Italy Experiences - museums, architecture and culture

In brief: Rome, Venice and Florence offer three different ways to understand Italian culture. Start with the collections that matter most to you, then make room for churches, palaces, architecture, films and reading that give the art a wider context.

Best museums in Rome

MACRO

Rome's Repubblica district is home to MACRO, installed in an old Peroni brewery, where Italian art from the 1960s onward is the focus. French architect Odile Decq added a vivid red framework and glass walkways, so the building deserves attention alongside the collection.

Musei Capitolini

Capitoline Museums rank behind only the Vatican Museums in Rome and are often credited as the first public art museums. Their two buildings around Michelangelo's Piazza del Campidoglio follow art from ancient Rome through the Baroque, including Caravaggio's St. John the Baptist.

Palazzo Colonna

Rome's most imposing private palace appeared in Roman Holiday and contains paintings from Poussin, Tintoretto and Veronese. In the gallery, look up to the ceiling's Battle of Lepanto fresco, then find Annibale Carracci's The Beaneater, with its solitary diner, spoon poised and front teeth absent.

Galleria Borghese

At Galleria Borghese, Bernini, Caravaggio, Raphael, Rubens and Titian share an exceptionally beautiful villa. Cardinal Scipione Borghese commissioned the Renaissance house in 1612 for his collection; later alterations changed much of the structure.

Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia

The pre-Roman Etruscans arrived in Italy around 2000 BC, although their homeland is still uncertain. Villa Giulia, commissioned for Pope Julius III during the mid-1500s, is the place to follow their story.

Palazzo Doria Pamphilj

For a glimpse of aristocratic Rome, enter the Doria Pamphilj family's 15th-century palazzo just below Piazza di Spagna. The Hall of Mirrors borrows Versailles as its model, but the Old Master paintings deserve equal time.

Musei Vaticani

Vatican Museums fill papal palaces with about 1,400 rooms, galleries and chapels, putting the complex among the world's largest. Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel is the magnet, while Raphael's Rooms are the other essential Renaissance stop.

Palazzo Altemps

Palazzo Altemps belongs to Rome's Museo Nazionale Romano and holds an exceptional group of ancient Roman marbles. Its sober street facade conceals the ornate effect of the large courtyard.

Palazzo Barberini and Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica

At Palazzo Barberini, a Baroque landmark from the 17th century, the collection includes Raphael's La Fornarina, a luminous portrait of his lover. Guido Reni's Beatrice Cenci, executed for patricide in Rome in 1599, and Caravaggio's Judith Beheading Holofernes are further highlights.

Architectural wonders in Venice

Ponte di Rialto

The Ponte di Rialto reached completion in 1591. A broad arch, central gateway and Renaissance shops give the bridge a measured balance worthy of comparison with Palladio.

San Francesco della Vigna

Two Renaissance masters worked together here, producing a harmonious church in a quiet neighbourhood. The combination makes San Francesco della Vigna a useful retreat when the central sights become crowded.

Hilton Molino Stucky

At the western tip of Giudecca, the neo-Gothic Hilton Molino Stucky is a conspicuous lagoon landmark. It began as an industrial flour and pasta works; today the industrial shell houses a hotel.

Santa Maria della Salute

Santa Maria della Salute commemorates the end of the plague that struck Venice in 1630 and killed almost 50,000 people. Where the Grand and Giudecca Canals meet, the church makes a particularly powerful memorial.

Punta della Dogana

The point between the Grand and Giudecca Canals has housed the Sea Customs House since the 15th century, though today's building follows an 1860s design. Two Atlases above the entrance support a bronze globe carrying Fortune.

Arsenale

For centuries, the Arsenale joined shipyards, warehouses and armouries into Europe's biggest military-industrial complex. Much is still a military zone, but visitors can enter its southern area during the Biennale Arte e Architettura.

Jewish Ghetto

The Jewish Ghetto occupies a former foundry, and the local word geto supplied its name. Venice's palazzi and houses rise especially high here, stacking extra floors to use scarce land efficiently.

Palazzo Ducale

The Doge's Palace combines high Gothic arches with a richly carved arcade; seen from Piazza San Marco or across the Bacino, it can look almost confectionery. A palace has stood on the site since the ninth century. The present building uses Verona-pink marble and limestone from Istria, reflecting Filippo Calendario's design (1315-55).

