Places to see in Italy

Reached up a wide flight of sixty-odd steps from the square, with a striped Arab-Norman front that says plainly which sea Amalfi traded on. The Cloister of Paradise beside it is the part worth the ticket. Half an hour, and the centre of the only town on this coast with a flat piazza.

Where the Bellini and carpaccio were both invented, open since 1931 and declared a national landmark. A small, plain, expensive room near San Marco — go for one drink at the bar rather than dinner.

A shell-shaped square sloping to the town hall, divided into nine paved segments, and the finest public space in Italy by a fair margin. People sit on the brick and stay for an hour. Twice each summer it is packed earth and the Palio is run around its edge in about ninety seconds.

A rock church driven into the spur that stands in the middle of the Sassi, with Byzantine frescoes inside and the best view over both districts from the terrace outside. Small, ticketed, and the clearest single explanation of how this place was built.

The neighbourhood market east of the centre, smaller than the Mercato Centrale and almost entirely locals doing their shopping. Mornings only, and there are a couple of very plain places to eat inside it.

The view of Florence everyone has seen: the whole city, the dome and the river in one frame. A steep twenty-minute walk up from the Arno or a short bus ride. Go for sunset and expect company; go in the morning and have it nearly to yourself. San Miniato al Monte, a few minutes further up, is better and almost empty.

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 gorge cut by the river behind Bellano, walked on gangways bolted to the rock a few metres above the water. Loud, cool and about half an hour. The eastern shore it sits on is the working side of the lake and much cheaper to eat on than the western one.

A food hall behind the cathedral trading since 1883 — cheese, cured meat, pastry and a wine cellar underneath. More useful as an assembled lunch than a sit-down meal.

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.

The city's fish and produce market, working since the eleventh century and still supplying the restaurants around it. Mornings only, closed Sundays and Mondays for fish. Go early with a coffee — it is the one place in central Venice that is unambiguously for the people who live there.

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.

The town hall's bell tower over the Campo, built to exactly the height of the cathedral so that church and state stood level. Four hundred narrow steps, no lift, numbers capped at the top. The view over the tiled roofs and out into the Tuscan hills is the one people come to Siena for.

The view back over Riomaggiore's stacked houses dropping to the harbour — the photograph that sells the Cinque Terre. On the path above the village, a short steep walk from the station. Best in the last hour of light, when the west-facing front is lit.

Monopoli's cathedral, baroque and much larger than the town around it suggests, a few streets back from a working fishing harbour. Free. Monopoli is the least self-conscious of the coastal towns here and the easiest to spend an evening in.

Enormous, and famously unfinished — the marble facing stops halfway up the front and simply becomes brick. Inside is a meridian line laid into the floor in 1655, still accurate, with a hole in the roof that puts a disc of sun on it at noon. Free, and a much stranger building than it first appears.

A tiny café facing the Consolata church, open since 1763 and still serving the drink it invented — espresso, drinking chocolate and cream in a glass, layered and not stirred. Eight marble tables and usually a wait.

Mirrors, brass and carved wood from 1875, on the corner of the Galleria Subalpina. A confectioner first and a café second — the gianduiotti are the reason to go in.

Trading since 1733 and on Piazza della Repubblica since the square was built, with a belle époque interior and a pastry counter worth the stop on its own.

Naples' grand café since 1860, on the corner of Piazza del Plebiscito, with frescoed rooms and a standing bar that is a different price and a better experience. The caffè sospeso — paying for a stranger's coffee — started in places like this.

The domed church at the mouth of the Grand Canal, built as a thank-offering after the plague of 1630, and the shape that closes every photograph taken from the Accademia bridge. Free to enter, rarely busy, with Titians in the sacristy. Ten minutes by vaporetto or a walk through Dorsoduro.

The tower over Piazza delle Erbe, and the best view in Verona — the river bend, the roofs, the hills behind. A lift covers most of it with a short climb at the top. Twenty minutes, and the market square below is the reason to be in that part of town anyway.

Striped black and white in the Ligurian manner, at the heart of the old town's alleyways. An unexploded naval shell from 1941 still sits inside where it landed. Free, central, and the natural pause in a walk through the carruggi around it.

The largest baptistery in Italy, round and domed, and famous for an acoustic that custodians demonstrate by singing a note and letting it hang in the air for seconds. Worth timing your visit to catch one. On the same ticket as the rest of the cathedral complex.

The terrace at the edge of Ostuni looking out over the olive plain to the sea — the view that explains why the town is white and why it is where it is. Free, and the natural end of a walk up through the old quarter. Best in the evening.

A blank, pyramid-studded stone front — left over from the palace it used to be — hiding an interior of near-total baroque saturation. The contrast is the whole point and it registers in about a second. On Spaccanapoli, opposite Santa Chiara's tiled cloister.

A plain white front on Ravello's square hiding two carved mosaic pulpits, one supported on lions, that are among the finest twelfth-century work in the south. Free to enter the nave, small charge for the museum in the crypt. Ten minutes, between the two gardens.

The octagonal building facing the cathedral, older than it, with a ceiling of gold mosaics that most people miss because they are looking at the doors. Ghiberti's bronze Gates of Paradise on the east side are replicas; the originals are in the cathedral museum opposite. Twenty minutes, covered by the Duomo complex ticket.

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.