The Best Places to Eat and Stay in Italy

Frescoes on the walls, herbs from the kitchen garden on the plate: this is a formal restaurant inside a villa hotel in the Veneto countryside, with a fireplace for winter and a courtyard for summer. The young chef grew up cooking here, which shows in dishes built around vegetables and local producers. The wine list leans heavily into Riesling if that's your thing. A bistro handles the lighter, more casual lunch crowd next door.

An 18th-century farmhouse in the Alessandria countryside, stripped back to clean lines and pale walls inside, which makes a quietly dramatic frame for Piedmontese cooking with a modern lean. This is a proper sit-down restaurant, meat-forward and rooted in the region, with a chef who adds just enough of a twist to keep things interesting without losing the thread. The kind of place where the room itself feels considered, and the food follows suit.

Photographs of old locomotives and rows of copper pots line the walls of this long-running osteria in Pordenone's historic center. The kitchen leans hard into Friulian tradition, turning out cured meats, local cheeses, and braised beef cheek with polenta, the kind of food that arrives in portions sized for people who actually work. The room runs warm and convivial, the way an old neighborhood place does when it has nothing to prove.

A contemporary trattoria a short drive outside Crema, with a minimalist room lifted by pops of colour. The kitchen leans on Italian tradition, leaning further into modern technique as the week winds toward the weekend. The wine list splits evenly between Italian and French labels, with a serious run of champagnes for a room this unfussy. Weekday lunches are the quiet bargain the locals already know about.

The restaurant sits inside a wine estate, so the list leans hard on Barbaresco and Barolo, with Champagne as the only outside voice. La Gallina is a contemporary fine dining room with a rustic-elegant feel, the menu circling Piedmont and dipping into Liguria and the chef's native Campania. A dessert that arrives disguised as a cappuccino and focaccia breakfast suggests the kitchen has a sense of humor about where it draws its references.

The Josper oven and a dry-ageing unit on site tells you where this contemporary Italian restaurant's priorities lie. Grilled meats, including prized Iberian cuts, anchor the evening menu, while fish dishes keep things balanced. Lunch pulls back to something more casual and accessible without abandoning the kitchen's modern technique. The room itself has an architectural edge that matches the food, a short walk from the center of Foggia.

Tucked into the Villa Bardini museum complex above the city, this creative fine-dining restaurant earns its uphill walk with a summer terrace where you eat among herbs and greenery with Santa Croce floating in the distance. The chef works through Italian culinary tradition with genuine curiosity, leaning on sustainable sourcing for meat, bread, and pasta. Several menus are on offer, including a vegetarian option, which feels less like an afterthought here than most places.

A piano sits in the corner of what looks like a large glass veranda, and in summer the whole operation shifts outside to a terrace shaded by lemon trees. This contemporary restaurant in a quiet residential neighbourhood away from the centre builds its menu around fire and the grill, turning out personal, market-driven dishes that don't feel obligated to Piedmontese convention. The all-female front-of-house team runs things with easy, unforced warmth.

The dining room sits over the excavated remains of a Roman villa, which makes the bread service feel appropriately humble by comparison. This is a sit-down restaurant in central Assisi, split between straightforward Umbrian cooking and more considered modern plates. The wine cellar is serious enough to be a destination on its own, and the setting, ancient stone and all, does most of the interior decorating.

Castelfranco Emilia is tortellini country, and this modern Emilian restaurant leans into that with zero embarrassment. The chef grew up here, and the menu reads like a love letter to the region, fresh pasta folded by hand, bollito misto served with serious sauces. The dining room is contemporary without being cold, and the service runs warm enough that you don't notice how long you've been sitting there.

An old mill on the edge of Pietrasanta, with wood beams overhead and a terrace that earns its keep in summer, houses this modern Italian restaurant where seafood is the clear obsession. The chef works both sides of the pass, often taking orders tableside, and the raw seafood preparations are where the kitchen shows off, small bites that lean creative without tipping into gimmick. Meat dishes round out the menu for anyone who needs convincing.

An old mill just outside Modena doing its best impression of Puglia, and pulling it off. This trattoria-style restaurant leans hard on the heel of Italy: stuffed peppers, fava purée with chicory, eggplant parmigiana, and meats cooked over live embers. Sitting in egg-pasta country and ignoring most of it takes some nerve. Desserts arrive in a basket, a pile of small sweets with dried fruit and chocolate, which is a fine way to end anything.

