Drink an Italian grappa

Three thousand years of art, twenty regions of cooking, and a coastline that never quits — Italy is Europe's greatest hits

A city built on water with no cars — gondolas, Byzantine mosaics, and getting happily lost in the back canals

The 50,000-seat amphitheatre where Rome staged its bloodiest spectacles for 2,000 years

Eat properly handmade pasta — egg-rich tagliatelle in the north, bronze-cut durum in the south

Bite into the original — a 60-second wood-fired margherita in the city that invented pizza

Climb 251 spiralling steps up the world's most famous architectural mistake — tilting since 1173

Loud, ancient and alive — the birthplace of pizza, gateway to Pompeii, Vesuvius and the Amalfi Coast

Glide the back canals by gondola — touristy, yes, but silent, ancient and unrepeatable anywhere else