no such thing as 'Italian food' in Italy: there is the food of each region, and it pays to eat local. In Rome, cacio e pepe, carbonara, amatriciana, supplì and carciofi alla giudia. In Naples, Neapolitan pizza with its puffed-up crust, sfogliatella and a coffee shorter and stronger than in the rest of the country. In Bologna, tagliatelle al ragù (not 'spaghetti bolognese', which does not exist there), tortellini in brodo and mortadella. In Florence, bistecca alla fiorentina and lampredotto from the street stalls. In Sicily, arancini, cannoli and granita with brioche for breakfast. And artisan gelato everywhere: look for shops where the pistachio is brown, not fluorescent green. To drink, Chianti and Brunello in Tuscany, Barolo in Piedmont, Prosecco in the Veneto and the seven o'clock spritz.
Reference prices from July 2026: an espresso standing at the bar costs between 1.20 and 1.50 euros in most of the country — it has gone up more than 20% in four years and in many bars in the centre and north it is already above that mark — and sitting at a table can double the bill, especially on tourist squares. A pizza margherita runs 6 to 9 euros, a primo piatto 10 to 14 and a full meal with house wine 25 to 35. Almost every restaurant charges the coperto, a fixed cover charge of 2 to 3 euros that turns up at the end of the bill and is legal. Three rules that save you embarrassment: cappuccino is a morning drink and is not had after a meal, you do not ask for grated cheese on fish dishes, and table water is ordered naturale or frizzante and is paid for.
Italy is a safe country and violent crime against tourists is rare. What there is plenty of is opportunistic theft and small scams at the busiest spots: Termini station and the number 64 bus in Rome, the area around the Duomo in Milan, the port area and the stations in Naples. The classics are pickpocketing on public transport, 'free gift' bracelets you are later charged for, taxis without a meter and ticket websites that are not the official ones. The fix is boring and effective: backpack in front, nothing in your back pockets, tickets only from official sites and taxis ordered by app or taken from a rank. In summer, be careful with the heat in Rome and the south, and if you are going to walk Vesuvius or Etna, closed shoes and water.
No vaccine is required to enter from Latin America. Tap water is drinkable across the country and public fountains are part of the landscape: Rome's nasoni give out cold water free all day, so bring a refillable bottle and save several euros a day. Public healthcare is good but does not cover non-EU tourists, and a private consultation or an emergency room visit can be expensive: take out travel insurance with medical cover of at least 30,000 euros, the standard Schengen requires. Pharmacies solve a lot and night duty rotas are signposted. The single emergency number is 112 (NUE), free from any phone (verified July 2026).
Italy is somewhat more expensive than Spain but still affordable if you avoid the tourist traps. With the euro at around 1.15 dollars (31 July 2026), a backpacker day — hostel dorm, pizza al taglio or a simple trattoria, city transport and one admission — comes to 65 to 90 euros, that is about 75 to 105 dollars. A mid-range trip, with a three-star hotel, à la carte meals and some high-speed legs, runs 120 to 160 euros a day (140 to 185 dollars). A comfortable one starts at 220 euros (about 255 dollars). What weighs most is not the food but accommodation in Venice, Florence, Cinque Terre and the Amalfi Coast in high season.
Concrete references from July 2026: Rome's single BIT ticket (100 minutes, valid on metro, bus and tram) is listed at 1.50 € on ATAC's official site, with a rise to 2 € announced for this year, so confirm it on arrival; tourist passes cost 8.50 € for 24 hours, 15 € for 48, 22 € for 72 and 29 € for the CIS weekly. An espresso at the bar 1.20 to 1.50 €, a pizza 6 to 9 €, a primo 10 to 14 €. Big-ticket admissions: Colosseum 18 € plus 2 € booking, Vatican Museums 20 € (25 € online), Uffizi 25 € in high season, Pompeii 20 €, Venice access fee 5 or 10 € depending on when you pay it. On top of that comes the tassa di soggiorno, which in Rome runs from 3 to 10 euros per person per night depending on the type of accommodation and is charged on the first 10 nights. Accommodation has no official price: as a guide, a hostel bed goes for 25 to 45 € and a three-star double for 90 to 150 €, quite a bit more in Venice. Fast Rome-Florence trains can be found from 15 to 20 € if you buy ahead on Trenitalia or Italo, and climb above 50 € close to the date.
Italian looks enough like Spanish for you to understand the signs and 60% of a menu, and just enough for you to slip up: burro is butter, salire is to go up, guardare is to look, aceto is vinegar and caldo means hot. Slow Spanish and goodwill get you a long way, but do not assume people understand you: this is not Spain. English is spoken reasonably well in hotels, museums and restaurants on the tourist circuit, and rather little in the south and in small towns. Four words learned — buongiorno, per favore, grazie, scusi — noticeably change how you are treated, because formality matters: you greet people when you walk into a shop and greet them again on the way out.
Mealtimes are earlier than in Spain but just as rigid: lunch runs between 12:30 and 14:30 and dinner between 19:30 and 22:00 (later in the south), and outside those windows many kitchens are closed. In villages and small cities there is riposo, with shops shut from 13:00 to 16:00, and many state museums close on Mondays. To enter the big churches — St Peter's, St Mark's, Milan's Duomo — you need shoulders and knees covered. The power supply is 230 V and 50 Hz, and there is a quirk here: as well as the European types C and F, Italy uses type L, with three round pins in a line, and not every old socket takes the thick Schuko plug, so a universal adapter is safer than a simple one. For data, an eSIM bought before you leave or a local prepaid SIM with roaming included across the European Union. Tipping is not expected: the coperto and sometimes the servizio are already on the bill, and rounding up is enough.
The history of Italy is, to a large extent, the history of the West. On this boot-shaped peninsula, laid out like a bridge between Europe and the Mediterranean, were born the Roman Republic and Empire, the Latin language that branched into Spanish, Italian, French and Portuguese, the law that still governs our courts and the Catholic Church that ruled the consciences of half the world. A thousand years later, in those same cities, the Renaissance flowered: Florence, Rome and Venice gave humanity Dante and Petrarch, Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael, Galileo and Machiavelli. Few corners of the planet have weighed so heavily on world culture.
And yet Italy as a unified state is young: it was born only in 1861, after more than thirteen centuries in which the peninsula lived fragmented into kingdoms, duchies, republics and the Papal States, fought over by Spaniards, French and Austrians. The Risorgimento united it by blood and fire; unification left the wound of the "southern question" open and pushed millions of Italians to emigrate — a great many to the Río de la Plata, to the point that a good share of Argentines and Uruguayans carry Italian blood and Italian surnames. In the 20th century it knew Mussolini's fascism, war, the Resistance and, afterwards, the Republic, the economic miracle and the Years of Lead. To travel through Italy today is to move through all those layers stacked on top of each other: the Roman forum and Brunelleschi's dome, the Venetian lagoon and the Greek temples of Sicily, the luminous memory of art and the hard memory of war.
Read the full history of Italy →Pick a region and open each destination to see what to do, prices and how to get there.
These are the sources we cite most across this country's guides, with how many times each appears. Hard data —tickets, opening hours, requirements, transport— comes from the official source and carries the date we checked it. Restaurant and hotel picks come from guides and reviews, and we say so on each page.
