3 month stay in southern Italy

Some high-level comments:

• If you're traveling on US or Canadian passports, you are limited to 90 days (not 3 months!) in the entire Schengen area within any 180-day period. Italy is part of the Schengen zone, so you must be very careful about your length of stay. Both your arrival day and your departure day count. Overstaying the limit can result in a fine and even in being banned from returning to the Schengen area for years.

• I don't know anything about Sardinia, but you're otherwise targeting southern Italy, which will generally be seriously hot in the summer. I wouldn't even plan to go that far south in late May. (Voice of experience.) I really like both Sicily and Puglia, but sightseeing outdoors in the summer in those areas is a physically draining experience, and you cannot even count on museums to be air conditioned. If you've spent substantial time in Rome and Florence during the summer and would happily do so again, you are made of stronger stuff than I am and can ignore my advice about Sicily and Puglia (though they will probably be hotter).

• I always recommend at least 2 weeks in Sicily for folks who'll have a rental car and longer for those who are using public transportation. Three weeks would definitely not be too long (except for the heat).

• Lecce is a lovely Baroque city and a relatively convenient base, but public transportation in Puglia isn't fast, so if you won't have a car, you should dig into train and bus schedules to be sure you can get where you want to go on day trips. I haven't been to Bari, but it sounds worthwhile.

• I seriously question the practicality of a really long stay in Sorrento unless you don't want to do much more than relax around your (probably expensive) hotel. Driving in the area will get old very fast because of heavy traffic, the buses are overcrowded and slow, and the only rail service is the slow, non-air-conditioned Circumvesuviana or the 4-times-a-day Campania "Express" which takes 75 minutes to get to Naples. Sorrento isn't really a good base for day trips beyond the Amalfi Peninsula, Capri (maybe Ischia and Procida as well--I haven't checked), Pompeii, Herculaneum and Naples. But Naples has many days' worth of sights, so it would be more practical to spend multiple nights there rather than taking repeated trips in from Sorrento.

• if you decide to spend a lot of time in the Naples/Sorrento/Amalfi area, you'll save a lot of money on sight entry fees with the annual Campania ArteCard.

• For a summer trip I'd be looking much farther north to mountainous areas like the Dolomites. I'd also consider the north and west coasts of Spain, Normandy and Brittany in France, Scandinavia and the Baltic countries.

Sicily is full of quaint old towns, including Erice and Modica on opposite sides of Sicily. But it and Sardinia are about the hilliest, steepest places you might imagine, so a bicycle will require extra effort to get around.

Hi,
acraven gives excellent advice....I live in Italy and I second all he says. If you're looking to relax and explore southern Italy for three months I would choose March, April and May if you mainly want to explore and sightsee or April, May and June if you want to include beach/sea time. The only reason to choose July and August is if you have absolutely no choice. Most of Italy, except the mountains, is hot, crowded, stressful and expensive in July and August when hordes of foreign visitors are joined by Italians on holiday.
To visit the south in the spring start from Sicily, nice even in March, then Puglia, then Sardinia....

Ok THANKYOU for your words of wisdom, this is incredibly helpful!
Yes understood on the Shenghen Visa, sadly.

Initially a long stay was to complete an immersion course then stay in a local
Town for Months, but had already reverted to improving our language skills at home first /instead and just holiday.. mainly due to the visa.
We are Australian.
Travel dates are restricted to commence mid-May.
We will hire a car or motorbike (not bicycle).
So, in rethinking the plan from your combined info, might this look better?:
Arrive mid-May, Sicily 2weeks;
first 2 weeks June.. Lecce 5-6N, then Sorrento 4-5N;

End June, Sardinia 2 weeks.

For July we could revisit an earlier plan to do the Camino .. again if July is not too hot.
Again THANKYOU :)

Australians are also limited to the 90 in 180 day Schengen rule.

Your revised plan is much better than your original. Enjoy but be prepared for heat.

Perfect ! thanks Tanic .. and all for the input :)

If you have three months, in my opinion, Sicily rates an entire month. We recently spent two weeks and felt kind of cheated, only saw the eastern portion, and not enough of that!
I'd do one month Sicily, one month Puglia, and split the other month between Calabria (absolutely breathtaking coastal scenery) and Abruzzo (I'm dying to see that Adriatic coast!)

