Italy visa requirements
The rule for your own passport, from Italy's official immigration page, with the date it was last checked. The same answer for every guide in Italy: Rome, Florence, Venice, Amalfi Coast, Sicily, Lake Como and 37 more.
No visa needed
Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland
Freedom of movement — no time limit, and no visa. Bring a passport or national ID card.
No visa neededup to 90 days
United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Israel, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Panama
90 days within any 180-day period, counted across the whole Schengen area, not per country. ETIAS, a paid online authorisation, is being introduced for these passports — check the official link for whether it applies to your travel dates.
Visa required in advance€90 (Schengen short-stay visa)
Every other passport
A Schengen short-stay visa is applied for before travel, at the consulate of your main destination.
How to get it: Apply at the consulate or visa centre of the country you will spend most time in, typically 15 working days ahead and no more than six months before travel.
Entry rules change often and depend on your passport, your route and the purpose of the trip. Confirm on the official page before booking.
The guides in Italy
RomeItalyThree thousand years of history on every corner
FlorenceItalyThe Renaissance, still standing
VeniceItalyA city built on water, sinking beautifully
Amalfi CoastItalyVillages stacked up a cliff above the Tyrrhenian, on a road that should not exist
SicilyItalyGreek temples, Norman cathedrals, an active volcano and the best street food in Italy
Lake ComoItalyA Y-shaped lake under the Alps, with villas, ferries and villages stacked up the mountainsides
MilanItalyDesign, fashion, and aperitivo culture
Cinque TerreItalyFive villages stacked on cliffs above the Ligurian Sea, joined by a footpath and a train
PugliaItalyWhitewashed towns, conical stone roofs, olive groves to the horizon and two coasts to choose from
SardiniaItalyCaribbean water on a Mediterranean island, with a stone-age civilisation inland that nobody talks about
NaplesItalyThe loudest, oldest and best-fed city in Italy, with Pompeii on one side and the islands on the other
BolognaItalyForty kilometres of arcades, the oldest university in the world, and the food capital Italians actually name
VeronaItalyA Roman arena that still fills for opera on summer nights, a pink-marble city around it, and Venice an hour away without Venice’s prices
DolomitesItalyPale 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 valleys
Lake 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 water
SienaItalyA 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 summer
SorrentoItalyA 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 here
CapriItalyA 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 visiting
TaorminaItalyA 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 1800s
MateraItalyA 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 rooms
Cortina d’AmpezzoItalyThe Dolomites’ grandest town, in a bowl of pale limestone towers, hosting the Winter Olympics again in 2026 having first done it in 1956
Val 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 door
PaduaItalyGiotto’s chapel, the oldest botanical garden in the world, and a student city that has been arguing in the same square since 1222
PisaItalyEveryone 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 empty
LuccaItalyA 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 amphitheatre
AssisiItalyA 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 year
RiminiItalyFifteen 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 other
PortofinoItalyA 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 it
IschiaItalyThe 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 thousand
LecceItalyBaroque carved out of soft golden limestone until the whole city looks iced, at the heel of Italy with two seas twenty minutes away
LivignoItalyA 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 snow
Madonna 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 dinner
BormioItalyA 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 town
TurinItalyBaroque arcades under the Alps, Italy’s first capital, and the city that invented the aperitivo
TriesteItalyAn 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 over
BergamoItalyA walled Venetian city on a hill above the plain, reached by funicular, with a lower town nobody bothers to visit and mountains behind it
PerugiaItalyAn Etruscan hill city with escalators running up through a buried medieval quarter, a jazz festival in high summer, and chocolate the rest of the year
OrvietoItalyA 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 it
ParmaItalyThe 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 all
ModenaItalyBalsamic 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 Italy
RavennaItalyEight 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 empire
GenoaItalyA republic that ran the Mediterranean, squeezed between mountains and port into the densest old town in Europe, and still not really on the tourist map
BariItalyA 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