Things to Do in Italy: The Australian Traveller's Guide for 2026

Italy Is Not a Country. It's Twenty Countries That Share a Flag.

Italy has only been a unified nation since 1861, and it shows in the best possible way. Cross an invisible line an hour outside Bologna and the pasta shape changes, the wine changes, the accent changes and the cheese on the table changes. Travel from Milan to Palermo and you may as well have changed continents. This is the single most useful thing an Australian can understand before booking: you are not visiting one destination, you are choosing which two or three Italies you have time for.

The second most useful thing is that Italy is now a country that manages its visitors. Venice charges day-trippers to enter. The Colosseum puts your name on your ticket and checks your passport at the gate. Half the historic centres in the country are ringed by cameras that will fine you for driving into them. None of this is a reason not to go — it's a reason to plan properly, because the traveller who books and reads is having a completely different holiday from the one queueing in the sun with no ticket.

This guide is written for Australians. The entry rules that shift in 2026, the seasons that clash with our holidays, the honest cost of Italy in euros, the rail network that makes flying pointless, and the driving traps that mail fines to Brisbane six months after you get home.

Entry Rules for Australians: What Changed in 2026

Visa-free, but ETIAS is coming

Australian passport holders still travel to Italy without a visa — up to 90 days in any rolling 180-day period across the Schengen Area. That isn't changing.

What is changing is ETIAS, the European Travel Information and Authorisation System, which begins operating in the fourth quarter of 2026. Australians and other visa-exempt travellers will need an approved ETIAS before departure. The fee is EUR 20 — around AUD 33 — it links electronically to your passport, and it lasts three years or until your passport expires. There's a six-month transition period, so strict enforcement is expected from around April 2027.

The scam warning is worth repeating: the EU has confirmed that no action is required from travellers yet because the portal is not live. Websites currently accepting ETIAS applications are fraudulent, and some have already harvested passport details and card numbers. Apply only through the official EU domain when it opens.

The Entry/Exit System is causing real delays

The EU's biometric Entry/Exit System is now operating at external Schengen borders, replacing passport stamps with fingerprints and facial scans. Smartraveller currently warns that EES is causing delays of up to four to six hours at some European airports, that travellers have missed flights because of it, and that queues for the self-service kiosks can be long enough that you should be prepared to stand for an extended time.

The Venice Access Fee: Read This Before You Book Anything

This is the change that catches Australians out most often, because it's new, it's enforced, and it applies on the exact days most people want to visit.

Venice charges an access fee — the contributo di accesso — to enter the historic centre on selected peak days. In 2026 the scheme has expanded to 60 chargeable days, running from 3 April to 26 July, mostly Fridays through Sundays plus certain holiday weeks. The fee applies between 8.30am and 4pm on those days.

Inspectors check QR codes at key entry points — Santa Lucia station, bus terminals, water transport stops — and conduct random checks in the historic centre. Fines run from EUR 50 to EUR 300 on top of the fee itself. Being on an organised excursion does not automatically exempt you.

Two things worth knowing. First, the fee applies only to the historic centre, not to the lagoon islands — Lido, Murano, Burano and Torcello are outside it. Second, the fee window closes at 4pm, which means an afternoon-and-evening visit costs nothing and gives you Venice at its most beautiful and least crowded. If your dates are flexible, that's the play.

Rome: Doing the Ancient City Properly

Four nights minimum. Rome is a city where the walking is the point, and where every second attraction now runs on timed entry.

The Colosseum, Roman Forum and Palatine Hill

The standard ticket is EUR 18 and it automatically includes the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill — you do not need a separate ticket, and plenty of visitors buy one anyway. The Full Experience ticket at EUR 24 adds the arena floor and additional restricted areas, and standing on the arena looking up at the tiers is genuinely a different experience from looking down at it. It's also almost impossible to get: official Full Experience allocations sell out within minutes.

Two rules that catch Australians. First, tickets are personalised — every visitor's name must be entered at booking, and valid photo ID is checked at the gate. A ticket bought in someone else's name is a ticket you can't use. Second, the official site releases tickets only 30 days before the visit date, so set a calendar reminder rather than trying to book six months out and concluding it's sold out.

Entry is free on the first Sunday of each month, but arena and underground access aren't available on free days and the queues are punishing. Skip it.

The Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel

Around 30,000 people a day pass through the Vatican Museums, and in summer the queue wraps around the walls for two to three hours in full sun. Do not join it. The standard adult ticket is EUR 20 on-site or EUR 25 online (the EUR 5 is the presale booking fee), and the online timed ticket is the best twenty-five euros you'll spend in Rome.

Good news for 2026: the restoration of Michelangelo's Last Judgment on the Sistine Chapel's altar wall was completed on 26 March 2026, the scaffolding is down, and the full Michelangelo programme — the ceiling, the Creation of Adam and the Last Judgment — is visible again.

Timing strategy: take the earliest slot available and you'll reach the Sistine Chapel before the tour groups compress it. Tuesday and Thursday are the calmest weekdays. Avoid Wednesday, when the Papal Audience swells the crowds, and note the Museums are closed on Sundays except the last Sunday of the month, when entry is free (and consequently the most crowded day of the month). There are also Friday evening openings in the warmer months. Dress code is enforced: shoulders and knees covered, no exceptions, and no photography inside the Sistine Chapel.

The rest of Rome

• The Pantheon — nearly two thousand years old, still the largest unreinforced concrete dome on earth, and the oculus open to the sky. A small entry fee now applies; book a slot.
• The Borghese Gallery — Bernini's sculpture at close range, in a villa surrounded by parkland. Strictly timed, strictly capped, and the best museum in Rome. Book weeks ahead.
• Trastevere — cross the river at dusk and eat where the Romans do. Cacio e pepe, carbonara, artichokes in season.
• Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps — go at 7am or don't bother. By ten they are a wall of phones.
• The Appian Way — hire a bike on a Sunday when it's closed to traffic and ride a two-thousand-year-old Roman road past catacombs and aqueducts. Almost nobody does this and everybody should.

Florence, Tuscany and the Renaissance Heartland

Florence is small — you can walk it end to end in forty minutes — and it holds more Renaissance art per square metre than anywhere on earth. Three nights is right.

The Uffizi Gallery is the headline: Botticelli's Birth of Venus and Primavera, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Caravaggio. Timed entry, closed Mondays, and worth booking the first slot of the day. The Accademia holds Michelangelo's David — a twenty-minute visit for a statue that justifies every one of them. The Duomo complex is a separate ticket, and climbing Brunelleschi's dome (463 steps, no lift, not for the claustrophobic) puts you eye-to-eye with the frescoed interior of the cupola before you emerge on the roof of Florence.

Go up to Piazzale Michelangelo at sunset with a bottle of wine and no plan. It's the view on every postcard and it earns it.

Out into Tuscany

This is where you hire a car — but park outside the walls of every town you visit (see the ZTL warning below). Siena is the great medieval rival, its shell-shaped Piazza del Campo one of the finest public spaces in Europe. San Gimignano bristles with medieval tower houses. The Val d'Orcia is the landscape you already have in your head: cypress avenues, hilltop farmhouses, Pienza and Montalcino, and Brunello in the glass. Chianti sits between Florence and Siena and is best done slowly, on back roads, with a designated driver.

The Rest of Italy: Where the Second Week Goes

Amalfi Coast & Naples

Positano, Ravello, the Path of the Gods, and the best pizza on the planet in Naples. Pompeii and Herculaneum are an easy train ride from the city.

Cinque Terre & Liguria

Five cliff villages linked by trains and coastal footpaths. Base in Levanto or Monterosso, walk the trails early, and eat pesto where it was invented.

The Dolomites

Vertical limestone, alpine huts serving strudel and speck, and some of the best day-walking in Europe. Half Italian, half Austrian, entirely spectacular.

Lake Como & the Lakes

Varenna and Bellagio by ferry, villa gardens, and mountains falling straight into deep water. An hour from Milan and a world away.

Puglia

The heel of the boot: trulli houses in Alberobello, baroque Lecce, olive groves, empty beaches and prices that still feel like the old Italy.

Sicily

Greek temples at Agrigento, mosaics at Monreale, Etna smoking above Catania, and street food in Palermo. A trip in its own right, not an add-on.

Eating in Italy Without Getting It Wrong

Italy is the easiest country in Europe to eat well in and the easiest to eat badly in, and the difference comes down to a handful of habits.