Madonna dell'Orto

This red-brick Gothic church is richly decorated in marble. Its first dedication honoured St. Christopher, the travelers' patron. A Madonna discovered in a nearby orto, or kitchen garden, later gave the church its name. Tintoretto developed his craft here; in the Martyrdom of St. Paul, a soldier's violent movement meets the saint's calm beneath the light.

Ca' da Mosto

Many Grand Canal palaces catch the eye sooner than Ca' da Mosto, but few reach further back. Its Byzantine-style form dates to the 13th century, and its lower two floors show the casa-fondaco, a home combined with a warehouse. Work undertaken in 2019-21converted it into an exceptionally luxurious hotel with adventurous design and notable art.

10 best museums in Florence

Palazzo Pitti

The corridors of Palazzo Pitti once belonged to Florence's powerful families. Its display rooms and former royal quarters still carry the richness of a palace, with more than 500 paintings, mostly Renaissance, including Raphael and Titian.

Bargello

Bargello, with its fortress-like exterior, served as a family residence, government office and prison; its patio once hosted executions. Now a Museo Nazionale branch, it holds Italy's strongest Renaissance sculpture collection, along with arms, armour and Medici medals. Donatello's bronze David and Michelangelo's marble Bacchus are the principal attractions.

Galleria degli Uffizi

Giorgio Vasari designed the magistrates' former offices in 1560, and the Uffizi now holds one of Florence's most visited collections. Botticelli's Birth of Venus and Primavera, Leonardo's Annunciation, and paintings from Michelangelo, Raphael, Giotto and Caravaggio fill the rooms. The reopened Vasari Corridor runs to the Boboli Gardens across Ponte Vecchio; reserve through the official site to avoid the longest queues.

Galleria dell'Accademia

The line along Via Ricasoli leads to Michelangelo's David, 17 feet of Carrara marble shown before its imagined fight with Goliath. Afterward, see Florentine Gothic paintings, Renaissance works spanning the period, including Andrea del Sarto and Sandro Botticelli, plus musical instruments. High-season visitors benefit from booking ahead.

Museo dell'Opera del Duomo

Museo dell'Opera del Duomo traces Florence's cathedral complex. The complex reached completion in the 1400s and ranked as Europe's largest church. Celebrated artists decorated it; Lorenzo Ghiberti spent 27 years on the bronze Gates of Paradise, now protected indoors. A seven-year renovation finished in 2015 and made the museum one of the city's most modern.

Museo Salvatore Ferragamo

Museo Salvatore Ferragamo follows the southern Italian-born designer Salvatore Ferragamo (1898-1960). Its archive includes a gold-and-Technicolor rainbow wedge made for Judy Garland in 1938 and an Audrey Hepburn cross-strap ballet flat from the 1950s, still a signature form. Temporary displays often bring film, art, culture and fashion history together, fitting a designer known for dressing stars.

Palazzo Strozzi

Palazzo Strozzi operates through an independent foundation rather than Florence's municipal museum system. Its programme can move from a survey of cinquecento art to experimental work such as The Florence Experiment, a 65-foot spiral tunnel, or Marina Abramovic's The Cleaner, known for nude performers. Banker Filippo Strozzi commissioned the palace but did not live to see it finished.

Palazzo Vecchio

Palazzo Vecchio is known as Palazzo della Signoria. Florence's medieval seat of government has served the city since the Renaissance. David's replica greets visitors outside; inside, marble stairs rise to rooms of gilded fresco. Giorgio Vasari designed and painted the vast Salone dei Cinquecento.

Santa Croce

Florence's churches double as museums, and Santa Croce is regarded as the world's largest Franciscan church, traditionally linked to St. Francis of Assisi. Sixteen chapels reflect the families who financed them; Giotto painted the Bardi and Peruzzi chapels, Andrea della Robbia made the terracotta altarpiece, and Michelangelo, Galileo and Machiavelli are buried here.

Santa Maria Novella

Dominican monks established Santa Maria Novella in the 13th century. Leon Battista Alberti, born in Genoa, gave its facade its green-and-white marble design. Inside, Masaccio's Trinita, painted in the 1400s and rediscovered after a covering in the 1800s, is an early landmark of perspective; Giotto's Crucifix probably dates from the late 1200s, while Ghirlandaio's Tornabuoni Chapel tells Mary's story in late-1400s frescoes. Next door, the cathedral-like Officina Profumo Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella sells perfumes, candles and its famous lemon-scented hand cream.

