Looking Beyond the Popular Italian Regions

Italy is an incredibly popular vacation destination, there’s no denying that. Most visitors, though, never make it beyond the “holy trinity” of Rome, Florence and Venice. After Frances Mayes’ Under the Tuscan Sun, more people started exploring Tuscan and Umbrian hill towns, and Le Marche got its own wave of expat-wannabes. Puglia has since gone from secret to Instagram fixture. And even with all the people who pour into Italy every year, there are still big parts of the country that rarely see anyone but locals.

Italy has 20 regions, and the differences between them are real: different food, different dialects, different landscapes, sometimes a different first language. If you’ve done the big three, or you’re thinking about where you might actually live, here are the regions and corners worth a much closer look, what makes each one different, and where to start.

The Quick Version

Abruzzo

About half of Abruzzo is protected as national parks or nature reserves, more than any other Italian region, and it has the highest peak in the Apennines, the Corno Grande on the Gran Sasso (2,912 meters). Wolves and Marsican brown bears still live in the Abruzzo National Park. Drive up to the high plateau of Campo Imperatore, eat arrosticini (lamb skewers grilled over a trough of coals), then come down to the Adriatic’s Costa dei Trabocchi, named for the wooden fishing platforms on stilts along the shore. Sulmona is the prettiest base, and famous for sugared almonds. L’Aquila, badly damaged in the 2009 earthquake, has been largely rebuilt. It’s the closest of these regions to Rome, about two hours by car or bus. Local resource: Abruzzo Turismo.

Molise

Italians joke that “il Molise non esiste”: Molise doesn’t exist. It’s the second-smallest region after the Aosta Valley, with fewer than 300,000 people, and along with Aosta it’s the only region without a UNESCO World Heritage Site. That’s exactly the appeal. Molise has the ruins of the Samnites, the tribe that fought Rome for decades (their theater at Pietrabbondante is a wonder), the walled Roman town of Saepinum, a small walled old town on the sea at Termoli, and ferries from Termoli to the Tremiti Islands. Expect few English speakers and prices that feel like a different decade. Local resource: Italia.it on Molise.

Basilicata

Basilicata used to be the region Italians pitied. Carlo Levi’s Christ Stopped at Eboli described the poverty he found in exile here in the 1930s, and the cave dwellings of Matera were emptied by the government in the 1950s. Today Matera’s Sassi are a UNESCO site (since 1993), the town was European Capital of Culture in 2019, and you can sleep in a restored cave hotel. Beyond Matera, the region has a short, dramatic stretch of Tyrrhenian coast at Maratea, the ghost town of Craco, and a share of Pollino, the largest national park in Italy. Local resource: Basilicata Turistica.

Calabria

The toe of the boot has more coastline than almost anywhere in Italy, and much of it is still low-key outside August. Tropea, a town on a cliff above white sand, is the famous one. The real reason to come, though, is in the National Archaeological Museum of Magna Graecia in Reggio Calabria: the Riace Bronzes, two Greek warriors cast in the 5th century BC and found by a diver in 1972. Inland are the forests of the Sila and Aspromonte, and everywhere there’s ’nduja, the spicy spreadable salami from Spilinga. Read our Calabria guide. Local resource: Calabria Straordinaria.

Puglia

Fair warning: Puglia is no longer off the beaten path. The trulli of Alberobello (UNESCO since 1996), Polignano a Mare and baroque Lecce are busy all summer. It’s still worth it, and still far less crowded than Tuscany once you step away from those. Base yourself in a masseria (a fortified farmhouse, many now hotels) in the Valle d’Itria, or head for the Gargano peninsula in the north or the far tip of the Salento, where the Adriatic meets the Ionian. Bari and Brindisi both have airports. Local resource: Italia.it on Puglia.

Le Marche

If you want what people go to Tuscany for, the hill towns, farmhouses and Renaissance art, with a fraction of the visitors, Le Marche is the answer. Urbino, Raphael’s birthplace and a UNESCO site, is one of the finest Renaissance towns in Italy. The Conero Riviera south of Ancona has the region’s best beaches, the Frasassi caves are enormous, and the Sibillini mountains are superb walking country. Le Marche also has an astonishing number of small historic theaters; several joined the UNESCO list in 2026. Local resource: Turismo Marche.

Friuli Venezia Giulia

Tucked into the northeast corner against Slovenia and Austria, Friuli Venezia Giulia feels half Central European. Trieste was the Habsburg Empire’s great port, and it still has grand cafes and a coffee culture all its own, with its own names for the drinks, so ask before you order. Aquileia has Roman ruins and some of the largest early Christian floor mosaics anywhere, Cividale del Friuli has Lombard treasures, and Palmanova is a perfect nine-pointed star fortress, all three on the UNESCO list. Add San Daniele ham and the white wines of the Collio. Local resource: Turismo FVG.

