Paestum — the Greek colony of Poseidonia founded c.600 BC on the southern Campanian coast. Three Doric temples better-preserved than anything standing in Greece itself; the Tomb of the Diver, the only surviving Greek painted wall-painting from the Classical period; and the Cilento National Park stretching south.
Herculaneum — the smaller, better-preserved, quieter twin of Pompeii. 20 metres below the modern town of Ercolano, preserved by pyroclastic flows that carbonised wood and fabric rather than destroying them. The Villa of the Papyri scroll library being digitally read by the Vesuvius Challenge in 2024.
Pompeii — the single best-preserved ancient city in the world, buried by Mount Vesuvius on a morning in autumn 79 AD, partially excavating since 1748, still 40% unexcavated. The Forum with Vesuvius behind it, the plaster casts of the victims, the Villa of the Mysteries Dionysiac fresco, the Amphitheatre (oldest stone Roman), the House of the Vettii reopened 2023.
Ravello, the clifftop town 365m above the Amalfi Coast where Wagner sketched Parsifal, Villa Cimbrones Terrazza dellInfinito looks out over a 350m drop, the oldest outdoor music festival on the coast has run since 1953, and Gore Vidal lived for 34 years. Villa Rufolo, Villa Cimbrone, the Duomos 1272 pulpit, and the Ravello Festival.
Positano, the cliff-hanging village on the Amalfi Coast that John Steinbeck effectively launched to international tourism in 1953. A Byzantine Madonna in a majolica-domed church, a Roman villa buried under it, the Li Galli islands of the sirens offshore, and the Sentiero degli Dei path of the gods overhead.
Amalfi, the capital of a medieval Mediterranean maritime republic that once had 80,000 residents; now a town of 4,900 with the single most architecturally layered cathedral complex in southern Italy, the 1343 storm that ended the republic, the Chiostro del Paradiso, the Paper Museum, and scialatielli at La Caravella.
Castellammare del Golfo — the small Sicilian fishing town halfway between Palermo and Trapani, with a 10th-century Arab-Norman castle, a working fishing harbour, the Tonnara di Scopello and the Zingaro nature reserve on its doorstep, and the historical distinction of having exported half of the Prohibition-era American Mafia.
The places Francis of Assisi actually lived, walked, and died — from the Porziuncola and San Damiano to La Verna, Greccio, and the small edicola at Piandarca where he preached to the birds. A secular travellers guide to the geography of his life, with the 2026 centenary calendar.
Nocera Umbra is the Umbrian hill town behind the mineral water. Beyond the bottling plant: a Lombard necropolis, a cathedral with the incorrupt body of Saint Raynald, a Franciscan pilgrim geography, and a painstaking restoration after the 1997 earthquake.
