Italy

Italy is less a country than a string of city-states with shared pasta and very strong opinions about coffee. Rome stacks 2,000 years of empire on top of itself; Florence is the Renaissance in walking-tour form; Venice still floats; and the south offers volcano-shadowed coastlines, ancient Greek ruins and the kind of tomato that makes you reconsider lunch. Eat regionally, drive the back roads, and don't try to do it all in a week.