Italy at the right pace: Rome, Naples, and a week in Sicily I can't stop recommending
Mika Soren
The thing about Italy is that it punishes speed.
I went the first time with seven cities in ten days. Milan, Venice, Florence, Siena, Rome, Positano, Naples. A train every two days. A checklist mentality.
I saw everything and understood nothing.
The second trip I gave Rome four full days and didn’t leave. The third trip I went to Naples for a week and barely left the neighbourhood around my guesthouse because everything I wanted was already there.
The fourth trip: Sicily for nine days, a rented Fiat Panda, zero agenda. That’s the one I keep telling people to do.
Rome: the third trip is the one you actually live
Repeat visits to Rome compound in a way that doesn’t happen in most cities. The first time you’re doing monuments. The second time you start to understand the neighbourhood structure. The third time you stop trying to see it and start just being there.
Where I stayed (and where you should look): Pigneto and Prati are the two neighbourhoods I’d put money on. Pigneto is east of the centre, slightly rough around the edges, full of aperitivo bars and trattorie where nobody is trying to impress you. Prati is north of the Vatican, cleaner, quieter, genuinely good for a morning espresso and a walk along the Tiber. Stay in either of these and you immediately feel less like a tourist.
The Borghese Gallery problem. Book it a week in advance minimum. They limit entry strictly, which means it’s actually quiet inside, which means you get to stand in front of Bernini sculptures without someone’s selfie stick in your eyeline. The gallery is small enough to do in two hours. The gardens outside are free. Go for a run through the gardens in the morning and feel like you live there for forty-five minutes.
Trastevere in the early morning. Everyone knows Trastevere. Everyone goes to Trastevere for dinner and aperitivo and it fills up completely by 8pm. What fewer people do: go at 7am, when the market vendors are setting up and the cats are still sleeping on the church steps and there’s nobody there except some people waiting for the bread shop to open. Walk for an hour. Then come back for dinner when it’s full. You’ll like it more having seen both versions.
Where I actually ate in Rome:
Supplì Roma on Via di San Francesco a Ripa in Trastevere: fried rice balls stuffed with mozzarella and ragù, €2 each, eaten standing on the street, no reservation required. Da Enzo al 29: the kind of Roman trattoria that’s been there since 1935 and plans to stay. The cacio e pepe is not the prettiest thing you’ll eat but it might be the most correct. Book ahead. Flavio al Velavevodetto in Testaccio: eating next to the ancient rubbish mound is extremely specific and extremely good. The artichokes are not optional.
Naples: the place that made me understand Italy
Naples is loud and chaotic and nothing works the way you expect and the food is so extraordinary that I’ve genuinely lost patience with pizza everywhere else on earth.
I want to be direct about this: the pizza in Naples is a different thing from pizza everywhere else.
Different dough, different tomatoes, different water (this gets cited a lot and I think it’s probably real). The crust is thick and soft at the edges and charred in spots from the 400-degree wood oven and the whole thing collapses in the middle because it’s wet and that’s correct. You eat it at a small plastic table with a beer. You eat two. You think about a third.
Sorbillo and L’Antica Pizzeria da Michele are the two famous ones. The queues at both are significant. They are worth the queue. Michele has two pizzas on the menu: margherita and marinara. Order the margherita. Sit for twenty minutes. Leave having understood something.
The Spaccanapoli walk. The street that cuts straight through the old city. Do it at noon, when it’s maximum chaos: scooters weaving through crowds, market stalls, churches with their doors open, street food vendors. It is completely overwhelming. It is also the most alive place I’ve been in Europe.
The National Archaeological Museum. Has the best collection of objects from Pompeii and Herculaneum in existence. The Secret Cabinet (Roman erotic art) is now open to the public without the old permission system. The mosaics from the House of the Faun at Pompeii are in here. Give it half a day.
Pompeii itself. An hour from Naples by Circumvesuviana train. Go early. Wear good shoes. Bring more water than you think you need. It takes three to four hours to do it properly. The thing I didn’t expect: how intact it is. Not intact like a museum. Intact like someone left in a hurry.
Sicily: the right way to do it is slowly
The plan was seven days. I stayed nine.
Sicily is not Italy’s appendix.
It is its own thing: Greek temples, Arab-Norman churches, Baroque hill towns, beaches where the water is so clear it’s embarrassing. The food is different from the mainland. The pace is slower. People look at you slightly differently when you’re obviously a tourist who’s actually lingered.
The route I’d repeat: Palermo for three days. Train to Catania. A day at Etna. Rented car from Catania down to Agrigento (the Valley of the Temples is genuinely one of the most impressive ancient sites in the Mediterranean). Across to Marsala on the west coast for salt flats and wine. Up to Trapani. Erice by cable car for the view and the almond pastries. Done.
Eating in Palermo: The Ballarò market in the morning is one of the best markets I’ve been in anywhere. Street food culture here is serious: arancini, panelle (chickpea fritters), pani ca meusa (spleen sandwich, eat it before you know what it is). The market smells like fish and spices and frying and it’s EXCELLENT at 9am.
Eating in Catania: The fish market by Piazza del Duomo on weekday mornings. Fresh swordfish, tuna, sea urchins. Lunch at whatever trattoria looks full. Granita for breakfast (this is a real thing in Sicily and it’s correct: almond granita with a brioche at 8am).
Mondello beach outside Palermo in September: basically empty, warm enough to swim, a beach bar serving Aperol spritzes. I spent an entire afternoon there doing nothing and feel fine about this.
A few things worth knowing
Italian meal times are law. Lunch: 12:30-2:30pm. Dinner: 7:30pm at the absolute earliest, most places filling up at 8:30pm. Show up at 6pm expecting dinner and you will be staring at a closed kitchen.
Order the wine from the region. Every region has something good and inexpensive. Campania has Falanghina and Aglianico. Sicily has Nero d’Avola. Piedmont has Barbera. Don’t bring your Bordeaux preferences. Order local and trust the carafe.
Stand at the bar for espresso. Everywhere in Italy, espresso costs less at the bar (standing) than at a table with service. €1-1.50 standing, €3-4 sitting. It also tastes slightly better at the bar, possibly because standing at an Italian bar counter at 8am is the right context for espresso.
The art and the queues. The Uffizi in Florence, the Vatican Museums, the Colosseum: all need advance booking or you will spend an entire morning in a queue. Book online before you go. Not the day before. Before you leave home.
Staying connected in Italy is straightforward. Coverage is good across the main cities and tourist areas, though it drops in some rural parts of Sicily and the more remote hill towns in the south. Before my last trip I tested several eSIM options and wrote up which ones actually work in Italy if you want to skip the research.
Italy keeps giving as long as you give it time. Slow down. Eat two pizzas. Drive around Sicily with no particular agenda.
It’ll work out.
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