The 10 Best Cultural Experiences in Italy

The Colosseum is the largest amphitheatre ever built and an enduring symbol of the power and ingenuity of ancient Rome.

Completed in 80 AD, it could hold up to 80,000 spectators who came to watch gladiatorial contests, animal hunts, and public spectacles that defined Roman entertainment culture.

For over a thousand years, Venice has marked the weeks before Lent with elaborate porcelain masks and Baroque-era costumes, worn by visitors who pose motionless along the canals and in St Mark's Square as if stepped from a painting.

The Flight of the Angel, where a costumed performer descends by wire from the Campanile into the square, opens the festival each year.

Brunelleschi's magnificent dome crowns Florence's skyline and remains the largest brick dome ever constructed.

Built between 1296 and 1436, the Duomo's terracotta-tiled dome and its ornate campanile have defined the city's silhouette for nearly 600 years.

The cathedral of Venice, a Byzantine pile of domes, marble columns and eight thousand square metres of gold mosaic gathered and looted over eight centuries.

The four bronze horses on the loggia were taken from Constantinople in 1204.

The Pala d Oro behind the altar is set with almost two thousand gemstones.

Restored 1920s and 1930s carriages, all inlaid wood, brass fittings and Art Deco marquetry, carry passengers between London, Paris and Venice aboard the most famous luxury train in the world, evoking the golden age of rail travel that inspired Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express.

Formal dinner is required most evenings aboard.

The last medieval bridge left on the Arno, lined with jewellers' shops that jut out over the water on timber brackets.

Vasari's covered corridor runs above the shopfronts, linking the Uffizi to the Pitti Palace so the Medici could cross the river without mixing with the city below.

Butchers occupied the shops until 1593, when they were evicted for the smell and replaced by goldsmiths.

The world's smallest sovereign state packs an extraordinary concentration of art and architecture into just 44 hectares.

The colonnaded embrace of St Peter's Square, Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling, and Raphael's frescoed Stanze make Vatican City unmissable for art lovers.

Siena is a medieval city in the heart of Tuscany that has preserved its Gothic character more completely than any other city in Italy.

Its fan-shaped main piazza, the Piazza del Campo, is the venue for the famous Palio horse race held twice yearly, and its cathedral, the Duomo, is considered one of the finest Gothic buildings in Italy.

The Rialto Bridge is the oldest and best known of the four crossings of Venice's Grand Canal, a single stone arch completed in 1591 after a succession of wooden predecessors collapsed.

Two rows of shops run the length of its span, and the steps up either side open onto views down the canal in both directions.

The market on the San Polo bank has traded fish and produce for centuries.

The Duomo di Milano is the largest Gothic cathedral in the world and took nearly six centuries to complete.

Its rooftop terrace, accessible by lift or stairs, offers a unique up-close view of its 3,400 statues and 135 spires against the Milan skyline.