The Best Places to Eat and Stay in Italy

Sitting inside the Cala del Forte marina with the ruins of the Forte dell'Annunziata visible from the sea-facing tables, this is a seafood restaurant where raw fish gets top billing and an oyster bar handles the side business. The glass-fronted veranda overlooking the promenade is where you want to be, though the contemporary dining room inside is no hardship. The chef knows Ligurian waters well, and the menu follows the season wherever it leads.

A village bakery turned four-generation family trattoria, Marsupino sits in a tiny Piedmontese hamlet and cooks the kind of food that has no interest in impressing you, then impresses you anyway. The menu runs on regional tradition with a light contemporary touch, and the wine program is a genuine draw, guided by someone who talks about bottles the way other people talk about old friends.

A farmhouse restaurant set in the woods above Pedraces, Maso Runch-Hof serves Ladin home cooking in snug, wood-paneled Stube rooms on a single tasting menu. The kitchen leans into the local pantry with spinach-filled cajinci t'ega, pork ribs with polenta, and apple strudel, and the short wine list stays just as regional. A handful of chalets on the property means you can eat like this, then sleep here too.

The dining room at this rural Apulian masseria sits inside whitewashed stone walls thick enough to keep out the heat, and the menu leans hard into whatever the surrounding organic gardens are doing that week. Chef Giorgia Eugenia Goggi runs a set menu built mostly on vegetables, plated with enough color to look almost suspicious. A short list of natural Italian wines keeps things honest. Six rooms upstairs mean you don't have to leave, and people rarely want to.

Tucked into the forests of Casentino, this contemporary dining room opens onto the trees through floor-to-ceiling French doors, so lunch arrives with a side of absolute silence. The kitchen leans into its surroundings, building tasting menus from the kind of ingredients a city restaurant would call a sourcing story and a local one just calls Tuesday. The crowd runs to couples who drove a while to get here and don't mind at all.

The door looks like it belongs to someone's apartment, and inside, a wall stacked floor to ceiling with jars of seeds, lentils, and nuts makes the point before a dish arrives. This is a casual modern Sicilian restaurant where shared tables and a short menu rooted in land and sea keep things grounded. The kitchen leans on the grill and follows the seasons closely, with vegetables given the same attention as the fish.

The lift from Capo La Gala hotel drops you to the seafront, where this creative Mediterranean restaurant sits close enough to the water that the waves are an ambient soundtrack. Tasting menus lean on local recipes with a modern turn, the kind of place where a marinated amberjack arrives as the Amalfi Coast's take on ceviche. Sunset from the terrace is the sort of thing people move holidays around.

A small seafood trattoria on a quiet piazzale, with a terrace that earns its keep on warm evenings. The kitchen leans hard into fish in every form, raw and cooked, with homemade pasta pulling its weight alongside the main plates. The sparkling wine list, mostly Italian with some Champagne threaded in, is available by the glass, which in Parma, a city that lives for its cured meats, feels like a quiet act of rebellion.

Two 1930 frescoes by Giuseppe Barone hang in the dining room of this intimate restaurant near the Teatro Bellini, where a trio of young Catanian chefs have taken over a space that used to be a haunt of the city's high society. The focus is contemporary Sicilian cooking, but meat, especially off the grill, is the real reason to sit downstairs. A cocktail bar run by one of the partners occupies the floor above.

A family trattoria in Fagnano Olona where the fourth generation now runs the room, which means the cooking has been refined over a very long time without anyone forgetting what the food is supposed to taste like. The menu leans seasonal and local, with the daily specials worth a look. The wine list gets serious attention from the owner, and the service is informal enough that you won't feel watched.

Portholes punctuate the walls of this sleek seafood restaurant in Ferrari country, which is either a bold design statement or a gentle reminder that you're nowhere near the coast. The kitchen leans modern but stays honest, letting the catch carry the meal. A daily selection of raw and simply prepared fish anchors the menu, and the tagliolini with langoustine, caviar, and a Martini-spiked cabbage purée shows where the chef's ambitions surface.

