The Most Beautiful Places in Italy
279 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Italy are Tre Cime di Lavaredo, Positano and Siena Cathedral. The list covers 279 places. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Italy holds more layers of building than almost anywhere else: Etruscan and Roman cities, early Christian basilicas, medieval hill towns, the Renaissance and the Baroque, all on a peninsula of volcanoes, limestone mountains and steep coasts. Rome alone keeps two thousand years of monuments within walking distance, and every region added its own cathedral, palace and piazza on top of what was already there.
The Colosseum, completed under Titus in 80 AD, is still the largest amphitheatre the Romans ever built, and beside it the Roman Forum lays out the temples and law courts at the centre of the ancient city. Trajan's Column winds a spiral relief of the Dacian wars around its shaft, and the Arch of Constantine celebrates the emperor's victory at the Milvian Bridge in 312. Castel Sant'Angelo began as Hadrian's mausoleum and became a papal fortress. Above the Bay of Naples, Mount Vesuvius still looms over the towns it buried in 79 AD.
North and south bring other forms. Milan Cathedral, begun in 1386, bristles with spires and statues in white marble, and La Scala nearby has been the city's opera house since 1778. The Uffizi in Florence, designed by Giorgio Vasari for the Medici, holds one of the great collections of Renaissance painting, while Turin's Mole Antonelliana lifts its slender spire over the city and now houses the National Museum of Cinema. On the coast, Positano tumbles down a cliff of the Amalfi Coast and Vernazza packs its colourful houses around a tiny harbour in the Cinque Terre.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tre Cime di Lavaredo | Mountain | |
| 2 | Positano | Most beautiful village | |
| 3 | Siena Cathedral | Cathedral | ✓ |
| 4 | Lago di Braies | Lake | |
| 5 | Sassi di Matera | Rock formation | |
| 6 | Cala Goloritzé | Beach | |
| 7 | Trevi Fountain | Sculpture | |
| 8 | Scala dei Turchi | Cliff | |
| 9 | Colosseum | Archaeological site | |
| 10 | Mount Vesuvius | Volcano | |
| 11 | Milan Cathedral | Cathedral | |
| 12 | Roman Forum | Archaeological site | |
| 13 | Castel Sant'Angelo | Castle | |
| 14 | Trajan's Column | Sculpture | |
| 15 | La Scala | Opera house | |
| 16 | Lake Garda | Lake | |
| 17 | Arch of Constantine | Triumphal arch | |
| 18 | Uffizi Gallery | Museum | |
| 19 | Mole Antonelliana | Observation tower | |
| 20 | Capri | Island | |
| 21 | Vernazza | Most beautiful village | |
| 22 | Ponte Sant'Angelo | Bridge | |
| 23 | Piazza Navona | Square | |
| 24 | Manarola | Most beautiful village | |
| 25 | Su Nuraxi di Barumini | Nuraghe | ✓ |
| 26 | Palatine Hill | Archaeological site | |
| 27 | St Mark's Campanile | Bell tower | |
| 28 | Column of Marcus Aurelius | Sculpture | |
| 29 | Boboli Gardens | Historic garden | ✓ |
| 30 | Castel del Monte | Castle | ✓ |
01 Tre Cime di Lavaredo
Italy46.619° N 12.306° E
Image by Jerry明 from Pixabay Three blunt towers of pale rock standing side by side on a high, stony plateau: the Tre Cime, or Drei Zinnen, are the emblem of the Dolomites, and their north faces are among the most famous walls in the Alps.
Did you know? In 2002 Alexander Huber climbed the Hasse-Brandler route on Cima Grande free solo, without a rope.
02 Positano
Italy · 25 km from Salerno40.628° N 14.482° E
Image by floydbarbel from Pixabay Positano is a village that falls down a mountain into the sea.
Did you know? A chain of medieval watchtowers, including the 13th-century Torre della Sponda, guarded Positano's coves against Saracen raids.
03 Siena Cathedral
Duomo di Siena
Italy · 1.7 km from Siena43.318° N 11.329° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by Anajim from Pixabay Siena's cathedral is the product of a city that wanted to outdo Florence and very nearly did. Built between about 1215 and 1263, it is clad inside and out in bands of white and dark green-black marble, the colours of Siena's black and white coat of arms, with red marble added on the facade.
