Museum in Italy

The oldest Egyptian museum in the world and second only to Cairo for what it holds — an entire rock-cut tomb, the Drovetti collection, room after room of it. The single best reason to come to Turin and easily half a day. Consistently the thing visitors expect least and remember most.

The Renaissance collection everything else is measured against — Botticelli's Birth of Venus and Primavera, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Titian, Caravaggio. Big enough to exhaust anyone, so pick a few rooms rather than walking all of it. Book a timed entry; the walk-up queue routinely runs over an hour and the corridor windows over the Arno are worth arriving fresh for.

A Bourbon palace on a hill above the city holding one of Italy's best painting collections — Caravaggio's Flagellation, Titian, Masaccio, Bruegel — in rooms that are frequently almost empty. The park around it is free and full of Neapolitan families at the weekend. Half a day including the climb up.

The Medici's later palace across the river, holding several museums at once — the Palatine Gallery's Raphaels are the reason to come — with the Boboli Gardens climbing the hill behind. Easily a half day if you do both, and much quieter than the Uffizi. The Oltrarno around it is the least touristed part of central Florence.

A lakeside house at Tremezzo with a botanical garden climbing the slope behind it — azaleas and rhododendrons in spring are the reason to time a visit for April or May. Canova sculpture indoors. Directly across the water from Bellagio and easy to combine by ferry.

Five centuries of Venetian painting — Bellini, Carpaccio, Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese — in the city that produced them, which is a different experience from meeting them scattered through other countries' museums. Big but not overwhelming, and never as crowded as it deserves. Two hours.

The oldest public museum collection in the world, on Michelangelo's square above the Forum — the she-wolf, the bronze Marcus Aurelius, and a gallery window with one of the best Forum views in the city. Less crowded than the Vatican and easier to do in one visit. Good rainy-afternoon option.

A small, perfect collection in a garden villa — Bernini's sculpture at its best, several Caravaggios, and none of the exhaustion of a large museum. Entry is by timed slot and capped, so it must be booked ahead; that cap is also why it stays calm inside. Two hours, then the Borghese gardens around it.

A fourteenth-century castle on the river, remodelled by Carlo Scarpa in the 1960s into what architects still travel to see — the building and the intervention are the exhibit as much as the paintings. The fortified bridge beside it is free to walk across. Two hours for anyone who cares about buildings.

Milan's major painting collection — Mantegna's foreshortened Dead Christ, Piero della Francesca, Raphael, Caravaggio — in an academy building in the most attractive quarter of the city. Consistently uncrowded for what it holds. Two hours, then the Brera streets around it.

Striped black and white inside and out, with a marble floor of fifty-six inlaid panels that is uncovered only for part of the year, and the Piccolomini library off the nave frescoed in colours that look freshly mixed. Denser and stranger than Florence's cathedral. An hour and a half with the museum next door.

The doge's palace of the Genoese republic, now the city's main exhibition space, opening onto the central square at one end and the old town at the other. Worth checking what is on rather than visiting for the permanent collection. The tower gives a view over the roofs.

One of the Rolli palaces on Via Garibaldi — the street of merchant houses so grand that the republic used them to lodge visiting heads of state, now collectively a world heritage site. Van Dyck portraits of the family that built it, and a roof terrace over the city. Ticketed with Palazzo Bianco next door.

A patrician house museum of Neapolitan painting, inlaid furniture and porcelain, with a garden running out to a terrace above the sea. Rarely busy. The best hour in Sorrento that is not spent on a boat or a bus, and the obvious wet-afternoon answer.

The papal palace at the centre of Pienza — a village a Renaissance pope rebuilt from scratch as an ideal town, which is why the whole place is a world heritage site. The hanging garden and the loggia look straight down the valley. An hour, and Pienza itself takes another.

The cathedral's own museum, holding Duccio's Maestà — removed from the high altar and now shown alone, which is how it should be seen. The climb up the unfinished nave wall at the end gives the best rooftop view in the city and comes as a surprise to most visitors.

Florence's sculpture museum in a former prison, and the quiet alternative to the Accademia — Donatello's David, Michelangelo's early work, and a courtyard worth sitting in. Rarely busy even in August. An hour, and a good pairing with Santa Croce five minutes away.

Michelangelo's David, and the unfinished Prisoners in the corridor leading to him, which many people end up preferring — half-carved figures still emerging from the block. A small museum built around one sculpture: an hour is plenty. Book ahead, and go early or late, because the room around David fills.

Where the cathedral complex keeps the original sculpture taken indoors out of the weather, including Giovanni Pisano's carving. Quiet, small, and the place to understand what the buildings outside actually carry. An hour, and it has a cloister view of the tower most visitors never find.

Church treasure and Puglian painting in the bishop's palace beside the cathedral, small and quiet. The indoor option on a coast that has almost none, and useful in the middle of a summer afternoon when everything outside is shut and too hot to walk.

Sienese panel painting and church treasure in the bishop's palace on Pienza's square, small enough to see properly in half an hour. The right indoor option when the valley is under rain and the views are the reason you came.

A small private chapel holding the Veiled Christ — a marble figure under a marble sheet, carved so convincingly that people have insisted for two centuries it must be a trick. Two more veiled sculptures beside it and a genuinely strange basement below. Tiny, timed, and it sells out: book before you reach Naples, not after.

A cave dwelling left furnished as it was when families, and their animals, lived in one room here into the 1950s. Ten minutes and cheap, and it does more to make sense of the Sassi than any amount of walking above them.