Day-by-day programme of this 12-day itinerary across Rome, Florence, Cinque Terre and Venice.
Day 1 — Arrival in Rome
A travel day and a first taste of the Eternal City: arrive at Termini, drop the bags and wander unhurried between the Pantheon, Piazza Navona and the Trevi Fountain.
- ✈️ Milano Centrale → Roma Termini — Piazza dei Cinquecento, Roma
- 📍 Pantheon — The best-preserved monument of ancient Rome: two thousand years old, with the largest unreinforced concrete dome ever built and an open oculus that swings daylight around the rotunda like a sundial. Raphael and the kings of Italy rest inside. It is the perfect starting point for Rome: out on the square, two lanes to the west and the Baroque ellipse of Piazza Navona opens up.
- 📍 Piazza Navona — Built over the stadium of Domitian, it keeps its exact shape: an ellipse of ochre palaces around Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers, with street artists, cafés and the church of Sant'Agnese by his rival Borromini. This is Rome's Baroque drawing room, best circled slowly at sunset. Then back across the Corso: fifteen minutes of lanes and you hear the water before you see it — the Trevi Fountain is around the corner.
- 📍 Trevi Fountain — Twenty-six metres of travertine marble squeezed into a little square that seems too small to hold them: Oceanus on his chariot drawn by sea horses, the water booming between the buildings. Tossing a coin with your right hand over your left shoulder is the ritual that promises a return to Rome — and with three days ahead, the return is already guaranteed. Dinner in the surrounding lanes and early to bed: the Colosseum opens tomorrow morning.
- 🏨 Hotel Navona — Centro storico, Roma
Day 2 — Ancient Rome
Empire day: the Colosseum at opening time, the Forums and the Palatine, the view from the Altare della Patria. In the evening, cross the Tiber for dinner in Trastevere.
- 📍 Colosseum — The largest amphitheatre ever built: fifty thousand spectators, eighty numbered entrances, a system of lifts and trapdoors under the arena that worked like stage machinery. Book the first slot and, if you can, the ticket with arena or underground access: you feel the difference. Out past the Arch of Constantine, the Via Sacra climbs ahead: the Roman Forum begins exactly where the generals' triumphal parades used to end.
- 📍 Roman Forum — For a thousand years the fate of the known world was decided here: you walk the Via Sacra between the Arch of Septimius Severus, the House of the Vestals and the rostra from which Cicero spoke. Then climb the Palatine Hill, where Romulus traced the founding furrow and the emperors built their palaces: from the terrace the view sweeps the whole Forum on one side and the Circus Maximus on the other. You exit by the Capitoline, where the white mass of the Altare della Patria closes the view.
- 📍 Altare della Patria — The Vittoriano has divided Romans for a century, but everyone agrees on one thing: the panoramic terrace on top, reached by a glass lift, gives the most complete view of the city — the Forums on one side, the domes of the centre on the other. Below, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier with its guard of honour. Back down at Piazza Venezia, tram 8 crosses the Tiber in ten minutes: Trastevere is on the far bank, and dinner is well earned.
- 🍽️ Tonnarello — Steps from Santa Maria in Trastevere, this is the Roman trattoria in its most direct form: tonnarelli cacio e pepe, carbonara, meatballs in tomato sauce and artichokes in season, little tables out on the cobbles and almost always a queue — it moves fast. After dinner, getting lost in Trastevere's lanes with a gelato in hand is the right way to end the day: yellow street lamps, washing lines, tiny squares. Tomorrow you change country: you enter the Vatican.
Day 3 — The Vatican
Early start for the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel, then St Peter's Basilica with the climb up the dome. Afternoon along the Tiber to Castel Sant'Angelo, closing at the Spanish Steps.
- 📍 Vatican Museums — Seven kilometres of galleries amassed by five hundred years of popes: the Laocoön, Raphael's Rooms, the Gallery of Maps, and at the end of the route the Sistine Chapel, where Michelangelo's Last Judgement silences even the noisiest groups. Book the first entry and head straight for the Sistine, then double back at leisure. On exit, the staircase to the right leads in a few minutes to Bernini's colonnade: St Peter's awaits.