Trentino-Alto Adige

Two provinces, two cultures. Trentino is Italian-speaking; South Tyrol (Alto Adige) was Austrian until 1919 and most people there still speak German first. Both share the Dolomites, a UNESCO site since 2009 and some of the most spectacular mountains in Europe, with a network of mountain huts (rifugi) that makes hut-to-hut hiking easy in summer. In Bolzano you can see Ötzi, the 5,300-year-old iceman found in a glacier in 1991, and in December the Christmas markets in Bolzano, Merano and Trento are the best in Italy. Riva del Garda, at the top of Lake Garda, is in Trentino too. See our Trentino-Alto Adige guide. Local resources: Visit Trentino and South Tyrol.

Aosta Valley

Italy’s smallest region is one long valley running up to Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn, and French is an official language alongside Italian. Aosta itself has so many Roman walls, gates and theater ruins that it gets called the Rome of the Alps. On the valley’s south side is Gran Paradiso, which became Italy’s first national park in 1922 and is the easiest place in the Alps to see ibex. Come for skiing in winter, hiking in summer and fontina cheese all year. See our Aosta Valley page. Local resource: Lovevda.

Piedmont

Piedmont is where the Kingdom of Italy began, and Turin, its first capital, is an elegant city of arcades, chocolate and the Egyptian Museum, one of the finest collections of Egyptian antiquities outside Cairo. South of Turin, the vineyard hills of the Langhe, Roero and Monferrato (a UNESCO site since 2014) produce Barolo and Barbaresco, and Alba’s white truffle fair runs through the autumn. The Slow Food movement started in Bra. If you love food and wine and don’t need a beach, start here. Local resource: Visit Piemonte.

Emilia-Romagna

It’s hardly unknown, but most foreign visitors still only pass through Emilia-Romagna on the train between Florence and Venice. Stop. This is the home of Parmigiano Reggiano, prosciutto di Parma, balsamic vinegar, mortadella and fresh egg pasta. Bologna’s porticoes became a UNESCO site in 2021, Ravenna has the finest Byzantine mosaics in the West, and Modena and Maranello are Ferrari country. The cities are an hour or less apart by train, so it’s one of the easiest regions to see without a car. Local resource: Emilia Romagna Turismo.

Sardinia

About 200 kilometers west of the mainland, Sardinia barely feels Italian, and Sardinians will tell you it isn’t. It has its own language, thousands of Bronze Age stone towers called nuraghi (the complex at Barumini is a UNESCO site), and prehistoric rock-cut tombs, the domus de janas, that joined the UNESCO list in 2025. The Costa Smeralda is for yachts; the Gulf of Orosei and the southwest coast are for the rest of us, with water as clear as anything in the Caribbean. Ferries run from Genoa, Livorno and Civitavecchia. Local resource: Sardegna Turismo.

And the Valtellina

This whole page started with a Guardian article about the Valtellina, the long Alpine valley in Lombardy north of Lake Como, an area that hadn’t attracted much tourist or expat interest. Why? Perhaps because:

The Valtellina Valley in northern Italy is described by the Lonely Planet guides as one of the country’s ‘least attractive Alpine regions’. But Italy is such a beautiful country that its less attractive parts can still be stunning. It is a bit like the Miss World contenders who do not reach the final but are still traffic-stoppers.

The Valtellina got its moment in 2026, when Bormio and Livigno hosted snow events at the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics. It’s still a lovely, under-visited place: terraced vineyards making Sforzato red wine, bresaola and buckwheat pizzoccheri, the thermal baths at Bormio, and the red trains of the Bernina line, which climb from Tirano over the Alps into Switzerland. And while some parts of Italy would be harder to live in as an expat, being a couple of hours from Milan by train would help immensely. Y’know, for when you’d need an Armani fix. Local resource: Valtellina tourism.

How to Explore the Quieter Regions

• Rent a car. Trains serve the cities well, but in Abruzzo, Molise, Basilicata, inland Calabria and Sardinia you’ll want to drive. Read up on renting a car in Italy and watch for the camera-enforced ZTL zones in old town centers.
• Stay in an agriturismo. Farm stays are the best lodging in the rural south and often the best dinner too.
• Learn a little Italian. English is much less common here than in Florence. Our Italian language page has the basics.
• Avoid August on the coasts. This is when all of Italy goes to the beach. June and September are better, and the mountains are best from late June to mid-September.

For all 20 regions, see our guide to the regions of Italy.