Did you know? Pinturicchio frescoed the Piccolomini Library between 1502 and 1507; whether Raphael drew some of the designs is still debated.
04 Lago di Braies
Italy46.694° N 12.085° E
Image by 16018388 from Pixabay The lake sits at 1,496 metres in a side valley of the Puster Valley, and it exists because a mountain once fell. 2 kilometres long and 300 to 400 metres wide, reaching 36 metres at its deepest.
Did you know? Records call it simply the lake in Prags from 1296; the name 'Pragser Wildsee', the wild lake, appears only in 1885, and 'Lago di Braies' only in 1940.
05 Sassi di Matera
Italy40.667° N 16.608° E
Maksimsokolov · CC BY-SA 4.0 Matera's Sassi are two whole quarters of a town carved into and built out of the soft stone of a ravine. On the slopes of the Gravina, the gorge that cuts into the Murgia plateau, the Sasso Barisano and the Sasso Caveoso spread out on either side of the Civita, a rocky spur crowned by the Romanesque cathedral.
Did you know? UNESCO inscribed the Sassi together with the Park of the Rupestrian Churches as a World Heritage Site in 1993.
06 Cala Goloritzé
Italy40.108° N 9.690° E
Image by Giglio_di_mare from Pixabay Cala Goloritzé is a small cove at the southern end of the Gulf of Orosei, on the wild eastern coast of Sardinia in the municipality of Baunei. It is younger than it looks: the pale fan of pebbles on which people now lie was brought down by a landslide in 1962.
Did you know? The name may come from a Sardinian word for snake, an allusion to the winding shape of the Goloritzé gorge.
07 Trevi Fountain
Fontana di Trevi
Italy · 0.4 km from Rome41.901° N 12.483° E
Image by jdegheest from Pixabay What feeds this fountain isn't ornamental plumbing — it's the working outflow of the Aqua Virgo, an aqueduct finished in 19 BC that has been delivering the same spring water to roughly this same spot for over two thousand years.
Did you know? Bernini was asked by Pope Urban VIII to plan a new fountain here in 1629, but the project was abandoned and only completed a century later by others.
08 Scala dei Turchi
Italy37.290° N 13.473° E
Image by Comanche0 from Pixabay The Scala dei Turchi is a cliff of pure white marl on the south coast of Sicily, at Realmonte just west of Porto Empedocle, and in strong sunlight it is almost too bright to look at.
Did you know? The International Union of Geological Sciences lists the cliff's Pliocene layering among its geological heritage sites of world importance.
09 Colosseum
Colosseo
Italy · 1.2 km from Rome41.890° N 12.492° E
Image by MARTINOPHUC from Pixabay The eighty-foot drop beneath the Colosseum's sand floor is where the real machinery of the show lived.
Did you know? Spectators were guided to their seats by numbered pottery tokens that matched one of the 80 ground-level entrances.
10 Mount Vesuvius
Vesuvio
Italy · 15.8 km from Naples40.823° N 14.429° E
Image by stostank from Pixabay Vesuvius rises from the shore of the Gulf of Naples about 9 km east of the city, and its profile explains its history.
Did you know? Near Nola in 2001, archaeologists found thousands of human footprints left by villagers fleeing north from an eruption about 3,800 years ago.
11 Milan Cathedral
Duomo di Milano
Italy · 1.3 km from Milan45.464° N 9.191° E
Jakub Hałun · CC BY-SA 4.0 Milan Cathedral took almost six centuries to finish. Work began in 1386 under Archbishop Antonio da Saluzzo, at a moment when his cousin Gian Galeazzo Visconti had just taken power in the city; the last bronze portal was inaugurated only on 6 January 1965.
Did you know? A meridian line laid in the floor in 1786 by Brera Observatory astronomers uses a hole 24 metres up to fix solar noon to within seconds.
12 Roman Forum
Foro Romano
Italy · 0.7 km from Rome41.892° N 12.485° E
Image by jensjunge from Pixabay The Roman Forum fills a small valley between the Palatine and Capitoline hills that was once a marsh.
Did you know? The Temple of Saturn doubled as the state treasury, holding vaults for public funds and private deposits.
13 Castel Sant'Angelo
Italy · 1.4 km from Rome41.903° N 12.466° E
Image by rainhard2 from Pixabay Hadrian started building his own tomb in 123 CE and didn't live to see it finished — it was completed in 139 under his successor Antoninus Pius, a cylindrical drum of a monument meant to hold the ashes of an emperor and his family for eternity. Eternity lasted about three centuries as a mausoleum.
