Italy travel tips

Italy travel health

Required is not recommended: the first is what the border asks about, the second is what a clinic would suggest. Both, for Italy, then the number to dial and what care costs a visitor. Applies to every guide in Italy: Rome, Florence, Venice, Amalfi Coast, Sicily, Lake Como and 37 more.

Required to enter

Nothing. No vaccination certificate is asked for at the border.

Recommended

  • Routine vaccinations up to date

Emergency number

112

Care for visitors

Excellent and cheap

EU/EEA and Swiss visitors are treated on the same terms as residents with an EHIC or GHIC card; UK visitors use a GHIC. Everyone else pays, and travel insurance is worth having for the repatriation cover rather than the treatment. Pharmacies handle a lot of minor problems directly and are the fastest route to advice.

The general rules — clinic timing, water, mosquitoes, insurance — are in travel health 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