70 Best Sights in Italy

What started out as an early-Christian 4th-century suburban basilica was transformed in the 9th century into a monastery and then a farmhouse. Now it's a museum: some of the fragments of 4th-century mosaics preserved here are even more delicate than those in the main basilica. It's open Saturday and by appointment on weekdays.

It's only fitting that Deruta is home to an impressive ceramics museum, which is housed in the 14th-century former convent of San Francesco. The most notable pieces are Renaissance vessels made using the lustro technique, which originated in Arab and Middle Eastern cultures some 500 years before coming into use in Italy in the late 1400s and which incorporates crushed precious materials such as gold or silver to create a rich, lustrous finish.

Frederick Stibbert (1838–1906), born in Florence to an Italian mother and an English father, liked to collect things. Over a lifetime of doing so, he amassed some 50,000 objects. This museum, which was also his home, displays many of them. He had a fascination with medieval armor, as well as costumes, particularly Uzbek costumes, which are exhibited in a room called the Moresque Hall. These are mingled with an extensive collection of swords and guns.

There are few places dedicated to Second World War history in Rome, but this small museum inside the infamous prison on Via Tasso serves as a poignant reminder of the horrors that conspired here under the Nazi-Fascist regime. In cells where the S.S. tortured partisans and other prisoners, artifacts such as wartime bulletins, letters written by the prisoners, and even bloody garments are displayed as moving testaments to a dark period in history.

This museum was founded after World War I to commemorate the conflict—and to warn against repeating its atrocities. An authoritative exhibition of military artifacts is displayed in the medieval castle perched above Rovereto; the views alone warrant a visit. From June through October you can also see a collection of artillery from the Great War housed in a former air-raid shelter.

Arranged in a series of rooms around the cobbled courtyard of the 18th-century Palazzo Fici, this museum in the old center opened in 2024 to showcase the Marsala wine for which the town is famous. It also chronicles the development of wine production in the region generally, from its Phoenician beginnings to the present, in the process providing a good summary of the history of the town itself. It's worth pausing in the first rooms to view the subtitled videos, before moving on to rooms that cover the terrain and manufacture of Marsala wine, focusing on the first British exporters—Woodhouse, Ingham, and Whitaker—and the Italian wine dynasties that succeeded them, notably the Florios.

Half of this building is the Baroque triumph of Guarino Guarini, the priest and architect who designed many of Turin's most noteworthy buildings. Built between 1679 and 1685, his redbrick palace later played an important role in the creation of the modern-day nation. Vittorio Emanuele II of Savoy (1820–78), the first king of a united Italy, was born here, and, after a 19th-century neoclassical extension, Italy's first parliament met here between 1860 and 1865. The palace now houses the Museo del Risorgimento, a museum honoring the 19th-century movement for Italian unity.

Gubbio's striking Piazza Grande is dominated by this medieval palazzo, attributed to a local architect known as Gattapone, who is still much admired by today's residents (though some scholars have suggested that the palazzo was in fact the work of another architect, Angelo da Orvieto). In the Middle Ages, the Parliament of Gubbio assembled in the palace, which has become a symbol of the town and now houses a museum with a collection famous chiefly for the Tavole Eugubine—seven bronze tablets that are written in the ancient Umbrian language, employing Etruscan and Latin characters, and that provide the best key to understanding this obscure tongue.

Also in the museum is a fascinating miscellany of rare coins and earthenware pots. A lofty loggia provides exhilarating views over Gubbio's roofscape and beyond. For a few days at the beginning of May, the palace also displays the famous ceri, the ceremonial wooden pillars at the center of Gubbio's annual festivities.

In the center of Piazza Castello, this castle was named for the Savoy queen Maria Cristina, who made it her home in the 17th century. The building incorporates the remains of a Roman gate with late-medieval and Renaissance additions, and the monumental Baroque facade and grand entrance staircase were added by Filippo Juvarra (1678–1736). The palace now houses the Museo Civico d'Arte Antica, whose collections comprise more than 30,000 items dating from the Middle Ages to the Baroque era.

The house where Carlo Levi, the author of Christ Stopped at Eboli, lived in Aliano now contains two museums: the Museo Carlo Levi, which includes some of the paintings Levi did during his 1930s exile, and the Museo della Civiltà Contadina (Museum of Peasant Traditions), which documents peasant life of the past. Guided tours (call ahead for seasonal times and to reserve a place) include visits to both museums and discuss Levi's life under Fascism as well as the old farm implements.

If you have the time, visit the Aliano Cemetery to see Levi's tomb and/or hike the Calanchi Mountains along one of five trails.