Central Italy - Italia centrale

• Rome - Few cities, however large they may be, are as universally known and loved as Rome, the Eternal City. The fame that derives from its ancient history, which has influenced and directed the history of modern Europe, and the fact of hosting the Vatican CITY contribute to his universality. Great vestiges of a great past, basilicas, churches, palaces from every historical period make it one unicum on the world tourism scene. Therefore, the Colosseum, St. Peter's Basilica, the steps of Trinità dei Monti, the Tiber are not only cultural heritage and symbols of the city, but they belong to the world.
• Ancona - Stretching towards the sea, the city stands on a promontory in the shape of a bent elbow, which protects the largest natural harbor in the central Adriatic. The Greeks of Syracuse, who founded the city in 387 BC, noticed the shape of this promontory and for this reason they called the new city Ἀγκών, "ankòn", which in Greek means elbow. The Greek origin of Ancona is remembered by the name with which it is known: the "Doric city". Its best-known monument is the thousand-year-old Cathedral of San Ciriaco, towering over the top of the promontory. It is one of the symbols of the city; Romanesque in the decoration, Byzantine in the Greek cross plan, it dominates the sea from three sides and has a portal characterized by two column-bearing lions, which are among the symbols of Ancona
• Assisi - The city of San Francesco keeps the veneration for the Saint alive; among the many Franciscan places, the Basilica, San Pietro, Santa Chiara, the Porziuncola are just some of the destinations of spiritual interest but also of great artistic value. The whole city is an urban and architectural jewel, which has well deserved the inclusion among World Heritage Sites
• Florence - It was the cradle of the Italian Renaissance. The Medici, the greatest protagonists of art in all its manifestations and sciences, worked here, protected and favored by the lords of the city. The genius Florentine left the city churches, palaces, monuments of extreme beauty; its museums collect an infinite number of masterpieces, such as its churches and palaces. City of international fame, it is a destination for world tourism that shows no signs of diminishing. Capital of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, then for a brief period also the capital of Italy, Florence is now rightfully one of the world capitals of culture.
• L'Aquila - It is slowly but tenaciously reborn after the earthquake of 2009. Santa Maria di Collemaggio, San Bernardino, the Spanish Fort, the Fountain of the 99 spouts are its major monuments.
• Lucca - Walled city, it preserves an artistic heritage of great stature; the Duomo, where you can see the famous tomb of Ilaria del Carretto, San Michele in Foro, San Frediano are its most significant churches. In the medieval village there are the Guinigi Towers and the palaces and towers of via Fillungo. The market square overlaps, surrounded by a curtain of houses that follow the perimeter, to theRoman amphitheater.
• Orvieto - It develops on a tuffaceous cliff that rises isolated in the plain. Its historic center of great atmosphere reaches its apex in the splendor of the Cathedral, a masterpiece of Gothic in central Italy. It was an Etruscan city, a civilization of which it retains numerous testimonies and a necropolis in the countryside below.
• Perugia - Capital ofUmbria, with a medieval and apparently small appearance, it has the characteristics of a scattered municipality, with its remote villages in its enormous municipal territory (the largest in Italy) and the multitude of greenery and fields. City of art rich in history and monuments, founded by the Etruscans, it is the cultural, productive and directional pole of the region, a tourist destination and university seat.
• Pescara - Largest commercial and industrial center inAbruzzo, is also a popular seaside resort. It now forms a conurbation with Chieti is Francavilla al Mare
• Pisa - Her Leaning Tower it is one of the best known monuments in the world. Destination of international tourism, the ancient Maritime Republic boasts numerous important monuments, but it is above all for the Square of Miracles which can boast the qualification of World Heritage
• Siena - Piazza del Campo and its Palio are world famous. In addition to them, the city offers an extensive and well-preserved historic center, nestled in the hills of Crete Senesi
• Spoleto - The Cathedral, the church of San Salvatore, the Rocca albornoziana, the sacred wood of Monteluco are the excellences of this city of great charm, universally famous also for its famous Festival of the Two Worlds.
• Urbino - It was the capital of the Montefeltro dukedom; its lords held a refined court there, a cenacle of artists who made the city one of the major centers of culture of the Italian Renaissance. The splendor of the Montefeltresca lordship has remained in the urban planning of Urbino, in the churches and palaces, in the world-famous Palazzo Ducale. The modern city lives a little secluded, sheltered in the quiet of its rolling hills, away from the din of the Adriatic coast animated by a tourism that is influenced by the nearby Romagna. Its past role as a cultural capital remains alive in its famous University and in the beauty of its monuments.
• Viterbo - Its historic center, with an almost totally medieval aspect, finds an excellent example of that era in via San Pellegrino, precisely in its medieval quarter. Numerous churches, squares with fountains, narrow streets are surrounded by turreted walls that contribute to making the impression of having gone back in the centuries even stronger. Popes often resided there; of undoubted beauty is the Papal palace, a fine example of Viterbo Gothic. The anecdote of the election of Pope Gregory X in 1271 is linked to the city; the voting took a long time, so that the people of Viterbo closed the hall where the cardinals met, uncovered the roof of the room and drastically reduced food supplies. The pope was elected without further delay. Since then the term came into use conclave, locked environment (cum clave).

