Ultimate Italy: A packed one-week itinerary

The Roman ForumTake a tour
If you prefer an expert guide for your sightseeing, here are some walking tours from our partners at Viator.com that cover many of the sights featured on this day:

• Private Tour: Imperial Rome Art History Walking Tour
• Skip the Line: Ancient Rome and Colosseum Half-Day Walking Tour
• Private Tour: Ancient Rome and Colosseum Art History Walking Tour
• Ancient Rome Half-Day Walking Tour
• Capitoline Museums and Origins of Rome Walking Tour
• Private Tour: Ancient Roman Art History Walking Tour
• Imperial Rome Afternoon Tour
MORNING: Most transatlantic flights land in Rome in the early morning (around 8am), and by the time you get you bags, get downtown, and check into your hotel, it'll by 11am—plenty of time to check in, splash your face, and head out to the first postcard sight of your trip: the Roman Forum. Spend an hour or so wandering the ruins where orators once held forth, senators debated, and Julius Caesar strode the streets.

Unfortunately, little is left to see, but so much the better so you can be out by 12:30 and on your way past the Imperial Forums to lunch at the old-school wine bar Cavour 313.

AFTERNOON: (If the timing works out, after lunch you can pop into the nearby church of San Pietro in Vincoli to see Michelangelo's Moses, but it doesn't reopen for the afternoon until 3:30pm, or 3pm in winter. If you do work it in, it means you are running a bit late, so don't spend more than 15 minutes in here.)

Next, pay a visit to the Colosseum. You just kind of look at it, take a peek inside at the floor plan, and you're done (save time in the often long lines by booking your entry ahead).

If you manage to get out of the Colosseum by 4pm, you're in good shape and have time for both of the next sights. If it's closer to 5pm, you only have time for one, so pick.

1) Walk several long blocks farther south to tour the church of San Clemente, with medieval mosaics glittering in the apse, Renaissance frescoes in the chapels, and a door off the gift shop leading down to the first of several basements that provide an unparalleled tour through Rome's layer cake of history: below the current, medieval church is a 4th century church, and below that is a pagan temple to Mithras and the remains of several ancient Roman buildings, streets, and the splashing waters of a still-functioning aqueduct (go ahead and fill your water bottle; the water is clean, cold, and delicious).

2) Catch a bus to head back to Piazza Venezia, at the north end of the Forum. Nearby is the elevated square Piazza del Campidoglio, where the Capitoline Museums will entertain you with ancient sculpture and Renaissance and baroque painting until 7pm.

Make sure that before sunset you nip around the back of the right side of the central building on Piazza del Campidoglio where you're treated to a surprise panorama of the Forum from above, with the Palatine Hill and the Colosseum as a backdrop. Have dinner in the Old City tonight.

» Stay: Rome

The Sistine Chapel cieling.Take a tour
If you prefer an expert guide for your sightseeing, here are some walking tours from our partners at Viator.com that cover many of the sights featured on this day:

• Skip the Line: Vatican in One Day
• Private Tour: Vatican Museums and St Peter's Art History Walking Tour
• Skip the Line: Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel, & St Peter's Half-Day Tour
• Skip the Line: Vatican Museums Walking Tour including Sistine Chapel, Raphael's Rooms and St Peter's
• Skip the Line: Vatican Museums Tickets
• Private Viewing of the Sistine Chapel and Vatican Museums
• Private Tour: Vatican Museums Tour
• Skip the Line: Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel Tour

• Best of Rome Afternoon Walking Tour
• Rome Photography Walking Tour: Learn How to Take Professional Photos
• Baroque Rome Small Group Day Tour
MORNING: This morning we spend on the other side of the river from the bulk of old Rome. Be up bright and early so that you beat the legions of tour buses to the grandiose church of St. Peter's Basilica, which opens at 7am.

See Michelangelo's Pietà and the other amazing sights inside, and tour the tombs of popes under the basilica before climbing its dome (opens at 8am) for a panoramic sweep of the city across the river.

By 8:45am, have exited the church, turned left under the start of the colonnade surrounding the piazza out front, and be walking around the Vatican walls to get to the entrance to the world-famous Vatican Museums, which open at 9am.

You'll have time only for the highlights of its artistic wonders : the Pinacoteca painting gallery with Raphael's Transfiguration and Caravaggio's Deposition, the Raphael Rooms, and Michelangelo's incomparable Sistine Chapel ceiling.

