Italy Bucket List

Walk to the rim of the volcano that buried Pompeii, with the whole Bay of Naples at your feet

Share a colossal T-bone steak, charred rare over wood — Florence’s carnivore centrepiece

Lampedusa's elegiac novel of a Sicilian prince watching his world dissolve in the 1860s

Eat the "king of cheeses" where it’s made — aged in giant wheels stamped by the consortium

Fellini's portrait of glamour and emptiness in 1960 Rome — and the original Trevi Fountain scene

Primo Levi's clear-eyed memoir of survival in Auschwitz — essential, unforgettable witness

Umberto Eco's labyrinthine medieval murder mystery, set in a doomed monastery library

Walk through chapels decorated entirely with the bones of 3,700 Capuchin friars

Trek the high cliff trail above the Amalfi Coast, the sea shimmering 500 m below

Feel the madness of a bareback horse race round a medieval square, 90 seconds of pure tribal passion

Stand before the 5.17 m marble David — Michelangelo's flawless Renaissance colossus in Florence

Sip the "king of wines" among the UNESCO vineyard hills of Piedmont, ideally in white-truffle season

Step inside the best-preserved Roman building — a 2,000-year-old concrete dome open to the sky

Wander a surreal 16th-century garden of giant stone monsters, a tilting house and an ogre’s mouth

Bathe in warm sulphur water cascading over natural limestone terraces in the Tuscan countryside

Toss a coin over your shoulder into Rome’s baroque masterpiece to guarantee your return

Ferry between baroque palace-gardens and a fishing-village island on a serene pre-Alpine lake

Eat the real "bolognese" — slow ragù on fresh egg tagliatelle, never on spaghetti

Cross a footbridge to "the dying town" — a near-deserted village marooned on a crumbling tufa pinnacle

Summit the highest peak of the Apennines, looming over a high plateau called "Little Tibet"

Elena Ferrante's fierce four-book saga of female friendship across decades in postwar Naples

Cheer the pink jersey on a mountain hairpin at Italy's great three-week cycling race

Crack into a crisp fried shell piped with sweet ricotta — filled to order, never soggy

Eggs, pecorino, black pepper and crisp guanciale — and absolutely no cream

Loop beneath the three iconic rock towers — the most famous silhouette in the Dolomites

Walk among red icons at the Ferrari shrine, in the Emilia "Motor Valley" that also births Lamborghini and Ducati

Drink the Black Rooster wine where it’s made — among vineyards and castles between Florence and Siena

Tear into a fresh ball of buffalo-milk mozzarella in Campania, still warm and dripping whey

Bite a sandwich of herb-roasted whole suckling pig, crackling and all, from a market van

Tear into a tall, airy Milanese Christmas cake studded with candied fruit and raisins