Italy travel tips

Budget travel in Italy

What a visitor's money does in Italy: every guide rated from very cheap to very expensive, cheapest first, then the things that cost travellers money without buying anything — the ATM, the taxi, the SIM.

Mid-range average across 43 guides · 5 is very cheap

Money

Euro (EUR) · 1 EUR = 1.15 USD · 1 EUR = 0.86 GBP

Euro country — no exchange needed from the Eurozone. Skip the change bureaus around Termini and the Spanish Steps, they take 10%+ in spread.

ATMs

Avoid: Euronet, ATMs beside the Trevi Fountain and Termini

Use: Intesa Sanpaolo, UniCredit, BNL, Banca Sella

Look for the Bancomat logo — that is the Italian interbank network.

Getting around

A short ride in Rome: €12–20 across town — pricey

From the airport: Fiumicino to central Rome is a flat €55 by taxi, and the Leonardo Express is €14

The app is the taxi. Uber Black is a different, dearer category.

City by city, cheapest first

Lake Como Good value

Lake fish — perch with risotto, missoltini dried in the sun — and pizzoccheri from the valleys above, buckwheat pasta with cabbage and cheese. The lakeside restaurants price the view; one street back costs half.

Lecce Good value

Rustico leccese, a puff pastry of mozzarella and béchamel eaten standing; pasticciotto, a custard tart, for breakfast; orecchiette with turnip tops; and puccia, a bread pocket filled to order. Primitivo and Negroamaro, both from vines within an hour.

Bari Good value

Orecchiette with turnip tops, bought from a doorway in the old town and cooked the same day; focaccia barese with tomatoes and olives; raw seafood at the port, which is a local habit worth approaching carefully; and panzerotti, fried and filled.

Matera Good value

Matera bread, a huge sourdough with a protected name that keeps for a week; cavatelli with cruschi peppers, dried and fried until they shatter; lampascioni, wild onion bulbs; and Aglianico del Vulture from the volcanic hills north of the city.

Padua Good value

The market under Palazzo della Ragione is the thing to see and the place to eat: sandwich bars in the arcade, cheese and salami upstairs. Bigoli pasta, boiled meats, and a spritz — which was invented up here and is drunk from about five o’clock in the afternoon.

Pisa Good value

Cecina, a chickpea flour flatbread sold by the slice; bordatino, a bean and kale soup with cornmeal; and the student cheapness around Piazza delle Vettovaglie, which is where the city actually eats. The sea is ten kilometres away and the fish is good.

Lucca Good value

Tordelli lucchesi, a meat-stuffed pasta with ragu; buccellato, a sweet aniseed bread eaten with strawberries; and farro soup from the Garfagnana. The olive oil from the hills here is among the best in Tuscany and sold plainly in the shops.

Rimini Good value

Piadina, which Rimini argues it does better than Ravenna; grilled Adriatic fish and fried moleche; and cheap enormous portions along the beach strip. The old town restaurants in Borgo San Giuliano are better and barely dearer.

Livigno Good value

Valtellina cooking, which is the best reason to be here that has nothing to do with snow: pizzoccheri, buckwheat pasta with cabbage, potato and cheese; sciatt, fried buckwheat cheese fritters; bresaola, air-dried beef from the valley below. And the wine is duty-free.

Trieste Good value

The food is Central European as much as Italian: jota, a bean and sauerkraut soup; boiled pork with mustard and horseradish at a buffet, which here means a particular kind of hot-meat bar; and coffee ordered in a vocabulary used nowhere else in Italy — ask for a nero, not a caffè.

Bergamo Good value

Casoncelli, a stuffed pasta with butter, pancetta and sage; polenta with everything, including the sweet version shaped like a cake; and Franciacorta, the sparkling wine from the hills towards Brescia, which is worth ordering instead of prosecco.

