We have a 21-day trip planned in October/November 2025 to Italia.
Current itinerary is:
Napoli (5 days)
Sorrento (3)
Ravello (3)
Salerno or Caserta (4 days)
Bologna (5 and our 3rd visit)
We are slow travelers who prefer to spend more time in a place to get to know it better.
Which city would you recommend?
We have spent 6 days in Roma and have no further interest in it.
Thanks
Since you are already staying a decent number of days on both sides on the Sorrentina Peninsula (Sorrento and Ravello), you could probably rearrange your number of days in that area a bit to give you extra time to visit Salerno from Amalfi (via bus or ferry), and spend some time in Caserta and visit the Royal Palace, the medieval town of Casertavecchia (Old Caserta) on top of the hill, and the Caroline Aqueduct o Vanvitelli, which supplied water to the Royal Palace.
Will you have a car? I found driving in the Caserta - Salerno area quite alarming, you need to be calm, confident, have full insurance and not expect other drivers to respect a 'Stop' or ?give way' on local roads - no problems on motorways. We drove into Salerno which was not a good idea: very stressful and also stressful and expensive parking. I would visit using public transport. We also had a car for Caserta which instead was useful for visiting nearby places which were very interesting (as Roberto says), plus the Reggia di Caserta is fascinating and the gardens so enourmous you can easily spend a whole day there if you are slow like us.
In conclusion, if you already have a car and are keeping it I would choose Caserta, where a car is advantage, however stressful it is.
If you are using public transport choose Salerno - you could easily add a a day on Naples and day trip to Caserta just for the Reggia.
https://slowtravelitalyspain.blogspot.com/2020/12/october-2020-caserta-santangelo-and.html
@Tinac
"Will you have a car?"
No. We are train people. Sometimes buses, but my wife hates bus trips longer than 20 minutes.
Ravello gets universal rave reviews. But it has to be noted that it's at a higher elevation than the actual Amalfi Coast, and is a considerable bus or taxi ride from "civilization". In that sense, it might be described as a poor "base for daytrips". You didn't exactly say that's what you want, but I just wanted to make the observation. Amalfi is the point where the two bus routes between Salerno and Sorrento meet.
In the sense that Salerno is convenient to Paestum, while Caserta has the Palace, they are very different. I have not been to either of them. It seems possible to train from Salerno to Caserta, but probably with a change in Naples (?) Check Caserta as a daytrip from Naples? Sorrento is considered the busiest off-season town in the AC area, so you can expect some stores to be closed in October/November. I've only been there in the summer.
Bologna seems like an outlier, simply for distance, despite being a lovely place to stay.
@Tim,
"Ravello gets universal rave reviews.... You didn't exactly say that's what you want"
We will relax, walk, and eat. Eating is a passion. We won't be visiting the non-existent cathedral.
"It seems possible to train from Salerno to Caserta, but probably with a change in Naples (?)"
Trenitalia has a number of direct trains for €6.
Bologna is farther away, but:
1. We like it. We have spent 10 days there in past years.
2. It has BA flight that leaves early in the morning to LHR so we can catch our flight home to DEN. Also, BLQ is conveniently close to the city and is small.
I was just in Salerno end of last October for several days. The ferries start a much reduced schedule in November so any Salerno <> Amalfi coast travel is easiest to accomplish before November.
Salerno is an interesting town with some of the southern chaos but on a much reduced level than Naples. To me Salerno felt kind of like being a tourist in Italy in the 90s - you order food but the results may be different than you are expecting. The English translations are unpredictable as are the accommodations for tourists. But after the madness of Naples for 5 days I think Salerno will probably seem tame and quaint.
Ultimately I liked Salerno but the appeal is really the things around Salerno - Pompeii, Paestum, Amalfi more than the city itself. It made a nice place to stay as a hopping off point for the other attractions. If Caserta itself interests you more than Salerno - outside the castle - then I would choose that way.
I have not been to Caserta but there are both direct (~1 hr) and change in Naples (~1:45 hr) or just 45 minutes from Naples options via train. You could day trip to each one from Naples and then decide if you're willing to swing last minute reservations in the off season.
Have a great trip,
=Tod
