Beyond the famous art cities lies an Italy of soaring mountains, protected wilderness, dramatic coastlines, and landscapes that most visitors never see. For travelers who love nature and the outdoors, a custom scenery focused vacation gets you into the wild heart of the country at the right pace, with the guides, transfers, and well placed bases that make remote beauty easy to reach. We build each day around how active you want to be, from gentle drives and stunning viewpoints to full days of hiking, and pair the landscape with the food and culture that give each region its soul.
Italy’s most beautiful landscapes are also its least understood by visitors, and reaching them well takes local knowledge. Knowing which park trail rewards the effort, which village makes the best base, and which road delivers the view is what turns a scenic idea into a great trip. As a custom tour operator that has designed private Italian vacations for more than twenty years, we build these journeys around genuine local expertise, with private drivers and guides who know the terrain, so you experience the wild side of Italy comfortably and safely.
Scenery trips are decided by season, altitude and how far apart the good days are. These are the numbers behind the itineraries we build.
More than a third of the region sits inside national and regional parks, which is why the wolves, bears and golden eagles are still there and why the walking is as good as it is.
The Aosta Valley is ringed by the highest peaks in the Alps, and the cable cars put those views inside reach of travelers who are not climbing anything.
The wind decides which coast works on any given day, so we plan a Sardinian week with both in reach and the archaeology held back for the hot afternoons.
Wild country is spread out. Eight to twelve nights across two or three bases is what it takes to see real landscape instead of the road between the good bits.
A single night in a mountain base means you arrive, sleep and leave. Two is the floor and three is where the walking actually starts.
The small mountain properties and the guides who are worth having take a handful of groups a season. Five months works for shoulder season, nine for July and August.
Best for hikers and wildlife travelers who still want a proper dinner at the end of the day.
Abruzzo is Italy’s wild green heart, where more than a third of the land is protected. The peaks of the Gran Sasso and the Majella shelter wolves, bears, and golden eagles, medieval villages like Sulmona and the fortress of Rocca Calascio crown the hills, and the Trabocchi coast serves seafood from wooden fishing platforms over the sea. It is a region for hikers, photographers, and anyone who wants nature and tradition far from the crowds, and we build the days around the landscapes and the food that define it.
We build days into the Gran Sasso and Majella parks with local guides, pair hilltop villages like Sulmona and Rocca Calascio with seafood on the Trabocchi coast, and set the pace to your appetite for walking. The national parks need a guide who knows where the wildlife actually is at that time of year, and we book those people rather than a general driver.
Gran Sasso, Majella and Abruzzo National Park cover a third of the region and hold the largest protected area in Europe. Wolves, chamois and the Marsican brown bear are all still here, which is true almost nowhere else on the continent.
Wooden fishing platforms on stilts run out from the cliffs along the Adriatic, some of them centuries old and several now serving dinner over the water. A cycle route follows the old railway line between them.
Santo Stefano di Sessanio, Castelli and Scanno are stone villages on the slopes with a few hundred residents each. Rocca Calascio stands on a ridge at 1,460 meters and it is one of the highest fortresses in Italy.
Best for travelers who want mountains, vineyards and coast inside one short region.
In Italy’s northeastern corner, the Alps tumble down to the Adriatic and Italian, Slavic, and Central European cultures blend. The Collio hills produce some of Italy’s finest white wines along gentle vineyard roads, the Julian Alps rise dramatically inland, and lagoon towns and the grand port of Trieste add coast and history. It is an uncrowded, layered region for travelers who want scenery with genuine authenticity.
We weave the Julian Alps, the Collio vineyard roads, and the lagoon and grand cafes of Trieste into a memorable journey, with private drivers who know the back roads. Three cultures meet in this corner of Italy and the borders are casual, so we build days that cross them rather than stop at them.
Tarvisio, the Fusine lakes under Mangart, and the Triglav border country. Hiking trails here run through valleys that see a fraction of the traffic the Dolomites take, three hours further west.
