What are the best places to tour in Italy that are not common to tourist ?

Question

Places that the locals enjoy but the tourist have not flooded.

Answer 1

Mantua, Ferrara, Padua, Verona, Ravenna : great works of art, but not as tourists flooded as Florence/Venice.

Answer 2

Sicily get little tourism and what tourism it does get is usually Italian. The same with Calabria and Puglia - the foreigners you see are usually Italians coming back home for a visit from abroad. Friuli doesn't get its share of tourism which makes it an ideal territory to explore - it's got mountains and sea. Another place is the Po river Valley - full of interesting small towns and wonderful scenery.

Answer 3

we loved exploring the umbria region!  spoleto was a wonderful little town to discover and we really enjoyed using it as our base for operations.  if you like caves, go on the cave tour at frasassi di grotte.  we also dug through the ceramic stores in deruta to find some great handmade ceramics.  the monster park in bomarzo was really cool and definitely off the beaten path.  

honestly, i found a lot of great non-touristy things in a tour book.  i used the eyewitness books for italy and just read through all the information for the regions we wanted to visit.  also, just exploring led us to some new places.  probably the best way to not be so touristy is to not stay in a tourist region.  if you can, rent a villa or apartment in a small town or residential area of a city to really get the feel of being a local but also near the major sites you may want to see.  we used this site to book our villa and really liked it.  http://www.villavacations.com

Answer 4

I am biased but my three favourite area are Marche, Piedmont and Sardinia. The coast in le Marche and Sardinia is fairly crowded this time of year but for the rest you won't find floods of tourists. What you will find is the real Italy. Beautiful villages and towns, lot's of history, great food and friendly people.

Answer 5

Tropea

http://img178.imageshack.us/img178/3552/...

Camogli

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/147/42587...

Portofino

http://img484.imageshack.us/img484/9169/...

Vernazza

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/164/33872...

Lampedusa

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/104/30000...

Sardinia

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread...

Answer 6

Great question! I've just returned from Florence and it was like being in Disneyworld. Lines for everything, really packed.

I think that a great rule of thumb is to get a guidebook and chose the 5th top attraction. Tourists rarely pass the third one.

I went to Lucca in Tuscany. Really close to Piza. It's not touristy, it has lots of history and it's a walled city. Great food and you can really experience Italy being there.