423 Best Sights in Italy

One must-see is the Piazza della Libertà, where the Palazzo Pubblico is guarded by soldiers in green uniforms. As you'll notice by peering into the shops along the old town's winding streets, the republic is famous for crossbows and other items (think fireworks or firearms) that are illegal almost everywhere else.

The square marks the site of an ancient forum, which was the core of the original Roman settlement and which was replaced in the Middle Ages by the Mercato Vecchio (Old Market). The current piazza, constructed between 1885 and 1895 as a neoclassical showpiece, is lined with cafés that are the perfect spots from which to people-watch.

Often the first view that spells "Rome" to weary travelers walking from Termini station, this round piazza was laid out in the late 1800s and follows the line of the caldarium of the vast ancient public baths, the Terme di Diocleziano. At its center, the exuberant Fontana delle Naiadi (Fountain of the Naiads) teems with voluptuous bronze ladies happily wrestling with marine monsters. The nudes weren't there when the pope unveiled the fountain in 1888—sparing him any embarrassment—but when the figures were added in 1901, they caused a scandal. It's said that the sculptor, Mario Rutelli, modeled them on the ample figures of two musical-comedy stars of the day. The colonnades now house the luxe hotel Anantara Palazzo Naiadi and various shops and caffès.

Frescoed buildings surround this medieval square, where a busy Roman forum once stood; during the week it's still bustling, as vendors sell produce and trinkets, much as they have been doing for generations. Eyes are drawn to the often sun-sparkling Madonna Verona fountain (1368) and its Roman statue (the body is from AD 380, with medieval additions).

A bronze statue of Neptune, which dates from 1745, presides over this square's bountiful fruit and vegetable market. Stalls spill over with colorful displays of local produce; bakeries and grocery stores showcase hot breads, pastries, cheeses, and delicatessen meats—a complete picnic. Try the speck tirolese (cured and lightly smoked ham from Tyrol, Austria) and the apple strudel.

This tiny piazza takes its name from the figure in the corner, the remnant of an old Roman statue depicting Menelaus. The statue underwent a name change in the 16th century when Pasquino, a cobbler or barber (and part-time satirist), started writing comments around the base. The habit caught on; soon everyone was doing it. The most loquacious of Rome's "talking statues," its lack of arms or face is more than made up for with the modern-day commentary that is still anonymously posted on the wall behind the weathered figure.

A statue, set in an ironically disorienting traffic roundabout in front of the harbor, honors the Amalfitano credited with inventing the maritime compass in the Middle Ages. Many say it was the Chinese who invented the compass, passing the idea along to the Arabs, who traded with Amalfi; Gioia may have adapted it for sea use (for the record, some historians believe there was no such person as Gioia).

This piazza is the heart of Parma, where people gather to pass the time of day, start their passeggiata (constitutional), or simply hang out; the square and nearby Piazza del Duomo make up one of the loveliest historic centers in Italy. Strada Cavour, leading off the piazza, is Parma's prime shopping street. It's also crammed with wine bars teeming with locals, so it's a perfect place to stop for a snack or light lunch or a drink.

Filled with handsome buildings, this large square on the heights of the old historic town is Montepulciano's pièce de résistance.

With its irregular shape and sloping brick pavement, framed by buildings of assorted centuries, Arezzo's central piazza echoes Siena's Piazza del Campo. Though not quite so magnificent, it's lively enough during the outdoor antiques fair the first weekend of the month and when the Giostra del Saracino (Saracen Joust), featuring medieval costumes and competition, is held here on the third Saturday of June and on the first Sunday of September.

One of Trastevere's most historic and time-burnished squares (albeit one that's now a bit overrun by traffic), this piazza takes its name from ancient Roman baths on the site (piscina means "pool"). It's said that the tiny church of San Benedetto on the piazza was built on the home of Roman nobles in which St. Benedict lived in the 5th century. Opposite is the medieval Casa dei Mattei (House of the Mattei), where the rich and powerful Mattei family lived until the 16th century, when, after a series of murders on the premises, colorful legend has it that they were forced to move out of the district, crossing the river to build their magnificent palace close to the Jewish Ghetto.

The city's main square divides the new town to the west and the old town to the east. The triangular piazza contains the town symbol: the towering Guglia di Sant'Oronzo (Spire of St. Oronzo), named after the patron of Ostuni, in whose honor an elaborate festival is held every year in late August.

