Italy

The high-speed network — Trenitalia’s Frecciarossa and its competitor Italo — links the great cities fast and, booked ahead, cheaply: Rome to Florence in about 90 minutes, Rome to Naples in 70, Rome to Milan in three hours. You genuinely don’t need a car for the classic city circuit; a car is for Tuscany’s hill towns, Puglia and the Dolomites. Two cautions: on the slower regional trains you must validate a paper ticket before boarding or risk a fine, and rail strikes are a recurring, usually pre-announced disruption. In the cities, the trap is the ZTL — the limited-traffic zone in historic centres, where automatic cameras fine you and the notice reaches your rental company months later.

Plan the marquee sights weeks ahead, not on the day. The Colosseum uses timed, nominative tickets (around €18 for the combined Forum-and-Palatine ticket); the Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel draw huge queues without a booking; Florence’s Uffizi requires a reservation (€25 same-day, €29 in advance) and the Accademia for Michelangelo’s David books out; and Pompeii now runs a daily cap of 20,000 nominative tickets with timed slots. The extreme case is Milan’s Last Supper, which sells out months ahead. Book through the official sites — and steer clear of the reseller sites that pad the price or sell fakes.

The classic circuit is Rome (ancient core plus the Vatican, three full days), Florence (the compact Renaissance capital and the base for Tuscany) and Venice (unique, car-free, overtouristed). Around them: Naples — grittier, cheaper, the pizza birthplace and the base for Pompeii and the coast; the Amalfi Coast, beautiful and expensive, best done by SITA bus and ferry rather than fighting its cliff road for parking; the car-free Cinque Terre, five villages linked by a little train and coastal trails on a paid park card; Tuscany, Puglia’s trulli and the Dolomites, all of which want a car; and Lake Como, luxurious and increasingly queued at the ferry piers.

The point of the map is that these are different holidays, not stops on one loop. A first trip is usually the Rome–Florence–Venice triangle by train; the south and the countryside are their own returns.

Italy is Schengen and eurozone. The coperto — a per-person cover charge of about €1.50–3 added to a restaurant bill — is normal and legal (the idea that it’s banned in Rome is a myth); what to avoid is the tourist-menu boards near the big sights. Tap water is safe, and Rome has some 2,500 free nasoni drinking fountains, so carry a bottle. English is variable — better in the north and in tourist venues, thinner in the south — and dining is late. On borders: the EU’s biometric Entry/Exit System is now in force (fingerprint-and-photo on arrival), while the separate ETIAS authorisation is not yet required — it’s due in 2027.