Vineyards on rolling hills right on the Slovenian border, producing the best white wines in Italy. The landscape is closer to Chianti than to anything else in the northeast, and the towns in it are half Italian and half Central European.
A port that spent six hundred years as Austria’s window on the sea, with palaces, grand cafes and the Miramare castle and gardens on a headland above the water. The Carso plateau behind it is limestone, caves and wind.
Best for gentle scenery at a slow pace, with Renaissance towns attached.
One of Italy’s best kept secrets, Marche layers rolling hills, Renaissance towns, the dramatic Frasassi Caves, and the Sibillini Mountains with a quiet Adriatic coast. It rewards travelers who want authentic Italy and beautiful landscapes at a gentle pace, with a fraction of the crowds of its famous neighbors.
We combine the Frasassi Caves, the Sibillini Mountains, and Renaissance Urbino with a quiet stretch of Adriatic coast, an authentic region most visitors miss. The Sibillini roads are beautiful and slow, and we plan the distances honestly so nobody in your group is driving mountain switchbacks after dark.
A national park of high meadows and beech forest, with Castelluccio sitting above the Piano Grande. Late May into early July the whole plain turns to wildflowers, and it is one of the great sights in Italy.
One of the largest cave systems in Europe. The Abisso Ancona chamber is big enough to hold Milan cathedral, and the route through takes about ninety minutes underground.
Urbino is a complete Renaissance hill town and a World Heritage site. An hour east, the Conero headland drops white cliffs straight into clear water, with beaches below reached on foot or by boat.
Best for coastline reached by boat, and for pairing beaches with Bronze Age archaeology.
A Mediterranean island of turquoise seas, white sand, wild gorges, and mysterious Bronze Age stone towers, offering some of the most beautiful coastal and interior scenery in Italy.
We arrange a private boat to hidden coves, a day among the Bronze Age nuraghi, and the wild Gulf of Orosei, pairing the stunning turquoise coast with the island’s ancient interior. We plan Sardinia around the wind, because which coast you want on a given day depends entirely on which way it is blowing.
Limestone cliffs running for twenty five miles with beaches at Cala Goloritze, Cala Mariolu and Cala Luna that you reach from the sea or on a long walk. The waters here are the clearest in the Mediterranean by most measures.
The Gorropu gorge is five hundred meters deep and one of the deepest in Europe. Inland Barbagia is a mountain region of cork oak, shepherds and villages that kept their own language.
Seven thousand stone towers built between 1800 and 700 BC, and nobody is entirely sure how. Su Nuraxi at Barumini is a World Heritage site and it is older than the Greek temples in Sicily.
Best for high alpine views without a serious hiking commitment.
Italy’s smallest, most alpine region is ringed by Mont Blanc, the Matterhorn, and the Gran Paradiso national park.
Cable cars climb to the heights, offering breathtaking views of Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn, and we pair the Gran Paradiso park with the castles and Roman ruins of the valley floor. We time the Skyway ascent for a clear morning window rather than booking it blind, and we keep a second day in reserve for when the mountain closes.
Mont Blanc, the Matterhorn, Monte Rosa and Gran Paradiso all stand around this one valley. The Skyway cable car out of Courmayeur climbs to 3,466 meters and rotates on the way up.
Italy’s first national park, created to save the ibex, which had been reduced to a few dozen animals. They are now back in the thousands and you see them on the trails above Cogne.
Fenis, Verres and Issogne guard the old road, and Fenis with its double walls and wooden galleries is the one people photograph. Roman Aosta below them still has its arch, its gate and its theater.
The five regions above are where our landscape trips usually run, because they are quiet. These are the other Italian landscapes worth building a trip around, and what each one asks of you.
Vertical limestone towers over green valleys, and a World Heritage site for the geology as much as the scenery. Alpe di Siusi is the largest high alpine meadow in Europe. The hiking trails link mountain huts, so a walk here can run for days without a tent.