• Arezzo - It was an Etruscan and Roman city, then a proud and proud municipality that it fought for a long time with Florence who finally subdued her. Its monumental heritage boasts among the most important architectures the Romanesque parish church of Santa Maria, San Francesco, the gothic Cathedral. The Medici fortress recalls the definitive subjection to Florence, from whose dominion the Aretini had also tried several times to escape.
• Ascoli Piceno - Its beautiful historic center uses travertine in large quantities, a material that gives the city the characteristic warm color that distinguishes it. Founded by the Piceni, a people that continues to remember in its name, it was a Roman center. The medieval city still lives with its numerous churches, palaces, towers and bridges; urban planning in which Renaissance inserts are not lacking, especially by Cola dell'Amatrice. The monumental Piazza del Popolo, with the Gothic church of San Francesco and the Palazzo dei Capitani del Popolo is one of the most beautiful squares in Italy.
• Atri - One of the oldest cities in theAbruzzo, preserves an artistic heritage of the first order, whose excellence (among many) is certainly recognizable in the stupendous Cathedral, distinguished among the remarkable churches of Abruzzo.
• Avezzano - An important center risen from the devastating earthquake of 1915. It retains traces of its ancient history, such as the Claudio's tunnels, work through which the Romans, in the first century after Christ, made much of the waters of the ancient flow out Fucino lake starting the drying up and reclamation of the area.
• Cassino - For centuries the administrative center of the ancient Land of San Benedetto, the city develops at the foot of the hill on which stands the famous abbey of Montecassino, for which it is mainly known. However, it also boasts important testimonies of its Roman past: amphitheater, theater, mausoleum, nymphaeum, urban walls of the archaeological park Casinum.
• Roman castles - The denomination, which indicates a group of villages and towns of the Alban Hills located a short distance from Rome, in the territory corresponding to the ancient Latium Vetus, dates back to the fourteenth century when many inhabitants of Rome, to escape the economic and political difficulties deriving from the Avignonese captivity, they took refuge in the castles of the Roman feudal families of the Savelli (Albano Laziale is Castel Savello, Ariccia, Castel Gandolfo, Rocca Priora), of the Annibaldi (Molara, Mount Compatri, Rocca di Papa), of the Orsini (Marine) and Colonna (Monte Porzio Catone, Nemi, Genzano is Civita Lavinia). There are castles, picturesque historic centers, archaeological remains, natural riches and, above all, a good wine production.
• Cortona - It was an ancient and important Etruscan city, founded in a strategic position that allowed a wide control of the territories that were part of the lucumonia. They were built by the Etruscans in the 4th century BC. the imposing walls that surround the city for about three kilometers, the "melon" noble tombs scattered around and the monumental funerary altar adorned with sphinxes, a unique example in Italy. The Tabula Cortonensis, a bronze plate with one of the longest inscriptions in the Etruscan language.
• Fabriano - The paper produced here in the fourteenth century was exported all over the world then reachable, and brought great prosperity to the city, which was embellished with valuable buildings. The monumental center is piazza del Comune, with a beautiful central fountain and the Palazzo del Podestà, the town hall, the bishop's palace, the clock tower, the loggia of San Francesco. Of the most important artist of his school of painting, Gentile da Fabriano, he keeps nothing, while he preserves works of his artistic circle that generated the style of Marche painting.