The Pantheon.By 11am, be out of the galleries and headed back across the river to spend the afternoon in the Tiber Bend area of the old city.

AFTERNOON: After a quick bite for lunch, pay homage to the ancient Pantheon—the only ancient Roman temple to have survived the centuries intact—and the nearby church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, with its Michelangelo Risen Christ statue and Filippo Lippi frescoes.

Head to Rome's prettiest square, Piazza Navona. Station yourself at Tre Scalini's outdoor cafe tables to enjoy their famous tartufo dessert while watching children play soccer under the shadow of Bernini's fountains. If you have the energy or interest, you might squeeze in a visit to San Luigi dei Francesi (just off the piazza's east side) for its Caravaggio paintings, and/or the ancient Roman collections in the gorgeous Palazzo Altemps just off the north end of Piazza Navona.

Make your way over to the lively Spanish Steps. Mingle for a while, then windowshop down fashionable Via dei Condotti and the surrounding streets. By the time you get to the Corso, one of Rome's main drags, the evening passeggiata stroll will be in full swing and you can strut your stuff with the Romans until it's time for a hearty and well-deserved dinner.

» Stay: Rome

Take the tour
This is one day on which I seriously recommend taking a guided tour (or at least a shuttle to save the time and aggravation of changing trains).

• Pompeii and Amalfi Coast Small Group Day Trip from Rome
• Pompeii and Vesuvius Day Trip from Rome
• Naples and Pompeii Day Trip from Rome
• Rome to Pompeii Shuttle Bus & Independent Day Trip

A street at Pompeii.ALL DAY: Though you could do a day trip to Pompeii on your own, you will lose an hour or two just changing trains and such (first take the train to Naples, then transfer to the private Circumvesuviana rail line, as detailed here).

Far better either to get door-to-door service with a Rome-to-Pompeii shuttle bus for an independent day trip, or to take an escorted day-trip tour with a professional guide and driver that includes transportation and guided visits to the ruins and surrounding sights (two flavors: Pompeii and Vesuvius, or Naples and Pompeii).

But that just covers Pompeii, and you've signed up for the "Insane, Gotta-see-it-all" week, right? As long as you're in the neighborhood, you want to tour the famous Amalfi Coast, too. Well, on your own you could conceivably spend an hour or so at Pompeii and then take a quick ride—without stopping—down the Amalfi Coast in a single day...though I would never dream of trying it using public transportation. There are simply too many connections—a minimum of four trains and two buses—for a one-day trip.

Your best bet to fit it all in is to take an escorted day-trip tour with our partners at Viator.com: a one-day trip that combines a visit to Pompeii with a trip down the Amalfi Coast.

It's not a giant tour bus, but a small group tour—maximum of 8 people in a minivan—taking a 13-hour trip that leaves Rome at the yawningly early hour of 6:45am (don't worry; you spend the first 2+ hours just driving, so you can go back to sleep in the van).

The tour heads first along the Amalfi Drive, that famously white-knuckle roadway twisting along an undulating coastline peppered with fishing villages-turned–chic resort towns. (You'll be glad someone else is doing the driving, both for the terror factor and to leave you free to stare out the windows and snap photographs.) There's a leisurely stop in the postcard village of Positano, and another for lunch in the pretty town of Amalfi.

You then cross over the Amalfi Coast peninsula toward Mt. Vesuvius and a two-hour guided visit to the ruins of Pompeii, the famous ancient Roman ghost city destroyed by Vesuvius in AD 79 (tour guide is provided; entrance fee is extra). You can nap again on the ride back to Rome, arriving around 7:15pm.

After you get back to Rome and freshen up at the hotel, spend the evening in the medieval neighborhood of Trastevere, where you can find lots of excellent Roman restaurants. Afterwards be sure you make your way back across the Tiber River to the famous Trevi Fountain, into which it's tradition to toss a few coins in order to ensure that, one day, you'll return to the Eternal City.