Perugia Good value

Torta al testo, a flatbread split and filled, sold everywhere and eaten standing; strangozzi pasta with truffle from the Umbrian hills; and Perugina chocolate, made here since 1907, with a factory you can tour on the edge of town.

Orvieto Good value

Umbrichelli pasta, hand-rolled and thick; wild boar; pigeon, which the tufa lofts were built for and which is still on menus; and Orvieto Classico, a white wine the town has made since the Etruscans and which is far better than its supermarket reputation.

Parma Good value

This is the reason to come. Parmigiano Reggiano, made in the morning and best tasted at the dairy; prosciutto di Parma, aged in the hill air; culatello from the misty river villages, which is the rarer and better one; and anolini in brodo, the local stuffed pasta.

Modena Good value

Tortellini in brodo, which Modena and Bologna both claim; gnocco fritto and tigelle, fried and griddled breads eaten with cured meats; zampone at the new year; and traditional balsamic vinegar, which is nothing whatever like the supermarket bottle and is drunk by the spoon.

Ravenna Good value

Piadina, the flatbread of Romagna, folded round squacquerone cheese and rocket and sold from kiosks; cappelletti in broth; and grilled fish from the Adriatic at Marina di Ravenna. Sangiovese from the hills to the south.

Genoa Good value

Pesto, from here, on trofie with beans and potato; focaccia eaten at breakfast, dipped in cappuccino by locals; farinata, a chickpea pancake from a wood oven; and cima, stuffed veal, in the old trattorie. The fried fish paper cones at the port are a proper lunch.

Sicily Mid-range

The best street food in Italy and it is not close: arancine in Palermo (arancini in Catania, and they will argue), panelle, sfincione, and pane con la milza if you are brave. Cannoli filled to order and never before. Granita with a brioche for breakfast, which is the correct way to start a summer day.

Puglia Mid-range

Orecchiette with turnip tops, burrata from Andria eaten the day it is made, and raw sea urchin on the Adriatic side. The bread from Altamura keeps for a week. Puglia produces more olive oil than any other region in Italy, and the difference is obvious.

Verona Mid-range

Risotto all’Amarone, made with the wine the hills behind the city are famous for, and pastissada de caval, a horse stew that is genuinely the local dish and worth knowing about before it arrives. Bigoli pasta with duck. The wine to drink with all of it is Valpolicella, and the bars pour it by the glass for a euro or two.

Siena Mid-range

Pici, a thick hand-rolled pasta, with garlic or with wild boar; ribollita, the bread and bean soup; and panforte, which is a Christmas cake eaten all year. The wine is Chianti Classico from the hills north of the city, and Brunello from Montalcino to the south.

Assisi Mid-range

Umbrian and plain: strangozzi with truffle, lentils from Castelluccio, roast pork with fennel from a van in the square, and torta al testo. The restaurants on the main route are priced for pilgrims; walk two streets uphill.

Ischia Mid-range

Coniglio all’ischitana, rabbit stewed with tomato and herbs, which is the island dish and nothing to do with the sea; fish from the Sant’Angelo boats; and the white wine from the volcanic terraces, which is drunk young and locally.

Bormio Mid-range

Valtellina, and worth the trip on its own: pizzoccheri, sciatt, bresaola della Valtellina, and polenta taragna. The wine is Valtellina Superiore, nebbiolo grown on terraces, and it is one of the best things in the Italian Alps and barely known outside it.

Rome Mid-range

The rule is simple: walk five minutes away from any monument before you eat. Order cacio e pepe, carbonara or amatriciana — Rome does pasta better than sauce variety.

Florence Mid-range

Eat a lampredotto sandwich from a street cart — it is the real Florentine street food. For steak, bistecca alla fiorentina is sold by weight and served rare, no exceptions.

Sardinia Mid-range

Sardinian food is its own thing rather than Italian: porceddu, suckling pig roasted over myrtle; fregola, toasted pasta pearls with clams; pane carasau, bread rolled thin as paper. Casu marzu exists and is illegal, and you will be offered it anyway. Cannonau is the red.

