The Best Places to Eat and Stay in Italy

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.

A pizza restaurant in Aversa's main piazza where the classic dough does the talking: light, well-leavened, and staying crisp to the final crust. The room is dressed up more than most pizza spots, and the staff carries itself accordingly. Prices run higher than the neighborhood average, which the elegant setting makes feel reasonable. 50 Top Pizza Italy ranks it among its top forty in the country.

A Monteverde pizzeria that has been around forever without feeling like a museum piece, La Gatta Mangiona sits outside the usual Roman pizza camps and does things its own way. The dough is light and handled well, holding up under toppings that lean into stronger ingredients without losing balance. Evenings only, reservations a good idea, and a room that fills with people who have clearly been coming for years.

A Puglia-sourced pizzeria in central Varese where the dough is only the starting point. The chef builds tasting menus that move through sushi, pasta, and hot dogs, all anchored to pizza in ways that sound chaotic on paper and apparently work in practice. Burrata and stracciatella from Andria appear regularly, and the wine list leans Champagne. It landed on 50 Top Pizza Italy, which tracks.

A pizza restaurant on the island of Ischia, set inside a tuff-stone building where the terrace catches the sunset over the water. The menu moves well past the Neapolitan standard, offering several dough styles and the option of double cooking, with the kitchen showing a clear hand for balancing quality ingredients. The wine list pulls from a wide range of grapes and regions. Ranked in 50 Top Pizza Italy.

Roman-style pizza, done thin and crispy the way the city has always insisted it should be, anchors this relaxed pizza spot along the Tiber. The fried starters get as much attention as the pies, coming out fragrant and genuinely light, which is harder than it sounds. A solid list of sparkling wines makes the pairing case for itself. The room is informal and unhurried, the kind of place where the service moves fast enough that you never feel forgotten.

Colorful pizza triangles cover the walls of this bright, modern Roman pizzeria, which is built around the scrocchiarella, the thin, aggressively crisp style native to the city. The dough is featherlight and the crunch is the whole point. The menu wanders past the usual fritti into a broader spread of Italian small plates, and the pizzas run from classic to a little unexpected. It landed on the 50 Top Pizza Italy list, which tracks.

Perched at 1,800 metres in the South Tyrol, this spa resort sits close enough to the clouds that the distinction feels negotiable. Floor-to-ceiling windows and stone-accented interiors keep the architecture out of the landscape's way rather than competing with it, and balconied rooms make ignoring the Dolomite peaks essentially impossible. A spot on The 50 Discovery list confirms the pilgimage has a point.

A 16th-century watchtower anchors this resort on Ischia's quieter western edge, part of the Pellicano group but content to let its more famous sibling steal the spotlight. Rooms and cottages sit inside a lush private park, dressed in hand-painted tiles, handwoven wall hangings, and soft creams that feel less like a design brief and more like someone's actual taste. A private bay keeps the crowds at arm's length.

A pizzeria in Milan that imports Dolomite water for its dough, which is either obsessive or exactly the kind of detail that ends up mattering. Denis Lovatel's pies are thin and crispy, long-leavened, and noticeably light, topped with alpine cheeses and mountain herbs that make the menu feel like a hill station menu and not a city one. The wood-warmed room reinforces the altitude fantasy. 50 Top Pizza World ranked it among its top spots globally.

An 800-year-old Tuscan villa set across 200 acres of gardens, wild land, and a working kitchen garden, all of it painstakingly restored by its Danish owners into a boutique resort that somehow feels like a very grand private home. The grounds alone justify the visit, but the interiors match them beat for beat. A Discovery from The World's 50 Best Hotels, and easy to see why once you're standing in the orto at dusk.

The Ferragamo family bought an entire medieval Tuscan hamlet and turned it into a resort, which is a sentence that explains a great deal about the atmosphere. Il Borro's 38 suites occupy centuries-old stone buildings scattered across the property, each fitted with exposed beams, open fireplaces, and antiques chosen by hand. The kind of place where the grounds themselves feel like the amenity, and the village outside your door has been there since the thirteenth century.

Roman-style pizza here means a rolling pin, not a toss, turning out thin, crisp rounds the way the neighborhood has always expected them. A Rota is a no-ceremony pizzeria in Tor Pignattara, sister spot to the trattoria next door, with a short menu of classic pies and a fried-foods list that reads like old Roman dialect. About fifteen pizzas, a seasonal special, and service that moves without making you feel rushed.

