Alternative Places Near Popular Italian Cities

Ferrara, a Renaissance duchy near Bologna and Venice

Ferrara sits about an hour from Bologna and under two hours from Venice, and it was ruled for centuries by the Este family, whose moated brick fortress, Castello Estense, still sits in the middle of town complete with a working drawbridge. The city's medieval core is compact and flat, easy to cover on a bike, which locals still use as their main mode of transport.

It's a UNESCO site for its Renaissance urban planning, one of the earliest examples of a city deliberately designed rather than grown organically, and that planning is still legible in the wide, straight streets of the newer quarter the Este dukes commissioned.

Mantua, tucked behind three lakes

Mantua, about 40 minutes from Verona and under two hours from Milan, is nearly surrounded by artificial lakes formed from the Mincio river, which gives the whole town an unexpectedly watery backdrop for somewhere so far from the coast. The Ducal Palace here was the seat of the Gonzaga family and contains room after room of frescoes, including Mantegna's famous Camera degli Sposi, painted with a trompe l'oeil ceiling that's still striking today.

The city's isolation, relatively speaking, has kept it quieter than its art collection deserves, and it rarely feels crowded even in summer.

Parma, for the food as much as the art

Parma is well known by name because of the cheese and the ham that share it, but the city itself, about an hour from Bologna, gets far fewer visitors than its culinary exports would suggest. The Baptistery, built in pink Verona marble, is one of the more unusual medieval buildings in northern Italy, octagonal and covered inside with 13th-century frescoes.

Beyond the sights, this is simply one of the best places in Italy to eat without trying particularly hard, since the local specialties are the actual local specialties, not a tourist-adjusted version of them.

Lucca and Bergamo, walled towns with staying power

Lucca, about half an hour from Pisa and under two hours from Florence, is ringed by intact Renaissance walls that have been converted into a tree-lined path for walking or cycling, a rare thing to be able to do around an entire historic center. Inside the walls, the streets still follow the outline of the old Roman amphitheater in a way that's visible if you know to look for it, most clearly in the oval piazza that now occupies the site.

Bergamo, covered elsewhere for its proximity to Milan, deserves a second mention here for how well it fits into a broader northern Italy loop alongside Mantua and Parma, given the train connections that link them without needing to backtrack through Milan.

Fitting these into a bigger trip

The five cities here sit in a rough band across northern Italy, which makes a loop possible if you have five or six days to spend beyond the usual Venice-Florence-Rome route. Ferrara and Bologna pair easily, Mantua and Verona pair easily, and Parma sits conveniently between Bologna and Milan on the rail line.

None of these need a full week on their own. A night or two in each, chained together by regional trains, gives a very different picture of Italy than the one most first-time visitors come home with.

• Ferrara: near Bologna and Venice, moated castle and Renaissance planning
• Mantua: near Verona, lake-ringed and full of Gonzaga-era frescoes
• Parma: near Bologna, a pink marble baptistery and serious regional food
• Lucca: near Pisa and Florence, walkable Renaissance walls
• Bergamo: near Milan, a walled upper town on a hill