Three days in Rome — the ancient core, the Vatican, Trastevere — then the fast train south, Pompeii on the way, and three nights in Positano for Ravello's cliff gardens, an Amalfi ferry day and the Path of the Gods on foot.
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Numbered days, not dates — start it whenever you like, ideally May to June, September to October.
Two squares, the dome, then dinner across the river.
The shape underfoot is a Roman stadium — the square kept the track's outline when the seating became houses. Open ground, never ticketed, so it is the right first stop when your body clock is still somewhere else. Sit on the far side from the fountains where the cafés charge half as much.
Nineteen centuries old, still the largest unreinforced concrete dome anywhere, and the hole in the top is open to the sky — rain falls through it onto a floor built to drain. It is ticketed now, a few euro, and booking online skips a queue that wraps the piazza by late morning. Open daily bar a handful of holidays. Entry is free on the first Sunday of the month, but there is no booking that day and everybody queues, so treat it as a different kind of visit rather than a bargain. It is a working church too, so a service can pause visits.
A produce market in the morning and a drinking square by night, with the hooded statue of Giordano Bruno standing where he was burned in 1600. Come at this hour for the changeover, and buy the aperitivo here rather than dinner. The full market runs Monday to Saturday and packs up by early afternoon; on Sundays it is reduced or absent altogether.
Cross the river for the first night: cobbled lanes, ivy, and a piazza built around Santa Maria in Trastevere, whose gold apse mosaics are free to walk in and see and worth ten minutes before dinner. Book a table or eat early — after 20:30 the good rooms are full and the ones taking walk-ins are the ones with laminated menus.
Overnight
The rione between the Forum and Termini: you walk to the Colosseum in ten minutes, to the Pantheon in twenty, and back from dinner without a taxi. Cavour on metro line B is the stop — one stop from Termini, where the fast train south leaves, and one more on to the Colosseum — or a fifteen-minute walk to Termini with a suitcase. It is residential enough to have its own bars rather than only visitors' ones, and the streets are cobbled and mostly level, which matters more than it sounds after three days on your feet.
Amphitheatre, forum, imperial hill, then the Capitoline.
One ticket covers the Colosseum plus a single entry to the Forum and Palatine, usable within 24 hours either before or after your booked slot — but the Colosseum half is timed and you get 75 minutes inside, so book it on the official site the moment you know your dates, before the resellers take the early hours. Take the first slot: gates open at 08:30 and the arena is bearable then and an oven by noon. Open daily except two winter holidays; the Forum and Palatine open at 09:00.
The civic centre of the ancient city, and the part of this ticket people rush because they have already spent their energy in the amphitheatre. It rewards the opposite: walk the Via Sacra end to end, then climb the ramp at the Palatine side for the view back down over it. Almost no shade — hat and water, not a plan to buy them here.
The hill the emperors actually lived on, entered from inside the Forum so there is no second queue. It is greener and emptier than everything below it, and the Farnese gardens at the top look straight down into the Forum you just walked. Same 24-hour ticket, so it is the piece to save for last or drop if the heat wins.
The world's oldest public museum collection, on the hill Michelangelo laid out, and the one big Rome museum that does not close on Mondays — 09:30 to 19:30 every day but two holidays, last entry an hour before. Two palaces linked by an underground passage, and at the end of it the Tabularium's arches look straight down the length of the Forum for nothing extra.
Overnight
Museums at opening, the basilica, a castle, the Trevi.
Book a timed entry weeks ahead and take the earliest one — the galleries funnel everyone through the same corridors towards the Sistine Chapel and by 11:00 it is shoulder to shoulder. Closed Sundays except the last of the month, when entry is free from 09:00 until early afternoon and the queue is correspondingly enormous. Also shut on a handful of religious holidays; check before you plan the day around it.
Free to enter, always has been; what costs is the dome climb, and the lift only takes you to the roof — the last 320 steps up the curving inner shell are on foot and are not for anyone uneasy in tight spaces. Knees and shoulders covered or security turns you away. On audience Wednesdays — most of the year, though not usually in July and August — the square and its single security entrance are given over to the audience, so getting into the basilica is choked until around midday. That is the one scheduling fact worth checking before you fix this day.
Hadrian's tomb, then a papal fortress, and still linked to the Vatican by the raised escape corridor you can see running along the top of the wall outside. Closed Mondays. The spiral ramp inside climbs through 1,900 years in one continuous walk, and the terrace at the top is the best free-standing view back over St. Peter's dome.
