The big hubs
If you're new to Italy, start here.
Rome
The eternal city — espresso bars, Trastevere coworking, and millennia of layered history within a 30-minute walk.
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Milan
Italy's design and finance capital — efficient, fashionable, internationally minded, with the lakes 30 minutes away.
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Florence
A walkable Renaissance jewel-box — small, refined, and built for slow living.
Read post →Northern Italy — value, mountains, lakes
Affordable bases with easy travel into Switzerland, Slovenia, and the Dolomites.
Bologna
University-town energy, Italy's best food scene, and the country's most affordable major city for foreigners.
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Turin
Elegant, regal, often overlooked — Italy's first capital, with the Alps on the horizon.
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Genoa
A vertical, tangled port city with UNESCO-listed caruggi and the Cinque Terre 90 minutes away.
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Trieste
Italy's literary, multilingual border city — Habsburg architecture and Slovenian cafés on the Adriatic.
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Verona
Romantic, walkable, and quietly working-class — 30 minutes from Lake Garda and the Dolomites.
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Venice
118 islands, 400 bridges, no cars — calmer than its tourist reputation if you live in the right sestiere.
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Bergamo
A two-cities-in-one Lombard town with Ryanair access to all of Europe and Lake Iseo 30 minutes away.
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Como
A small, elegant lakeside city under the Alps — Milan in 35 minutes, Switzerland in 30.
Read post →Tuscan small cities — slow Italy at its most photogenic
Walled, walkable, and built for long-stay nomads who want a slower pace.
Lucca
A walled, walkable Tuscan jewel — small enough to know in a week, refined enough to stay for years.
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Siena
A medieval Tuscan hill town frozen in time — small, intense, and built for walking.
Read post →Southern Italy & the islands — beaches, value, intensity
Lower rents, hotter summers, the Mediterranean's most distinctive food.
Naples
Loud, intense, gloriously alive — Italy's most affordable major city, with legendary pizza and ferries to Capri and Procida.
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Sorrento
A clifftop town on the Bay of Naples — fast ferries to Capri, lemon groves, and views of Vesuvius.
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Bari
Puglia's bustling port capital — orderly, affordable, and flanked by some of Italy's best beaches.
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Lecce
The "Florence of the South" — a baroque sandstone gem in the deep heel of Italy, surrounded by Salento beaches.
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Matera
A surreal cave-city carved into a ravine — UNESCO-listed, ancient, and recently restored.
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Palermo
Sicily's vibrant, chaotic capital — a Norman-Arab-Byzantine layer cake with fierce pride and astonishing food.
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Catania
Sicily's volcanic, baroque second city — built from black lava stone, with Mount Etna rising behind it.
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Cagliari
Sardinia's bright, salty capital — a fortified hilltop centro and an 8 km city beach.
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