Naples Mid-range

Pizza was invented here and the argument about where to eat it has no end. Sfogliatella for breakfast, a coffee taken standing, ragù that cooks for six hours, and the buffalo mozzarella comes from the plain outside the city.

Bologna Mid-range

This is where tagliatelle al ragù comes from, and it is never called bolognese here and never served on spaghetti. Tortellini in brodo is the winter dish that matters. Mortadella, not salami. Go to Osteria dell’Orsa or queue at Sfoglia Rina.

Dolomites Mid-range

Not Italian food in any recognisable sense: canederli, bread dumplings in broth; speck, smoked and air-dried; barley soup; and apple strudel at the end of it. The huts serve all of this at altitude and close early in the afternoon, so eat before three.

Lake Garda Mid-range

Lake fish, which is worth taking seriously here: coregone, lavarello, and sardines from the lake cured and grilled. Olive oil from the northern shore, which is among the most northerly in the world, and Bardolino and Lugana from the southern hills.

Sorrento Mid-range

Gnocchi alla sorrentina; anything with the local lemons, which are enormous and thick-skinned; provolone del monaco, the local cheese; and limoncello, which is made here and is worth buying from a producer rather than a souvenir shop.

Turin Mid-range

The aperitivo was invented here and a drink still buys a table of food at six o’clock. Bicerin — coffee, chocolate and cream in a glass — agnolotti del plin, and the hills south are Barolo and Barbaresco.

Taormina Expensive

Sicilian and confident: pasta alla Norma with aubergine and ricotta salata; swordfish; arancini; granita with a brioche for breakfast, which is the correct thing to do here in summer. Nero d’Avola and the Etna reds from the volcanic slopes.

Val Gardena Expensive

Ladin and Tyrolean: canederli, turtres — fried pastry filled with spinach or sauerkraut — barley soup, speck and apple strudel. The mountain huts here are among the best in the Alps and they close in the middle of the afternoon, so lunch is early.

Madonna di Campiglio Expensive

Trentino cooking: canederli, strangolapreti — bread and spinach dumplings — polenta with luganega sausage, and Trentodoc, the sparkling wine from the valley below, which is worth ordering instead of prosecco.

Venice Expensive

Do a giro d’ombra: hop between bacari bars for small cicchetti plates and a glass of wine. Cannaregio and around Rialto market are where locals do it.

Milan Expensive

Aperitivo is the local institution: buy a drink between 18:00 and 21:00 and the buffet comes free. Navigli and Porta Venezia do it best.

Cinque Terre Expensive

Ligurian food: pesto made with a pestle, trofie and trenette to put it on, and anchovies from Monterosso salted or fried. Focaccia here is thinner and oilier than the Genoese kind. The white wine is Sciacchetrà if you can find it.

Cortina d’Ampezzo Expensive

Ampezzano and Tyrolean at once: casunziei, beetroot-filled pasta with poppy seed; canederli dumplings; polenta with game. The town is expensive and the huts on the Cinque Torri side are both better and cheaper than the restaurants on the Corso.

Amalfi Coast Very expensive

Lemons the size of a fist, and everything made from them — delizia al limone above all. The pasta here is scialatielli with seafood, and the mozzarella comes from the plain behind Naples that morning. Eat away from the seafront in Atrani, which is a five-minute walk from Amalfi and a third of the price.

Capri Very expensive

Ravioli capresi, with caciotta and marjoram; the insalata caprese, which was invented here and is a different thing made properly; grilled fish; and the torta caprese, a flourless chocolate and almond cake. Anacapri is noticeably cheaper than Capri town.

Portofino Very expensive

Expensive on the harbour and no better for it. The seafood is good — anchovies from Monterosso, trofie with pesto, fried fish — but the same plates cost half as much in Santa Margherita fifteen minutes away, which is where to eat and sleep.

