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Look, I get it. You saved up, you're flying ten hours, and you want the postcard — the gondola, the Amalfi sunset, the obligatory Trevi Fountain coin flip. But here's the thing nobody tells you: you'll spend half that trip in a queue, the other half being herded past a "no photo" sign, and the entire time you'll be wondering when, exactly, the Italy part of your Italy trip kicks in.
The answer, as it turns out, is somewhere else.
May, specifically, is when this country quietly opens up before the summer locusts descend. The light is long, the sea is cold but swimmable, and the trattorias still have a free table at 8.30pm without a reservation made in February. Despite what you think, shoulder season isn't a compromise. The food is the same, the buildings are the same. The only difference is that you can actually see them, and the person serving you isn't running on three hours of sleep and a pure hatred of tourists.
Here are some of the best towns in Italy that I think you should check out. Skip Amalfi, please!
You've actually seen Matera even if you don't know it. This is where they shot the opening chase in No Time to Die, and Mel Gibson used it as Jerusalem in The Passion of the Christ. It's a city carved into a limestone gorge, lived in for around 9,000 years. The thing to eat is pane di Matera, a bread with a crust and a crumb so good they gave it an EU protected status, usually paired with crapiata, a peasant soup of legumes that's been made here forever. Stay in a cave hotel for one night. Might be a splurge but you’ll love it!
They call it the Florence of the South, which kind of sums it up. The whole town is carved out of soft golden limestone that turns molten at sunset. The local move is rustico leccese — a little puff pastry parcel with mozzarella, tomato and béchamel, eaten standing up at a bar for a euro fifty — followed by pasticciotto, a warm shortcrust pastry filled with custard that you have for breakfast. Dolce la vita, amiright?
Whitewashed houses dropping straight off a limestone cliff into the Adriatic. The famous cove beach, Lama Monachile, tucked under a Roman bridge, is on Instagram, yes, but it earns it. Polignano is also the birthplace of Domenico Modugno, the guy who wrote Volare — there's a statue of him on the promenade with his arms thrown open mid-song. Eat crudo di mare (raw sea urchins, prawns, oysters, all of it) at Pescaria, and finish with a caffè speciale, the local thing with cream, lemon zest and amaretto. By July the viewpoints are unusable. Go now!
Romeo and Juliet's city — yes, that one — and the balcony is a touristy fabrication, skip it. The actual draw is the Roman arena, older than the Colosseum, where the opera season starts in late May. Letters to Juliet was filmed here, if that's your thing. The local plate is pastissada de caval, a slow-cooked horse stew you should try once, or risotto all'Amarone, made with the famous local red. Lake Garda is also maybe half an hour away, so go for a perfect day trip.
The Tuscan hill town the postcards are based on. Vino Nobile is made in cellars directly under your feet, and most charge almost nothing for tastings. You've seen this town too — New Moon shot the Volturi sequence here in Piazza Grande, and the Under the Tuscan Sun world is essentially this. The food is pici (a thick hand-rolled spaghetti), usually with garlic or wild boar ragù, and pecorino from nearby Pienza that's so good they age it in walnut leaves and ash.
This place is a gateway to the Dolomites and genuinely is a strange, wonderful place — bilingual Italian and German, half-Austrian in feel, apple strudel and canederli (bread dumplings) on the same menu. The town's other claim to fame is Ötzi the Iceman, the 5,300-year-old mummy they found in the glaciers in 1991, now displayed in the archaeology museum. Eat speck (smoked cured ham) with rye bread and pickled cabbage, and drink the local Lagrein. In May the apple orchards in the valleys are blooming and the high peaks still have snow. You'll love it!