The Best Places in Italy

Tucked off a broad piazza a short walk from Trani's harbour and its cathedral, Terradimare is a small, graceful seafood-forward restaurant where the kitchen follows the daily catch closely and pivots on what came in that morning. The name nods to both land and sea, and the menu honours that, with meat dishes alongside. An all-female front-of-house team runs the room with quiet precision, which sets a tone the food is happy to match.

A converted joinery on a sprawling Tuscan estate, Terraforte is a country-house restaurant where the menu is essentially a tour of the land around it: farm-reared meats, game, poultry, vegetables, herbs, and honey, almost all from the estate itself. You choose how many courses you want and the kitchen composes from there. In warmer months, the terrace earns its reputation without trying. The estate's own wines, including the celebrated Lupicaia, pour by the glass.

Four tables, candlelight, gilded walls inside a Merano villa: this is a tasting-menu restaurant built to feel like a private dinner hosted by someone with strong opinions about biodiversity. Chef Marcello Corrado runs an eight-course menu rooted in the South Tyrol landscape, and a shorter format is available for those who want the same ideas with an earlier bedtime. Service is the kind that notices everything without being noticed.

The first-floor dining room looks straight out at the Duomo and the Galleria, which does make it harder to concentrate on the menu. Chef Valerio Braschi runs a contemporary Italian restaurant where the kitchen moves between Milanese classics and South American and Asian detours, reinterpreting a costoletta alla milanese alongside chimichurri-lifted calamari. The terrace upstairs is where most people end up at some point, aperitivo in hand, staring at the cathedral like it's their first time.

A luminous dining room of warm wood and wide windows onto a manicured garden sets the mood at this contemporary restaurant in San Vito, where a young chef channels years in Italian and French kitchens into something quietly personal. The menu reads as a love letter to Italian identity filtered through serious technique, and the front-of-house paces the tasting menu with the calm confidence of someone who has done this before.

Inside the medieval Castello di Casole, Tosca is a tasting-menu restaurant where the stone walls and candlelit fabrics make it feel like the estate has been expecting you. The kitchen leans into the surrounding 1,300-hectare organic property, pulling herbs and produce from the castle's own gardens. In summer, dinner moves to the open courtyard, with Tuscan hills doing the decorating. Dressy but not stiff, and priced to match the setting.

The sfogline roll fresh pasta right in front of you, and the extra lengths go straight to the adjoining shop. This Bologna trattoria keeps one foot planted in the old school, with Sunday lasagne alla bolognese made the way your nonna's nonna would recognize, and one foot pointed forward in lighter, more contemporary preparations. A heated winter terrace means there's always an excuse to linger longer than planned.

A 19th-century mansion on the Brenta canal, just outside Venice where the villas outnumber the tourists, houses this classic seafood trattoria. The dining room is simple and welcoming, the kind that lets the fish do the talking: Adriatic scampi, lightly seared octopus, and mixed fried fish from the same waters that have been feeding this corner of the Veneto forever.

Wood-panelled walls and staff who seem genuinely pleased to see you set the tone at this old-school trattoria in central Alba. The kitchen stays firmly rooted in Piedmontese tradition, and the wine list reads like a love letter to the Langhe. Tajarin with rabbit and hazelnuts is the dish regulars tend to order without looking up. It's exactly the kind of place you hope exists when you arrive in truffle country.

On the uphill road to the Palazzo Farnese, this old-school family trattoria in Caprarola has been turning out northern Lazio cooking for five generations, and the kitchen cooks like it plans to go five more. The food is rooted in Tuscia, with some Tuscan drift, and the wine list runs to around 900 labels, many available by the glass, managed by the cook's son after a stint in fancier rooms abroad.

A trattoria on the main road through San Nicolò that has built its reputation almost entirely on fish, which is an unlikely move this far inland in Emilia-Romagna. The dining room was recently done up, though the cooking stays traditional. Weekday lunches lean simpler; evenings open into a longer menu if you ask. Sunday winters bring a full meat feast, from anolini in broth to boiled meats, that the regulars have clearly memorized.