Did you know? The last emperor known to have been interred here was Caracalla, in 217.
14 Trajan's Column
Colonna Traiana
Italy · 0.3 km from Rome41.896° N 12.484° E
Raffaele pagani · CC BY-SA 4.0 Trajan's Column is a 30-metre marble shaft, 35 m with its pedestal, that has stood in Trajan's Forum just north of the Roman Forum since it was dedicated on 12 May 113.
Did you know? Ancient coins suggest the column was first topped by a figure that was probably an eagle, before a statue of Trajan took its place.
15 La Scala
Teatro alla Scala
Italy · 1.2 km from Milan45.468° N 9.189° E
Image by dimitrisvetsikas1969 from Pixabay La Scala in Milan is, for many, simply the opera house — the place where a singer's career is made or broken.
Did you know? Puccini's Turandot, left unfinished at the composer's death, received its first performance at La Scala in 1926.
16 Lake Garda
Lago di Garda
Italy · 33.1 km from Verona45.633° N 10.667° E
Image by Leonhard_Niederwimmer from Pixabay Lake Garda is the largest lake in Italy and the most varied of the great Alpine lakes. Its shape explains its character: in the north it is a narrow fjord of deep water squeezed between steep mountains, while in the south it opens into a broad basin fringed by gentle morainic hills, vineyards and olive groves.
17 Arch of Constantine
Arco di Costantino
Italy · 1.2 km from Rome41.890° N 12.491° E
Image by TreptowerAlex from Pixabay The Arch of Constantine stands in the open ground between the Colosseum and the Palatine Hill, the largest triumphal arch to survive from ancient Rome: 21 metres high, almost 26 metres wide and more than 7 metres deep, with a tall central opening flanked by two smaller ones.
Did you know? The arch was officially opened on 25 July 315, the start of the tenth anniversary year of Constantine's reign.
18 Uffizi Gallery
Palazzo degli Uffizi
Italy · 1.4 km from Florence43.768° N 11.255° E
Image by Michelle-Maria from Pixabay The Uffizi began as offices. In 1560 Cosimo I de' Medici commissioned Giorgio Vasari, painter and architect, to build a single home for the magistracies, guilds and agencies of Florence, hence the name, "the offices".
Did you know? So that no smell would reach the duke's private passage, the butchers on the Ponte Vecchio were moved out, and goldsmiths had taken over their shops by 1593.
19 Mole Antonelliana
Italy · 2 km from Turin45.069° N 7.693° E
Image by nonmisvegliate from Pixabay 5 metres in all. The Mole Antonelliana takes its name from its architect, Alessandro Antonelli, and from the Italian word mole, a building of monumental size.
Did you know? The Mole held the title of the world's tallest masonry building until 1908.
20 Capri
Isola di Capri
Italy · 32.4 km from Naples40.550° N 14.233° E
Image by babusz from Pixabay Capri is a limestone island of just over 10 square kilometres at the southern entrance to the Gulf of Naples, about 5 km off the tip of the Sorrento Peninsula.
21 Vernazza
Italy44.135° N 9.684° E
- one of the most beautiful villages
Bruno Rijsman · CC BY-SA 2.0 Vernazza is the fourth of the five villages of the Cinque Terre, counting from the south, and for many the most perfectly composed.
Did you know? In 1209 nearly ninety heads of Vernazza's leading families swore allegiance to the Republic of Genoa.
22 Ponte Sant'Angelo
Ponte Sant’Angelo
Italy · 1.3 km from Rome41.902° N 12.466° E
Image by valtercirillo from Pixabay Ponte Sant'Angelo crosses the Tiber in the heart of Rome, leading straight to the massive drum of Castel Sant'Angelo. Emperor Hadrian built it in 134 AD as the Pons Aelius, the approach to his own mausoleum — the drum that later became a papal fortress and gave the bridge its present name.
Did you know? The angels were carved by a team of sculptors including Antonio Raggi, Ercole Ferrata, Domenico Guidi and Cosimo Fancelli, with Bernini's son Paolo helping on the two originals.