» Stay: Rome

The Duomo.Take a tour
If you prefer an expert guide for your sightseeing, here are some walking tours from our partners at Viator.com that cover many of the sights featured on this day (as a bonus, many include the Accademia, which would free up tomorrow morning):

All sights:
• Florence Half-Day or Full-Day Sightseeing Tour
• Private Tour: Florence Sightseeing Tour

Duomo:
• Skip The Line: Best of Florence Walking Tour including Accademia Gallery and Duomo
• Skip the Line: Florence Renaissance Walking Tour with Accademia Gallery
• Private Tour: Florence Walking Tour
• Florence Walking Tour

Uffizi:
 • Skip the Line: Florence Uffizi Gallery Tickets
• Skip the Line: Florence Uffizi Gallery Tour
• Skip the Line: Uffizi Gallery and Vasari Corridor Walking Tour
• Skip the Line: Small Group Florence Uffizi Gallery Walking Tour
• Skip the Line: Florence Accademia and Uffizi Gallery Tour
MORNING: Take the earliest morning train you can manage to Florence and drop your bags by the hotel.

Head directly to the Duomo (cathedral) to climb Brunelleschi's ingenious and noble dome for a panorama across the city, then duck into the adjacent baptistery to marvel at the mosaics inside and the massive bronze doors outside—the ones facing the Duomo are so beautiful they became known as the Gates of Paradise.

AFTERNOON: Be sure you extricate yourself from the cathedral group by 1pm so that you can wander a few blocks south for a lunch on-the-go at I Fratellini, a traditional fiaschetteria, a hole-in-the-wall joint with no seats, just a counter selling wine by the glass and scrumptious sandwiches to patrons who stand in a crowd on the flagstones of the sidewalk and pedestrianized street.

Then continue a few more blocks to the stage set of Piazza della Signoria, filled with statues and lined by buildings the Medici would still recognize.

Opening off the south side of the square is world's premier gallery of the Renaissance, the Uffizi (TIP: another museums for which you'll want to purchase tickets before leaving home). Spend the rest of the afternoon communing with Giotto, Botticelli, da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Caravaggio, and Titian until they boot you out the doors at 7:30pm. Have a Tuscan feast at Il Latini before bed.

» Stay: Florence

Piazza del Campo in Siena. (Photo by Zyance)Take the tour!
The only way to fit it all in on an all-day escorted tour with partners at Viator.com:

• Tuscany in One Day Sightseeing Tour (12 hrs)

There are other day trip options if you want to take things more slowly and do just a few of the towns:

Siena/San Gimignano:
• Siena and San Gimignano Small Group Day Trip from Florence (8 hrs)
• Private Tour: Siena and San Gimignano (8.5 hrs)
• Siena and San Gimignano (8.5 hrs)

Pisa:
• Private Tour: Pisa and the Leaning Tower from Florence (4 hrs)
• Pisa and the Leaning Tower Half-Day Trip from Florence (5.5 hrs)
• Private Tour: Lucca and Pisa from Florence (10 hrs)

The Chianti
• Small Group Chianti Wine Region Day Trip from Florence (8 hrs)
• Chianti Region Wine Tasting Half-Day Trip from Florence (5 hrs)
• Private Tour: Chianti Wine Tasting (5–9 hrs)
• Chianti Region Wine-Tasting and Dinner Half-Day Trip (8 hrs)
• Horse Riding in Chianti Day Trip (6 hrs)
• Vespa Day Trip to the Chianti (6 hrs)
• Tuscany Bike Tour in the Chianti (7 hrs)

• 5-Day Best of Italy Trip (5 days/4 nights)
ALL DAY: OK, you could conceivably fit in two or three of those towns listed below (Siena, San Gimignano, Chianti, Pisa, Monteriggioni) on your own using public transportation—maybe three or four if you rent a car and do everything at a dead run.

But honestly, the only reasonable way to cram this much Tuscany into one day is to let someone else do the driving—and the parking, and the guiding, and the entry tickets, and the taking care of finding everything and knowing all the background information...

That's why I highly recommend the Tuscany in One Day Sightseeing Tour offered by our partners at Viator.com. It is a long one—12 hours, getting up at 8:30am and not returning to Florence until 8:30pm—but you get a lot for your $108.

Cruise past the walled hilltown of Monteriggioni en route to the king of the Tuscan hilltowns, Siena, which you can tour with the guide or on your own. (If you opt for the latter, try to squeeze in both the wondrously frescoed rooms of the Palazzo Pubblico town hall on the main square, the gorgeous sloping scallop-shell of Il Campo, and a quick spin around the zebra-striped 12th century Duomo, with its medieval carved pulpit and a library frescoed in bright, Fujifilm colors by Umbrian master Pinturicchio—helped by a young apprentice named Raphael).

