1473 Best Sights in Italy

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.

This lakeside piazza, the heart of Riva del Garda, is surrounded by medieval palazzi. Standing there and looking out over the lake, you can understand why Riva del Garda has become a windsurfing destination: air currents ensure good breezes on even the most sultry midsummer days.

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.

The square's centerpiece, a lavishly decorated fountain with 500 separate pieces of sculpture and an abundance of nude figures, so shocked some Palermitans when it was unveiled in 1575 that it got the nickname "Fountain of Shame." It's even more of a sight when illuminated at night. Sadly, there is no water in the fountain at present while it awaits a major repair.

Legendary violin maker Antonio Stradivari lived, worked, and died near the verdant square at Piazza Roma 1 (not open to the public). According to local lore, Stradivari kept each instrument in his bedroom for a month before varnishing it, imparting part of his soul before sealing and sending it out into the world. In the center of the park is a copy of Stradivari's tombstone, while the original is in the Violin Museum.

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."

This was the site of Porta Catello, the summit of the old walls that once surrounded the city. Today it remains a symbolic portal to the Old Town, overflowing with cafés, Liberty Style buildings, people who congregate here day and night, and horse-drawn carriages. In the center of it all is Torquato Tasso himself, standing atop a high base and rendered in marble by sculptor Giovanni Carli in 1870. The great poet was born in Sorrento in 1544 and died in Rome in 1595, just before he was to be crowned poet laureate. Tasso wrote during a period when Italy was still recovering from devastating Ottoman incursions along its coasts—Sorrento itself was sacked and pillaged in 1558. He is best known for his epic poem Jerusalem Delivered, which deals with the conquest of Jerusalem during the First Crusade. At the northern edge of the piazza, where it merges into Corso Italia, is the church of Maria del Carmine, with a Rococo wedding-cake facade of gleaming white-and-yellow stucco. Step inside to note its wall of 18th-century tabernacles, all set, like a jeweler's display, in gilded cases, and the ceiling painting of the Virgin Mary.

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.

This church dates from the 12th century, though the interior was redone in the 18th century and most of the art inside is from that period.

One of Volterra's best-looking Renaissance buildings contains an impressive collection of Tuscan paintings arranged chronologically on two floors. Head straight for Room 12, with Luca Signorelli's (circa 1445–1523) Madonna and Child with Saints and Rosso Fiorentino's later Deposition. Though painted just 30 years apart, they illustrate the shift in style from the early 16th-century Renaissance ideals to full-blown Mannerism: the balance of Signorelli's composition becomes purposefully skewed in Fiorentino's painting, where the colors go from vivid but realistic to emotively bright. Other important paintings in the small museum include Ghirlandaio's Apotheosis of Christ with Saints and a polyptych of the Madonna and Saints by Taddeo di Bartolo, which once hung in the Palazzo dei Priori.

Cardinal Federico Borromeo, one of Milan's native saints, founded this picture gallery in 1618 with the addition of his personal art collection to a bequest of books to Italy's first public library. The core works of the collection include such treasures as Caravaggio's Basket of Fruit, Raphael's monumental preparatory drawing (known as a "cartoon") for The School of Athens, which hangs in the Vatican, and Leonardo da Vinci's Portrait of a Musician. The highlight for many is Leonardo's Codex Atlanticus, which features thousands of his sketches and drawings.

The 14th-century Palazzo dei Consoli houses Deruta's Municipal Picture Gallery. The rich collection displayed over two floors includes frescoes and paintings by the Renaissance artists Perugino and L'Alunno, among other works from local churches. Upstairs, the Pascoli Collection features 17th- and 18th-century canvases, donated by a descendant of the prominent art collector and writer Lione Pascoli. Artists represented include Giovanni Battista Gaulli, Sebastiano Conca, and Francesco Trevisani. Note that outside of the summer months, the museum is only open on Sunday.