23 Piazza Navona
Italy · 0.7 km from Rome41.899° N 12.473° E
Krzysztof Golik · CC BY-SA 4.0 Piazza Navona keeps the exact outline of a Roman racetrack. Emperor Domitian built a stadium here around 80 AD for athletic contests, the agones, and when the stands were quarried away after the fall of the empire the houses that replaced them simply followed the curve.
Did you know? According to tradition, Saint Agnes was martyred in one of the stadium's arcades, and the church on the square keeps her skull in a shrine.
24 Manarola
Italy44.106° N 9.727° E
Image by tristanmimet from Pixabay Manarola is the smallest drama of the Cinque Terre told at full volume. Tall, narrow houses painted in reds, yellows and pinks are packed onto a spur of dark rock that ends abruptly above the Ligurian Sea, with a tiny harbour cut into the stone at its foot.
Did you know? Manarola grew from people moving down to the sea from the Val di Vara and the Roman-era settlement of Volastra once raids by Muslim pirates had declined.
25 Su Nuraxi di Barumini
Area archeologica di Su Nuraxi
Italy39.703° N 9.000° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Norbert Nagel · CC BY-SA 3.0 Sardinia is dotted with nuraghi, the stone towers of the Bronze Age Nuragic civilization, and Su Nuraxi at Barumini is the most complete of them. The name simply means "the nuraghe" in Campidanese Sardinian.
Did you know? The three stacked rooms of the central tower were linked by a spiral staircase; the topmost chamber has collapsed, but the two below are almost intact.
26 Palatine Hill
Palatino
Italy · 1.2 km from Rome41.888° N 12.487° E
Livioandronico2013 · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Palatine is the hill where Rome says it began. Roman tradition put the she-wolf's cave, the Lupercal, at its foot and Romulus's founding of the city on its summit, and archaeology is not far off: huts of the early Iron Age have been found here.
27 St Mark's Campanile
Campanile di San Marco
Italy · 0.6 km from Venice45.434° N 12.339° E
Image by hadzaj from Pixabay 6 metres, the tallest structure in Venice, and Venetians call it the master of the house. It began as a watchtower and a sea-mark in the tenth century, raised in stages by successive doges to guard the harbour entrance and guide ships home.
28 Column of Marcus Aurelius
Colonna di Marco Aurelio
Italy · 0.3 km from Rome41.901° N 12.480° E
Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Column of Marcus Aurelius stands in Piazza Colonna, on the Via del Corso in the centre of Rome, in front of Palazzo Chigi, the seat of the Italian government.
29 Boboli Gardens
Giardino di Boboli
Italy · 1.6 km from Florence43.765° N 11.250° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by psychographism from Pixabay Florence is the city of the Medici, and the Boboli Gardens are where that family turned a hillside into a statement of power. Rising behind the Pitti Palace, the main residence of the grand dukes of Tuscany, the garden was begun in the mid-16th century for Eleonora di Toledo, wife of Cosimo I de' Medici.
Did you know? The Neptune statue's fountain is nicknamed the Fountain of the Pitchfork, after the god's trident.
30 Castel del Monte
Italy · 26.1 km from Barletta41.085° N 16.271° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by Jack78 from Pixabay Seen from the surrounding countryside of northern Apulia, Castel del Monte looks less like a fortress than a stone crown set on a hilltop 540 metres up. Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Sicily, had it built in the 1240s; a document of 1240 already orders work on it.
Did you know? A letter Frederick II sent from Gubbio in January 1240 orders building materials for a castle at Santa Maria del Monte, the site's original name.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in Italy?
- On our list, Tre Cime di Lavaredo ranks first, followed by Positano and Siena Cathedral.
- How long did it take to build Milan Cathedral?
- Construction began in 1386 and continued for centuries; the main façade was only completed in the early nineteenth century under Napoleon, and finishing work went on even later. It is one of the largest Gothic churches in the world.
- What is Castel Sant'Angelo?
- It was built in the second century as the mausoleum of Emperor Hadrian and later converted into a fortress and residence used by the popes, linked to the Vatican by a fortified passage. Today it is a museum.
- When did Vesuvius destroy Pompeii?
- Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD and buried Pompeii, Herculaneum and other towns around the Bay of Naples under ash and volcanic debris. It is still an active volcano and last erupted in 1944.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Italy?
- In our collection, the places in Italy are most often churches (37), archaeological sites (22), cathedrals (15) and museums (14).
- How many places are on this list in Italy?
- The list covers 279 places.