Northern Italy

One word of advice: Don't drive! Non-resident cars are not allowed in the centers of any of the cities you mention; parking (outside the centers) is difficult and expensive. The train will whisk you in comfort and very little time from city center to city center.

A car can be useful around the lakes (although parking will still be difficult and expensive), but public transportation by train, bus and boat will get you almost anywhere you might want to go.

Actually there are parking areas just off the inner belt in Bologna (at least on the south side), so that parking is not a problem. Nor was it in Faenza (with a good faience museum) or in Ravenna (a must for the mosaics).

To whet your appetite:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mksfca/sets/72157622914503405/

We were in N. Italy in 2008 - May and loved it.
I do not know how many days you plan to be there and what is your plan, but I would like to tell you about other places that we included in our trip, and enjoyed:
Bergamo (a day trip from Milan), Verona , Manotva ( day trip from Verona), Vicenza (day trip from Verona), Ferrara (day trip from Bologna), Ravenna (day trip from Bologna).

At Maggiore Lake we enjoyed very much Isola Bella and the gardens at Villa Taranto.
At Lake Como, we loved Villa Carlotta and its park.

I totally agree with Zerlina about car: we made the trip by train and we were very happy with this solution. The trains are clean, in time, cheap, in general the train stations are close to the center of each town.

In may 2008 we had beautiful weather. I am sure that you will enjoy!

I would enjoy having a car for that trip, especially in Emilia-Romagna, where you can use it to get off the beaten track. There are wonderful castles in that area (Torrechiara is just outside Parma, but you need a car to get there).

http://goeurope.about.com/od/parmaitaly/a/castles_parma.htm

http://diariodiviaggio.voloscontato.it/images/torrechiara1.jpg

yes, you will need to mind the driving and parking rules in Italy -- but what else is new? If you use Michelin maps, they can show you were to find public parking.

I'm glad valtor had a nice experience with clean trains that are on time. That is not a guarantee in Italy.

thank you for the recommendations. i am town about the car. we are spending two full weeks the end of may. we were going to drive from the milan airport up to the lake region, then to turin, and then through areas like parma, verona and end in venice. Bologna would be the furthest south we would go. my goal was to park our car at each hotel (most i have looked into have on site parking) and take trains as needs or drive if we need to.

We spent several weeks the last 2 Springs in NITaly. We did some of each trip by train and then picked up rental cars and loved the freedom. All of the towns have parking on the outskirts and its simple enough to park and walk into the old part of town. U do need to be careful and look for the zone restricted areas that dont allow cars without permits.
Don't miss Ravenna -- an easy day trip from Bologna. Dozza is on the way from Bologna to Ravenna, maybe 20 miles southeast of Bologona. They do a contest every other year and artists are selected to draw murals on the walls of the houses and the winning entry remains on the wall. They have a castle and there are great views of the surrounding countryside. So you walk thru the hilly streets and see all these really neat paintings with the panorama in the background. Great meal there also -- but I dont think we had any bad meals in NITaly.
Also really enjoyed Mantova.