Grandmother Erminia's recipes still run the kitchen at this family trattoria tucked into the hills above Felino, in the Parma countryside. The Leoni family has been doing regional Emilian cooking the old-school way for generations, salame aged in their own cellar, rabbit alla cacciatora boned and slow-cooked into something that makes you understand why this corner of Italy has such a high opinion of itself.

Tortellini in Parmigiano cream and bollito misto are the kind of dishes that remind you why Emilian cooking has a reputation to defend. This is an old-school trattoria doing the regional classics without modernizing the soul out of them: fresh egg pastas, cotechino with stewed beans, and the celebrated zuppa inglese to finish. When the weather cooperates, tables spill into the intimate Piazza della Pomposa, and the meal gets considerably harder to leave.

A fireplace warms the main room of this old-school Tuscan trattoria in the stone village of San Quirico d'Orcia, with a pergola garden out back for warmer months. The cooking is rooted deep in the territory: hand-rolled pasta, truffle, meats and game, the kind of menu that doesn't need to explain itself. A wine list heavy on local labels keeps the whole thing honest.

Three chefs share the kitchen at this contemporary tasting-menu restaurant in Rome, running two parallel menus, one plant-based, one not, built around a single ingredient explored front to back through changing techniques. Most tables face the open kitchen, so you watch the work as it happens. The room is calm and pared back, which lets the cooking do the talking. For a tasting menu in Rome, the pricing won't keep you up at night.

The dining room is a converted village nursery school, which tells you something about both the setting and the chef's ambition. This tasting-menu restaurant in a small Ligurian hill town does contemporary cooking with one foot firmly in the local landscape, meats and seafood leaning on whatever the valley offers. In summer, the terrace nearly touches the Argentina river. Dishes can also be ordered à la carte if committing to a full menu feels like a lot for a Tuesday.

A farm-to-table trattoria tucked inside Cascina Cuccagna, a working urban farm where the farmers' market smell drifts in from next door and a carpentry workshop hums nearby. The kitchen leans on seasonal and organic ingredients, cooking Italian classics on a charcoal grill, the kind of place where lunch outdoors feels genuinely removed from the city even though Milan's buildings frame every view.

Nikkei cuisine, the Peruvian-Japanese fusion that became a whole culinary movement, is the organizing idea at this intimate restaurant tucked above street level in one of Naples's most expensive shopping corridors. The dining room runs soft and romantic, and there's a private terrace for warmer nights. It's a dressy dinner-out kind of place, the sort where the neighborhood does most of the talking before you've even ordered.

A glass-enclosed veranda on Cesenatico's main avenue, busy with summer promenaders just outside the windows, while inside the focus stays firmly on the Adriatic. This is a seafood restaurant in the straightforward sense: raw catches, gratins, pasta, risotto, grilled and baked fish, the daily specials announced aloud at the table. Alberto Faccani, the name behind Magnolia, oversees the kitchen, keeping things rooted in local maritime tradition rather than reaching for the clever.

A former barrel warehouse tucked into the narrow alleys of Riposto's centre, this contemporary Sicilian restaurant is run by a self-taught chef whose menu splits evenly between meat and fish, which is a quiet statement given the port is practically next door. Two tasting menus and a full à la carte, house olive oil from the family farm, and a dish named for the chef's father's favourite recipe round out a room that takes its food seriously without making you feel it.

The estate outside Volterra raises its own pigs, presses its own olives, and keeps its own bees, so dinner at Villa Pignano's restaurant is essentially a tour of the surrounding 300 hectares plated up as contemporary Tuscan cooking. Lunch runs simpler; evenings get more elaborate. The wine list leans into organic Tuscany, with a fair share of bottles from the property's own vines. A long way from the nearest delivery truck.

Frescoed ceilings from an old Piedmontese villa make a quietly theatrical backdrop for a restaurant that covers a lot of ground: regional à la carte at lunch, quality pizzas in the evening, and a garden that, charmingly, now belongs to the local municipality rather than the house. The chef came up through the family pastry shop, and the cooking still has that range-of-motion quality. Seasonal and locally rooted, with enough flexibility that most tables find something to argue over.