A bistro in the heart of Domodossola where the fish menu splits in two directions: Italian tradition on one side, the chef's native Spain on the other, with paella representing the home team. The room has been updated over the years, and in summer the terrace looks out over the old town center. His wife runs the front of house and knows the wine list well, which is the kind of detail that makes a place feel like someone actually lives there.

A deconstructed cannolo is the closing argument at this old-port Sicilian restaurant, where the kitchen runs from breakfast pastries through to whatever the boats brought in that day. The cooking is traditional island fare, the kind built around swordfish, bottarga, and fresh catch rather than culinary ambition. Warm, unhurried, and run as a family operation, it's the sort of place you end up staying far longer than planned.

A fire crackling at the back of the room is your first hint: charcoal-grilled meat is the main event at this old-school Emilian trattoria, which has been feeding the neighborhood across from the Abbey of Nonantola for generations. Fresh pasta, outstanding charcuterie, and a dessert trolley that comes to you round out the menu. The rooms are homely but cared for, with fresh flowers on every table, and the wine list runs deep.

A stilt house on the Brugiano Canal done up in colonial wood and Parisian brasserie details, which is a combination that shouldn't work but somehow does. La Péniche is a seafood and Mediterranean restaurant with a long à la carte menu running from a dedicated oyster list to Cantabrian anchovies and pata negra. In summer, tables out on the floating raft are the ones to ask for. Book ahead.

A lounge bar at the entrance nudges you toward an aperitivo before you've even found your table, which is probably the point. This Cernobbio bistro has a retro-modern room and a terrace that catches the lake breeze in summer, and the kitchen runs a Mediterranean menu with a light, contemporary hand. The crowd tends young and local, the kind who know the pasta already.

The rooftop of a former Fiat factory now hosts a botanical garden, and the restaurant one floor below it has made peace with that act to follow. This is a creative tasting-menu spot inside the Lingotto shopping center, with four menus ranging from Piedmontese classics to a vegetarian garden tour to a blind "trust the kitchen" option. Everything is also available à la carte, which is a rare and civilized gesture.

The building itself spans Via Stalingrado like a bridge, which sets the tone before you've ordered anything. By day it runs as a casual bistro with straightforward plates; by evening the room shifts into creative modern dining, all warm wood and a mostly female front-of-house team who seem to actually enjoy being there. The kitchen draws from Emilian tradition and then quietly departs from it, mixing regional references with a chef's own restless curiosity.

Tucked into a small medieval hilltop village, this agriturismo restaurant runs on produce grown right on the property, with a charcoal grill doing serious work on Tuscan ribeye and a spit-roasted pigeon and quail dish that earns its place on any table. The setting is rustic farmhouse with the views to make you forget about the drive. In summer, the outdoor tables under the lime trees fill fast, so booking ahead is the move.

Half deli, half bistro, with the kitchen deciding which half you're in based on the hour. At lunch it's a casual counter among local salumi and cheeses; come evening, the shop quiets down and wooden tables and soft lighting take over for proper Calabrian cooking with a contemporary edge. The fish is aged on site, and the menu moves between local catch and the occasional Wagyu cut, which feels like a reasonable range of ambition for one room.

A seafood trattoria where the menu is mostly a suggestion and the real action is whatever came off the truck that morning. The cooking pulls from Sardinia and broader Italian tradition, clean and unadorned. Regulars let the owner steer, which is the correct move. The roasted turbot with porcini and potatoes is about as fussy as it gets, and that tells you everything about the kitchen's general philosophy.

A compact modern Sardinian restaurant steps from Alghero's seafront, where the menu shifts between tasting routes named for roots, revolution, coast, and courtyard. Each path traces a different logic of the island, vegetables one way, local fish another, tradition a third. All wines pour by the glass, and the sommelier seems to genuinely enjoy being asked. The room is small enough that the kitchen's intentions land at the table without getting lost.

Floor-to-ceiling windows frame the Langhe hills so completely that lunch feels like eating inside a landscape painting. This is a small Piedmontese restaurant where the chef, originally from Puglia, landed in the Langhe by way of stints in England and never quite left. The cooking stays rooted in local tradition without being a museum piece. In good weather, the outdoor terrace is the obvious place to be.

