The 51 Best Bakeries in Italy

The pizza ebraica here is not pizza at all but a dense, sticky fruit cake built on almond flour with raisins, nuts, and candied fruit, and it will absolutely wreck your shirt. This old-school bakery in the former Jewish ghetto has been around forever, turning out that signature loaf alongside cinnamon-heavy biscotti and amaretti thick with whole almonds. Find a bench nearby before you start eating, or accept the consequences.

A French-leaning pastry shop run by an Italian chef whose heart landed somewhere between Paris and Lyon. The chocolate work is the draw, with single-origin bars appearing in multiple textures across a single slice. The tiramisù ranks among Italy's finest by 50 Top Italy's count. Jar-baked leavened desserts, including panettone and babà, fill out the counter for anyone who thought they'd only stop in for coffee.

A pastry shop in the heart of a small Campanian town, recently renovated so the display cases now run low and horizontal, letting the cakes and chocolates present themselves properly. The range runs from classic leavened pastries to pralines and semifreddi with chocolate bases, and the Black Forest cake has its devotees. It ranked among 50 Top Italy's best chocolate desserts, if that helps narrow things down.

The babà here landed at number five on 50 Top Italy's ranking of the best in the country, which is a serious thing to say about a single pastry. This is a neighborhood pasticceria in Pollena Trocchia where the chef trained across Italy and France before coming home, and the French pastry tradition shows in the decor as much as the technique. Sfogliatelle and choux fill the case alongside the classics.

A pastry shop in the Monteverde quarter where single-portion cakes have quietly become the whole point. The team turns out both old-school classics, like sacher and apricot tart, and contemporary creations that regulars now order without looking up. Breakfast pastries run from croissants to krapfen to pain au chocolat, and there's a savory counter and made-to-order cakes for good measure. It ranked seventh on 50 Top Italy's chocolate dessert list.

A bakery a short walk from Napoli Centrale that's been pulling sfogliatelle from the oven since before your grandparents were born, in both the flaky riccia and the crumbly frolla. The shells crack open to a perfumed, creamy filling, and the place operates at a pace that suggests demand has never once slackened. Ranked second on 50 Top Italy's sfogliatelle list. Leave with a cartoccio wrapped in blue and white paper or don't bother claiming you visited Naples.

A pastry shop in the Piedmontese countryside where the display case runs from classic regional sweets to chocolate work, confections, gelato, and leavened breads, covering most of the dessert canon in a single stop. The spoon desserts are the quiet argument for making the drive, and the tiramisù, ranked among Italy's finest, lands light in texture but deep in flavor. Bonet, done properly, also shows up to make the case.

A pastry shop facing Amalfi's cathedral square, its liberty-style windows trimmed with the blues, greens, and yellows of local ceramics. The sfogliatelle, both the ridged ricce and the short-crust frolle, are filled with candied citrus that scents the whole thing without taking over. The candied orange and lemon peels dipped in chocolate are hard to walk past. Ranked sixth among Italy's sfogliatelle, if that helps you decide how many to order.

A pastry shop in Forio that locals and summer visitors have been stopping into for generations, Pasticceria F.lli Calise is best known for its cornetto ischitano, a brioche-meets-puff-pastry hybrid that is essentially the island's calling card. The babà here, ranked among Italy's finest by 50 Top Italy, is well-risen, pillowy, and soaked in fragrant syrup. A Mediterranean garden out back makes lingering over a coffee feel less like a detour and more like the whole plan.

A pastry shop in Prato run by a chef who decided the city needed more than dainty tea cakes, and built a whole sweet world around that conviction. The pesche di Prato, brioche spheres filled with pastry cream and soaked in alchermes, are the signature, but the babà earned its own recognition, landing on 50 Top Italy's list of the country's finest. Spiced panforte, pralines, and layered torte fill out a counter that rewards slow browsing.

The black-and-white spiral outside is the neighborhood shorthand for knowing where to go. Poppella is a Neapolitan pastry shop in the Sanità quarter, turning out sfogliatelle, chocolates, and babà soaked in a fragrant, well-balanced syrup. The babà lands at number four on the 50 Top Italy ranking, which in Naples is the kind of claim that invites argument, which is also the point.

A neighborhood pasticceria in the Arenella quarter, halfway between the seafront and the Vomero hill, where the display cases are never less than fully loaded with Neapolitan classics. The sfogliatelle come in both forms, the flaky ricce and the softer frolla, filled with a balance that doesn't tip into sweetness. The babà shelf is equally serious. Ranked among Italy's top ten sfogliatelle spots, it draws the whole neighborhood in, weekday or Sunday.

A pastry shop in a small Campanian town that became a quiet pilgrimage stop for anyone serious about babà. The family-run lab turns out traditional sweets, pralines, layered cakes, semifreddi, and some savory pastry worth pairing with a drink. Their babà ranked second in all of Italy on 50 Top Italy's list. The panettone, a cause the late founder championed before it was fashionable, is still made with the same unhurried care.

The tiramisù here, ranked among Italy's finest, is the obvious reason strangers stop mid-walk across Piazza Benedetto Cairoli. Roscioli Caffè is a Rome pastry bar where the classics are taken seriously: layered cornetti, ring cakes, raisin swirls, and a parade of petite pastries that regulars navigate without looking at the case. The whole operation reads as traditional Roman, just done with unusually good ingredients.

A pastry shop in Minori where the chef's ricotta and pear combination put the whole Monti Lattari region on the dessert map. Crisp sfogliatelle share the case with frolle, santarosa, and cakes piled with chocolate or fruit cream, plus panettone shipped to admirers worldwide. The philosophy is straightforward: local dairy, fresh ingredients, no shortcuts. Ranked among the top sfogliatelle in Italy by 50 Top Italy.

A pastry shop in Maddaloni that has been turning out Campanian classics long enough to have earned an old-school following, and whose babà, ranked among Italy's finest by 50 Top Italy, come in sizes from single-serve to savarin, soaked properly and finished with custard and fresh fruit if you like. The pastiera and caprese are Sunday-tray staples, and the festive leavened breads are worth planning a visit around.

This is a Roman bakery where the pizza comes out of the oven by the tray and gets cut to order with scissors, sold by weight, so you point and hope your estimate holds up. Expect a counter scrum of locals and visitors elbowing toward the pizza rossa, the potato pizza, and supplì. The ciambelline are made for dunking in wine or coffee, a morning habit nobody here will judge. Cash is fine, patience is better.

The espresso machine lives in what appears to be a closet, but the coffee coming out of it is from Cafe Piansa, one of Florence's serious craft roasters. This is a tiny, ornate pastry shop on Piazza Beccaria, decorated like a miniature ballroom in old-school teal with ceramic and glassware that means business. The team sources Valrhona cacao and wild strawberries from local markets, and the cornetto-and-cappuccino crowd fills the few curb tables early.

The display cases at this old-school Roman pasticceria are packed with maritozzi, the whipped cream-filled buns that have been a local obsession forever. The family has been running the place for generations, and the seasonal rotation holds: bigne in spring, colombe at Easter, pandoro come Christmas. Order at the counter and take your pastries next door to Caffé Regoli, where the kitchen will bring everything to your table with coffee.