The Most Beautiful Places in Italy (For Those Who Can't Stop Going Back)
Italy ruins you for everywhere else. It's the unfair truth that everyone who loves it knows and accepts. The food, the light, the art, the architecture, the way even a small medieval hill town can stop you mid-sentence with its beauty — Italy sets an impossible standard and does it in a thousand different ways, from the Alpine lakes in the north to the sun-scorched coast of the deep south.
Here are the most beautiful places in Italy — the ones that stay with you long after you've come home.
1. Tuscany
The defining Italian landscape — rolling hills, cypress trees, vineyards and stone farmhouses glowing in golden evening light. The Val d'Orcia valley in particular, with its winding roads and hilltop towns, is one of the most beautiful views on earth. Tuscany is why people fall in love with Italy in the first place, and why they keep coming back.
2. The Amalfi Coast
A cliff road of vertiginous drama, villages clinging to impossibly steep hillsides above the deep blue Tyrrhenian Sea, lemon groves cascading down to the water and a light that makes everything glow. The Amalfi Coast between Positano and Ravello is Italy at its most extravagantly beautiful — and Positano, with its cascade of pastel houses tumbling to the sea, is the jewel of it all.
3. Cinque Terre
Five villages stitched into the cliffs of the Ligurian coast — Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore — each one a different combination of brightly painted houses, fishing harbours and terraced vineyards. The clifftop paths connecting them are among the most beautiful walks in Europe. Come in April or September, before the summer crowds arrive.
4. Venice
The most improbable city in the world: a Renaissance metropolis built on wooden piles in a lagoon, its streets replaced by canals, its traffic by gondolas and vaporetti. The Grand Canal at golden hour, the Piazza San Marco at dawn before anyone arrives, the Rialto Bridge, the Frari — Venice is incomparable. It's also slowly sinking, which makes visiting it feel both magical and urgent.
5. Florence
The city that gave the world the Renaissance — and looks exactly as you'd expect. Brunelleschi's dome presiding over a skyline of medieval towers and terracotta rooftops, the Uffizi, the Ponte Vecchio at dusk with the Arno running gold beneath it. Florence is an overwhelming concentration of human beauty in a compact, walkable city. Give it at least three days.
6. Lake Como
The most elegant lake in the world — a Y-shaped stretch of deep Alpine water flanked by mountains, its shores lined with Belle Époque villas, terraced gardens and small towns of extraordinary beauty. Bellagio, at the point where the two arms of the lake divide, is the most perfectly situated town in Italy. The ferry between Bellagio and Varenna, with the mountains reflected in the water, is one of the most beautiful journeys you can make.
7. Rome
The Eternal City — 2,800 years of history stacked on top of itself, from the Colosseum and the Forum to Bernini's fountains and Michelangelo's ceiling. Rome is also a city of extraordinary daily life: the coffee, the markets, the piazzas at aperitivo hour, the way ancient monuments are woven casually into the fabric of a living, breathing modern city. The Trevi Fountain at midnight, when the crowds have thinned, is unforgettable.
8. The Val d'Orcia
A UNESCO World Heritage landscape in southern Tuscany that looks like a Renaissance painting at every turn. Cypress-lined roads climbing towards hilltop towns, rolling fields of golden wheat, ancient abbeys, stone farmhouses — and a quality of evening light that makes every photograph look like it was taken with a filter. This is the Italy of dreams, and it's real.
9. Positano
The most photographed village on the Amalfi Coast. A near-vertical cascade of pastel-coloured houses, bougainvillea and lemon trees tumbling from the clifftops to a small beach, with the deep blue sea filling every gap in between. The view arriving from the coastal road at sunrise, from the east, is one of the great sights in Europe.
10. Sicily
The southernmost edge of Italy — and some of its most dramatic scenery. The Valley of the Temples at Agrigento, the medieval hilltop drama of Taormina above the Ionian Sea, Cefalù beneath its vast golden rock. Sicily is Italy's most complex and beautiful island and one of Europe's most underrated destinations.
Bring Italy Home
From the rolling hills of Tuscany to the clifftop villages of the Amalfi Coast — our Italian watercolour print collection captures the beauty of Italy's most beloved destinations. Each print is made to order on premium fine art paper with free UK shipping.