Italy unusual places to visit

Autumn is the best season for stargazing in Italy. The nights are getting longer, the air becomes drier and clearer, and light pollution is less of a problem in more remote areas. From the Alps to the islands, Italy is home to observatories, astronomical parks, and plateaus where the Milky Way is once again visible to the naked eye. Here, then, are some of the best places to see the stars in autumn in Italy.

Some people decide to build a house not to live in, but to cut off their neighbour's electricity. Or they move their home brick by brick, rather than give in to pressure from an administration. These aren't movie gimmicks, but true stories, in Italy and around the world. Spite houses—called spite houses in the Anglo-Saxon world—are constructions born from personal conflicts, inheritance disputes, neighbour quarrels, and disputes with institutions. From Sicily to Bergamo and Beirut, some have become tourist attractions; others have entered architectural history books.

Rome has no shortage of headline acts. The Colosseum, the Trevi Fountain and the Vatican draw the crowds, while areas such as Trastevere and Monti tend to dominate the neighbourhood chat.

Some places are able to become film sets with hardly any alteration at all: spaces with such obvious grandeur that artificial scenery feels unnecessary. The Royal Palace of Caserta is one of them. A UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1997 and a towering achievement of Italian Baroque architecture designed by Luigi Vanvitelli, this extraordinary royal residence has appealed to directors across the world, including George Lucas, Ron Howard and J.J. Abrams.

There is a point on the approach to Civita di Bagnoregio when the modern world rather abruptly falls away. A long pedestrian bridge crosses a deep valley towards a cluster of honey-coloured stone houses, seemingly detached from the rest of Lazio. At a distance it looks almost too neat to be real.

Off north-west Sardinia, Italy’s car-free prison island with rare white donkeys is a place of pale coves, wind-swept cliffs and quiet roads where the animals amble freely.Closed to the public for 112 years, it served first as a quarantine station and penal colony, then as a prisoner-of-war camp and,

In one Italian village, houses, stairways and bell towers follow the mountain ridge as if they are trying to reach the sky.

High in the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines, San Pellegrino in Alpe is the sort of place that makes a road trip feel properly rewarding.

At more than 4,500 metres above sea level, where thin air makes every breath harder and the night sky puts on an unequalled display, stands a building unlike any other in Europe. A wooden cabin, perched on Punta Gnifetti in the Monte Rosa massif, has held the continental record as Europe’s high

A mountain road in Piedmont has reopened for 2026 after its winter closure.

The Gentlemen, the Netflix series created by Guy Ritchie, features sweeping fields, historic houses, London clubs and, in its second season, available since 3 September 2026, even Italian lakes.

Each year, as summer gives way to the cooler air of inland Sardinia, one of the island’s most authentic cultural events gets underway. Autumn in Barbagia 2026 opens up the villages of central Sardinia between September and December, turning old courtyards, craft workshops and wine cellars into

It is neither a pub legend nor a temporary installation. In Abruzzo, there is a wine fountain that pours Montepulciano d’Abruzzo day and night, free of charge, for anyone who approaches with a glass. The Abruzzo wine fountain is a permanent feature within a working winery, created for walkers and travellers making their way through the coast and hills.

Prince Salina knew that “if we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change”. On Pantelleria, one of Italy’s most remote islands, time seems to have taken that line quite literally.

A tiny hilltop settlement in Lombardy has earned its identity through a free-roaming feline colony that has lived among its stone houses and lanes for generations.

A supermarket in Venice is drawing attention for a detail that has nothing to do with pasta offers or the weekly shop. Despar Teatro Italia occupies a former Neo-Gothic and Art Nouveau theatre, where original decorative details and a ceiling fresco remain in place above the shelves.The unusual

A medieval castle on the Lazio coast played an unexpected part in Cleopatra (1963), the Hollywood epic starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

There is no need to travel as far as England to see a genuine English-style garden in Italy. Liguria has one overlooking the sea, with blooms that have few rivals in the country. On the hillside above Alassio, the Gardens of Villa della Pergola combine Mediterranean views with exceptional botanical collections, including iconic wisteria and a record-breaking collection of agapanthus.

Rome has an old riddle hidden in plain sight.

Italy has more than 7,400 kilometres of coastline, yet every summer millions of people end up on the same beaches, at the same stabilimenti — beach clubs — and in the same resorts. A short distance from the best-trodden routes, there are lesser-known seaside towns where beaches can still be qui

Elba may seem familiar at first, until you come across corners that change the picture entirely: a green lagoon where swimming is forbidden, a black beach reached only by taking the walk slowly, and a fortress that never fell under siege. These are six unusual, lesser-visited places on Elba, giving a different perspective on Tuscany’s best-known island in the archipelago.

In a small village in Tuscany’s Valdarno Aretino, the sound of running water is part of daily life.

How relevant can the art of getting lost still be? In Italy, more than you might think. Across lagoon islands, historic parks and Alpine settings, mazes are once again becoming places to experience, photograph and talk about. The following selection, covering Venice, Parma and Verona, brings together five mazes recognised for their appeal, history and originality, already popular with families and enthusiasts.

A village of stone houses, a bell tower rising from the sumac bushes, and the sound of water still flowing along the valley floor. It looks like a movie set from another era, but it's real: Cunziria, an ancient 19th-century tannery village near Vizzini, in the province of Catania.

Can people still live in a village with no roads, where the sea is the only way in and night is properly dark?On the south-western side of Stromboli, that is everyday life. One village is cut off by steep slopes and volcanic rock, so no cars, no scooters, no constant background noise.