The Best Places to Eat and Stay in Italy

Checked cotton tablecloths and bottles lined up on the shelves set the tone at this old-school osteria in Borgo San Giuliano, the painted fishermen's quarter that Fellini grew up loving. The kitchen stays deep in Romagna tradition: house-cured meats, fresh pasta, and Mora Romagnola pork cooked several ways. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, which tracks with the crowd of locals who seem entirely unsurprised to be eating this well.

The wood-fired oven and barbecue grill share the floor like co-stars at this rustic, exposed-brick osteria in a small Abruzzo wine village, and the ember-to-ember cooking chain that connects them shapes much of the menu. The young team works regional traditions without being enslaved by them, landing somewhere between grandmother's kitchen and genuine curiosity. The Michelin Guide has handed them a Bib Gourmand, which for a place this new is a notable way to start.

You reach the dining room by crossing through the courtyard of an old palazzo, which sets the tone: this is a traditional Piedmontese osteria that takes its region seriously. A climate-controlled case of Langa and Roero reds anchors the main room, and the menu reads like a guided tour of the province. The Michelin Guide gives it a Bib Gourmand, and booking ahead is wise even at lunch.

A family-run osteria in a small hilltop town square, where a father-and-son team cooks Campanian food with enough personal touches to keep it from feeling like a museum. In summer, tables spill out to face the piazza. The wine list leans into Irpinia with serious Aglianico and Taurasi pours. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, so the cooking punches well above the bill.

A brick-vaulted ceiling gives this cozy Lombardian osteria its feel, somewhere between a farmhouse and a proper dining room. The menu runs on seasonal ingredients and deep regional habit, from marubini in broth to pumpkin tortelli, with the kitchen leaning generous rather than fussy. The wine list skews sparkling, which in this part of the Po Valley is a statement of local pride. The Michelin Guide has awarded it a Bib Gourmand.

A farmhouse osteria outside town where the beer list gets as much attention as the pasta. The kitchen covers traditional Emilian cooking with a few local turns, and the Michelin Guide has flagged it with a Bib Gourmand for the value. The owner's beer selection runs from regional craft labels to bottles from well past the Italian border, and the Birramisù, a tiramisu built around beer, commits to the bit. Book ahead.

A Bib Gourmand osteria in Bra's old town, a short walk from a square where you can actually park. The kitchen leans into Piedmontese classics, vitello tonnato, tajarin, and local sausage, but the cooking reads as carefully considered rather than dusty. Portions are generous and the plates are pretty. A couple runs the room with genuine warmth, and the staff manages to be both efficient and relaxed, which in a small Italian dining room is harder than it looks.

Barrel-vaulted ceilings and a terrace shaded enough to actually linger through a long lunch set the scene at this old-school Tuscan trattoria in central Chiusi. The kitchen digs into regional recipes that predate most cookbooks, turning them out with the kind of generous flavour that makes you suspect shortcuts were simply never invented here. The Michelin Guide awards it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks.

The wisteria-covered terrace sits just off Marostica's famous chessboard square, and the dining room inside feels like it has barely changed in decades. This old-school trattoria holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand and runs on a tight menu of Venetian classics: bigoli pasta, salt cod the Vicenza way, tripe soup. Tables are few and regulars are loyal, so booking ahead is less a suggestion than a fact of life.

Giancarlo Perbellini, the chef behind one of Verona's grand tasting-menu temples, runs this osteria as a kind of antidote to his own reputation. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, and the point is exactly that: seasonal Italian classics, a good run of wines by the glass, and prices that don't require a second mortgage. A terrace tucked down a side street off Via Mazzini makes it easy to linger longer than planned.

The wooden ceiling came from an old country haybarn, which tells you something about the room before the food arrives. This is a classic Emilian trattoria, the kind where the charcuterie board alone could end the meal, anchored by culatello di Zibello and fried gnocco. Fresh egg pasta follows, then meat, then a dessert list long enough to cause genuine indecision. The wine list is taken seriously. Michelin Bib Gourmand.