- 📍 St Peter's Basilica — The largest church in Christendom: Michelangelo's Pietà behind glass just inside on the right, Bernini's baldachin above the apostle's tomb, and a staircase (or a lift halfway) climbing inside the dome up to the lantern — the effort of 551 steps is forgotten at the sight of the square and city below. Entry is free but the security queue can be long: bring patience. Then walk down Via della Conciliazione, straight towards the round castle on the river.
- 📍 Castel Sant'Angelo — Born as Hadrian's mausoleum, it became a fortress, a prison and the popes' refuge (the elevated passetto still links it to the Vatican): inside you spiral up through Renaissance halls to the angel's terrace, with the Tiber and the domes at your feet. In front, Ponte Sant'Angelo with Bernini's angels is Rome's most theatrical bridge. Cross it and head north-east through the centre: the last Roman evening deserves the world's most famous staircase.
- 📍 Piazza di Spagna — The Spanish Steps at sunset, with the elder Bernini's Barcaccia fountain gurgling below and Via dei Condotti glittering ahead: this is postcard Rome, and for once the postcard tells the truth. Climb the 135 steps for a last view over the rooftops, then a farewell dinner in the lanes around Via Margutta, the artists' street. Pack tonight with the alarm set: tomorrow morning the Frecciarossa glides to Florence in an hour and a half.
Day 4 — Train to Florence
Morning on the high-speed train, afternoon in the heart of Florence: Brunelleschi's dome, Piazza della Signoria and sunset from the Ponte Vecchio.
- ✈️ Roma Termini → Firenze Santa Maria Novella — Piazza della Stazione, Firenze
- 📍 Florence Cathedral — Florence's Duomo announces itself from every street in the centre: white, green and pink marble, Giotto's bell tower and above all Brunelleschi's dome, the largest masonry dome ever built, raised without scaffolding thanks to a double shell that in 1436 seemed a miracle. The 463-step climb passes between the two shells and emerges above the city: book days ahead. Back down, Via dei Calzaiuoli leads straight to the square of Florentine power.
- 📍 Piazza della Signoria — Florence's civic drawing room is an open-air museum: the copy of David in front of Palazzo Vecchio (you'll see the original tomorrow), Cellini's Perseus under the Loggia dei Lanzi, the Neptune fountain and the plaque where Savonarola burned. Sit on the loggia steps and watch the square live its life. Then take the passage towards the Arno alongside the Uffizi: the bridge of goldsmiths is three minutes away, and the light is just right.
- 📍 Ponte Vecchio — The only bridge in Florence spared by the war, lined with goldsmiths' shops ever since the Medici evicted the butchers because the Vasari Corridor running above it was not to smell anything unpleasant. At sunset the shop windows light up and the Arno turns copper: the best photo is from the next bridge over, Ponte Santa Trinita. Dinner in the Oltrarno with a bistecca alla fiorentina: tomorrow is museum day, and you will need the energy.
- 🏨 Hotel della Signoria — Centro storico, Firenze
Day 5 — Florence of the masterpieces
David at the Accademia at opening time, lunch at the Mercato Centrale, afternoon at the Uffizi and grand finale at Piazzale Michelangelo for sunset over the whole city.
- 📍 Accademia Gallery — You come here for him: David, four metres of marble carved by a twenty-six-year-old Michelangelo from a block others had rejected. Seen in person, at the end of the gallery of unfinished Prisoners who seem to struggle out of the stone, the effect is something no photo prepares you for. Book the first entry and you will have the room almost to yourself. Outside, a five-minute walk towards San Lorenzo takes you into the city's gastronomic belly: the Mercato Centrale.
- 🍽️ Mercato Centrale Florence — San Lorenzo's nineteenth-century covered market on two floors: downstairs the historic stalls of fruit, meat and salt cod, upstairs a food hall serving lampredotto, fresh pasta, pizza and cantucci with vin santo. The Florentine ritual is the lampredotto sandwich, dipped in its own broth: purists get it at the Nerbone counter on the ground floor, in business since 1872. Recharged, head down towards the Arno: the Uffizi opens your afternoon of masterpieces.