The cost rating is this site's own, for a visitor, from the guides' authors and the corrections readers send in. The general rules — the conversion prompt, shoulder season, the airport taxi — are in budget travel tips.

The guides in Italy

Colosseum arena photographyRomeItalyThree thousand years of history on every cornerwhite and brown concrete dome building during daytimeFlorenceItalyThe Renaissance, still standingVenice Grand Canal, ItalyVeniceItalyA city built on water, sinking beautifullyThe houses of Positano stacked down the cliff to the sea on the Amalfi CoastAmalfi CoastItalyVillages stacked up a cliff above the Tyrrhenian, on a road that should not existThe cliffs and sea below Taormina in SicilySicilyItalyGreek temples, Norman cathedrals, an active volcano and the best street food in Italywhite and brown concrete building near body of water under blue sky during daytimeLake ComoItalyA Y-shaped lake under the Alps, with villas, ferries and villages stacked up the mountainsidespeople walking near brown concrete building during daytimeMilanItalyDesign, fashion, and aperitivo cultureblue fishing vessel near houses on mountainCinque TerreItalyFive villages stacked on cliffs above the Ligurian Sea, joined by a footpath and a trainbrown rock formation on blue sea during daytimePugliaItalyWhitewashed towns, conical stone roofs, olive groves to the horizon and two coasts to choose fromA cove on the Gulf of Orosei, white pebbles between limestone cliffs — Sardinia, ItalySardiniaItalyCaribbean water on a Mediterranean island, with a stone-age civilisation inland that nobody talks aboutUrban landscape with a bay and distant mountainNaplesItalyThe loudest, oldest and best-fed city in Italy, with Pompeii on one side and the islands on the othera view of a city with tall buildingsBolognaItalyForty kilometres of arcades, the oldest university in the world, and the food capital Italians actually namea large circular structure with people around itVeronaItalyA Roman arena that still fills for opera on summer nights, a pink-marble city around it, and Venice an hour away without Venice’s pricesbrown rock formationDolomitesItalyPale limestone towers that go pink at sunset, a network of huts you can walk between for a week, and two languages plus Ladin in the valleysgreen trees near body of water during daytimeLake GardaItalyItaly’s biggest lake, with lemon houses and olive groves at the southern end and a fjord between cliffs at the northern one — two different holidays on one body of waterCrowd gathered in a large, historic italian piazzaSienaItalyA medieval city that stopped growing in 1348 and never restarted: a shell-shaped square, seventeen districts that still hate each other politely, and a horse race twice a summeraerial view of city buildings near body of water during daytimeSorrentoItalyA town on a cliff facing Vesuvius, with lemon groves behind it and Pompeii, Capri and the Amalfi Coast all within an hour — which is why everyone bases herea group of boats floating on top of a body of waterCapriItalyA limestone rock an hour from Naples with two towns, a blue cave, and a day-tripper crowd that arrives at ten and leaves at five, which is the whole trick of visitingbrown concrete structureTaorminaItalyA Greek theatre on a terrace above the sea with Etna smoking behind it, in a town that has been letting rooms to foreigners since the 1800sbrown cave with over-view of cityMateraItalyA city of caves carved into a ravine, abandoned as a national disgrace in the 1950s and now a UNESCO site with hotels in the same roomsThe campanile over Cortina d’Ampezzo, with the Dolomites behindCortina d’AmpezzoItalyThe Dolomites’ grandest town, in a bowl of pale limestone towers, hosting the Winter Olympics again in 2026 having first done it in 1956A Val Gardena village and its steeple, under the Dolomite wallsVal GardenaItalyThree villages in one Dolomite valley where the first language is Ladin, the wood carving is a real trade, and the Sella Ronda circuit starts at the doora fountain in a courtyardPaduaItalyGiotto’s chapel, the oldest botanical garden in the world, and a student city that has been arguing in the same square since 1222white concrete towerPisaItalyEveryone comes for four