The penthouse dining room of the Hotel Splendide Royal frames a panorama that takes in Villa Medici, Trinità dei Monti, and St. Peter's, which means the sunset does a lot of work before the food even arrives. This is a fine dining restaurant running on classical Italian technique with a modern sensibility, the menu moving between meat and seafood according to the season. Dress accordingly, and consider lingering.

The covered veranda sits at the exact tip of Bellagio's promontory, where the two arms of Lake Como split, so the views across to the far villages go in both directions at once. It's a modern cuisine restaurant with the feel of a grand hotel dining room, piano drifting in at dinner, guests from every corner of the world, and a menu that moves between Italian classics and quietly international territory.

A Japanese restaurant just outside San Pantaleo's village center, built on a premise that could easily go wrong: an Italian chef who learned his craft traveling the world, now pulling fresh Sardinian fish into sushi and gyoza in a quietly minimal room. The Italian-Japanese handshake extends to dessert, where mochi shares the table with Italian-inspired sweets. The Michelin Guide has it selected, and the logic tracks.

Five tables, soft light, and wood everywhere you look: Mogano is a small, intimate restaurant tucked beside the Ritual Lab brewery in Formello, built around the idea that craft beer belongs at a serious dinner table. The chef spent years cooking internationally before landing here, folding Italian instincts into something harder to pin down. Guests get an aperitif in the kitchen before they sit, which sets the tone nicely for an evening that never quite fits a category.

A family-run restaurant tucked into the Dolomite valley of Sappada, where the kitchen leans hard into the forest around it, wild game, mountain herbs, and whatever the season allows. The wine cellar, called KAVEAU, is the kind of room that turns a bottle of something regional into an event. The crowd tends toward people who planned the drive, not stumbled in. Michelin has it in the Guide.

The chef's table tucked into the kitchen is the detail that sets the tone here. This dinner-only fine dining room inside a design hotel serves a quietly confident Italian menu, with the kitchen leaning on the country's own pantry rather than reaching abroad. The room runs soft and elegant; guests who want to ease in gently tend to start with drinks downstairs at Bulk before heading up.

A father cooks while his son tends the room and the cellar, which gives Musciora the kind of focused intensity that usually takes a committee to ruin. This is a tasting-menu restaurant in Alghero built around Sardinian ingredients, offered across three menus: one from the sea, one from the hinterland, and one that folds both together. The wine list leans hard into small Sardinian producers and natural bottles from further afield.

Large windows frame the Tuscia Viterbese woodland at this modern Italian restaurant tucked inside a country resort outside Sutri. The kitchen takes traditional Lazio recipes as a starting point and works them forward with contemporary technique, leaning on local produce. Fresh pasta and dry-aged wild boar show up regularly, and the room's soft lighting does the kind of heavy lifting that a good candlelit table should.

The wine cellar sits in a vaulted space that's been around for centuries, which sets the tone for an otherwise modern Tuscan restaurant in a small Val di Pesa hill town. The kitchen riffs on regional cooking with technical confidence, and the pastry side, handled by the co-owner, has a playful streak, including a tiramisù finished with a whisper of tobacco. The wine list has grown into something serious over the years.

A small, polished dining room tucked between Vomero and the Chiaia waterfront, where the wine list leans hard on Campanian labels and the kitchen runs on Mediterranean instincts with a contemporary edge. Two tasting menus or à la carte, both structured around land and sea with the occasional exotic turn that keeps things interesting. The kind of place that seats few people quietly and means it.

A farmhouse restaurant outside Piacenza where an open hearth warms the dining room in winter and a shaded terrace takes over come summer. The feel is a well-loved private home, and the menu leans into that generosity: four tasting menus plus a long à la carte spanning meat, fish, and vegetarian. The wine cellar runs to over 700 labels, with a soft spot for cooler-climate bottles that most Italian lists ignore.