- 📍 Uffizi Gallery — The world's most important collection of Renaissance art, housed in the administrative offices Vasari designed for the Medici: Botticelli's Primavera and Birth of Venus side by side, Michelangelo's Doni Tondo, Leonardo's Annunciation, the Caravaggios at the end of the route. Three hours vanish unnoticed; always book the ticket. On exit, cross the Arno at Ponte Vecchio and walk up (or take bus 12): sunset has a precise address, and it is on a hill.
- 📍 Piazzale Michelangelo — The terrace above the Oltrarno is the spot where Florence lets itself be seen whole: Brunelleschi's dome ruling the rooftops, Palazzo Vecchio, the Arno with its bridges in a row. At sunset it fills with people sitting on the steps, glass in hand, and the atmosphere is that of a small collective ritual. On the way down, stop at the Romanesque basilica of San Miniato if it is still open. No packing tomorrow, but it is an early start: the Tuscany of towers awaits.
Day 6 — Siena and San Gimignano
A day trip into the heart of Tuscany: the shell of Piazza del Campo in Siena, the striped cathedral, then the medieval towers of San Gimignano and the world-champion gelato. Back to Florence in the evening.
- 📍 Piazza del Campo — From Florence it takes just over an hour (rental car or bus 131 from the station: the bus gets you closer to the centre). And there it is: the shell-shaped square divided into nine brick segments, tilted like a theatre towards the Palazzo Pubblico and the Torre del Mangia. Twice a year the Palio horse race is run here; the other 363 days you sit on the ground like everyone else, sun on your face. Climb the tower's 400 steps and the Sienese clay hills stretch to the horizon. A few steps away, behind the lanes, the black and white stripes of the cathedral appear.
- 📍 Siena Cathedral — Striped black and white inside and out, the colours of Siena's balzana: the floor is a carpet of 56 marble inlay panels other cathedrals can only dream of (fully uncovered only a few months a year), the Piccolomini Library bursts with Pinturicchio frescoes and Nicola Pisano carved the pulpit. Lunch in the lanes — pici cacio e pepe and a cantuccio — then back on the road: an hour through the hills of Chianti and Val d'Elsa, and the towers of San Gimignano rise on the horizon.
- 📍 San Gimignano — The Manhattan of the Middle Ages: of the 72 towers with which wealthy families competed in height, 14 remain — enough to give the village a skyline unique in the world, a UNESCO site. Climb from Porta San Giovanni along the artisans' street to Piazza della Cisterna, with its well in the middle and medieval houses all around; from the Torre Grossa the Val d'Elsa is a sea of vineyards and cypresses. And before leaving there is one sweet obligation, ten metres from the well.
- 🍽️ Gelateria Dondoli — Sergio Dondoli has twice won the gelato world championship and the queue outside his window on Piazza della Cisterna tells the story on its own. The local flavours: Crema di Santa Fina with San Gimignano saffron and Champelmo with pink grapefruit and sparkling wine. Cone in hand, one last lap of the walls at sunset, then back to Florence for the final Tuscan night: tomorrow you return to the rails, heading for the sea.
Day 7 — Pisa and the Cinque Terre
Leaving Florence: a stop in Pisa for the Square of Miracles, then a train along the coast to Monterosso, the largest of the five villages. Afternoon of beach and anchovies.
- ✈️ Firenze Santa Maria Novella → Pisa Centrale — Piazza della Stazione, Pisa
- 📍 Leaning Tower of Pisa — It has leaned for eight and a half centuries, nearly fell in the 1990s and was straightened by half a degree: climbing its 294 spiral steps, feeling the floor tilt beneath your feet, is an experience worth the booking. Around it, the Square of Miracles is a green lawn on which float the Romanesque cathedral and Italy's largest baptistery, where every half hour the custodian sings to demonstrate the echo. Ritual photo taken, head back to the station: the sea is an hour away by train.
- ✈️ Pisa Centrale → Monterosso al Mare — Stazione di Monterosso, Cinque Terre
- 📍 Fegina Beach — Monterosso is the only one of the five villages with a real beach: orange-striped umbrellas facing green water, the Giant statue carved into the rock at the far end of the seafront. The right afternoon to slow down after six days of cities: a swim, a walk to the old village through the pedestrian tunnel, an aperitivo with Monterosso anchovies — fried, marinated or salt-cured — which are a religion here. Tomorrow you walk: the trail to Vernazza starts at the end of town.