• Stop - The great bulk of its Cathedral stands out on top of the hill towards which the urban agglomeration climbs. There was also a fortress of the Sforza house, the lady of the place, which was demolished by the people of Fermo in revolt.
• Foligno - Foligno, the ancient one Fulginia Umbrian (pre-Roman city whose foundation dates back to the 10th century BC) is the richest and most important commercial and industrial center of the Umbrian Valley and the main communications center of the entire region. It has an important historical center in which the cathedral stands out.
• Formia - The modern city is above all a seaside resort on the Gulf of Gaeta, with which it is now a conurbation; Extensive beaches on the Riviera di Levante and the Riviera di Ponente attract a large number of tourists. It was a health resort even at the time of the Romans; among the numerous archaeological remains of that period there are also those, grandiose, of the Cicero's villa, who died in Formia.
• Gaeta - Seaside city, it stretches between the promontory of Mount Orlando and the sea on the gulf to which it gives its name. To the natural beauties it combines an old town with beautiful churches and ancient fortifications of its past as a military stronghold of the Kingdom of Naples. It is a popular seaside resort.
• Gubbio - The city of the Franciscan wolf in addition to the memories related to the life of the Saint offers us a valuable historic center with the Palazzo dei Consoli, the cathedral, the praetorian palace, the ducal palace and, among the Roman remains, the theater in the plain outside the center inhabited.
• Palestrina - It boasts the important remains of the Roman temple of the goddess Fortuna; born on the site of the ancient Preneste, the city collects numerous finds in its rich archaeological museum.
• Meadow - Second city of the Tuscany by population, third in central Italy after Rome and Florence, it suffers from the cumbersome proximity of Florence, with which it is in fact conurbated. Nationally known for the textile industry and for the cantucci, biscuits with almonds that are often dipped in Holy wine, offers us of its past a splendid Romanesque-Gothic cathedral in which Michelozzo and Donatello worked.
• Saint Gimignano - For the characteristic medieval architecture of its historic center it was declared by UNESCO World HeritageThe site of San Gimignano, despite some nineteenth-twentieth-century restorations, is mostly intact in its thirteenth-fourteenth century appearance and is one of the best examples in Europe of urban organization of the municipal age.
• Subiaco - The city, which has a medieval aspect, is famous for the monasteries that it preserves a short distance from the urban center: the monastery of San Benedetto (Sacro Speco) and that of Santa Scolastica. They are immersed in a suggestive environment of great beauty, which increases the charm of the convent building of San Benedetto in particular, which seems to blossom from the rock of the mountain.
• Sulmona - City of Peligni, Municipium Roman, homeland of the Latin poet Ovid (Sulmo mihi patria est), capital ofAbruzzo in the thirteenth century, it boasts an important monumental center and also links its name to the production of sugared almonds, already flourishing and renowned in the past.
• Teramo - Ancient city with an important historical center, it boasts a splendid Cathedral which is one of the best expressions of Abruzzo's religious architecture.
• Tivoli - It was already in ancient times a place of residence and delights for the Roman patricians. It is famous for its waterfalls and its villas: Villa d'Este, a sumptuous sixteenth-century building with an incredible terraced garden full of vegetation, fountains and water features; Villa Gregoriana, with a grandiose park and the Aniene falls that falls from 160 meters. 6 km from the city is the sumptuous archaeological complex of Hadrian's Villa, which was built by the Emperor Hadrian, extends over a very large area and shows numerous remains of great interest.

