The Best Places in Italy

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.

The Zivieri family raises animals and grows produce in the Apennines, then drives it all down to Bologna and cooks it for you inside a medieval tower off Piazza della Mercanzia. It's a regional trattoria where the charcuterie and grilled meats are essentially the point, made from animals the same family farms. A butcher's counter next door sells the same stuff to take home, which feels either convenient or dangerous depending on your willpower.

An old farmhouse in Tisens, barn and stables folded into the dining room so the stone walls and timber feel less like decor than something that was always there. The kitchen runs a "Wine & Dine" concept, pairing South Tyrolean flavors with dishes that are clean rather than fussy. The wine cellar has been quietly accumulated over years and it shows. Service is the kind that doesn't need to announce itself.

Vaulted ceilings inside a grand old palazzo on Bolzano's main piazza set the stage for a restaurant that runs two distinct modes under one roof. Lunch leans casual and regional, riffing on South Tyrolean flavors with a lighter touch, while the gilded back dining room is where the chef gets serious, offering a full gastronomic tasting experience. Dressing up is not required, but the gilded room will make you wish you had.

Floor-to-ceiling glass and Patricia Urquiola's interiors face the eastern shore, where Il Sereno sits among Lake Como's old money mansions looking conspicuously, deliberately modern. It's a boutique luxury hotel with 40 suites, a 60-foot infinity pool, a boathouse converted into a spa, and a waterfront restaurant that holds a Michelin star. The kind of place where the lake does half the decorating, and the design team handles the rest.

A Campanian transplant running one of Florence's more serious Neapolitan pizza shops, with a dough that goes through a long cold ferment before it sees any heat. The crust comes out soft and fragrant, the toppings lean on well-sourced producers, and the menu covers classics alongside house originals. A fried pizza filled with lampredotto is the kitchen's nod to its adopted city. It ranks on both 50 Top Pizza Italy and 50 Top Pizza World.

A pizzeria sitting a thousand meters above sea level on the border of Campania and Basilicata, where the kitchen forages the surrounding hills, ages its own cheeses in on-site caves, and grows vegetables in a high-altitude garden. The wood-and-stone dining room feels rooted in its landscape, and the panoramic terrace makes the drive up feel obvious in retrospect. Ranked in the 50 Top Pizza Italy and World lists.

A former match factory in Este is now a pizzeria with a garden, which is exactly the kind of origin story that sounds invented but isn't. The chef runs three styles of pizza, wood-fired classics, tasting pies in a contemporary style, and thin Roman rounds, with vegetables and ingredients pulled largely from small local producers. Ranked in the 50 Top Pizza Italy and World lists, it earns a Forno Verde special award for its green sourcing focus.

A restored stone farmhouse in Cilento, with its own mill on-site and a vegetable garden just outside the door. The pizza here is built around the ammaccata, an old local flatbread tradition, made with ancient grains and kept deliberately simple so the ingredients can actually speak. The dough is light and fragrant, which sounds like a given until you eat one. It landed on 50 Top Pizza Italy, a ranking worth knowing.

A Roman-style pizza shop in Velletri where the crust is thin, crisp, and built on pre-fermented doughs and carefully chosen flours. The team fries well and takes the dough seriously, which shows in how the slices hold their structure without going rigid. It's a young operation that already draws a local following, and 50 Top Pizza named it Young Restaurant of the Year for Italy in 2026. The room is cheerful and unpretentious, and the staff seem to mean it.

A Roman-style pizzeria transplanted to Milan, where the thin, wide rounds come in at 160 grams of dough, light enough that a second slice feels less like a dare. The room is small and loud in that companionable way. Supplì are the move to start, and the wine list runs longer than you'd expect. It lands on the 50 Top Pizza Italy list, which tracks.

