Italy: three regions to choose for this summer

Par Gabriel Goldberg 31 May 2026 10 min read

I don't speak Italian. Yet every time I return to the peninsula from Brussels, I feel that strange sensation of coming home — to a family I didn't choose but that adopts you at the first buongiorno . Italy isn't a country: it's an open-air museum, a cuisine that changes dialect every two hundred kilometres, and a way of inhabiting time that should be taught in schools. This essay isn't a guide. It's a notebook — a tour of the regions I've loved, crossed, eaten, photographed. A preparation for summer: pick three regions, because doing everything is impossible, and wanting to see all of Italy means missing all of it. Why Italy remains, in my eyes, the heart-destination of Europe People often ask why I go back so often. The answer is an intuition: Italy is the only country in Europe where daily life itself is a work of art . The piazza isn't a backdrop — it's a way of life. Pasta isn't a dish — it's a regional language. Morning espresso isn't caffeine — it's a ninety-second social rite. Then there's the dizzying cultural density. More than half of UNESCO's world heritage sits inside a country the size of Poland. That means everywhere — truly everywhere — you turn a street corner and bump into two thousand years of history. It's what I look for in Delos or in Ankara too — but in Italy it's multiplied, free, and served with an espresso. Campania — when Naples slaps you with love L'Antica Pizzeria da Michele, Naples — the queue before reunion with a five-euro Margherita. If…