Thanks Joan, I like your suggestions. I see a couple of others here for stays on Sicily, if for 3 weeks would you move around and stay in which places? Swimming is big on our agenda. TIA

Sicily is very large. You really, really need quite a few bases to do it justice. There are no fast trains to help you cover ground quickly. Unless you plan to work remotely, write a novel, take language lessons, or have some other significant project to work on, I wouldn't recommend going to Sicily and spending multiple weeks in one place.

For me the absolute musts are Palermo (side trips to Cefalu and Monreale) and Siracusa (the Ortygia neighborhood). Siracusa works as a base for side trips to the Baroque towns of Ragusa, Modica, Noto and Scicli--or you could stay in one of those towns, in addition to Siracusa if you had a car.

A spot in the interior would be good--maybe Piazza Armerina for convenient access to the Villa Romana del Casale.

Then there are some interesting points in the northwest--Erice, Trapani and some others that I missed.

Catania/Taormina/Mt. Etna are another cluster that deserve time. I really disliked the overrun, international-boutique-y atmosphere of Taormina, but it is indisputably beautiful and plenty of folks really like it.

You're on your own for figuring out the best way to see one or more of the major Greek sites (Agrigento, Segesta and Selinunte), because I skipped them all.

Then you have the islands.

A month would definitely not be too long for a relaxing visit to Sicily, but I really wonder whether you'd make it through 4 weeks before the heat seriously got to you. I'd fear the same problem in Puglia, and all the more so if you went to Puglia after a month in Sicily.

Thanks acraven! amazingly helpful thankyou. We do live in Singapore so are used to the heat but I understand what you are saying. Thankyou ..

That probably will help, but I'm from Washington DC, where it can be hot and humid for many months of the year, and I still found Sicily and Puglua pretty exhausting. At home I'm in an air-comditioned apartment, air-conditioned stores, air-conditioned restaurants and air-conditioned museums for most of the day. If I want to go somewhere 2 or 3 miles away, I hop on the air-conditioned subway system. It's not the same as being a tourist in Southern Italy.

Having a car would be helpful, because you wouldn't be standing outdoors at uncovered bus stops, waiting for a bus to take you to the next town. Intercity buses are generally not very frequent, and few of them are on the road on Sunday.

Lynmantle, we are swim people also. (We rented our own small boats in both Cinque Terre and Lake Como. The CT boat was wonderful choice for avoiding day crowds.)
In Sicily, we stayed in Cefalu and took a day train trip to Palermo for a food tour. The beach at Cefalu is perfect for swimming. Warm gorgeous water. We had a balcony apt (too hot during the day to sit on the balcony but gorgeous at night). We swam daily there.
We drove south after that and stayed in Scicli, which fulfills your desire for a quaint town, to be near the coast. One of our days we drove 15 minutes and walked the beach and swam. It was bizarre because there were multiple cabana type places all lining the beach, and all closed! This was a Saturday morning in September, so warm and perfect beach weather yet nothing was open. There were a few people on the beach, but maybe Covid had closed all these mini businesses, rather desolate feeling!

Our Scicli apartment: (absolutely a true art-filled bargain) was called Athena's Rest (on Air bnb)
and our Cefalu place, also with terrace, was called Orlando apartment, also on Air bnb. Let me know if you need the links.

P.S. I do agree with Acraven about the heat, but we try to go out early and rest during the late afternoons when the heat is worst, then venture out in the early evening...and sometimes you can't choose the month, so I say go for it!

Be aware that most car rental companies do not allow taking cars to Sicily from the mainland. We into Catania and rented a one way car to Palermo. Was wonderful exploring Sicily. If you will then be traveling to Pugila, you could fly to Baru and travel to Lecce by bus or train. We found parking in Lecce to be a hugh headache.

Becky, Avis allowed us to take the rental from mainland on car ferry to Sicily and back. But you're right, it's worth checking.
And we also had a huge headache parking in Lecce. The meters and the parknow app did not work. There was a "gentleman" cruising around the parking lot, he yelled at us for no placard, we explained we could not seem to pay, and he waved us on without us paying. We were afraid to come back, but our car was safe and sound when we did! whew!