- 🏨 Hotel Marina — Monterosso al Mare, Cinque Terre
Day 8 — The villages of the Cinque Terre
The most scenic day: the Sentiero Azzurro trail to Vernazza, then the train between villages — Manarola's viewpoint, Riomaggiore's lanes — and back to Monterosso for a last Ligurian dinner.
- 🎯 Monterosso - Vernazza Trail — The most beautiful stretch of the Sentiero Azzurro: two hours among dry-stone walls, terraced vineyards, lemon trees and vertical glimpses of the sea, with the moment that repays it all — Vernazza appearing from above, gathered around its little harbour as if in a photograph. You need proper shoes, water and the Cinque Terre Card (the trail is ticketed); in summer start early, the sun shows no mercy. The descent ends right in the village lanes, just in time for a harbour-view lunch.
- 📍 Vernazza — For many the most beautiful of the five villages: the little square on the harbour with boats pulled ashore, the Gothic church of Santa Margherita with its feet in the water, the Doria castle that kept watch for pirates. Lunch on trofie al pesto or a quick paper cone of fried seafood, then a dive off the pier for the brave. From the station in the middle of the village, the Cinque Terre Express threads two tunnels and drops you at the village of the most famous postcard: Manarola.
- 📍 Manarola — The climb to Punta Bonfiglio, above the little harbour, gives you the view you have already seen a thousand times without knowing it: pastel houses stacked on black rock, boats hung along the cliff, the sea foaming below. It is the most photographed spot in the Cinque Terre, and the afternoon light is perfect. A wander through the carruggi and a glass of sciacchetrà at a wine bar if you like, then back on the train: three minutes and you are in Riomaggiore, the last village of the day.
- 📍 Riomaggiore — The easternmost and most vertical village: the main street drops steeply between Ligurian tower-houses to the little marina, where at sunset the rocks fill with people holding paper cones of fried fish from Il Pescato Cucinato. It is the right finale for the day: the colours flare up, the boats come home. The Cinque Terre Express takes you back to Monterosso for a last night by the sea; tomorrow the train crosses the whole plain to the city on the water.
Day 9 — Train to Venice
A morning of travel across the plain, an afternoon of wonder: you step out of Santa Lucia station directly onto the Grand Canal. Rialto, the bacari and cicchetti for dinner.
- ✈️ Monterosso al Mare → Venezia Santa Lucia — Fondamenta Santa Lucia, Venezia
- 📍 Rialto Bridge — The right way to meet Venice is to get lost on the way: from Santa Lucia follow the flow along Strada Nova or, better, slip into the wrong alleys until you emerge at the stone bridge that for centuries was the only one over the Grand Canal. From the balustrade you watch vaporetti and gondolas cross beneath; around you, the Rialto market is packing up its stalls. It is aperitivo time, and in these parts the aperitivo has a precise name: you go bacaro-hopping.
- 🍽️ Cantina Do Mori — Venice's oldest bacaro, open since 1462: dark wooden counter, copper pots on the ceiling, no tables. You dine the Venetian way, standing, with an ombra of wine and cicchetti: creamed baccalà, sarde in saor, francobolli (tiny tramezzini). Then carry on from bacaro to bacaro between San Polo and Rialto, as Venetians have done for five centuries. Ride home on vaporetto 1 along the floodlit Grand Canal: tomorrow morning, St Mark's.
- 🏨 Hotel Antico Doge — Sestiere San Marco, Venezia
Day 10 — St Mark's and the Doge's Palace
The golden basilica at opening, the Doges' palace with the Bridge of Sighs, and in the afternoon the gondola ritual and the Dorsoduro district out to the customs point.
- 📍 St Mark's Basilica — A thousand years of plunder and devotion in a single church: the four bronze horses brought from Constantinople, eight thousand square metres of gold mosaics that ignite with the light, the gem-studded Pala d'Oro behind the altar. Book your entry and climb to the horses' loggia: the square seen from up there, with its nineteenth-century cafés and bell towers, is already a painting. Outside, the Gothic façade next door is your next ticket: the palace from which the Mediterranean was ruled.