The towers of San Gimignano.After a drive through the Chianti—and lunch and a wine-tasting class at a Chianti vineyard—you check out the Medieval Manhattan of San Gimignano, a picture-postcard hilltown bristling with stone towers.

Last stop: Pisa, with its gorgeous gaggle of Gothic buildings on the Campo dei Miracoli (The "Field of Miracles"), and a chance to climb the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa.

The tour drops you back off in Florence around 8:30pm—exhausted, but with loads of famous Tuscan sights added to your list of vacation accomplishments. Time for a celebratory dinner—and early bed time.

» Stay: Florence

Michelangelo's David in the Accademia.Take a tour
If you prefer an expert guide for your sightseeing, here are some walking tours from our partners at Viator.com that cover many of the sights featured on this day:

• Skip the Line: Accademia Gallery Tickets
• Skip the Line: Accademia Gallery Tour
• Skip the Line: Accademia and Uffizi Tour
• Skip The Line: Best of Florence Walking Tour, incl Accademia Gallery and Duomo
• Skip the Line: Florence Renaissance Walking Tour with Accademia Gallery
• Florence Half-Day or Full-Day Sightseeing Tour
• Private Tour: Florence Sightseeing Tour
MORNING: Florence rule #1: Be in line at the Accademia when it opens to see Michelangelo's David before the crowds arrive. (Avoid the hour-long wait altogether by reserving your tickets.)

Don't linger since before lunch you need to swing by Santa Maria Novella church for a look at the first Renaissance painting to use perfect perspective and a Ghirlandaio fresco cycle on which a young apprentice named Michelangelo helped out.

AFTERNOON: After a quick lunch, and while the city is shut down for the mid-day riposo, make your way over to the Giotto frescoes in Santa Croce church (it stays open all day), Florence's version of Westminster Abbey and the final resting place of Michelangelo, Galileo, Rossini, and Machiavelli with an excellent leather school in the back.

On your way back over to the heart of town, stop by Vivoli for the best gelato (ice cream) the world has ever known. Licking your cone, head back toward the center of town to cross the jewelry shop–lined medieval bridge Ponte Vecchio over to the artisans' quarter known as the Oltrarno.

Here you'll find the Medici's grand Pitti Palace, whose painting galleries will keep you occupied until closing time at 7pm. The Oltrarno is full of good, homey restaurants where you can kick back, toast your 36 hours in Florence, and avow a return.

» Stay: Florence

The Grand Canal.Take a tour
Though no tours of the Accademia are offered, you can get book a gondola ride with our partners at Viator.com:

• Venice Gondola Ride and Serenade
• Venice Gondola Ride and Serenade with Dinner
• Venice Walking Tour and Gondola Ride
MORNING: There's an 8:37am train from Florence that pulls into Venice around 11:30am so you can dive into the city of canals (not literally).

AFTERNOON: Have a snack on your way to check into your hotel in the early afternoon, then spend the mid-afternoon perusing the Renaissance masterpieces in Venice's Accademia Gallery (yes, it has same name as a museum in Florence; this is because both are part of their city's "Academy" of Fine Arts).

If you have time (and for a chance of pace), also try to fit in an hour or so admiring the modern art—yes! Italy has modern art, too!—at the lovely Peggy Guggenheim museum nearby.

Take a gondola ride before dinner (yeah, it's a bit cheesy—and expensive—but you wouldn't want to have come all this way and not done it, either), and wander the quiet, romantic streets a while after your meal.

» Stay: Venice

The mosaics of San Marco.Take a tour
If you prefer an expert guide for your sightseeing in Venice, here are some walking tours from our partners at Viator.com that cover many of the sights featured on Day 14:

San Marco:
• Skip the Line: Venice Walking Tour with St Mark's Basilica
• Skip the Line: St Mark's Square Highlights Tour
• Skip the Line: Venice in One Day

Palazzo Ducale:
• Skip the Line: Venice Walking Tour with Doges Palace

Outlying islands:
• Murano, Burano and Torcello Half-Day Sightseeing Tour
• Private Tour: Murano, Burano and Torcello Half-Day Tour
MORNING: In the morning, head straight to one of Europe's prettiest squares, the canalside Piazza San Marco. Wander the glittering mosaicked wonderland of its Byzantine San Marco cathedral and ride the elevator up the bell tower for a sweeping view across the city and its canals.