What to watch and read

Italian Folktales by Italo Calvino

Published in 1956, the Cuban-born magical-realist writer who grew up in Liguria gathered about 200 traditional tales from across Italy. The 800-page Fiabe italiane is written in plain but evocative language and speaks to children and adults alike. Peasants, saints, princesses and kings face fantastical moral stories of adventure, revenge, love and loss, making it an ideal bedtime or beach companion.

Amarcord, directed by Federico Fellini

Amarcord means "I remember" in Romagnol and turns Fellini's teenage years in 1930s Rimini into a parade of comic types and dream scenes. Titta and his friends encounter schoolmasters with inflated egos, unhappy fathers, Fascist enforcers and the voluptuous hairdresser Gradisca. The 1973 film earned the foreign-language Oscar and mixes absurdity with insight into Italian family life, psychology and the interwar period; Nino Rota's wistful score intensifies the nostalgia.

The Italians by John Hooper

Published in 2015, John Hooper's examination of contemporary Italy draws on his long experience as a Rome correspondent and asks what shapes the Italian character. Food, sex and weather open onto an amaro side of social life, where famiglia and chiesa coexist with rewarded furbizia, or cunning, and raccomandazioni, or favours, in place of meritocracy.

The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

Il Gattopardo follows Sicily through the upheavals of the Risorgimento, from the 1860s into the early 20th century. Lampedusa, the last scion of a minor princely family, wrote it during a long depression; publication came in 1958, in the following year. Don Fabrizio, Prince of Salina, watches his family's influence fade as a new society emerges and the Mafia begins to appear. The story's political lesson is that preserving an old appearance may require sweeping change.

Cosa Nostra by John Dickie

John Dickie's fast-moving history of the Mafia combines journalism and scholarship with grim detail. It follows Cosa Nostra from the Risorgimento, through corruption within the First Republic and Corleone's notorious role, to the organisation's American expansion, the Mafia Wars and later crises tied to Italy's corrupt political system.

The Conformist, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci

Bertolucci's psychological thriller places a stylish story inside 1930s Fascist Italy and is regarded as a postwar classic. The 1970 film tests conformity against Mussolini's cruel, feverish political climate and influenced the American New Wave and later directors. Dark subject matter sits beside striking light, colour, costumes and locations, and its influence reaches Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and the Coen brothers.

Delizia! by John Dickie

John Dickie's food history crosses Italian regions and centuries, beginning with pastasciutta in 12th-century Palermo and reaching the Slow Food movement in modern Turin. A 1529 Ferrara banquet started with 105 soused sea bream and 15 large salted eels, then offered 104 roasted capon livers and sweet tarts filled with sea-bass, trout and pike spleens. It makes a restaurant menu read differently.

The Great Beauty, directed by Paolo Sorrentino

A Neapolitan director set this Oscar-winning 2013 film in Rome as a modern companion to La Dolce Vita. Toni Servillo plays Jep Gambardella, a hedonistic journalist aging into disillusionment; after his noisy 65th-birthday rooftop party, Roman ennui sends him pursuing beauty outside his circle's superficiality.

The Neapolitan Novels

Elena Ferrante's four novels, published between 2012 and 2015 and adapted for HBO, show postwar Naples beyond its postcard surface. Their rough rione is vivid as well as violent. Friendship and society intertwine while Elena and Lila's lifelong bond unfolds through palatial and squalid places in Naples and elsewhere in Italy.

1992, 1993 and 1994

The ten-episode political drama 1992, followed by 1993 and 1994, aired in 2015, 2017 and 2019. Six connected lives move through the early-1990s upheaval: Antonio Di Pietro's Mani Pulite, or Clean Hands, investigation helped topple the First Republic, while Tangentopoli, or Bribesville, shook the country, and marketing man Stefano Accorsi sensed an opening for an outsider. Silvio Berlusconi and Forza Italia then enter the picture.

Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy (2021-22)

In this CNN series, Stanley Tucci, an Italian-American actor, travels through Italy on a journey through food and local culture. His first run spans six regions, their cities and productive hinterlands: the Naples and Amalfi Coast episode takes him to a San Marzano farm under Vesuvius, where he watches mozzarella being made; in Rome he samples quinto-quarto offal, rigatoni all'amatriciana and guanciale-rich carbonara. Tuscany, Bologna and Milan supply bistecca alla Fiorentina, sought-after Parmigiano-Reggiano and Milanese aperitivo, before the series closes in Sicily with young Sicilian vintner Arianna Occhipinti.