The superb collection of five centuries of local painting in Siena's national picture gallery can easily convince you that the Renaissance was by no means just a Florentine thing. Accordingly, the most interesting section of the collection, chronologically arranged, has several important firsts. Room 1 contains a painting of the Stories of the True Cross (1215) by the so-called Master of Tressa, the earliest identified work by a painter of the Sienese school, and is followed in Room 2 by late-13th-century artist Guido da Siena's Stories from the Life of Christ, one of the first paintings ever made on canvas (earlier painters used wood panels).

Rooms 3 and 4 are dedicated to Duccio, a student of Cimabue (circa 1240–1302) and considered to be the last of the proto-Renaissance painters. Ambrogio Lorenzetti's landscapes in Room 8 are among the first truly secular paintings in Western art. Among later works in the rooms on the floor above, keep an eye out for the preparatory sketches used by Domenico Beccafumi (1486–1551) for the 35 etched marble panels he made for the floor of the Duomo.

Bologna's principal art gallery contains many works by the immortals of Italian painting; its prize possession is the Ecstasy of St. Cecilia by Raphael (1483–1520). There's also a beautiful polyptych by Giotto (1267–1337), as well as Madonna with Child and Saints Margaret, Jerome, and Petronius (altarpiece of St. Margaret) by Parmigianino (1503–40); note the rapt eye contact between St. Margaret and the Christ child.

Once a part of the Aurelian Walls and now a part of the Cimitero Acattolico, this monumental tomb was designed in 12 BC for the immensely wealthy praetor Gaius Cestius, in the form of a 120-foot-tall pyramid. According to an inscription, it was completed in a little less than a year. Though little else is known about the Roman official, he clearly had a taste for grandeur and liked to show off his travels to far parts of the nascent empire. The pyramid was restored in 2015 thanks to a €1 million donation from Japanese fashion tycoon Yuzo Yagi. Guided visits (when available) require a reservation but are usually on the second and fourth Saturday of each month.

Sea and nature are the big draws of Sardinia’s Costa Verde, where you’ll find such wild and unpopulated beaches as Piscinas, at the southern end of the coast and reached via a rough mountain road that passes deserted mines and herds of goats. Amenities: none; parking (fee in summer). Best for: solitude; sunset; swimming; walking.

In the 7th century BC, Pizzofalcone was Naples. The ancient Greeks had settled here because, legend says, the body of the siren Parthenope had washed ashore on the beach at the foot of the Pizzofalcone Hill, then known as Monte Echia. In the 18th century, the hill, mere feet from the bay and the Castel dell'Ovo, became a fashionable address as Naples's wealthy sought to escape the congestion and heat of the city center. The rocky promontory soon became studded with Baroque palaces and Rococo churches.

The leading sights these days are the palazzi along Via Monte di Dio—including Palazzo Serra di Cassano—and the churches of La Nunziatella and Santa Maria degli Angeli. As with other parts of Naples, Pizzofalcone harbors both palaces and slums; unlike other parts, it's off-the-beaten path, so make sure to be aware of your surroundings at all times.

For a look at gracious country living Renaissance style, take a detour to the Medici villa in Poggio a Caiano. Lorenzo "il Magnifico" (1449–92) commissioned Giuliano da Sangallo (circa 1445–1516) to redo the villa, which was lavished with frescoes by important Renaissance painters such as Pontormo (1494–1556), Franciabigio (1482–1525), and Andrea del Sarto (1486–1531). You can walk around the austerely ornamented grounds while waiting for one of the villa tours, which start on the half hour. The guides do not speak; rather, they follow you around the place.

Four floors of the handsome 18th-century Palazzo Lodispoto, near the Duomo, contain two very different collections: the Museo Diocesano showcases Trani's wealth of religious artifacts, while the Museo della Macchina per Scrivere follows the evolution of the typewriter. Among the highlights in the former are fragments from the 6th-century basilica, medieval and Baroque architectural elements, and funereal treasures commissioned by Charles I of Anjou on the death of his son Philip. The latter collection has 400 examples of typewriters from around the world, including some iconic Olivetti models as well as those used to type Braille, Arabic, and Japanese. Nearby at Via La Giudea, the Sinagoga Museo Sant'Anna has exihbits detailing the history of Trani's Jewish community.