Films are the most effective way to understand a country before visiting it, not for the romantic atmosphere of the shots but for the details that reveal the society, the history, the conflicts, and the contradictions. This list isn't "the most beautiful films shot in Italy", it's "the films that explain Italy to you in a way no travel guide can".
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The 5 essential films for understanding Italy
1. Roma, città aperta, Roberto Rossellini (1945)
Shot in Rome a few weeks after the liberation from the Nazi occupation (1944), with non-professional actors and film stock found on the black market. Roma, città aperta tells the story of the Roman Resistance against the German occupation with a realism no Hollywood war film has ever matched. Anna Magnani in the final scene, the run and the fall in the street, is really filmed, not acted. It's the most famous frame in Italian cinema. Why watch it before Italy: it explains why contemporary Rome is the way it is, the war, the occupation, the Resistance, the complicity and the heroism mixed in the same streets you'll visit.
2. La Dolce Vita, Federico Fellini (1960)
La Dolce Vita (3 hours) gave its name to a lifestyle and created the myth of 1960s Italy that still persists in tourism marketing. Fellini portrayed the Rome of the decaying aristocracy, of the paparazzi (the word exists because of this film, the photographer character is named Paparazzo), of the Italian economic miracle seen from the side of those who benefited from it. Why watch it: it shows the Italy tourists still look for, and that Fellini was already declaring lost in 1960.
3. Cinema Paradiso, Giuseppe Tornatore (1988)
Set in Palazzo Adriano (PA, Sicily) in the postwar years. The story of the boy who grows up with the projectionist Alfredo is also the story of rural Sicily, of the emigrating South, of cinema as a collective dream before television. Ennio Morricone's music is the most beautiful thing ever composed for an Italian film. Watch it before going to Sicily, it understands the South better than any guide.
4. Gomorra, Matteo Garrone (2008)
Gomorra is the film that touristic Italy doesn't want you to see before coming. Set in the outskirts of Naples (Scampia, Secondigliano), it portrays the Camorra not as the romantic myth of The Godfather but as industrial criminal bureaucracy that runs the territory like a multinational. Why watch it: because the Naples of Gomorra is as real as the Naples of the Duomo and the ragù, understanding this duality is understanding the South of Italy in its truest complexity.
5. La grande bellezza, Paolo Sorrentino (2013)
La grande bellezza (Best Foreign Film Oscar 2014) is the most precise portrait of the Rome of the contemporary cultural elite, the melancholy of privilege, the beauty that isn't enough to fill the void, the Roman baroque as the backdrop of a perpetual, empty party. Jep Gambardella (Toni Servillo) is the character who best describes the Rome of today: intelligent, ironic, aware of the decline, unable to stop taking part in it.
Another 15 Italian films recommended for the trip
- Ladri di biciclette, De Sica (1948): Neorealism in postwar Rome, the city you'll see in a different light
- Rocco e i suoi fratelli, Visconti (1960): southern emigration to Milan, the story that shaped modern Italy
- Amarcord, Fellini (1973): fascism in the small Italian town of the 1930s, how to understand why fascism took hold
- Novecento, Bertolucci (1976): the Italian twentieth century seen from the Po valley, an epic story of 5 hours
- Cristo si è fermato a Eboli, Rosi (1979): the South as another civilization (from Carlo Levi's novel), Basilicata before tourism
- Caro diario, Nanni Moretti (1993): Rome and the Aeolian Islands of the 1990s, the Italian intellectual's point of view
- La vita è bella, Benigni (1997): the Holocaust seen from Italy, Best Foreign Film Oscar 1999
- I cento passi, Tullio Giordana (2000): the resistance to the mafia in the Sicily of the 1970s
- Io non ho paura, Salvatores (2003): rural Puglia of the 1970s, a moving southern thriller
- Il vangelo secondo Matteo, Pasolini (1964): shot in Basilicata and Puglia, it shows the agricultural South pre-industrialization as it never was again
- Le quattro volte, Frammartino (2010): pastoral Calabria, one of the most original Italian films of recent decades
- Chiamami col tuo nome, Guadagnino (2017): the Liguria and Lombardy of the summer of 1983, Italian landscape and light as you don't normally see them
- Suburra, Sollima (2015): the criminal Rome of the developers and politics, before the Netflix remake
- Dogman, Garrone (2018): the Italian periphery of the forgotten, Marcello Fonte (Palme d'Or Cannes 2018)
- L'amica geniale, TV series (2018-2024): Naples from the postwar years to the 1980s, the most important Italian television series of recent years, from the novels of Elena Ferrante
Questions and answers about films on Italy
Films Italy: which films show the lesser-known Italian destinations?