A pizza restaurant tucked into the Abruzzo hills where the dough is half the point, light and structured in a way that makes most other crusts feel like an afterthought. The chef, known as Giangi, treats a pie more like a composed dish, layering local ingredients with enough audacity to pull off a pizza that riffs on sushi without embarrassing itself. It ranks on both 50 Top Pizza Italy and 50 Top Pizza World. The wine list has grown up to match.

A pizzeria in the Venetian mainland that seats 300 people and still runs multiple shifts on weekends, which tells you something. The chef is self-taught and built his reputation on high-hydration sourdough, with San Marzano tomatoes and fiordilatte from Agerola keeping the sourcing honest. The seafood pizzas are the move, built around Sicilian anchovies, Scardovari mussels, and octopus. It placed on 50 Top Pizza Italy.

A pizza spot in Pontecagnano that splits its attention between classic rounds and pan-fried double-baked slices with seasonal toppings, which is a more interesting menu architecture than most places bother with. The team roots everything in Campanian ingredients while still pushing into creative combinations. The wine list leans heavily regional, and the beer runs mostly artisanal. It landed at number 37 on 50 Top Pizza Italy, if you want a benchmark.

The dough here gets talked about in serious pizza circles, and I Fontana has earned spots on both the 50 Top Pizza Italy and World lists to back that up. It's a Neapolitan pizza spot in Somma Vesuviana where the crust is airy and blistered, toppings lean on produce from the Vesuvian gardens, and the fried starters, croquettes, arancini, the works, are the kind of thing you order while pretending to study the menu.

The Falia, a tall, thick-crusted pizza from nearby Priverno served by the slice, tells you immediately where this pizzeria stands: deep in the ingredients and traditions of the surrounding territory. High-hydration doughs, local artisan producers, and fried starters that earn their place before the pizza even arrives. The wine list runs by the glass, the staff actually know it, and 50 Top Pizza Italy and the World list both took notice.

Franco Pepe's Neapolitan pizza spot sits in a small hilltop town that most tourists drive straight past, which suits the regulars fine. The dough is the point here: soft, well-leavened, and light enough that finishing a whole pizza feels less like an achievement than it should. Fried starters and seasonal toppings lean hard into Campania's pantry. The space is carefully designed, with an outdoor terrace split across two floors for tasting.

A contemporary gastronomic pizzeria in the Vomero neighborhood, where the dough work is treated with the seriousness of a kitchen brigade and toppings read more like composed dishes than what you'd expect on a round. The room is airy and modern, built to handle a crowd without feeling like a canteen. Craft beers, gluten-free options, and a dessert involving Vesuvian apricot and mozzarella that has no business working as well as it does.

A pizza spot in Sassari where the dough gets the kind of obsessive attention other restaurants reserve for the main course. The chef's study of flours and fermentation produces bases that are light but structured, and the menu moves between careful classics and more experimental pairings. Amuse-bouches open the meal and set the tone. The room is relaxed but considered, and the whole thing lands on 50 Top Pizza Italy's list.

A Neapolitan pizza spot steps from Santa Maria Novella, run by a pizzaiolo from Ischia who's landed near the tourist crossroads and made it work. The dough is long-leavened, the toppings generous, and you can watch the whole operation from the dining room, which runs glamorous-dim in a way Florence's centro storico rarely does. Ranked in 50 Top Pizza Italy. Good for a sit-down or a box to eat on the train, which puts it in rare company.

The name is Hemingway-adjacent, but the real draw is a courtyard tucked behind a Florence street and a Neapolitan pizza dough that manages to be both light and serious about itself. This is a full-service restaurant that doubles as a seafood spot, with a wine and champagne list that suggests someone here has opinions. The tomato sauce gets mentioned with the kind of reverence usually reserved for relatives.

A Neapolitan pizza spot in Messina with a longer reach than most: in summer the whole operation shifts to Blanco Beach Club on the Strait, where you eat with water views instead of walls. High-hydration doughs and long leavening are the kitchen's religion, with a pronounced crust alongside Roman-style and fried options. A second location near the Duomo adds a proper sit-down dining angle for those who want more than a slice.