Also known as Piazza Giuseppe Garibaldi, this graceful square is surrounded by Renaissance palaces, historical cafés, and the mosaic-adorned cathedral. The Fontana Maggiore is fed by the remains of a Roman aqueduct; the fountain's latest form combines 16th-century marble with a lion added in 1918, attesting to centuries of Venetian rule here.

Greve's gently sloping and asymmetrical central piazza is surrounded by an attractive arcade with shops of all kinds. In the center stands a statue of the discoverer of New York harbor, Giovanni da Verrazzano (circa 1480–1527). Check out the lively market held here on Saturday morning.

While the whole of Noto can make you feel that you are on a film set, its central plaza trumps the lot for stage-set impact. Piazza Municipo is home to three of the grandest buildings in Noto, including Palazzo Ducezio, now home to the local town hall, that forms the plaza's main part. If you climb to the top of the ornate staircase to the north you will find Cattedrale di San Nicolò while on the western side of the palazzo is Palazzo Landolina, which was once home to one of the most powerful families in Noto, the Sant'Alfano family.

Surrounded by shops, arcades, fashionable cafés, and elegant Baroque palaces, this is one of the most beautiful squares in Turin. In the center stands a statue of Duke Emanuele Filiberto of Savoy, the victor at the battle of San Quintino, in 1557. The melee heralded the peaceful resurgence of Turin under the Savoy after years of bloody dynastic fighting. The fine bronze statue erected in the 19th century is one of Turin's symbols. At the southern end of the square, framing the continuation of Via Roma, are the twin Baroque churches of San Carlo and Santa Cristina.

This central square houses an elaborate 18th-century Baroque water fountain whose mountain water source has been vital for centuries. The Fontana dei Quattro Cannoli was once the social and commercial heart of the medieval city.

This is the buzzing hub of Lecce's social life in the heart of the maze of pedestrianized alleyways lined with cafés, little restaurants, and crafts shops. Named after Oronzo, the city's patron saint, who crowns a Roman column that once marked the end of the Via Appia Antica, the piazza is also occupied by Roman amphitheater (I--II century AD) and the 16th-century Renaissance-Gothic style Palazzo del Seggio or "Il Sedile."

The imposing square, ringed by grandiose facades, was set out as a plaza open to the sea, like Venice's Piazza San Marco, in the late Middle Ages. It underwent countless changes through the centuries, and its present size and architecture are essentially products of late-19th- and early-20th-century Austria. It was given its current name in 1955, when Trieste was finally given to Italy. On the inland side of the piazza, note the facade of the Palazzo Comunale (Town Hall), designed by the Triestino architect Giuseppe Bruni in 1875. It was from this building's balcony in 1938 that Mussolini proclaimed the infamous racial laws, depriving Italian Jews of most of their rights. The sidewalk cafés on this vast seaside piazza are popular meeting places in the summer months.

Piazza Venezia stands at what was the beginning of the ancient Via Flaminia, a historic Roman road leading northeast across Italy to the Adriatic Sea. From this square, Rome's geographic heart, all distances from the city are calculated.

The piazza was transformed at the turn of the 20th century when much older ruins were destroyed to make way for a modern capital city (and a massive monument to unified Italy's first king). The female bust near the church of San Marco in the southwest corner of the piazza is a fragment of a statue of Isis, now known to the Romans as Madama Lucrezia. It is one of the city's "talking statues" on which anonymous poets hung verses pungent with political satire.

The Via Flaminia remains a vital artery. The part leading from Piazza Venezia to Piazza del Popolo is now known as Via del Corso, after the horse races (corse) that were run here during the wild Roman carnival celebrations of the 17th and 18th centuries. It also happens to be one of Rome's busiest shopping streets.

In town, head straight for Via Roma, which leads to Piazza Vittorio Emanuele—the center of Enna's shopping scene and evening passeggiata. The attached Piazza Crispi, dominated by what used to be the grand old Hotel Belvedere, affords breathtaking panoramas of the hillside and smoking Etna looming in the distance. The bronze fountain in the middle of the piazza is a reproduction of Gian Lorenzo Bernini's famous 17th-century sculpture The Rape of Persephone, a depiction of Hades abducting Persephone.