A gasthaus tucked into the pedestrianized center of San Michele, where the wine list is all Alto Adige, the cooking leans on regional recipes, and gorgonzola sauce somehow ends up on arancini without anyone blinking. Herbert Hintner is considered the defining name in this corner of Italian cuisine, and the room reflects that confidence: simple, contemporary, and unfussy. The Michelin Guide awards it a Bib Gourmand.

Bread that takes four days to leaven tells you roughly where you stand with this rustic Sicilian trattoria, tucked into the pedestrianised centre of a medieval village inside the Parco delle Madonie. The kitchen keeps things firmly regional, letting the surrounding countryside dictate the menu. Antipasto arrives as a rotating spread of local vegetables, cheese, meat, and mushrooms. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, and priced like the countryside it cooks from.

Sandrigo is the town that gave the world the bacalà alla vicentina festival, so it makes sense that a restaurant here has built its entire identity around cod. Palmerino serves the fish plain, salted, and dried, with the house centerpiece being that same local classic, made with stoccafisso despite what the name implies. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, the menu adds other seafood and a few meat dishes for the unconvinced.

Farmhouse dining in the Emilian countryside, where the kitchen leans hard into the regional pantry: stuffed pastas, cured meats, and the kind of slow-cooked ragù that makes you wonder why anyone bothers with anything else. The cooking is traditional and unapologetic, the setting rural and unpretentious, and the Michelin Bib Gourmand signals generous cooking at a price that won't send you into quiet panic when the bill arrives.

The name is the naval coordinates of the spot, which sits a few metres from the Tiber with moored boats in view and a shipyard for a neighbour. This is a casual, relaxed seafood trattoria where Lele Usai, the chef behind the Michelin-starred Il Tino upstairs, keeps things deliberately simple: spaghetti alle vongole lupini, grilled fish, whatever came off the best boats. The outdoor tables tip the whole thing into something close to a holiday.

A trattoria in a tight Ligurian seaside village that started life as a fishing-net warehouse, and hasn't tried very hard to forget it. The room is simple and old-school, with tables outside on a characteristically narrow street. The Michelin Guide gave it a Bib Gourmand for the kind of generous, unfussy seafood cooking that's been arriving from the kitchen for generations: fish soup a permanent fixture, fish tartare turning heads lately.

A glass-walled kitchen lets you watch the chef work while you eat, which either relaxes or unnerves you depending on your table. This small, quietly modern restaurant in Voghera's historic centre earns a Michelin Bib Gourmand with Lombardian cooking that leans local but bends the rules just enough to keep things interesting. The co-owner steers wine choices toward the Oltrepò Pavese, and half-portions are on offer for anyone exercising restraint.

Vegetables from the family's own garden and orchard end up on the plate here, at a multigenerational Ligurian trattoria that's been an old-school institution in the Apennine interior for as long as anyone can remember. The menu follows the seasons closely, moving through mushrooms, truffles, and chestnut lasagnette with local cheese fondue, with daily market specials folded in. The Michelin Guide awards it a Bib Gourmand, and the welcome is the kind that makes you linger.

An agriturismo tucked into the rolling hills of Collio, where the wine list features only bottles from the estate and the kitchen runs on the same logic: hyper-local, seasonal, and occasionally surprising. The chef works cured meats and aged cheeses into the menu alongside dishes that show a more personal hand. Six tables keep things intimate, and a Michelin Bib Gourmand means bookings fill fast. Call ahead.

A veranda dining room perched above the Tyrrhenian with the sea running to every horizon is a hard setting to argue with. This Sicilian restaurant keeps the cooking clean and ingredient-forward, with an à la carte alongside sharing-style tasting menus and a cocktail list that makes lunchtime feel like a reasonable decision. The Michelin Guide has given it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks for a place that spends its energy on the food.

A suckling pig turns on a spit inside a room built around a fireplace, and that image is basically the whole argument for this Sardinian restaurant in the rural interior near Oliena. The terrace looks out over vineyards and olive groves, the dining rooms are hung with local handicrafts, and the menu stays firmly inland, running through cured meats, pane frattau, kid with fennel, and house-made ice creams. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand.

The address has changed since the name was set, which tells you most of what you need to know about this trattoria's relationship with pretension. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand and has been feeding the historic Rambaldo quarter for decades, turning out arrosticini and slow-braised meats rooted in Abruzzese tradition. The cellars below hold medieval and Roman ruins, which makes the house nougat feel like a reasonable way to end the evening.