A wine-bar tucked inside a hotel on the main square in Neumarkt, where the list leans hard into Italian producers and most things worth trying are available by the glass. The chef runs the room with the kind of unhurried attention that makes you feel like the only table, and the kitchen keeps it Mediterranean and seasonal without making a fuss about it. Good stop if you want serious wine with food that keeps pace.

A wine bar tucked into a 17th-century barn beside the cathedral bell tower, where the host doubles as cellarman and seems personally acquainted with every producer on the list. The food is deliberately simple, Lombardian home cooking with the occasional seafood detour, and the cured meats and pasta dishes do the heavy lifting. It's the kind of place where you came for one glass and left having learned something.

Broad picture windows frame the Langhe hills from every table, which at least gives you something to look at while you decide between the traditional Piedmontese menu and the freestyle one where the kitchen improvises entirely. It's a contemporary tasting-menu restaurant inside a small hotel near Barbaresco, with à la carte available for the commitment-averse. Come summer, the terrace opens as a bistrot for something lighter and less structured.

Despite the name, which translates to golden calf, fish runs the show at this old-school Udine restaurant that has been around forever. The room pulls off a neat trick, pairing sober contemporary design with the weight of a place that clearly predates everything around it. The Sabinot family has kept Friulian tradition going for generations, with seafood-forward plates and seasonal vegetables rounding out the menu.

Walls lined floor to ceiling with bottles give Vitis the feel of a very stylish cellar someone forgot to close up. It's a wine bar in the old center of Brixen, where low tables, armchairs, and bar stools share space without committing to any one vibe. The kitchen leans contemporary, with generous small plates that land somewhere between South Tyrolean and European without making a fuss about it.

A tiny doorway on via Assarotti opens into a handful of tables, just enough to fill with regulars who called ahead. This intimate seafood restaurant in Genoa runs on the chef's instinct for pairing classic technique with unexpected combinations, with the focus almost entirely on whatever came off the boat. The cappon magro, a layered Ligurian seafood salad, has its own following. Book before you leave the house.

Raw tuna noodles in dashi broth with a splash of yuzu and sake-marinated salmon roe give you the measure of this contemporary Japanese restaurant tucked behind Corso Como. The counter with stools along the back wall sets the tone: precise, slightly minimal, quietly international. Sushi, sashimi, uramaki, robata, and gyoza share the menu, and the wine list covers both Italian labels and champagne alongside sake by the glass.

Carriages once rolled through the courtyard that now encloses this glass-roofed dining room inside the St. Regis, Murano chandeliers overhead and a pianist at the center of it all. The restaurant leans Mediterranean, with a kitchen that keeps things seasonal and unfussy, precise technique doing the heavy lifting. The aperitivo hour at the cocktail bar, ringed by sofas and armchairs, feels less optional than the menu makes it look.

A canal-side restaurant that looks every bit like a neighborhood bacaro, right down to the convivial hum, then serves something else entirely. The kitchen pulls from local markets and lagoon producers to put creative, modern plates on the table, not cicchetti. A few outdoor tables face a quiet canal if you time it right. The mood is relaxed and the service actually reads it, which in Venice, with tourists everywhere, is its own kind of achievement.

A 15th-century inner courtyard, a summer terrace, and a menu that manages to feature both vitello tonnato and raw seafood without an identity crisis. ZELO is a modern Italian restaurant on one of Milan's quieter luxury streets, where the kitchen leans creative but keeps a few classics around for the table that just wants braised veal. Lunch skews lighter; dinner is when the raw fish comes out. The setting does a lot of the work, and the setting is very good.

White onyx panels and soft lighting set a mood of deliberate calm at this Japanese fine dining restaurant on Corso Magenta. The kitchen runs on rigorous technique and high-grade ingredients, with an omakase menu that hands control entirely to the chefs. Sitting at the counter while they work is its own argument for the format. The crowd tends toward people who booked weeks ago and mean it.

The terrace at this hotel restaurant in central Sorrento has the kind of lemon-scented, candlelit romanticism that makes Campania feel like it was designed as a film set. Inside, the dining room goes full grand hotel, all opulence and pressed linens. The kitchen leans into regional flavors from Campania, then nudges them somewhere unexpected, and a vegetarian tasting menu means the table doesn't have to negotiate.