This pedestrians-only square is Bolzano's heart; in warmer weather it serves as an open-air living room where locals and tourists can be found at all hours sipping a drink (such as a glass of chilled Riesling). The piazza's namesake was the 12th-century German wandering minstrel Walther von der Vogelweide, whose songs lampooned the papacy and praised the Holy Roman Emperor. In the center of the piazza stands Heinrich Natter's white-marble, neo-Romanesque Monument to Walther, built in 1889.

Cosenza's noblest square, Piazza XV Marzo (commonly called Piazza della Prefettura), houses government buildings as well as the elegant Teatro Rendano. From the square, the Villa Comunale (public garden) provides plenty of shaded benches for a rest.

Ancient even by Chianti standards, this hilltop church probably dates from the 10th century, but it was completely rebuilt in the Romanesque style sometime in the 13th century. It has a 14th-century cloister worth seeing. The 16th-century terra-cotta tabernacles are attributed to Giovanni della Robbia, and there's also a remarkable triptych (attributed to the Master of Panzano) that was executed sometime in the mid-14th century. Open days and hours are unpredictable; check with the tourist office in Greve in Chianti for the latest information.

Angels designed by Baroque master Bernini line the most beautiful of central Rome's 20-odd bridges. Bernini himself carved only two of the angels (those with the scroll and the crown of thorns), both of which were moved to the church of Sant'Andrea delle Fratte shortly afterward at the behest of the Bernini family. Though copies, the angels on the bridge today convey forcefully the grace and characteristic sense of movement—a key element of Baroque sculpture—of Bernini's best work.

Originally built in AD 133–134, the Ponte Elio, as it was originally called, was a bridge over the Tiber to Hadrian's Mausoleum. Pope Gregory changed the bridge's name after he had a vision of an angel sheathing its sword to signal the ending of the plague of 590. In medieval times, continuing its sacral function, the bridge became an important element in funneling pilgrims toward St. Peter's. As such, in 1667 Pope Clement IX commissioned Bernini to design 10 angels bearing the symbols of the Passion, turning the bridge into a sort of Via Crucis.

Even if a good portion of the arch was rebuilt by the Romans, three dark, weather-beaten, 4th-century-BC heads (thought to represent Etruscan gods) still face outward to greet those who enter here. A plaque on the outer wall recalls the efforts of the locals who saved the arch from destruction by filling it with stones during the German withdrawal at the end of World War II.

The oldest of Verona's elegant and graceful Roman portals, the Porta dei Leoni (on Via Leoni, just a short walk from Piazza delle Erbe) dates from the 1st century BC, but its original earth-and-brick structure was sheathed in local marble during the early imperial era. It has become the focus of a campaign against violence—there are often flowers and messages by the monument—in memory of the murder of a young Veronese here in 2009.

This gateway "door" to the harbor bears a huge ceramic panel, created by Renato Rossi in the 1950s, commemorating the trade routes of the republic during the Middle Ages. In one example, ships loaded with Italian timber sold the wood for gold in North Africa, then used the gold to buy gems, spices, and silks in Asia to trade back in Italy. Walk 200 feet along Corso delle Repubbliche Marinare, past the tourist office, to see the ceramic panel created by Diodoro Cossa in the 1960s. The scenes illustrate local historical highlights, among them Roman refugees establishing themselves in nearby Scala in the 4th century, the founding of Amalfi by these same Romans, Amalfi's commercial and diplomatic role in the Mediterranean, the arrival of St. Andrew's body, and the invention of the maritime compass.

The massive, 1st-century-AD arch was built as part of the original Aqua Claudia and then incorporated into the walls hurriedly erected in the late 3rd century as Rome's fortunes began to decline. The great arch of the aqueduct subsequently became a porta (city gate) and gives an idea of the grand scale of ancient Roman public works. On the Piazzale Labicano side, to the east, is the curious Baker's Tomb, erected in the 1st century BC by a prosperous baker (predating both the aqueduct and the city walls); it's shaped like an oven to signal the deceased's trade. The site is now in the middle of a public transport node and is close to Rome's first tram depot (going back to 1889).

Framed by two squat, circular towers, this gate was constructed at the beginning of the 5th century during a renovation of the 3rd century Aurelian Walls. Here you can see just how well the walls have been preserved and imagine hordes of Visigoths trying to break through them. Sturdy as they look, these walls couldn't always keep out the barbarians: Rome was sacked three times during the 5th century alone.