Cultural site in Italy

The oldest surviving Roman amphitheatre, at the far end of the Pompeii site from the main entrance — which is why most visitors turn back before reaching it and why it is often nearly empty. Pompeii itself needs three hours minimum, good shoes and water; the site is large, hard and unshaded.

The Ricasoli castle, where the recipe that became Chianti Classico was written down in the nineteenth century, and still a working estate. Gardens, a chapel, a long view over the vineyards, and tastings on site. The most substantial single stop in Chianti and the one to build a driving day around.

The Flavian amphitheatre, and the single sight most people picture when they picture Rome. Half a day with the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill next door, which share a ticket and sit across one road. Enormous, exposed and busy — worth an early slot in summer, and worth the extra ticket for the arena floor if you want the view the gladiators had.

The seat of the Venetian republic for a thousand years — state rooms, the largest oil painting in the world, and the route across the Bridge of Sighs into the old prisons. More rewarding than the basilica for anyone who wants to understand how Venice actually worked. Two hours, and the Secret Itineraries tour is worth booking if you want the small rooms.

The spire on every Turin postcard, built as a synagogue, finished as nothing in particular, and now holding the national cinema museum. A glass lift runs up the middle of the hall to a viewing deck with the Alps across the rooftops. The museum spirals around and below it and is far better than a building-with-a-lift deserves.

The Norman kings' palace, and inside it the Cappella Palatina — a chapel where Byzantine mosaic, Arab woodwork and Norman building meet in one room, which is the whole argument for Sicily in a single space. Still the seat of the regional assembly, so parts close without notice. Book ahead.

The Savoy royal palace at the head of the old centre, opening into a complex that also takes in the armoury and the gallery. Grand state rooms and a garden, rarely crowded. Two hours, and it sits three minutes from the Egyptian Museum, which makes a natural morning of the two.

A brick fortress at the top of the old centre holding several museums at once, among them Michelangelo's last and unfinished Pietà. The courtyards are free to walk through and Sempione park opens out behind it — the easiest place in central Milan to sit down outdoors. Half a day with the museums, twenty minutes if you are cutting through.

A Greek theatre rebuilt by the Romans, cut into the hillside so that the stage opens onto Etna and the coast below — the setting is the reason to come rather than the ruin. Still used for summer performances. Go at opening or late; the middle of the day is very hot and very full.

The fourteenth-century fort at the top of Montalcino, with ramparts you can walk and an enoteca inside the walls pouring the Brunello the town is built on. The view runs across the whole Val d'Orcia. The obvious place to end an afternoon of driving.

Forty metres under the old centre: Greek quarries, Roman aqueducts, and the cisterns the city sheltered in during the bombing. Guided only, about an hour and a half, and one optional passage is narrow enough that it is honestly not for everyone. Cool underground whatever August is doing above.

The civic centre of the ancient city — law courts, temples and the road every triumph came down, now a long field of columns and foundations. Rewards a guide or an audio tour more than almost anywhere else in Rome, because very little of it explains itself. Enter from Via dei Fori Imperiali and climb out onto the Palatine.

Imperial bath ruins on a scale that is hard to believe until you stand in them, and a fraction of the crowds of the Forum because they sit twenty minutes' walk south of it. Brick vaults, mosaic floors and open lawns. Used for opera in summer. The right choice on a second Rome trip, or a first one that wants space.

Early Christian burial galleries cut into the tuff, frescoed from the second century onward, and far roomier than the word catacomb suggests — these are wide corridors rather than crawlspaces. Guided, run by a local cooperative, and easily paired with Capodimonte on the same hill.

An open-air gallery of funerary sculpture from the 1860s onward, laid out like a small city and free to walk. Unexpected, uncrowded, and one of the more memorable hours in Milan for anyone who likes sculpture or a camera. Twenty minutes north of the centre by tram.

The city's lighthouse and its oldest symbol, standing since the twelfth century in its present form and still working. Reached on foot along a walkway from the ferry terminal, with a small museum and a climb to the lower terrace. Out of the way, and quiet for it.

Where the emperors lived, above the Forum and quieter than it. Gardens, imperial palace ruins and the best free view down over the Forum from the Farnese terraces. Included with the Colosseum ticket, and the part of that ticket most visitors run out of energy for — go here first if you would rather see it properly.

The taller of the two leaning towers, just under a hundred metres, climbed by nearly five hundred wooden steps with no lift and no shortcut. The view over the red roofs is the reward. Numbers are capped and slots timed; the tower has closed for structural work before, so it is worth checking it is open before building a day around it.

A French-looking Savoy residence on the Po, inside the riverside park that Turin actually uses — runners, rowers and families rather than visitors. The castle is a university faculty and mostly seen from outside; the park and the river walk are the reason to come. An easy hour on foot from the centre.

Corridors of some eight thousand mummified bodies, clothed and displayed upright, from the sixteenth century to the 1920s. Genuinely unsettling and not suitable for everyone or for young children — worth deciding before you are standing in it. An hour, and a short bus ride from the centre.

The cathedral's free-standing bell tower, leaning since it was built because the ground beneath one side is soft. Climbing it is ticketed, timed and capped, and the tilt is genuinely disorienting on the stairs. Everything around it — cathedral, baptistery, walled cemetery — is on the same lawn and is the better half of the visit.

The town hall on the Campo, holding Lorenzetti's Allegory of Good and Bad Government — a fourteenth-century fresco cycle about how to run a city, painted in the room where it was run. Unusually direct for medieval art and worth reading about beforehand. An hour.

One of the few opera houses whose name means something to people who never go to the opera. The museum and a look into a box are open by day; a performance is a different proposition and wants planning months out. The plain exterior surprises everyone who arrives expecting a monument.

The oldest working opera house in Europe, older than La Scala, with a red and gold auditorium that daytime guided tours get you inside. A performance is the better experience where the dates allow. Next to the royal palace and the arcade, so it slots into a walk rather than needing a trip of its own.

A nativity scene built into the terraced hillside above Manarola out of scrap and several hundred figures, lit from December to the end of January and visible across the bay. One man started it in the 1970s and it grew. Only worth planning around in winter, when the coast is otherwise very quiet.

An enormous cistern hollowed out beneath the main square, fifteen metres deep and unknown to most of the town until the 1990s. Visited on a short guided walk down into it. Twenty minutes, directly under the café you were sitting at.

Naples' answer to Milan's arcade, built a decade later on a similar scale, directly opposite the opera house. Free, roofed, and a useful shortcut in rain. Worth looking up at the glass and down at the zodiac set into the floor, then moving on.

A glass-roofed arcade from the 1870s linking the cathedral to La Scala, and the ancestor of every shopping centre since. Free to walk through and expensive to sit down in. Two minutes in passing, longer if you want the mosaic floor and the bull that people spin a heel on for luck.

The baroque crossroads where the two main streets meet, each of the four curved corners carved in tiers with a season, a king and a patron saint. Traffic runs through it constantly. Five minutes of looking up, and the point from which the old quarters are easiest to navigate.