A humble two-group espresso machine anchors one corner of this neighborhood bar-cafe, while the rest belongs to the bakery. Far from the tourist drag near Palermo's train station, it pulls nonnas and taxi drivers for arancini at lunch and a standing espresso at the counter. Local roasters fill the hoppers alongside guest roasters, and the full specialty menu runs flat whites to cold brew. Old-school institution, no airs about it.

A weathered brass 20kg roaster dominates the back of this old-school Palermo coffee shop, which has been grinding away in a narrow alley of the historic quarter for as long as anyone can remember. The retail side stocks beans from Hawaii to Colombian rum co-ferments alongside moka pots and hazelnut spread, while next door the standing-room sister café handles cappuccinos, granita, and brioche. One counter serves everyone from espresso purists to the lighter-roast curious.

A four-generation Sicilian roaster that claims to be Palermo's first true specialty coffee shop, with the Lab outpost sitting inside the Palermo Yacht Club right on the harbor. Getting there means winding past longshoremen's warehouses, which only makes the swank patio payoff stranger and better. A Modbar gleams behind the quartz counter, French and Italian pastries arrive on stained wooden boards, and a cocktail bar waits across the room if the cortado isn't cutting it.

A standing-room coffee shop tucked off the square at Colonna dell'Immaculata, Vago Rizzuto runs an unusually long menu for a cramped little room: shakeratos, V60 pour-overs, iced oat milk lattes, and multiple espresso options sit alongside wine by the glass and local beer. The menu is written in English, which tells you everything about the crowd. Focaccia sandwiches and Italian pastries handle the food side, and there's an AeroPress off-menu if you know to ask.

On a pedestrian street in the Politeama-Libertà office district, this coffee shop pulls shots with local roaster Histo Caffè but keeps specialty options from Casper tucked behind the counter for those who ask. The young baristas speak English and will happily dial in a gently roasted Gesha for anyone not ready for Palermo's standard ristretto. Filter options, including Chemex and V60, are available too, which is quietly unusual for an espresso city.

A medieval castle in the Maremma countryside, converted into a ten-suite boutique hotel where the kitchen is rustic and the service feels like a neighbor insisted you stay. Marble pools sit among cypress trees, with olive groves and vineyards rolling out in every direction, and the gardens smell the way Tuscany is supposed to smell in other people's photos. It's castle-as-farmhouse, and somehow more relaxing for it.

The Alpini Bridge fills the window and the Brenta runs below, which is a pretty solid backdrop for a pizza place. This Bassano del Grappa pizzeria works several dough styles, from puffy Neapolitan to a thinner Venetian version, piling them with Southern Italian imports alongside local Asiago and cod. Desserts come with a nod to the local grappa tradition, and the wine list punches above its weight. Ranked in 50 Top Pizza Italy.

A Neapolitan-style pizzeria in Melegnano's old center, where the dough gets the obsessive treatment: long leavening, DOP-certified toppings, and a crust that holds together even cold. The menu is short, which is usually a good sign. Seasonal specials rotate in alongside the regulars, and the artisanal draft beer list is taken as seriously as the pizza. Quick, young staff keep things moving at a pace that feels deliberate rather than rushed.

A pizzeria in central Foggia where the doughs run light and the toppings are paired with the kind of deliberateness that earns the name "taste researchers." The room is compact and modern, the service quick, and they serve lunch, which in a city where pizza is mostly a night-out affair is a useful thing to know. Exactly the sort of neighbourhood spot that locals treat as a given and visitors quietly feel smug about finding.

Neapolitan pizza served inside the glass veranda of a grand seafront hotel, which sounds like a setup for disappointment but isn't. The dough gets a 48-hour rise, the crust comes out soft and properly billowy, and the toppings lean into the Ligurian coast around it. The room is elegant enough that you'll sit up a little straighter, and the service moves with the kind of quiet efficiency that makes a long lunch feel effortless.

A pizzeria a short walk from Matera's main drag, with a room that mixes contemporary touches and traditional details without looking like a mood board. The menu splits between classics and limited-edition pies, and the pairings are considered without tipping into fussiness. The staff keep things relaxed rather than performative, which is its own small mercy. Listed among Italy's excellent pizzerias by 50 Top Pizza.