For Sardinia: Padre padrone (Taviani, 1977, Palme d'Or at Cannes), pastoral Sardinia of the 1950s. For Calabria: Le quattro volte (Frammartino, 2010), the mountain Calabria of the Aspromonte. For Basilicata: Cristo si è fermato a Eboli (Rosi, 1979). For inner Sicily: Il gattopardo (Visconti, 1963), the Sicily of the Risorgimento in its aristocratic complexity. For Friuli: Lamerica (Amelio, 1994), Albanian immigration toward Italy.
Italy movies: are there recommended Italian documentaries before the trip?
Bellissima l'Italia (RAI, several seasons, available on RaiPlay) documents the lesser-known Italian villages with cinematic quality. Piero Angela's series (Ulisse, Superquark on RAI) for Italian scientific and historical popularization at its best. Chef's Table: Massimo Bottura (Netflix, season 1, episode 1), an account of Emilia-Romagna and the Osteria Francescana that says more about the region than any guide. Viaggio in Italia (Roberto Rossellini, 1954), not a documentary but almost: Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders cross Campania in a film that precedes mass tourism by 40 years.
Italian TV series to watch before the trip to Italy?
L'amica geniale (HBO/RAI, 4 seasons), Naples from the postwar years to the 1980s, the most important. Suburra, La serie (Netflix, 3 seasons), criminal Rome. Il commissario Montalbano (RAI, 1999-2021), set in Ragusa, Scicli, and Modica in Sicily, with the Sicilian Baroque as a character of the series: an excellent pretext for visiting southeastern Sicily. Gomorrah, La serie (Sky Atlantic, 5 seasons), the most authentic and brutal Naples of any tourist tour. Boris (Fox, 3 seasons + a film), the satire of Italian television of the 2000s, indispensable for understanding Italian pop culture.
Related guides on ItalyPlanner.com
Italian film locations Rome: complete guide Sicily: complete guide Naples: complete guide Italian architecture Why visit Italy Bookshops and literary cafés Italian photo spotsEverything you won't find in the standard guides on Italy
The travel guides on Italy, even the best ones, tend to focus on the same 20-30 famous destinations repeated endlessly. But Italy has 7,904 towns, 300,000+ villages and hamlets, 20 regions with radically different cuisines, dialects, and traditions. Most of this heritage appears in no international guide. Some of the most extraordinary Italian experiences are found where mass tourism hasn't yet arrived: the Calabria of the "Greeks of Calabria" (villages of the Aspromonte where Grecanico is still spoken, a Greek dialect that survived for 2,500 years), the Pollino Basilicata (the Raganello gorges, thousand-year-old loricate pines, Albanian villages), the inner Marche (Ascoli Piceno with the original olive ascolane, the Frasassi Caves with the tallest stalactites in Europe).
Practical questions and answers for any trip to Italy
How to book the main Italian museums without getting stuck in the lines?
The museums that require mandatory or strongly recommended advance booking: the Vatican Museums (www.museivaticani.va, 2-4 weeks ahead in high season, €17-27). The Galleria Borghese (Rome, mandatory, entries every 2 hours, www.galleriaborghese.it, €15 + €2 booking). The Uffizi and Accademia (Florence, www.uffizi.it, 1-2 weeks ahead). The Colosseum + Roman Forum (www.coopculture.it, booking strongly advised). The first Sunday of every month: free entry to all Italian state museums, very long lines, arrive at opening (9:00).
How to buy Italian train tickets as a foreign tourist safely?
Directly on the official sites Trenitalia (www.trenitalia.com) or Italo (www.italotreno.it), they accept international credit cards, the ticket is a PDF or QR code on your smartphone. The non-refundable tickets are the cheapest but allow no change or refund, if you have a flexible plan buy the refundable ones. The regional tickets are validated (stamped) in the yellow machines before boarding the train, on pain of a €50 fine. The high-speed tickets booked online don't require validation (they have a fixed date and time).
Tipping in Italy: how does it really work for foreign tourists?
Italy doesn't have the North American system of mandatory tips. At the restaurant: the coperto (€1-3/person) is already on the bill, rounding up the bill or leaving €2-5 for excellent service is appropriate, not required. In a taxi: round up to the next euro. At the hotel: €2-3/day to the cleaning staff (in cash in the room). At the bar: no tip expected. Always leave it in cash, not adding to the card because it isn't guaranteed to reach the staff.
Is Italian necessary to travel in Italy in 2026?
In the big cities and tourist areas: English is enough for basic transactions. Outside the tourist areas English is rare among the over-40s. The solution: learn 20 words of Italian (grazie, prego, buongiorno, quanto costa, dov'è, mi dà il conto, un caffè, vorrei...), this small investment is rewarded with human warmth out of proportion to the effort. Italians visibly appreciate any attempt to use their language.
What's the best way to save in Italy without sacrificing quality?
The golden rule: the distance from the monument is inversely proportional to the quality of the food and inversely proportional to the price. Move 500 m from the main monument and the restaurant that depends on local regulars (not passing tourists) offers higher quality at lower prices. Lunch is systematically cheaper than dinner, the "menu del giorno" on weekdays (first course + main + water + wine + coffee for €12-18) is the best Italian culinary institution. The state museums are free the first Sunday of the month. The regional trains are 5-10 times cheaper than the high-speed ones for short routes.