Montalcino is Brunello country, so a tavern with a wine list deep in old vintages fits right in. This is a rustic trattoria where the kitchen leans hard on Tuscan tradition, and the handmade pici with meat sauce is the kind of unpretentious dish that makes you wonder why anyone bothers with anything else. The Michelin Guide has given it a Bib Gourmand, which makes sense once the bread basket lands.

A stone and brick farmhouse surrounded by woodland, where the fogolar fireplace crackles in the corner and the kitchen sends charcoal smoke through the dining room all evening. This is old-school country cooking, the kind of trattoria where the wine list leans heavily on the family's own labels and the risottos are as carefully made as anything grilled over embers. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, and guest rooms are available if the cellar gets the better of you.

Tortelli stuffed with Amarone-braised meat is a reasonable argument for making the drive into the Valpolicella hills. This is a cozy trattoria with a fireplace, a veranda, and a terrace for warmer evenings, the kind of room that makes it easy to stay for an extra glass. The wine list leans deep into Verona, with a generous pour-by-the-glass selection. The Michelin Guide has given it a Bib Gourmand, which tells you the cooking punches above the price.

A few kilometres outside Parma, this trattoria sits in the kind of quiet countryside that makes you wonder why you ever eat in cities. The cooking is old-school Emilian, the sort where tortelli alle erbette arrive because someone made the ricotta locally and the pasta that morning. The Michelin Guide gives it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks. The owner circulates the room and genuinely knows what to order, so let him.

The lampredotto on the menu tells you exactly where you are: a no-frills Florentine trattoria sitting next to its fancier sibling, Cibrèo, without any apparent envy. The kitchen sticks to old-school Tuscan staples, the room fills fast with people who know not to look at the prices twice, and the Michelin Bib Gourmand suggests the value is not accidental. Go for the stewed offal or the vegetable soup, and stay for the caramel panna cotta.

A family-run trattoria in a Tuscan mountain village where mushrooms turn up in half the dishes because mushrooms are the point. The rustic dining rooms are unfussy, the pasta is homemade, and the menu runs from tripe to a long bench of meats without ever trying to be anything other than what it is. The Michelin Guide's Bib Gourmand crowd tends to find places like this before you do, but here you are.

A roadside trattoria in a small Tuscan village, the kind of place where the walls stay plain because the kitchen has nothing left to prove. The menu runs through regional classics, from pappa al pomodoro to tripe and lampredotto meatballs, and the wine list is longer than it looks once the host starts talking. The Michelin Guide gives it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks.

A family trattoria tucked into the Val Serina, where polenta comes several ways and the kitchen holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand. The menu is short on purpose, built around Bergamasco staples: casoncelli with butter and pancetta, bresaola from Orobica cattle, and, when the season allows, the local black truffle. In fine weather the terrace opens onto hills that do most of the decorating. The women run the floor; the man of the house cooks.

Bolognina sits just past the point where most tourists turn back, which suits this no-fuss trattoria in Bologna's old working-class quarter just fine. The kitchen runs on fresh pasta and regional recipes done without flourish, the tortellini in broth being the kind of thing you think about on the train home. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand. Book ahead, including at lunch, or you'll be thinking about it even longer.

A seafood trattoria in the flatlands outside Ferrara that has been a local fixture long enough to count as furniture. The room has been freshened up without losing its unfussy bones, and the kitchen stays loyal to the classics, raw scampi lightly kissed with lemon zest, turbot under a potato crust. The Michelin Guide gives it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks: this is the kind of cooking where the fish does the talking.

A short climb from Piazza De Ferrari leads to this old-school Ligurian trattoria where the kitchen treats trofie al pesto alla genovese and brandacujun as articles of faith. Book ahead, because the dining room fills with people who know better than to show up without a reservation. The Michelin Guide awards it a Bib Gourmand, and the menu reads like a regional argument for never straying far from tradition.