- 📍 Doge's Palace — The Gothic lace of pink and white stone hides the Serenissima's machine of power: the Golden Staircase, the Great Council hall with Tintoretto's Paradise — the largest canvas in the world — and then the passage everyone waits for, the Bridge of Sighs crossed from inside, with that last view of the lagoon that drew a sigh from prisoners on their way to the cells. A quick lunch in the lanes behind the square, then to the Bacino Orseolo pier: there is one appointment in Venice that cannot be skipped.
- 🎯 Gondola ride, Bacino Orseolo — Yes, it is the most touristy thing you can do in Venice. And yes, you should do it anyway: thirty minutes gliding through the minor canals no vaporetto can reach, under private bridges and palaces crumbling with elegance, with only the sound of the oar. The fare is fixed and can be split between up to five passengers; the inner-canal route beats the Grand Canal one. Back ashore, head south towards the district of artists and students: Dorsoduro, for the right kind of sunset.
- 📍 Punta della Dogana — The tip of Dorsoduro is Venice's prow: the Grand Canal and the Salute on one side, the Giudecca canal on the other, and ahead St Mark's and its campanile floating in the evening light. You arrive strolling along the Zattere, perhaps with a gianduiotto from Nico in hand, and linger on the steps watching the ships. Dinner in a Dorsoduro osteria among Ca' Foscari students. Tomorrow the lagoon widens: you go island-hopping, among glass and painted houses.
Day 11 — Murano and Burano
A day on the lagoon: the glassmasters' furnaces on Murano, Burano's rainbow houses with biscuits fresh from the oven, and a last evening in a finally empty St Mark's Square.
- 📍 Murano — Vaporetto 4.1 or 12 from Fondamente Nove takes ten minutes: Venice's glassmakers have worked here since 1291, confined to the island so their furnaces would not set the city ablaze. Step into a furnace to watch a master pull a glass horse from the fire in thirty seconds of exact gestures, then stroll along the canal among the workshops — beware of prices that are too low, real Murano glass costs. Back on vaporetto 12, half an hour of open lagoon and Burano's bright colours rise on the horizon.
- 📍 Burano — The fishermen's island where every house is a different colour — so the fishermen could recognise them in the fog, they say — is a photogenic maze of fuchsia, turquoise and lemon yellow around the leaning bell tower of San Martino. A fish lunch in a canal-side trattoria (risotto de gò is the traditional dish), then a wander among real and fake lace: the authentic needle-made pieces by the last lacemakers are recognisable by their price. And before the vaporetto, one fragrant bakery stop.
- 🍽️ Panificio Pasticceria Palmisano Carmelina — The smell of butter will lead you there on its own: this is where you buy bussolà buranei, the ring-shaped butter-and-egg biscuits fishermen took to sea, and essi, the same dough shaped like an S. One bag for tomorrow's journey and one to finish straight away on the vaporetto home, watching the lagoon turn pink. Back in Venice, save your energy for the last evening: the world's most famous square is at its best after sunset.
- 📍 St Mark's Square — In the evening the square Napoleon called Europe's most elegant drawing room returns to the Venetians and to those who linger: the little orchestras of Florian and Quadri answer each other across the stones, the basilica glows gold under the floodlights, and sometimes the acqua alta mirrors it all. A coffee at the tables costs as much as a dinner — the music supplement is the ticket to the world's most beautiful concert. One last walk to the waterfront to bid the lagoon goodnight: tomorrow the circle closes.
Day 12 — Last market and the journey home
A last Venetian breakfast and a stroll through the Rialto market before the train. The trip ends as it began: at the window, with Italy rolling by.
- 📍 Rialto Market — Venice has done its shopping here for a thousand years: under the neo-Gothic arcades of the Pescaria, the stalls display cuttlefish, moeche crabs and sea bass landed at dawn, next to the erbaria with Sant'Erasmo baby artichokes. This is the real Venice of baskets and voices, the one day-trippers never see. One last espresso at a counter watching the Grand Canal, then vaporetto 1 up to Santa Lucia: the train is waiting.
- ✈️ Venezia Santa Lucia → Milano Centrale — Piazza Duca d'Aosta 1, Milano