Italy in practice: a pre-departure checklist
- Documents: a valid passport (6+ months), an EU ID card, the European health card (for EU citizens), travel insurance (for non-EU, required for the Schengen visa)
- Advance bookings: flights and hotels 2-4 months ahead in high season. Main museums 2-4 weeks. High-end restaurants 1-3 weeks
- Connectivity: an Italian eSIM (Airalo, Holafly) or a local SIM (TIM, Vodafone, Iliad), avoid roaming from home, which is expensive
- Essential apps: Google Maps (offline maps), Trenitalia, D-Flight (if you have a drone), Waze (for the ZTLs)
- Money: an international Visa/Mastercard credit card as the primary; €50-100 cash as a reserve. Notify the bank of the trip to avoid blocks
- Clothing: comfortable shoes for walking on cobblestones. Shoulders and knees covered for the churches. A hat and sunscreen in summer
Deep dive: what no travel guide says about Italy
Authentic Italy, the one the travel guides can't capture in its fullness, is made of vivid contradictions. It's the country with the highest bureaucracy in Europe that invented la dolce vita. It's the country with chaotic traffic that produces the most beautiful mountain roads in the world. It's the country where the museums open when they want but where the cuisine is punctual as a Swiss watch. Those who manage to embrace these contradictions instead of fighting them, who accept that the train is 15 minutes late as part of the scenery, that the waiter doesn't show up right away because it isn't lunchtime yet, find in Italy a hospitality and a beauty no normatively efficient country can offer. The frustration and the enchantment often come from the same source: Italy's refusal to be standardized.
What's the most common mistake foreign tourists make in Italy and how to avoid it?
The most common and most costly mistake, both economically and in terms of experience, is eating at the restaurants in the immediate vicinity of the main monuments. The rule is almost mathematical: the closer you are to the Colosseum, the Trevi Fountain, Florence's Duomo, Piazza San Marco, the more you pay for worse quality. 300-500 meters from the main monuments the real city begins, with the trattorias frequented by the Romans, Florentines, Venetians who work in the area. The price drops by 30-50%, the quality often doubles. The distance that safeguards your dining experience, and your wallet, is almost always reachable on foot in 5-10 minutes.
How to behave in the Italian churches, the unwritten rules that avoid awkward moments?
The written rules: shoulders covered (both sexes), knees covered, silence during the religious services, no flash in the photographs. The unwritten rules no guide specifies: don't cross the central nave while a Mass is in progress (walk along the side aisles). Don't sit on the pews during Mass if you don't intend to take part (it's a religious service, not a show). Don't eat inside the church. Don't talk on the phone. Lower your voice even when Mass isn't in progress, voices resonate in the stone churches and disturb those in prayer or meditation. The sacristies of many historic Italian churches have loaner garments (shawls for the shoulders, skirts for the knees) for those who arrive unprepared, don't be surprised if you're asked to cover up before entering.
What to do if you miss a train or a flight in Italy, the emergency guide?
If you miss a high-speed train (Frecciarossa/Italo): the "non-refundable" tickets aren't refunded but it's possible to change the train for a fee (variable supplement) if you're at the station within 1 hour of the departure of the missed train. The Trenitalia "smart" tickets can be changed for free online up to 5 minutes before departure. For the regional trains: the ticket is valid for 4 hours from validation (the stamp), if the train is late you risk nothing. If you miss a flight: contact the airline immediately for the "next available flight", the airports of Rome Fiumicino, Milan Malpensa, Venice, and Naples have physical offices of all the main airlines. Having travel insurance with "flight delay/loss" coverage (many premium credit cards include it) solves most of the economic problems.
Curiosities about Italy that travelers find surprising
- Italy has more protected food designations (DOP, IGP, STG) than any other country in the world, over 870 in 2025
- Parmigiano Reggiano has been protected since 1934 with a consortium that preceded the EU by 20 years, and it's still the most imitated cheese in the world ("Parmesan" is produced all over the world except in the EU)
- The word "mafia" appears for the first time in an official Italian document in 1865, two years after the end of the post-unification brigandage
- The Italian highway code forbids driving while dirty (article 217 of the Codice della Strada), rarely enforced, but technically in force
- The Vatican Museums have a modern art collection that includes works by Salvador Dalí, Francis Bacon, and Matisse, almost no visitor sees it because it's in the least publicized wing
- Italian is the fourth most studied language in the world after English, Spanish, and Mandarin
- The original panettone (Milanese, tall, soft) was a survival recipe, butter and sugar were luxury ingredients that were put into the bread dough to celebrate Christmas
- The public fountains of Rome ("nasoni") dispense about 40 million liters of water a day for free, they're fed by the same aqueduct that brought water to the city in 19 BC