Carrù is the town that puts a fattened ox on a pedestal every winter, and this old-school trattoria leans into that identity hard. Piedmontese classics fill the menu: bagna cauda, boiled meats, ravioli, and a hazelnut cake that closes things quietly but well. Ask about the cellar, where a round table for ten in the "Crota dl'amicissia" turns dinner into an event. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, and a few guest rooms sit nearby if the bonet tips you over the edge.

A family trattoria tucked into the Modenese Apennines, where the parents cook and their daughter works the room. Mom handles the hand-rolled pasta and desserts, dad tends the meats, and the whole operation holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand. Truffle scent drifts through in season. The drive up from Modena on the SP3 takes an hour of switchbacks through green valleys, which regulars treat as part of the meal rather than a detour.

A seafood restaurant on the waterfront at Villa San Giovanni, where the second-floor terrace looks straight across the Strait of Messina toward Sicily. The fish comes off the grill simply, or arrives raw in preparations that lean more creative, and the kitchen holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand. Most visitors here are catching a ferry; the ones who know are booking a table instead.

A vaulted ceiling, an open kitchen, and a terrace beside the church of San Carlo Borromeo: the setting alone does a lot of the work. This modern restaurant in a small Apulian village cooks entirely from local ingredients, with herbs from its own kitchen garden. The chef spent formative years in Bologna, and the house-made stuffed pasta remembers that. A Michelin Bib Gourmand.

A grandmother built this family trattoria, her granddaughter now runs the kitchen, and her parents still work the dining room with the kind of attention that makes 1960s wallpaper feel like atmosphere rather than neglect. The menu is Monferrato through and through: vitello tonnato, hand-folded agnolotti, tajarin with porcini. The wine list follows the same logic. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, and the prices stay honest enough to order a second carafe.

A four-hectare farm in the Cilento hills supplies most of what this artisan pastry shop turns into chocolate. The team grows their own ingredients, then sources obsessively for the rest, blending cacao into pralines perfumed with mountain oregano or wild violets steeped in cream. The panettone ferments in three stages and lands fragrant and barely sweet. Ranked among Italy's top praline makers by 50 Top Italy, which also named it Pastry Shop of the Year.

Bucatini all'amatriciana is the reason to come, and 50 Top Italy named theirs the finest in Rome. Il Matriciano is a proper trattoria in Prati, the kind where old regulars never open the menu and the waiters wear what appear to be period costumes. The room is dressed-up bourgeois, the service formal but warm, and the pasta arrives on fine porcelain exactly as it should, sauce clinging, guanciale doing the heavy lifting.

The wine cellar doubles as the breakfast room each morning, which tells you something about how this Sicilian countryside restaurant orders its priorities. Surrounded by olive groves outside Noto, it serves a spread of house-baked pastries and local products, with eggs and fresh juices available to order. 50 Top Italy named it the country's top breakfast, and sitting in the garden with the light coming slow over the valley, it's easy to see why.

The sandwich here starts with bread baked fresh that day, then gets filled with Calabrian sausage, 'nduja, Tropea onions, or caciocavallo from the Sila plateau, depending on your mood. It's a fast-casual spot built around showcasing small local producers, which sounds like a pitch deck but eats like lunch. The formula has been spreading to other Italian cities, and 50 Top Italy ranked it first among the country's sandwiches.

Fresh fish lands each evening, and the room around it in Monterusciello, just off the Naples ring road, is something: floor-to-ceiling wine racks, warm light, and the smell of the sea before you've ordered a thing. Punto Nave is a seafood restaurant that runs the full register, from raw crudi to the catch of the day, with oysters, lobster, and white caviar for those who want to push it. It holds the top spot on 50 Top Italy's best fish restaurants list.

Six hundred year old columns greet you in the lobby of this hotel, housed in a Renaissance palazzo a short walk from the Trevi Fountain. The team kept the bones intact, so cocciopesto plaster, Travertine stone, and a monumental marble staircase do most of the decorating. It's the kind of place that makes you feel like a guest of the building as much as the brand, which is a neat trick for a wellness hotel group.

Art nouveau bones, a courtyard that feels borrowed from a film set, and the kind of slightly faded glamour that no interior designer can fake. Hotel Locarno is a historic Rome property steps from the Piazza del Popolo, and it still carries the bohemian mood that drew Fellini and his crowd decades ago. The current owner inherited it from family and has kept it exactly as it should be: atmospheric, a little theatrical, and blessedly unmodernized.

