ITALY

Rome is not a city you visit — it is a city you survive and then miss for the rest of your life. The Colosseum, the Forum, and the Palatine Hill are a single combined site and require half a day. The Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel require another. The Pantheon is free and one of the best-preserved ancient buildings on Earth. But Rome's real texture lives elsewhere: in the aperitivo hour on Campo de' Fiori, the gelato at Giolitti on Via Uffici del Vicario (open since 1900), the pasta cacio e pepe at a trattoria in Testaccio, and the view from the Gianicolo hill at sunset over a city that has been continuously inhabited for 3,000 years.

Florence has more masterworks of Western art per square meter than any other city on Earth. The Uffizi houses Botticelli's Birth of Venus and Primavera, Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo. The Accademia has David. The Bargello has Donatello's work. The Duomo's dome — Brunelleschi's engineering miracle — can be climbed for the view across the terracotta rooftops. The Oltrarno neighborhood across the Arno is where Florentines actually live: the Mercato di Santo Spirito, the leather craftsmen on the back streets, the wine bars where a glass of Chianti Classico costs €4. Plan three days minimum.

Venice is sinking at approximately 2mm per year and experiencing increasingly severe flooding events (acqua alta) that close parts of the city. It will eventually become uninhabitable. This is not a reason not to go — it is a reason to go soon. The city is the most extraordinary feat of urban engineering in human history: 118 islands connected by 400 bridges, with no roads, no cars, and a transport system built on water. Arrive by train. Walk. Get lost. The correct areas are Dorsoduro, Cannaregio, and Castello — not San Marco, which is a theme park of itself. A cicchetti bar crawl through Cannaregio in the evening costs €15 and is how Venetians eat every night.

The Chianti wine road between Florence and Siena passes through a landscape that has been painted so many times it looks like art that has escaped its frame. The hill towns — Montepulciano, Montalcino, Pienza, San Gimignano — are each worth a half day. The wine in each is what the town is known for: Brunello di Montalcino, Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, the pecorino of Pienza with the local white wine. Rent a car. Drive slowly. Eat lunch in the town where you stop. This is the correct approach to Tuscany and it cannot be improved upon.