• Eat regionally. Ordering carbonara in Venice or risotto in Naples is ordering the tourist version. Cacio e pepe and carbonara in Rome. Bistecca alla fiorentina and ribollita in Tuscany. Ragù and tortellini in Bologna. Pizza in Naples. Cicheti and seafood in Venice. Arancini and cannoli in Sicily.
• Avoid any restaurant with a picture menu, a multilingual board or a man outside inviting you in. This one rule does most of the work.
• Understand the bill. Coperto — a small per-person cover charge — is normal and legal. Tipping is not expected; rounding up is plenty.
• Coffee has rules. Espresso standing at the bar, always cheaper than sitting. Cappuccino is a morning drink; ordering one after dinner marks you instantly, though nobody will actually mind.
• Lunch is 1–2.30pm, dinner starts at 8pm. A restaurant serving at 6pm is serving tourists.
• Aperitivo — a drink with free snacks, roughly 6.30 to 8.30pm — is the best-value hour of the Italian day, especially in Milan and Bologna.

Getting Around: Trains Yes, Cars Carefully

Italy's high-speed network is superb. Frecciarossa (Trenitalia) and Italo run competing services at up to 300km/h between the major cities, station to station, no airport transfers, no baggage drama.

Book early. High-speed fares are dynamic. Rome–Florence can be EUR 20 booked ahead and EUR 60 on the day. Validate regional (non-high-speed) tickets in the platform machines before boarding — the fine for an unvalidated regional ticket is real and unsympathetic.

Hire a car only for Tuscany, Umbria, Puglia, Sicily and the Dolomites, where the countryside is the destination. Italians drive on the right. Carry an International Driving Permit alongside your Australian licence — your state auto club issues these before you leave, and Italian police do ask for them. Autostrada tolls are collected by ticket; keep the ticket you take at entry or you'll pay the maximum.

What Italy Costs an Australian

Return airfares from the east coast to Rome or Milan typically run from about AUD 1,600 in the quiet months to AUD 2,600 and beyond in December and mid-year peaks, with a flying time of 22 to 26 hours via one stop.

Rome, Florence, Venice and Milan run well above the national average; Puglia, Sicily and Umbria run well below it. A per-night tassa di soggiorno (tourist tax) of roughly EUR 1–7 per person is charged by accommodation across Italy and is often collected in cash at check-out. Cards are widely accepted, but carry EUR 50 in cash — small trattorias, market stalls and rural bars still prefer it. Always decline the ATM's offer to bill you in Australian dollars.

Sample Itineraries

Ten days — the classic first trip

• Days 1–4: Rome. Colosseum, Forum, Vatican, Pantheon, Borghese, Trastevere.
• Days 5–7: Florence. Uffizi, Accademia, the Duomo climb, a day in Siena or Chianti.
• Days 8–10: Venice. Stay overnight (exempt from the access fee), see St Mark's early, then Murano and Burano.

Fourteen days — cities and coast

• Days 1–4: Rome.
• Days 5–7: Naples and the Amalfi Coast. Pompeii, Positano, the Path of the Gods.
• Days 8–10: Florence and Tuscany. Car hire for the Val d'Orcia.
• Days 11–12: Bologna. Italy's food capital, and nobody's there.
• Days 13–14: Venice. Fly home from Marco Polo.

Three weeks — the honest length

Add the Dolomites (three nights out of Bolzano or Cortina) and either Puglia or Sicily to the fourteen-day route. Three weeks is when Italy stops being a checklist and starts being a country.

Practical Notes for Australians

• When to go: late April to early June, and mid-September to October. July and August are ferociously hot and crowded, and much of Italy closes down around ferragosto in mid-August.
• Power: Type C/F/L plugs, 230V. Adapter, not converter.
• Language: Buongiorno on entering, grazie and arrivederci on leaving. English is common in cities and rare in the south.
• Pickpockets: Rome's Termini station, the 64 bus to the Vatican, Naples' historic centre and the Rialto crush in Venice. Zipped bag, worn in front.
• Dress codes: Churches enforce covered shoulders and knees. Carry a light scarf; it will save you an entry.
• Water: The public fountains — Rome's nasoni in particular — run cold, clean drinking water. Bring a bottle and refill.
• Travel insurance: Essential and separate from any ETIAS requirement. Cooee Tours can refer you to preferred Australian insurers; we don't sell or include insurance ourselves.