Why visit Italy
Italy is twenty regions disguised as a single country. Rome stacks emperors on popes on traffic; Florence trades in early Renaissance like nowhere else on earth; Venice keeps sinking gracefully into its own lagoon. The Amalfi Coast is the cliché that earns it.
The food map matters more than the political one. Bologna eats differently from Naples, which eats differently from Palermo, which barely shares a vocabulary with Trentino. Pick one region, eat your way through it, and forgive yourself for not seeing the other nineteen. Espresso at the counter, never sitting — that's the only rule worth knowing.