Take the "Secret Itineraries" tour of the Doge's Palace at 10:45am for a behind-the-scenes look at Venetian history and intrigue from its Renaissance days as the world's trading and shipping powerhouse.

(It’s wisest to book this tour ahead of time, but not necessarily from home before you leave. Dropping by the afternoon before or even first thing in the morning before touring San Marco, should be sufficient. Still, just in case you want to be sure you get a ticket by booking in advance, I've spelled out the process here.)

AFTERNOON: Option 1 (if you are flying home from Venice) - Spend the afternoon however you’d like: shopping for Venice's famous glass trinkets, popping into more museums (my votes: the Peggy Guggenheim of 20th century art and the Ca' d'Oro, the grandest of the Renaissance palazzi along the Grand Canal) and churches, or simply have fun getting lost in the twisting, confounding, unspeakably beautiful back streets of Venice.

tip
If any of your days in Venice happens to be a Sunday, do not miss the 6:345pm mass in the Cathedral of St. Mark's—the only time they throw on all the light switches to illuminate all of those amazing gold mosaics.Another option (and a personal favorite): take off on a ferry for the outlying islands of Murano, where the glass industry started and a bit like a Venice in miniature, and Burano, a fishing village of riotously colored houses along miniature canals. It’s about an hour's ride out and back, and you should spend about an hour on each island.

If you time things just right, you should be motoring back to downtown Venice (and a celebratory canal-side final dinner) right as the setting sun sends sparkling streamers across the waters of the lagoon with the bell towers of Venice as a backdrop. Perfect.

Milan tours
If you prefer an expert guide for your sightseeing in Milan, here are some walking tours from our partners at Viator.com that cover many of the sights featured on this day:

• Milan Half-Day Sightseeing Tour with da Vinci's 'The Last Supper'
• Skip the Line: Small-Group Milan Walking Tour with da Vinci's 'The Last Supper' Tickets
• Leonardo da Vinci Half-Day Walking Tour including 'The Last Supper'
• Private Tour: Milan Walking TourAFTERNOON: Option 2 (if you are flying home from Milan) - If you are flying home from Milan instead of Venice, you might want to go ahead and take the train to Milan this afernoon and spend the night there.

Because so few flights are scheduled late in the afternoon (most are midday or late morning), were you to wait to go to the Milan airport until tomorrow you would have to catch a 6am train from Venice just to get to the Milan airport in time—and even that would be cutting it a bit too close for my comfort.

Not that this has to be a bad thing. I say: plan to leave for Milan after your tour the Doge's Palace so that you will get there early enough to see Leonardo's Last Supper, wander through the magnificent Duomo, and then have dinner in the trendy Navilgi district.)

» Stay: Venice or Milan

ALL DAY: Most flights back to the U.S. leave either in the morning or early afternoon. Either way, the day's largely a wash. You'll spend all morning getting to the airport and the rest of the day in the air.

(Remember: if you have a 3pm flight, you have to check in by 1pm, which means you have to head to the airport by noon, which means you have to leave your hotel by 10:30... The day's pretty much shot by the time you wake up.)

Hopefully, you are able to book a flight home leaving from the Venice-Marco Polo airport, which does have a few direct flights to JFK, though most will stop/change in some other big city first.

If not, you will have to fly home from Milan, so be sure build in 3 hours for the train ride there from Venice (the ride actually only takes 2:35–2:45, but it's always wise to build in an extra cushion of time). Sadly, this means catching a ridiculously early train—like 6:20am.

As I outlined in the scheudle for Day 8, if you are flying home from Milan you might seriosuly consider heading to Milan on Day 8 and spending the night there instead. (Bonus: you can even get in a bit of Milan sightseeing, adding yet one more city to your itinerary)

Details on airport transfers:

• How to get to the Venice airport
• How to get to the Milan airport

That's it! I hope you had a great trip. Try to catch up on your trip journal on the plane—oh, and be sure to grab some good plane snacks before you head to the airport (foccaccia's my favorite)—Italian food beats airline food any day of the week.