Stepping down to the basin now costs €2, card only — the piazza above stays free and you can see and photograph the whole fountain from it without paying. A capacity limit on the basin area has been trialled alongside it. The ticket desk shuts late in the evening, and after that the barrier comes off, which is also when the square finally empties.
Overnight
Fast train, a buried city, then a boat to Positano.
Times are a suggestion — Frecciarossa and Italo between them run this line every half hour or better through the day, and the trip is a little over an hour. Book ahead at trenitalia.com or italotreno.com: the fare is dynamic and a walk-up ticket costs several times the advance one. Seats are reserved, so a missed train is a new ticket.
The Circumvesuviana platforms are in the basement of Napoli Centrale, signed Garibaldi — follow them down rather than looking for a separate building. Take the Sorrento line and get off at Pompei Scavi–Villa dei Misteri, which is at the ruins' gate; a different line has a station called Pompei Santuario, on the far side of the modern town, and that is the mistake everybody makes. Trains are frequent, basic and crowded; the reserved Campania Express covers the same track year-round with a supplement, guaranteed seats and room for luggage. Strikes are common enough to be worth a glance at eavsrl.it the night before.
Sixty-six hectares of a town stopped in AD 79, about forty-four of them excavated, and you will walk a fraction of that — so pick a route rather than wander: the Forum, the Stabian Baths, the House of the Vettii and the amphitheatre make a coherent loop. Open daily bar two winter holidays, 09:00 to 19:00 in the warm half of the year with last entry 17:30. A cap of 20,000 tickets a day applies year-round, split into two entry slots in the busy months, and tickets are nominative — buy online in the names of the people actually going. No shade and one main café; carry water.
Half an hour further down the same line, and Sorrento is the terminus so you cannot miss the stop. The station sits in the town centre; the ferry port at Marina Piccola is fifteen minutes downhill on foot, or a short local bus. Leave more slack than the timetable needs — a boat you miss here is a bus ride you did not plan.
Around forty minutes, several sailings a day, and worth far more than the bus: you arrive looking at the town stacked up the cliff instead of at the back of a coach. This route is seasonal — roughly April to October, thinning at both ends — so check the operator's timetable rather than assuming. Rough seas cancel boats at short notice; the SITA bus along the corniche is the fallback and takes about an hour.
The majolica dome you have already seen from the water, at the bottom of the town where every stepped lane eventually delivers you. Free and open daily, but it shuts for four hours in the middle of the day — roughly 09:30 to noon, then 16:00 to 20:00 — so early evening is the reliable slot. The Byzantine altarpiece inside is the reason the town exists. Arriving here teaches you Positano's one rule: everything is stairs, and going down is free while coming back up is not.
Overnight
Three nights in one place on a coast where every transfer costs an hour, and Positano is the one town with both ferries and buses running all day. Understand what you are booking: the town is a staircase, no vehicle reaches most doors, and porters charge per bag to carry them the last stretch — so ask how many steps from the road before you pay. Rooms near the church are the shortest climb to the beach; rooms high up in Chiesa Nuova are cheaper, have the better view, and put a bus ride between you and dinner.
Cathedral steps, the smallest comune, two cliff gardens.
About half an hour along the cliffs, and the same seasonal caveat applies. Buy the return leg when you buy the outbound, or check the last departure before you go up to Ravello — the evening boats stop earlier than you expect and the alternative is a full bus back. Tickets are sold from the kiosks at the jetty, cash or card.
Sixty-two steps up from the piazza to a striped Arab-Norman front that is largely a 19th-century rebuild of a much older church. The €3 ticket for the monumental complex is the one to buy: it takes you through the Cloister of Paradise, the crypt holding what Amalfi believes are the relics of Saint Andrew, and the museum. Open daily, on shorter hours in the cold months — read the board at the foot of the steps rather than trusting a printed table.
The smallest comune in Italy by area, ten to fifteen minutes east of Amalfi on foot — a signed walkway skirts the headland past the road tunnel — and it is what Amalfi looked like before the coaches. One small piazza, one small beach, and lunch at half the price of the town you just left. No gate and no hours: it is a village.
