Cliff villages, lake towns, a city of caves and one volcano that never quite goes quiet. Some are on every postcard; a few still get missed by the tour buses.
1VeniceLagoon city spread over more than a hundred small islands in the Veneto, crossed by canals instead of streets.1000pts
2Lake ComoDeep glacial lake in Lombardy lined with villas and the towns of Bellagio, Varenna and Menaggio.942pts
3SienaMedieval Tuscan city built around the shell-shaped Piazza del Campo, where the Palio horse race runs twice each summer.
4Cinque TerreFive fishing villages on the Ligurian coast, joined by cliff footpaths and listed by UNESCO in 1997.582pts
5MateraBasilicata city of the Sassi, cave dwellings carved into a ravine and lived in for thousands of years.514pts
6FlorenceTuscan birthplace of the Renaissance, its skyline dominated by Brunelleschi's dome over the cathedral.513pts
7Polignano a MareTown perched on limestone cliffs above the Adriatic in Puglia, with the Lama Monachile cove at its heart.513pts
8AlberobelloPuglia town filled with trulli, whitewashed stone houses with conical roofs, listed by UNESCO in 1996.434pts
9PortofinoSmall Ligurian fishing port whose ring of painted houses around the harbour made it a favourite of the yacht set.434pts
10RomeItaly's capital, where the Colosseum, the Pantheon and St Peter's Basilica stand within a few kilometres of each other.434pts
11Cala GoloritzéSecluded cove on Sardinia's Gulf of Orosei, reached by boat or a mountain trail and marked by a natural rock arch.434pts
12TaorminaHilltop town on Sicily's east coast, famous for an ancient theatre that frames the slopes of Mount Etna.342pts
13Lake GardaItaly's largest lake, shared by Lombardy, Veneto and Trentino, with the castle town of Sirmione on its southern shore.342pts
14Aeolian IslandsVolcanic archipelago off northern Sicily that includes Lipari, Vulcano and the still-active Stromboli.342pts
15CapriIsland in the Bay of Naples known for the Faraglioni sea stacks and the Blue Grotto.342pts
16Amalfi CoastAbout fifty kilometres of cliffs, lemon terraces and pastel towns such as Positano on Campania's Sorrentine Peninsula.342pts
17Val d'OrciaTuscan valley of rolling hills and cypress-lined roads between Montalcino and Pienza, on the UNESCO list since 2004.342pts
18The DolomitesPale limestone peaks spread across three regions of north-eastern Italy, a UNESCO site since 2009.233pts
19Civita di BagnoregioHilltop village in Lazio reachable only by a footbridge, slowly crumbling as its clay ridge erodes.233pts
20TropeaCalabrian clifftop town facing the Tyrrhenian Sea, crowned by the sanctuary of Santa Maria dell'Isola.0pts
Photo credits
- Venice — Wolfgang Moroder, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Lake Como — Unknown author, CC BY 2.0
- Siena — Massimo Catarinella, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Cinque Terre — Timothy A. Gonsalves, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Matera — Maksimsokolov, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Florence — Nono vlf, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Polignano a Mare — Calogero77, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Alberobello — Benjamin Smith, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Portofino — Radosław Botev, CC BY 3.0
- Rome — Diliff, CC BY-SA 2.5
- Cala Goloritzé — Bakis66, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Taormina — Hein56didden, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Lake Garda — Josep M, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Aeolian Islands — Carsten Steger, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Capri — Berthold Werner, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Amalfi Coast — Wiki.Bianco, CC BY-SA 4.0
- The Dolomites — Ximonic (Simo Räsänen), CC BY-SA 4.0
- Civita di Bagnoregio — User:New2022, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Tropea — Benjamin Smith, CC BY-SA 4.0
