Where to stay in Italy: the best cities, lakes and coasts

Rome is not a museum, though it has the contents of several lying about in the street. You turn a corner and there is the Pantheon; cross a square and you are at the Trevi Fountain; walk ten minutes and the Colosseum fills the end of the road. Across the Tiber, the Vatican holds St Peter's and the Sistine Chapel. It is noisy, chaotic and impossible not to love.

Where you sleep shapes the trip. The historic centre is the most atmospheric and the dearest. The streets around Piazza della Repubblica and Termini station have the widest choice, including grand five-stars within walking distance of the Colosseum and the Trevi Fountain. For calm, look to the edge of the Villa Borghese gardens, or to the hills above the Vatican, where one resort hotel sits in 15 acres of private parkland overlooking the city.

Florence is small, and that is its genius. Brunelleschi's great dome, the Uffizi, Michelangelo's David, the Ponte Vecchio and more frescoed churches than you can count are all packed into a centre you can walk across in half an hour. In between, there are leather markets, wine bars and trattorias serving steaks the size of a paving slab.

Stay inside the historic centre if you can: everything is on the doorstep and the evenings, once the day-trippers leave, are the best part. Hotels here include a former medieval inn with a thirteenth-century tower, thought to be the oldest hotel in Italy, and a refined classic facing Palazzo Strozzi around the corner from the Duomo. Along the Arno, grander hotels offer rooftop terraces and river views a few minutes' walk from it all.

Nothing prepares you for Venice, not even a hundred photographs. There are no roads, only canals and alleys; the bus is a boat; and the palaces along the Grand Canal seem to float. St Mark's Square and the Rialto Bridge draw the crowds, but walk five minutes in any direction and you will find a quiet square, a bar full of locals and washing strung across the water.

Staying on the islands, not the mainland, is worth every extra euro: the city is at its loveliest early and late. The grandest hotels line the Grand Canal near St Mark's. Cannaregio, a calm residential quarter, has a palazzo hotel with its own pier and views towards Murano. And for a true retreat, look out into the lagoon: to Giudecca, where a legendary hotel has a pool and tennis court, or to the private island of San Clemente, where a 900-year-old monastery stands in acres of ancient gardens.

Milan is the Italian city that works for a living, and it dresses accordingly. The Duomo, bristling with spires, stands at its centre, with the glass-roofed Galleria Vittorio Emanuele on one side and La Scala just beyond. A few streets north, Via Montenapoleone and Via della Spiga form the fashion district, where window-shopping counts as a cultural activity. Leonardo's Last Supper is here too; book well ahead.

For a short break, stay within walking distance of the Duomo or in the fashion quarter itself, where the hotels are as stylish as the shops, one of them designed from top to bottom by a famous fashion house. Design-led hotels further north have rooftop bars with skyline views. Milan is also the natural gateway to the lakes: Como and Garda are both an easy trip.

Lake Garda is so big it has two personalities. The southern shore is broad, gentle and Mediterranean, with olive trees, vineyards, thermal spas and pretty towns such as Sirmione and Desenzano. Further north the lake narrows between cliffs, the Dolomites close in and the breeze brings out the windsurfers at Riva and Torbole. Ferries criss-cross between the towns, and Verona is a short drive away.

It is a classic family destination, with safe swimming and theme parks near the southern end, and a romantic one too. The western shore around Gardone and Gargnano has the grand old lakeside hotels, including a nineteenth-century Habsburg hunting lodge turned five-star and a hilltop villa hidden in forest above the water. Spa lovers are well looked after, with hot springs and adults-focused wellness hotels along the shore.

Naples is Italy with the volume up. Scooters, laundry, shrines, street markets and the looming shape of Vesuvius across the bay: it can be a lot, and it is magnificent. The old centre is a grid of narrow lanes stuffed with churches and pizzerias, and this is the city that invented the margherita. Pompeii and Herculaneum are a short train ride away, and ferries leave the harbour for Capri, Ischia and the Amalfi Coast.

First-timers are happiest on the seafront or in elegant Chiaia, the smart shopping district, where guesthouses and boutique hotels sit close to Via Chiaia and Piazza dei Martiri. Grander hotels look across the bay from the hillside or stand near the port and the San Carlo opera house, handy for the island ferries. Prices are gentler than in Rome or Florence.

Sicily feels like a country apart, and for most of history it was one. Greeks, Arabs, Normans and Spaniards all left their mark, in temples, mosaics, baroque towns and a kitchen that puts pistachios, swordfish and ricotta in everything. Mount Etna smoulders over the east coast; Palermo's markets roar in the west.

The classic place to stay is Taormina, a hill town perched high above the sea with an ancient Greek theatre framing Etna. Its main street, Corso Umberto, is lined with shops and cafés, and its grand hotels, some more than a century old, are among the most famous in Italy. For a beach holiday instead, large resorts with direct access to the sand, several pools and plenty for children are dotted along the north and east coasts.

Puglia, Italy's heel, has gone from secret to sought-after without losing its unhurried soul. The landscape is flat, sun-bleached and silver with ancient olive trees. Hill towns such as Ostuni, the White City, gleam above the plain, the conical trulli houses of the Itria Valley look like something from a storybook, and the long coast of the Salento peninsula alternates rocky coves with sandy beaches.

The thing to do here is stay in a masseria, a fortified farmhouse turned hotel, among the olive groves. Some are family-friendly, with sports courts and designer pools; others are quiet luxury retreats a few kilometres from the sea near Monopoli. Ostuni has elegant hotels with vaulted ceilings and rooftop bars, and the Salento coast has suite hotels above the water. Bari and Brindisi are the airports. Hire a car.

The north-east corner of Sardinia has beaches that look retouched: white sand, wind-sculpted granite and sea in every shade of green and turquoise. The Costa Smeralda, developed in the 1960s as a playground for the jet set, is the famous stretch, centred on the village of Porto Cervo with its marina and designer boutiques. Prices in August are spectacular. So is everything else.

You do not have to be a billionaire to stay. Beachfront resorts around Baja Sardinia and Santa Teresa di Gallura offer gardens, secluded coves and private beaches in a more relaxed key, and San Teodoro, to the south, has gentle white-sand bays inside a marine reserve that are ideal for families. Olbia is the airport for all of it, and June and September are the sweet spot.