We steer travelers away from the most saturated destinations while still developing itineraries that allow them to experience Italy's beauty, culture, and famous sites.
What Overtourism Looks Like in Italy
Taormina
On a trip a few years ago to Sicily, despite some reservations, we decided to go to Taormina, a place many of our clients wish to visit. The weather was overcast, it was off-season, and we had checked to make sure there were no cruise ships in port that day.
The tourist crush begins well before you have even set foot in the town. To get to Taormina, you wind up a steep, narrow road. The views alone seem to make it worthwhile, and then the huge tour buses and giant parking structures appear. Not one, but several behemoths, scarring the hillside. This is the town’s solution to the huge volume of people descending upon their beautiful hilltop retreat. You park, and then you wait for a bus to take you the rest of the way in. Like Disneyland.
The main street resembles the Duty Free shop in the Rome airport. The artisan shops and small producers that once defined Sicilian town centers have been replaced by luxury retailers selling goods that weren't made in Italy and could be ordered online from anywhere in the world.
At one point, our son, who loves volcanoes, observed looking at the crowds, "It's like a pyroclastic flow of people."
In restaurants, the house wine has disappeared, replaced by bottles priced for people who don't know what things should cost. A pizza that should be €8 costs €18. The menus have drifted far from Sicily. Carbonara, a Roman dish that has no business being served here, appears on menus, ordered by tourists who want something familiar and served by restaurants who have learned to give them what they want.
This didn't happen by accident. When the second season of The White Lotus filmed in Taormina, bookings increased 500% compared to previous years. The town was never built for that volume, and its economy shifted accordingly. Today, a modest apartment on Corso Umberto — the very street lined with those luxury shops — lists for €670,000. The average annual salary in Sicily is around €27,000. Taormina has effectively been priced out of reach of the people who live there.
This is what overtourism does. It doesn't just make for a bad afternoon, it hollows out a place. The food gets worse. The prices go up. The things that made it worth visiting in the first place gradually disappear. And the people who call it home get pushed to the margins.
What Overtourism Does Not Look Like in Italy
Pella, Italy, along the shores of Lake Orta
The Blunt Advice We Give Our Clients
The overtourism problem comes up regularly in our discussions with clients. Here is a glimpse of our take on things.
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No, you should not, unless you want to self-combust in a burning hot piazza with thousands for an audience. There are much more pleasant times of the year to go to Rome and much more pleasant places to go in Italy in August.
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Do you remember the Saturday Night Live episode “Bad Idea Jeans”? There are great neighborhoods to stay throughout the city, but that is not one of them.
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Not anymore. There are many other beautiful coastal areas in Italy.
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How do you feel about falling off a cliffside while navigating foot traffic? We have lots of recommendations for wonderful hiking in Italy, and that is not one of them.
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That is its own special form of hell.
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First, are you wealthy? Second, do you want to get hit in the face with a selfie stick?
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Get ready to become a human sardine.
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Book yourself a therapy appointment for after you get home.
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Now we know one place you definitely will not be going.
How We Help You Get Beyond the Crowds
The client who hears our “blunt advice” on traveling Italy then asks:
“If I shouldn’t go to Rome in August and the Amalfi Coast in September and the Cinque Terre in April, should I never see those places? Where should I go?”
The answer is, "It depends." Rome can be visited Rome, our favorite Italian city, is wonderful at other times of year. Amalfi and Cinque Terre are another question.
Rome
Large cities like Rome have a lot more capacity to absorb visitors, as their centers extend far beyond the landmarks that attract the majority of tourists. This is why it is still possible, for example, to visit Rome without being engulfed by people the entire time. We direct travelers (with some exceptions) to stay in less-touristed parts of the city and help them appreciate the time spent getting to major sites as part of their Roman experience.
One neighborhood we enjoy a lot is Monteverde-Gianicolense. This works well for many of our clients, but not all, and it is not a blanket recommendation. Issues like physical fitness, arrival and departure time, amount of luggage, and your sense of adventure all impact which neighborhoods outside the tourist center are optimal for you.
This is one of the reasons why an Italy travel planner is very helpful. You can do a lot of research on "off-the-beaten-path" Rome, but without an understanding of the nature of the city — its layout, rhythms, character — you can end up choosing poorly.
In addition, what time of year you go, what time of day you visit particular sites and museums, how you organize your days, will all have a dramatic impact on your experience. The Colosseum, for instance, can be insufferable at 10 am but wonderful at 6 pm.
In some cases, you just have to accept the crowds. The Vatican will always be busy. It is a question of crowd intensity, not whether you'll encounter them at all. But structuring your day so that you're not going from one densely packed site to another can significantly alleviate the stress of overtourism on the traveler. A cruise-ship bus tour of Rome will never allow you to do this.
At a quiet hour, a seagull claims the Colosseum for itself.
Venice and Florence
While the historical centers of Venice and Florence are much more geographically limited, other cities nearby — Treviso, near Venice, or Pistoia near Florence, for instance — make it possible to visit these places without constantly being in a densely packed environment in which everyday life has become very distant from Italian culture. Treviso, for instance, is beautiful in its own right, with lovely canals and a historic center.
Lucca, a medieval walled city that is about an hour from Florence is still lovely, but has become a major destination of its own now. And during the high season, we generally do not recommend it as a place to which to retreat from the crowds in Florence. There are other options, however, including the countryside, whose small towns have train and bus links to Florence, giving the traveler the opportunity to both enjoy one of Italy’s most beautiful cities and take in the Tuscan hills.
Amalfi and the Cinque Terre
While managing an overtouristed environment is often possible in larger cities, the same is frequently not true of smaller towns or confined areas, such as the Amalfi Coast and the Cinque Terre. They are packed during the months you want to be there. They empty out considerably in the off-season — but not just of crowds. Many restaurants, shops, and amenities in tourist-dominated areas close during the cool, rainy winter months. Some clients enjoy visiting these regions at this time — it's part of the Italy they want to experience — others do not.
Sicily’s southern coast and beaches
The Adriatic Coast and Sicily
Italy offers extraordinary beauty that is distinctive and rare. Even during popular months, there is no need to subject yourself to experiences shaped entirely by mass tourism. If you want to be on the seaside in June, we will likely direct you to smaller towns on the Adriatic coast. If you want to visit Sicily in the summer, we will suggest some of the most beautiful places we have ever seen in all of Italy, which include small villages in the interior of the island that offer sweeping vistas and the possibility of a beach day on the less crowded Sicilian coasts.
The Italian Countryside
One option that is often overlooked is the Italian countryside during the busy summer months. It is simply wonderful, and if you base yourself at an agriturismo (farm stay) with a restaurant, or a rental within close proximity of a town or small city, you can have a thoroughly Italian experience at the height of the season without being shoulder-to-shoulder with others. The Le Marche region is gorgeous for this.
The challenge is that you cannot Google your way to the right agriturismo. What appears on booking platforms is a fraction of what exists, and knowing which ones are genuinely wonderful, where to position yourself, and what is and isn't accessible without a car requires exactly the kind of local knowledge that a travel advisor provides. There is also a broader issue: getting away from the crowds often means getting away from the tourism infrastructure — the English-speaking restaurants, the hotel concierges, the organized tours, the well-worn paths that make travel feel manageable even when it's crowded.
How We Help
This is precisely where we come in. Italy Within Reach provides the support and local knowledge that you need to not just get beyond the crowd, but do it comfortably and without the stress that comes with worrying that you’ve “wandered off the reservation.”
View our services to learn more about how we build itineraries that take you beyond the crowds.
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