3 Best Sights in Italy

Take a stroll through the streets of the university area: a jumble of buildings, some dating as far back as the 15th century and most to the 17th and 18th. The neighborhood, as befits a college town, is full of bookshops, coffee bars, and inexpensive restaurants. Political slogans and sentiments are scrawled on walls all around the university and tend to be ferociously leftist, sometimes juvenile, and often entertaining. Among the 15 university museums, the most interesting is the Museo di Palazzo Poggi, which displays scientific instruments plus paleontological and botanical artifacts.

During the 19th and 20th centuries, Carrara became a hotbed for anarchism, and, during World War II, it fiercely resisted the Nazis. The town is still lively, with a good number of bars and cafés in many of its squares, thanks, in part, to its art institute. The Accademia di Belle Arti, founded by Maria Teresa Cybo Malaspina d'Este in 1769, draws studio art students from all over Italy.

Built in the 1630s as a Jesuit college, this has been Genoa's university since 1803. The exterior is unassuming, but climb the stairway flanked by lions to visit the handsome courtyard, with its portico of double Doric columns.