Top 5 Best Cities to Visit

Rome, Italy’s capital, is a sprawling, cosmopolitan city with nearly 3,000 years of globally influential art, architecture, and culture on display. Ancient ruins such as the Forum and the Colosseum evoke the power of the former Roman Empire. Vatican City, headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church, has St. Peter’s Basilica and the Vatican Museums, which house masterpieces such as Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel frescoes. The 18th-century Spanish Steps sit at the heart of Rome’s high-end shopping district, with designer boutiques lining Via Condotti and Via Borgognona. Visitors toss coins into the iconic, baroque Trevi Fountain. The Pantheon, dating to the second century A.D., holds Raphael’s Renaissance-era tomb. Rome’s hearty cuisine includes such traditional dishes as carbonara, amatriciana, and saltimbocca. After-dark activities range from seeing one of Verdi’s classic operas at Teatro dell’Opera to club-hopping in working-class Testaccio, once the city’s slaughterhouse district.

Venice, the capital of northern Italy’s Veneto region, is built on more than 100 small islands in a lagoon in the Adriatic Sea. It has no roads, just canals – including the Grand Canal thoroughfare – lined with Renaissance and Gothic palaces. The central square, Piazza San Marco, contains St. Mark’s Basilica, which is tiled with Byzantine mosaics, and the Campanile bell tower offering views of the city’s red roofs. The Gothic pink-and-white-marble Doge’s Palace sits on the east side of the piazza. Before the Christian holiday of Lent, this area becomes the epicenter of Venice's Carnival, where partygoers dress in elaborate masks and costumes. A gondola ride away is the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, an influential gallery of modern art, and the Galleria dell'Accademia, a museum of Renaissance-era and Vedutisti paintings. The covered Rialto footbridge leads to a market that supplies many of the city's fish-focused Venetian restaurants.

Florence, the capital of Italy’s Tuscany region, is home to many masterpieces of Renaissance art and architecture. One of its most iconic sights is the Duomo, a cathedral with a terracotta-tiled dome engineered by Brunelleschi and a bell tower by Giotto. The Galleria dell'Accademia displays Michelangelo’s “David” sculpture. The Uffizi Gallery exhibits Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus” and da Vinci’s “Annunciation.” Another architectural highlight is the Ponte Vecchio, a medieval stone-arch pedestrian bridge that’s packed with jewelry stores. Near the bridge, on the south bank of the Arno River, is massive Palazzo Pitti, once home to the powerful Medici family, showing works by such renowned artists as Raphael and Titian. On the north bank, the Piazza del Signoria is one of the city’s most visited squares thanks to the imposing Palazzo Vecchio (the town hall) and the much-photographed statue “Perseus with the Head of Medusa” by Cellini

Milan, a metropolis in Italy's northern Lombardy region, is a global capital of fashion and design. Home to the national stock exchange, it’s a financial hub also known for its high-end restaurants and shops. The Gothic Duomo di Milano cathedral and the Santa Maria Delle Grazie convent, housing Leonardo da Vinci’s mural “The Last Supper,” testify to centuries of art and culture. The cathedral shares the central Piazza del Duomo with the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. This glass-roofed, 19th-century arcade is now home to luxury shopping and upscale cafes serving classic Milanese food such as risotto and osso buco veal stew. Milan’s cultural scene centers on the 18th-century Teatro Alla Scala opera house and the Pinacoteca di Brera gallery, which houses centuries of Italian painting by artists such as Titian and Caravaggio. Twice a year the Quadrilatero d'Oro fashion district buzzes when catwalks take over neoclassical palaces for the famous Milan Fashion Weeks.

Amalfi is a town in a dramatic natural setting below steep cliffs on Italy’s southwest coast. Between the 9th and 11th centuries, it was the seat of a powerful maritime republic. The Arab-Norman Sant'Andrea cathedral at the heart of town, with its striped Byzantine facade, survives from this era. The Museo Arsenale Amalfi is a medieval shipyard-turned-exhibition space. Amalfi’s Chiostro del Paradiso has 13th-century Moorish cloisters around a tropical garden. The Valle dei Mulini ravine above the town is home to the Museo Della Carta (Museum of Paper), in a 13th-century mill with original working paper presses. Hiking trails in the valley overlook lemon groves and pastel buildings on hillside terraces. Many use the town as a base for exploring the beaches, forests, and mountains of the surrounding Amalfi Coast, picturesque Positano, and the hillside gardens and villas of Ravello. Boat tours leave from the marina, where there’s also a lively beach

Source: wikipedia