A Lecce pizzeria spread across two floors with a big outdoor terrace for summer, 400 Gradi has become the city's go-to for Neapolitan-style pizza built on a slow, 24-hour indirect dough. The menu shifts with the seasons while keeping the signatures intact, and the staff can actually talk you through the wine and beer list without making it a performance. The desserts are unexpectedly creative for a pizza place, which is either a bonus or a trap, depending on your appetite.

A pizzeria on the Calabrian coast where the dough gets a 36-hour rise before it sees any heat, which gives the Neapolitan-style crust a lightness that tends to make people pause mid-slice. The menu splits into traditional, special, and margherita categories, but the local options are where things get interesting, pulling in 'nduja, peperone crusco, and octopus marinated in cedar from the surrounding territory.

A pizzeria on Soverato's main piazza where the dough does the heavy lifting: light, contemporary, and handled with care. Round pies share the menu with Roman-style slices and single-portion pizzas built around toppings chosen to match each format. The fried montanarine are worth ordering separately. Draft beers and cocktails round things out, and the staff are the kind who make you feel like they remembered you from last time.

Abate takes your reservation seriously before you've even walked in, which sets the tone for everything that follows. It's a pizzeria in the Abruzzo hills, leaning into local tradition with regional antipasti before the main event. The dough comes in three forms, including a double-baked seed focaccia, and each one is notably light without feeling austere. The combinations stay honest rather than clever, which turns out to be the point.

A Neapolitan-style pizzeria tucked under an ancient portico in central Ferrara, where writing in Campanian dialect covers the walls and two ovens handle both traditional and gluten-free pies. The chef came up from Salerno and the dough shows it, long-leavened and properly puffy. Seating spills across two floors in a room that feels more southern Italy than northern. The "ruoto" pan pizzas, rooted in rural Campanian tradition, are worth the short walk from wherever you managed to park.

A 48-hour ferment and a wood-fired oven are the baseline here, and the crust comes out high and airy in a way that makes you notice. Agape sits on the waterfront at Cetraro Marina and has become a go-to for contemporary pizza along this stretch of Calabria. The menu leans into local ingredients with some care, and the fried dishes draw their own following alongside the pies.

The panuozzo is the point here, a stuffed bread from nearby Gragnano that the kitchen treats as a shared centerpiece rather than an afterthought. This is a multi-generation pizzeria in Angri, and the third generation has leaned into leavening and crunch in a way that feels current without abandoning the house roots. Round pizzas are on offer too, and the service moves at a clip. Parking fifty meters away, right off the Naples-Salerno highway exit, which tells you something about the crowd.

A wood-fired pizza spot tucked into central Trieste, Al Civicosei builds its dough from organic type 1 flour, with whole wheat and multigrain options for the conscientious. The wine list leans heavily regional, craft beers fill the gaps, and grappa closes things out, which means this is a pizza place that takes the drinking seriously too. Desserts come from Sal De Riso, so someone here knows when to outsource.

A sourdough-forward pizzeria in the center of Gorizia that bridges Campanian tradition and Friulian pantry, so you might find speck from Sauris sitting next to fiordilatte on the same pie. The room is spacious with a veranda and garden, which helps on a warm evening. The menu includes a gluten-free option, and the kitchen takes its fillings seriously enough that the sourcing does most of the talking.

A pizzeria that arrived in this quiet Friulian town carrying the DNA of Vico Equense, on the Sorrento Coast. The dough gets a 48-hour rest before it sees any heat, and the toppings lean toward the considered end: red shrimp from Mazara, seasonal Rosa di Gorizia radicchio, a creamy burrata pizza alongside the classics. A veranda and garden keep things unhurried. On the 50 Top Pizza Italy list of Excellent Pizzerias.

A family-run pizzeria near the Adige river, named for the chef's grandmother and set in the kind of countryside you only reach on purpose. The dough is taken seriously here, not as a selling point but seemingly as a matter of principle, with classic round pies alongside more inventive stuffed and shovel-baked versions. Quiet, unhurried, and a long way from anywhere fashionable, which turns out to suit the food perfectly.

A former tobacco-drying shed at the north edge of Abano Terme, now a pizzeria with high ceilings, open space, and a wood-fired oven doing serious work. The dough runs in several directions: traditional biga, whole wheat, burnt wheat, and contemporary Neapolitan, all landing crispy and light. Tables fill fast, which tells you something about how the price sits relative to what arrives. The outdoor areas help with overflow.