Manarola and Vernazza are the two most photographed of the five villages, stacked houses in ochre and pink above the water. The paths above them run through terraced vineyards held up by dry stone walls that have been rebuilt by hand for eight hundred years.
Cypress lines, ridge farms and the light that made the landscape famous. The Val d Orcia is a World Heritage site in its own right, and the Chianti hills north of it give you vineyards and olive groves between Florence and Siena.
Como under the Alps, Garda between mountains and vineyards, Maggiore with its island palaces and gardens. Villa terraces, boats and mountain vistas, and towns that stay open and civilized when the mountain valleys close.
Mount Etna is the highest active volcano in Europe and you can stand near the summit craters. Vesuvius looks down on Naples and on Pompeii. The Aeolian islands north of Sicily are volcanoes in the sea, and Stromboli erupts on a schedule you can watch after dark.
The trulli and olive groves of Puglia’s Itria Valley, the ravine at Matera, the Amalfi cliffs at Ravello and Positano, and the Blue Grotto on Capri. Southern Italy is drier, emptier and hotter, and the countryside there is the reason to go rather than the gap between towns.
A private driver rather than a rental counter, because the good roads here are narrow and the good starting points are not near stations. Around half of each day guided and the rest yours. Families do well on these itineraries because the days are outdoors and nobody is queuing. Our own specialists walk this country constantly, so what you are told about a trail or a season is current.
The season depends entirely on the landscape you want. Late spring through early autumn is the window for the mountains and the parks, high summer belongs to the coast and the islands, and the shoulder months give you comfortable walking with the trails largely to yourself.
We begin by asking how active you actually want to be, and we listen to the answer rather than assuming. That decides everything downstream: how far apart the bases sit, how much of each day is on foot, and which guides we hold. Wild country runs on a small number of good people and small properties that take a handful of groups a season, so we commit those early and keep a weather alternative in reserve for the days the mountain decides otherwise.
Bring the whole family home to Abruzzo. A relaxed 11-day multigenerational journey through ancestral hill towns, shared kitchens and castle-crowned peaks, from Sulmona and L’Aquila to a grand finale
Discover the Italy few ever see. Cloud high castles, wild Apennine peaks and timeless villages across Abruzzo, with a private driver, your own rental car and a romantic finale
A bright 10 day summer family vacation in northeastern Italy, combining Udine as a relaxed home base with hands-on cooking, storybook day trips, and a coastal finale in Trieste.
Tell us how active you want to be, roughly when you want to travel and how much time you have, and we will come back with a first itinerary and the guides already being held. Nothing is booked until you have seen the plan.
Have a park or a stretch of coast in mind? Say which and we will shape the week around it. If all you know is that you want to be somewhere green and quiet, we can work from that.
Trips 2 Italy has been arranging Italian travel for 23 years, since 2003, and has 253 itineraries published across all 20 Italian regions. Easier to explain on the phone? Call 713-952-4055 in Houston or 1-866-464-8259 toll free and you will reach a planner directly.
Every one of these is planned privately around what you tell us. Browse the other ways our travelers see Italy.
It depends on what moves you. Abruzzo offers wild mountains and national parks, the Dolomites and Aosta Valley deliver the high Alps, Sardinia has extraordinary coast, and Friuli blends mountains and sea. We match the region to the scenery you want.
Only as much as you want. We design the days around your fitness and interests, from gentle drives and viewpoints to full hiking days, so the landscape is accessible to every traveler.
We provide private drivers and guides who know the terrain, so you can reach remote beauty comfortably without navigating unfamiliar mountain or rural roads.
Late spring through early autumn suits the mountains and parks, while summer is ideal for the coast and islands. We plan around the season and your dates.
Yes. Well placed accommodations, private drivers, guides, and experiences are arranged as one coordinated plan, confirmed before you travel.