The SITA bus climbs from Amalfi's seafront in about 25 minutes, roughly every half hour to an hour in season and thinner on Sundays — buy the ticket in a bar or tabaccheria first, because drivers do not sell them. The garden terrace hanging over the sea is the one Wagner used as his Klingsor's magic garden, and it doubles as the stage for the summer festival. Open daily, 09:00 to 20:00 in the warm months, last admission half an hour before.
Fifteen to twenty minutes' walk from Piazza Duomo through Ravello's lanes, and the walk is part of it. The Terrace of Infinity — a stone balustrade lined with marble busts and nothing beyond it but some 320 m of air and the Gulf of Salerno — is the single best view on this coast. The gardens open daily from 09:00 to 20:00 with last entrance at 19:30, so late afternoon costs nothing extra and empties out as the tour groups leave.
Overnight
Ridge walk from Agerola, then steps down to town.
There is normally no direct bus: take the SITA coast line east to Amalfi, forty to fifty minutes, then the Agerola line up from the seafront, another thirty-five to forty-five minutes of hairpins to Bomerano. The Agerola departures are spread through the morning rather than frequent, so leave real slack for the change instead of assuming a connection. Buy both tickets in a bar or tabaccheria before you board — drivers do not sell them — and validate the first. Stops in Positano are on the main road above the town, so add the climb up to it, and go early: by mid-morning the coast buses fill at the seaward side and you may be standing.
The hamlet of Agerola where the Path of the Gods begins, 630 m up and several degrees cooler than the coast. Walk it westwards from here and you spend the day descending with the sea always on your left; start from Nocelle instead and you climb the whole way. Fill your bottles in the square — there is no water and almost no shade on the trail, and the last café is the one you are standing in front of.
The far end of the trail — the surveyed line is 5.3 km and a little over two hours of pure walking, so call it three to four with the climb from the bus stop, lunch and the stops you will make for Capri sitting on the horizon. Sections are narrow with a long drop and no railing, so this is proper footwear and not a day for anyone unhappy with exposure. Nocelle itself is a handful of houses and one terrace bar, reached by a single narrow road where the municipal minibus turns round; its own lanes are stairs.
From Nocelle you either take the stepped path down to Positano — around 1,700 steps, hard on the knees, and about an hour — or wait for the small local bus, which runs the ridge road through here and is the sane option after a long walk. The pierced rock the hamlet is named for is visible from the road, and the terrace restaurants up here are cheaper than anything at sea level.
Overnight
Morning on the beach, an hour in Sorrento, train out.
Positano's main beach, grey pebbles rather than sand, split between free stretches at the ends and paid rows of loungers in the middle — the free ends fill first, so early is the whole trick. Swim before the day boats arrive; the ferry jetty is at the western end, on your right as you face the sea, which makes this the one morning you can be in the water an hour before you sail.
The same crossing in reverse, and the leg most worth a buffer on the last day. If the sea is up, the boats stop and everyone moves to the bus at once — so on a departure day, take the earlier sailing and spend the spare hour in Sorrento rather than the later one and none.
Ten minutes uphill from the port and free to walk into, which is what you want with a train to catch. The thing to find is the side door of 1479, inlaid in the intarsia woodwork Sorrento has made for centuries — the choir stalls copy it but date from 1938, and the workshops a few streets away still sell the real craft. Open daily, usually with an early-afternoon break.
An open-sided loggia on a corner of the old town, arched on two sides, frescoed under a green-and-yellow majolica dome, where the local nobles met from the 14th century on — the best preserved of the ancient seats left in Campania. It is a street corner, so there is nothing to open or close; the lanes around it are where to buy lemons, walnut liqueur and lunch before the station.
About an hour and a quarter back up the line, and it comes up into the basement of Napoli Centrale — so a Frecciarossa to Rome is one escalator away and a little over an hour, and the Alibus to Naples airport leaves from the square outside. Suitcases and the Circumvesuviana get on badly at rush hour; the Campania Express is the version of this train with luggage space.
Markets, pizza and coast trattorias over fine dining
High-speed rail, local trains, ferries and SITA buses — no car
Three full Rome days, then slower coast days with one long walk
Two adults, first time in Italy
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Every itinerary here is written as a real plan, then checked stop by stop before it is published: walkable distances, opening seasons, honest travel times, and two to four stops a day rather than a checklist. Nothing on this page is sponsored or paid for.
Days are numbered, not dated, so a plan never goes stale — open it in the app and it lands on real dates you can change. Coordinates come from Wikidata, and photos from Wikimedia Commons under the licence credited beside each image.
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