Lazio

• Albano lake - The Lacus Albanus, also known by the misnomers of lake of Albano or Castel Gandolfo lake, is the deepest volcanic lake in Italy (168 m) and is located in the Castelli Romani area, on the Alban Hills. Almost circular in shape, on its coasts there are important prehistoric and Roman archaeological remains, such as the Villaggio delle Macine, the artificial emissary and the nymphaeums Doric is of the Bergantino, the latter an integral part of the complex of the Albanian villa of Domitian. The rowing competitions of the 1960 Rome Olympics were held at this lake.
• Lake of the Salto - It is the largest artificial lake in the Lazio. It was created by damming the Salto river with a dam that caused the submersion of the homonymous deep valley in Cicolano. Its waters are home to a rich fish fauna composed of allochthonous or repopulation elements. Among the crustaceans there are the Turkish shrimp and the American shrimp.
• Turano Lake - It is a large hydroelectric basin born with the construction of the Turano dam. It is connected to the Lake of the Salto from a 9 km long tunnel and together with this it feeds the Cotilia hydroelectric plant. It lies at the foot of a natural reserve covered with woods, and is characterized by a great wealth of fish and by the presence on its banks of ancient villages and castles that are reflected in the clear waters.
• Lake of Bolsena - The lake, of volcanic origin, has numerous tourist settlements oriented in particular to naturalistic tourism. It can boast an almost completely uncontaminated natural environment and is one of the few large Italian lakes to be completely suitable for bathing. On its banks, low and with black sand that recalls its volcanic nature, fishing is practiced; some marshy areas are rich in birdlife. Its cities are Bolsena, Martha is Capodimonte.
• Bracciano Lake - originally also called Sabatino lake, is of volcanic origin and is located north of Rome. Two kilometers east of the lake is the smaller lake of Martignano, also of volcanic origin. On its banks rise the three cities of Bracciano, Anguillara Sabazia is Trevignano Romano. With the nearby lake of Martignano it is a popular tourist and seaside resort. In 1999 the area was established a Bracciano - Martignano Regional Park.
• Lake of Nemi - It is a small volcanic lake, located between Nemi, Genzano of Rome is Lanuvio, just south of Rome on the Alban Hills in the Castelli Romani area. It has characteristics similar to those of Lake Albano, compared to which it is considerably smaller. From a geological point of view, it is part of the so-called area volcanic complex of the Alban Hills. The lake can be bathed almost in its entirety; is the only Italian lake where the king fish, a South American species introduced to encourage fishing. The cultivation of strawberries is luxuriant.

Umbria

• Trasimeno lake - The largest lake in central and southern Italy, which has long been a climatic resort, has three islands and a lake navigation system: Isola Maggiore, Isola Minore, Isola Polvese. Very fishy, ​​it hosts on its banks the centers of Castiglione del Lago is Passignano sul Trasimeno. Famous is the battle of 217 BC, in which Hannibal defeated the Romans on its northern shores.
• Corbara Lake - Large body of water in a beautiful location; its dam, used for electricity production, also has the purpose of regulating the flow of the Tiber. It takes its name from the hamlet of Corbara, a locality in the municipality of Orvieto. It is part, together with the surrounding territories, of the River Park of the Tiber, protected natural area ofUmbria. It is characterized by jagged banks that stretch into a deep and narrow gorge that creeps almost to Todi.

Abruzzo

• Lake of Bomba - Also called, but rarely, Sangro lake. It was created by blocking the valley of the Sangro river by means of an earth dam with alluvial materials from the river. A destination for summer tourism as well as for fishing, on the southern shore you can enjoy a view of the Maiella; all the municipalities that insist on the lake offer tourist services such as camping, restaurants and farmhouses. Lake Bomba is also an official rowing competition area and in 2009 the competitions of this sport were held as part of the Mediterranean Games in Pescara. In September 2010 it was the seat of the absolute Italian canoe and kayak championships.
• Campotosto lake - It is the largest artificial lake inAbruzzo and it is the second largest reservoir ofEurope. Entirely included in the Gran Sasso and Monti della Laga National Park, is a destination for sportsmen and tourists especially in the summer season. Footing, trekking, horse riding (it is in the itinerary of thehorse trail of the Gran Sasso) are the main activities. In the water it is also possible to windsurf, kitesurf, and kayak. The perimeter of the lake in the water is about 30 km. Nearby the Pass of the Capannelle, a place particularly loved by cyclists and motorcyclists, and the ski resorts of Campo Imperatore and Prati di Tivo. The area is also renowned for some gastronomic excellences, including mortadella di Campotosto.

Interregional areas

• Marsica - The Marsica is a subregion of Abruzzo where there are important protected areas such as national park of Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise and the Sirente-Velino Regional Natural Park. At the center of its territory is the plateau of the former Fucino lake, surrounded by important mountain ranges and medieval villages. The area is characterized by the presence of hermitages, caves and numerous archaeological sites such as Alba Fucens. The main cities of art are Celano is Tagliacozzo, while the most popular ski resorts are located in Ovindoli is Pescasseroli. Avezzano it is its most populous center.
• Sabina - Sabina is a historical-geographical region that includes most of the Rieti area and some minor areas straddling the borders with the territory of Rome, L'Umbria and theAbruzzo. Its most important city today is Rieti. It embraces the tourist area of Mount Terminillo, a destination for summer but above all winter visitors for skiing. It constitutes a destination of paths la Piana Reatina, also called Holy Valley, where the Franciscan convent complexes of Greccio, Poggio Bustone, The forest is Colombo source. St. Francis operated there.