Italy

Italy stretches from the Alps in the north to the central Mediterranean and holds more UNESCO World Heritage sites than any other country. For Georgian travelers it is the highest-volume Schengen destination after France, both because of mass tourism to Rome, Venice and Milan and because of a steady year-round flow of Georgian seasonal workers and students, particularly in the Veneto, Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna regions. The country splits roughly into three blocks: the wealthy industrial north, the art-and-history center, and the sun-and-island south.

Rome, Florence and Venice are the canonical first trip. In Rome the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, the Pantheon, Trastevere and Vatican City with the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's Basilica are walkable from each other across a long day. Florence in Tuscany holds the Uffizi Gallery, the Accademia with Michelangelo's David, the Duomo and Ponte Vecchio, and works as a base for Siena, San Gimignano and the Chianti wine roads. Venice is best seen by walking off the Piazza San Marco and getting lost in Cannaregio and Dorsoduro. Beyond the big three, Milan is the fashion and business capital with the Duomo and Last Supper, Naples sits next to Pompeii and Vesuvius, the Amalfi Coast and Capri stretch south, and Sicily and Sardinia are full destinations on their own.

The best windows are April to June and September to October. July and August are hot and very crowded in Rome and Florence, December covers the Alps ski season around Cortina and Courmayeur, and the south stays mild well into November.

The currency is the euro (EUR). Italian is the language, English is patchy outside main tourist areas, and a few words go a long way. High-speed Trenitalia Frecciarossa and Italo trains connect Rome, Florence, Bologna, Milan, Venice and Naples in roughly 3 to 4 hours end-to-end, so renting a car is mostly only useful for Tuscany, Puglia and Sicily.

Flying from Georgia, Wizz Air, Pegasus, Turkish Airlines, ITA Airways and LOT serve Tbilisi (TBS) and Kutaisi (KUT) to Rome (FCO and CIA), Milan (MXP and BGY), Venice (VCE) and Bologna (BLQ), most routes via Istanbul, Warsaw or Vienna, and Wizz Air also runs seasonal Kutaisi to Milan Malpensa flights through the summer. Flight time Tbilisi to Rome is around 4h direct on the Georgian-Italian seasonal pair and 5 to 8 hours with one connection. Round-trip fares from Georgia typically run 600 to 1,800 GEL. Tax-free shopping is worth using: stores marked Tax Free for Tourists refund Italian VAT at the airport on goods purchased over 70 euros per receipt, which can recover roughly 12 percent of the price for travelers leaving the EU.