Charcoal-grilled lamb with rhubarb is the move to watch at this contemporary Italian restaurant inside a sleek new Rome hotel. The young chef spent serious time in France and Japan, and the cooking lands somewhere between classical precision and something fresher, with clean flavors that don't need much explaining. The room shares the hotel's polished lines, and the crowd skews international, which makes sense given the passport stamps behind the menu.

Duck shows up across the menu at this rustic Lombard trattoria in the Bassa Pavese flatlands, most memorably in the ragù that comes folded through fusilloni pasta. Lunch runs casual and honest, weekends lean more regional and considered, and the wine list stretches further than the setting might suggest. Easy to reach off the A21, which means the midday crowd knows exactly what it's doing when it pulls off the highway here.

The stone walls and vaulted ceilings have been around forever, first as a monastery, then an inn, and now a contemporary regional restaurant in the small town of Borgonovo Val Tidone. The kitchen leans into Emilia-Romagna's pantry but updates it with enough modern technique to keep things interesting. A handful of guestrooms next door means dinner doesn't have to end with a drive.

An open kitchen anchors this cheerful contemporary Italian restaurant near the Sant'Ambrogio market, where the menu shifts with the seasons and the cooking shows real precision without taking itself too seriously. The chef pairs duck breast with bao alongside the expected Tuscan touches, and the room's colourful furnishings match the energy of a front-of-house team that seems to be having as good a time as the guests.

A beach club that quietly grew up around its restaurant, Oasi sits on the Follonica waterfront where a husband and wife split duties between kitchen and floor. He's self-taught and lets it show in small, confident ways, the kind of seafood place where the classic preparations get a personal nudge rather than a makeover. The Ligurian coast crowd who wander in for lunch sometimes forget to leave before dinner.

An old South Tyrolean farmhouse that has been feeding people for longer than anyone currently alive can verify, Oberraindlhof is the kind of regional restaurant where five generations of the same family have decided that local recipes and nearby ingredients are the whole point. The ravioli stuffed with valley cheese are the kind of dish that quietly makes the case for staying put. The wine list is serious, the atmosphere is not.

A modern seafood bistro in central Saronno, connected to the Michelin-starred Olio in Origgio, which explains why the kitchen punches with more confidence than the postcode suggests. The menu leans heavily into raw preparations and clean, bright flavors, skipping pasta entirely in favor of fish-forward plates and a handful of meat options. The wine list is short and deliberate. Book ahead, even for lunch, the room fills.

The entrance, plastered floor to ceiling with stickers, looks more like a record shop than a restaurant, and the surfboard serving as a table near the door keeps that energy going. Inside, it's a casual contemporary spot in the Mercato delle Erbe, serving Emilian cooking that wanders confidently into other traditions, most famously a Bolognese ramen built around tagliolino in mushroom broth. Cocktails are available to open or close the meal. Book ahead.

Floor-to-ceiling windows on the fifth floor frame the Amalfi Coast in a way that makes whatever's on the plate work harder to compete. This is a creative contemporary restaurant with its roots deep in Campanian tradition, where the kitchen reworks local flavors rather than abandoning them. The cooking leans seasonal and ingredient-forward, the room has been recently redone, and the view does a lot of the heavy lifting for the mood.

The dining room seems to grow straight out of the beach, with big windows framing the Adriatic and a room that's noticeably more polished than the setting suggests. This is a proper seafood restaurant built around the day's catch, with classic dishes from the Adriatic coast and daily specials that follow the market wherever it goes. The wine list reaches well into France, which is a quiet flex for a place this close to the sand.

A farm estate east of Modena that also produces balsamic vinegar sets the scene for this countryside restaurant. The menu moves between Emilian tradition and the chef's own instincts, so tortelli in capon broth might sit alongside something more inventive, depending on the season. The room is quiet in the way that only fields can make a room quiet, which is either deeply restorative or deeply alarming, depending on your relationship with silence.