Tables on the terrace look straight down to the sea, with Positano lit up below like someone arranged it for effect. This is the gourmet restaurant inside Le Agavi Hotel, where the kitchen runs Campanian flavors through a quietly modern sensibility. The wine list wanders well beyond Italy, with a particular soft spot for Champagne rosés, and the sommelier guides pairings with the kind of ease that makes you feel like you chose well yourself.

A small seafood restaurant perched above its own private beach club in Golfo Aranci, La Spigola serves modern Sardinian cooking built around whatever came off local boats. The dining room looks straight out over the water, and the sea does most of the decorating. The wine list is relaxed until the last few pages, where aged bottles from the 1970s and 80s appear as if someone forgot to stop collecting.

Hundreds of candles are lit by hand every evening, which tells you something about the ambitions of the room before the food arrives. La Sponda is the fine-dining restaurant inside Le Sirenuse, with a terrace that looks out over Positano's pastel houses stacked up the cliff. The kitchen leans into southern Italian flavors, Campanian produce, the kind of cooking that feels inevitable once you're sitting there watching the coast go dark.

The panoramic veranda hangs over the Torbole lakefront, which makes the lake-fish focus feel less like a concept and more like the obvious thing to do. This is a small, polished restaurant where the cooking leans on freshwater catches and local produce, with a tasting menu built around the lake and an à la carte that lets the land and garden join in. The spaghetti with freshwater prawns, ginger, and lime has a following.

The terrace table with an unobstructed view of Lake Como sets the terms for everything that follows at this fine dining restaurant inside Villa d'Este. The kitchen works in contemporary Italian with a cosmopolitan lean, the kind of menu that keeps old-world instincts but isn't afraid of a detour. Dress as though someone might photograph you, because at Villa d'Este they very well might.

The Liberty-style dining room inside Parkhotel Laurin turns lunch into a minor occasion, and the garden tables under old trees make summer in Bolzano feel earned. The cooking is rooted in Italian tradition with detours into modern technique, so you'll find local South Tyrolean specialities alongside dishes that borrow ideas from further afield. Jacket optional, but the room will make you wish you'd tried a little harder.

Le Beccherie is the restaurant credited with inventing tiramisù, which gives it a certain authority in Treviso you'd be foolish to ignore. It's a contemporary dining room now, with canal-view tables doing most of the heavy lifting on atmosphere. The kitchen blends regional tradition with modern technique, and a tasting menu called "Beccherie 1962" offers the old repertoire polished up just enough to feel respectful rather than nostalgic.

Olive wood does the heavy lifting here, sending smoke through the stone walls of a former oil cellar that dates back to the late 1500s. It's a contemporary grill restaurant just a short walk from the sea in Sestri Levante, with its own kitchen garden out front and a dining room that leans pleasantly rustic and romantic. No fish on the menu, which makes a statement in Liguria, the kitchen favoring self-grown vegetables and meat cooked over the coals.

A restored stone house in Monforte's old quarter, fitted out with glass and steel in a way that shouldn't work but does. Dining happens across several levels connected by staircases steep enough to make you think twice about the second glass of Barolo, though the wine list will tempt you anyway. Piedmontese cooking anchors the menu, a wine bar handles aperitifs up front, and guestrooms mean you can simply stay.

Mirrors and silverware set the tone at this classic Genoese seafood restaurant, where the menu leans heavily on raw fish and whatever came off the boat. The mupa, a deep-water Mediterranean species most menus have never heard of, shows up here alongside prawns in season and handmade pasta with sauces that suggest someone's grandmother is involved. The table near the arte povera dresser at the back is the one to ask for.

The open kitchen sits center-stage in a spare, spotlight-lit dining room inside the Le Fucine hotel, and the chef works it like he knows people are watching. This is a tasting-menu restaurant with two full journeys on offer, one rooted in Friulian tradition and one tracing the chef's travels, plus a shorter menu that splits the difference. The sommelier handles pairings with evident conviction, which in wine country like this is not a small thing.

Sheaves of wheat hang from the ceiling and old farming tools line the walls, so the name, which means granary in the local dialect, earns its keep. This is a sit-down restaurant in the center of Saint-Vincent where the kitchen leans into Aosta Valley tradition while quietly modernizing it, home-baked bread included. An open fireplace does the atmospheric heavy lifting, and the regional wine list is long enough to slow any decision-making considerably.