buildings on a lawn and leaves in three hours, which is why the rest of a real Tuscan university city on a river is emptyUmbrella pines on the rampart of Lucca’s walls, with the town behindLuccaItalyA walled city whose ramparts were turned into a park you can cycle right round in half an hour, with an oval piazza built inside a Roman amphitheatreView of the Basilica of St Francis of Assisi, in the town of Assisi, Umbria, Italy, decorated with frescos by Giotto and CimabueAssisiItalyA pink stone town on the side of Monte Subasio, built around the basilica of a man who wanted nothing, and visited by five million people a yearThe grid of parasols and sun loungers on Rimini’s beach, seen from aboveRiminiItalyFifteen kilometres of sun loungers and Europe’s loudest clubs on one side of the railway, and Fellini’s Roman town with a bridge still carrying traffic on the otherColorful villas on rocky cliffs overlooking the blue sea in Portofino, ItalyPortofinoItalyA fishing village of about four hundred people that became the most expensive harbour in the Mediterranean, with a free walk through a nature reserve behind ita castle sitting on top of a cliff next to the oceanIschiaItalyThe volcanic island Capri’s crowds do not reach: thermal gardens cut into the hillside, a castle on its own islet, and a working population of sixty thousanda church with a lot of pews in itLecceItalyBaroque carved out of soft golden limestone until the whole city looks iced, at the heel of Italy with two seas twenty minutes awayA snow covered mountain with a village in the foregroundLivignoItalyA duty-free valley at 1,800 metres, cut off by passes for half the year until they bored a tunnel, with cheap petrol, cheap drink and reliable snowa house by a lake with mountains in the backgroundMadonna di CampiglioItalyAn elegant resort in a saddle between the Brenta Dolomites and the Adamello glaciers, where the Habsburgs came to ski and the town still dresses for dinnera full moon rising over a mountain rangeBormioItalyA Roman spa town with thermal baths still running, a World Cup downhill dropping into it, and the Stelvio Pass and its forty-eight hairpins starting from the edge of townAn aerial view of a city with tall buildingsTurinItalyBaroque arcades under the Alps, Italy’s first capital, and the city that invented the aperitivoBuildings reflected in a calm canal on an overcast dayTriesteItalyAn Austrian port city that ended up in Italy: Viennese coffee houses, a Habsburg square open to the sea, and a wind that can knock you overThe domes and towers of Bergamo’s Città Alta, seen from the lower townBergamoItalyA walled Venetian city on a hill above the plain, reached by funicular, with a lower town nobody bothers to visit and mountains behind itPerugia’s roofs on their ridge, with the Umbrian hills behind themPerugiaItalyAn Etruscan hill city with escalators running up through a buried medieval quarter, a jazz festival in high summer, and chocolate the rest of the yearbrown and beige concrete buildingOrvietoItalyA town on a slab of volcanic rock with a striped cathedral that has no business being this big, and a second town of caves cut underneath ita group of people sitting at tables in a courtyardParmaItalyThe town that gave its name to a ham and a cheese, with a Correggio dome, a Farnese theatre made entirely of wood, and no crowds at allA tall church spire seen between buildingsModenaItalyBalsamic vinegar aged in attics for twenty-five years, Ferrari and Lamborghini within half an hour, and a Romanesque cathedral that is the best in northern Italywhite and green floral ceilingRavennaItalyEight buildings on the UNESCO list, all of them lined with fifth- and sixth-century mosaic, in a quiet provincial town that was once the capital of the western empireThe pastel houses of Boccadasse, the fishing cove inside Genoa, at duskGenoaItalyA republic that ran the Mediterranean, squeezed between mountains and port into the densest old town in Europe, and still not really on the tourist mapFishing boats on the quay of Bari’s old harbour, the Teatro Margherita behindBariItalyA working Adriatic port with a walled old town where women make orecchiette in the street, and ferries to Greece, Albania and Croatia from the quay