A contemporary restaurant in the Padova province that grew out of a gastro pub and kept growing, which explains the wine list's unusual passion for international sparkling wines. The menu runs meat and fish with a leaning toward luxury ingredients, Wagyu and foie gras doing most of the talking. Lunch skews lighter, but the à la carte is where the kitchen shows off. Cocktails are on at midday too, which is either civilized or a warning.

The name nods to the old Florentine prison next door, and the chef leans into that with a dining room frescoed in gold leaf and a kitchen so open it practically pulls you into conversation. A fine dining restaurant tucked behind the Uffizi, serving creative contemporary Italian that moves comfortably between meat and fish. The crowd tends toward people who've done the museum and want the meal to match.

The 4.5km of switchbacks to reach this farm-to-table restaurant on a Ligurian estate might make you question your choices, but the Tyrrhenian Sea view from the table has a way of settling that debate. The kitchen leans on its own garden, local fish, and carefully chosen meat, and the cooking is bright and seasonal, occasionally pulled off the barbecue in the way that makes simple things taste like a point being made.

Minimalist interiors and a full-on Japanese aesthetic mark this long-running Milan restaurant, where the menu runs deeper than most. It's a traditional Japanese dining room doing set lunch and à la carte at dinner, with the kind of range that rewards slow reading. The sukiyaki, a simmering tableside broth of meat and vegetables meant for sharing, is the sort of thing that turns a weeknight into an occasion.

A meat-focused osteria a short walk from the island of Ortigia, where the kitchen ages cuts on the premises and fires them in a Josper oven. The sourcing leans toward non-intensive farms, which the menu is happy to tell you about. Sicilian wines anchor a list that wanders usefully beyond the island. Soft lighting and genuinely warm service make the whole thing feel less like a steakhouse and more like someone's very well-stocked dining room.

Tucked into a narrow alley near the Duomo, this old-school trattoria has been feeding Bressanone locals for generations, its dining rooms dressed in historic dark wood with a terrace that fills up the moment summer arrives. The kitchen straddles South Tyrolean and Mediterranean traditions, turning out tasting menus alongside à la carte options, with Tirtl, a fried ricotta and spinach pastry, among the dishes regulars tend to order without consulting the menu.

The dark wood and low ceilings of the dining room put you somewhere between a mountain hut and a serious osteria, which is more or less what Le Due Spade is. It has been around forever, feeding Trento since the Council of Trent era, and the kitchen still leans into Alpine Italian cooking: char, strudel, risotto, local produce handled with enough imagination that it never feels like a museum of regional food.

Tiny is barely the word: a handful of tables in a tucked-away Castello calle, and reservations that disappear weeks out. This snug seafood-forward osteria runs a menu shaped entirely by the market, with vegetables grown on Sant'Erasmo island through a collective kitchen-garden shared among small Venice restaurants. The cooking is rooted in the Venetian tradition, without fuss or flourish, which is exactly why the room is always full.

Tucked into the Barolo vineyards outside La Morra, this fine dining restaurant inside the Arborina Relais runs on a no-waste philosophy that shapes the menu rather than decorating it. Two tasting menus, at five or eight courses, pull from Piedmontese tradition with enough modern technique to keep things interesting. The wine list reads like a love letter to the surrounding hills, which makes sense given what's growing just outside the window.

Frescoed ceilings from the last century look down on two small dining rooms tucked behind the porticoes of Mondovì's oldest square, and the room has the kind of unhurried warmth that makes you order one more glass. This is a traditional Piedmontese osteria with a kitchen that lightens the classics without flattening them. The dining room manager knows the menu cold, so if the choices blur together, just ask.

The veranda's retro curve stops park walkers mid-stride, which is a reasonable way to find a restaurant. Inside, the Billis twins run an osteria that calls its approach "new tradition," meaning Piedmontese cooking refracted through wider influences. Local ingredients stay, but the techniques roam. The room has the kind of unhurried atmosphere that makes an extra glass feel inevitable, which is probably the point.