A Roman trattoria steps from the Pantheon that has never once been tempted to put a Caesar salad on the menu. The Gargioli family has been feeding the neighborhood for generations with the unapologetic classics: oxtail braised in tomato and celery, fettuccine with chicken innards, artichokes in the cooler months. The wine list is a serious one, and the ricotta and strawberry jam pie is the kind of dessert that makes you forget you had a plan after lunch.

The pizza ebraica here is not pizza at all but a dense, sticky fruit cake built on almond flour with raisins, nuts, and candied fruit, and it will absolutely wreck your shirt. This old-school bakery in the former Jewish ghetto has been around forever, turning out that signature loaf alongside cinnamon-heavy biscotti and amaretti thick with whole almonds. Find a bench nearby before you start eating, or accept the consequences.

L'Elementare is a casual Roman pizzeria, the thin, crackly-edged kind that arrives fast and costs less than the cocktail you'll have afterward. The crust splits the difference between airy and cracker, and the supplì include one stuffed with 'ndjua and fior di latte, which makes the fried starter the one you'll argue about. The Trastevere location sits next to a row of bars, so you can eat well and then watch everyone else try to.

Testaccio's covered market is the kind of place where serious Roman cooks still do their weekly shop, which is your best clue about the quality of what's on offer. Come morning to catch it in full swing before the 2 p.m. close. Standouts include Mordi e Vai for generational offal sandwiches, Da Artenio for pizza slices, and Da Corrado for natural wines and meatballs worth the detour.

Piatto Romano is a Roman trattoria in Testaccio, the neighborhood that more or less invented the city's cooking, which is why the menu leans hard on offal and the daily specials rarely leave anyone guessing. It suits a slow weekday lunch or a quiet dinner in the freshly redone dining room. Yes, there's salad, and it's fine, but the bitter genziana digestivo at the end is the part that tells you where you are.

A pizzeria where you can order a single slice à la carte or surrender to a tasting flight of four to six courses, each a different style of pizza served in sequence. The wine cellar is the quietly absurd part: a selection of bottles and champagnes that would embarrass most fine-dining rooms. Classic pies sit alongside fried and baked options, and the dough holds up its end. Ranked first on 50 Top Pizza Italy.

A three-flour dough blend with long fermentation is the organizing principle at this polished Neapolitan pizza spot in Chiaia, where the crust arrives light and airy in a way that makes you rethink what you thought you knew about pizza. The room is bright and carefully put together, with an outdoor terrace that fits the neighborhood's self-regard. The montanarine are worth the detour on their own, and the wine and craft beer list has been thought through with similar care.

The signature move here is the "sott'engopp," a pizza built in reverse: sauce, cheese, and toppings go down first, and the fried base is laid on top at the table. This is a Neapolitan pizzeria in the Sanità neighborhood, colorful plates and all, where the dough is light enough that you'll find yourself rationalizing a second pie. The drink list is taken seriously, and the service keeps pace.

The smell of baked pastry hits you at the door, but the charcoal grill is what this place is about. It's a lively trattoria-style restaurant in a small Veneto town where prime cuts are the main event, cooked over embers with obvious conviction. The menu nods to season and tradition while slipping in the occasional contemporary detour, and Wednesdays bring a short run of gourmet pizzas that feels less like a gimmick than it sounds.

A French-leaning pastry shop run by an Italian chef whose heart landed somewhere between Paris and Lyon. The chocolate work is the draw, with single-origin bars appearing in multiple textures across a single slice. The tiramisù ranks among Italy's finest by 50 Top Italy's count. Jar-baked leavened desserts, including panettone and babà, fill out the counter for anyone who thought they'd only stop in for coffee.

A pastry counter on Via Toledo that runs continuous production of sfogliatelle and babà so there's always something coming out warm. The point is freshness, and regulars know it: you grab one to eat while walking back from Piazza del Plebiscito, not to save for later. The babà ranks among the top ten in the country on the 50 Top Italy list. Caprese cakes and cassate fill out the case for anyone who needs a second reason to stop.