Things to do — Northern Italy

Northern Italy delivers radically different experiences depending on which corner you wake up in, and that contrast is precisely what makes the region so absorbing.

In Venice, the must-see list runs through St Mark's Basilica (arrive at opening to skip the queue), the Doge's Palace and the Bridge of Sighs, a slow vaporetto down the Grand Canal, the Gallerie dell'Accademia (Venetian painting from the 14th to the 18th century) and the Ca' d'Oro. But the real Venice unfolds when you deliberately get lost in Cannaregio (the historic Jewish Ghetto — Europe's oldest, with its synagogues and bacari serving cicchetti and ombre), Dorsoduro (the university quarter, Punta della Dogana turned contemporary art space) and the Castello (the Arsenale shipyards, the Riva degli Schiavoni). A day trip across the lagoon is non-negotiable: Murano for glassblowing, Burano for its painted houses and lace, Torcello for its lonely Byzantine basilica adrift in the reeds. The Peggy Guggenheim Collection in her unfinished palazzo on the Grand Canal is one of Italy's best modern-art museums and far less crowded than the Doge's Palace. At the Rialto market, the produce side (Erberia) and the fish side (Pescheria) are the clearest window onto Venetian cooking: sea bass, sarde in saor, moleche (soft-shell crabs) in spring.

In the Cinque Terre, the headline activity is walking. The Sentiero Azzurro links all five villages in a single day for fit walkers (6 to 8 hours with the climbs), and the higher Alta Via delle Cinque Terre offers even more spectacular ridge panoramas in exchange for tougher gradients. Swimming is possible from the rocks and concrete platforms at Monterosso, Vernazza and Riomaggiore. Boat excursions from Monterosso or La Spezia reveal the cliffs and villages from the sea — the angle that explains how these settlements ever came to be built — and a tasting of Sciacchetrà, the sweet local wine pressed from hand-harvested terrace grapes, is a non-negotiable food memory.

Beyond the two headline sites, Northern Italy keeps offering options. Verona deserves a stop for the Roman arena (still hosting open-air opera every summer), Piazza delle Erbe and the much-mythologised Juliet's balcony. The northern lakes — Como, Maggiore, Garda — are perfect short escapes from Milan, with neoclassical villas, formal gardens and ferries gliding under alpine peaks. Bologna, often nicknamed la Grassa (the Fat One), deserves at least a day or two for its porticoes, its university (the oldest in the world) and its food scene: real tagliatelle al ragù, mortadella, crescentine. The Dolomites, UNESCO-listed since 2009, are reachable by train or car from Trento and Bolzano: high-altitude walking, via ferrata routes and mountain refuges make for a spectacular nature interlude alongside the cultural stops.