Gluten free dining

I'm into sourdough bread baking, and I thought I'd pass on a few things if by chance, either could help you. I do see that you're are diagnosed as Celiac, so it may not help you, but just in case. 1) Some that can't handle gluten can handle sourdough bread. 2)I've heard that the less processed, more ancient grain varieties used in Europe can work for some folks with issues with gluten. That said, my recollection is that many of the restaurants we ate at had gluten free options. Good luck and I hope you have a great trip.

For Florence, see https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/italy-reviews/florence-and-montepulciano-gluten-free

In Rome, some favorites are:
1. Mama Eat (Trastevere) and Mama Frites (Vatican area)
2. Pandali (cafe with excellent inexpensive lunch options, bread, cookies, etc., very near the Pantheon)
3. La Soffitta Renovatio (near Vatican)
4. Le Altre Farina del Mulino (cafe with GF pastries, south of Vatican)
5. Risotteria Melloti is in Rome as well.
6. Pantha Rei (very near Pantheon)

In Venice we loved Frary’s, which has a range of excellent Mediterranean and middle eastern food. Good for a change after a few weeks of Italian fare.

Grom for gelato everywhere!

Celiac here myself and just back from 2.5 weeks in Italy. Unfortunately, the only common place on your list for us was we spent a day in Florence. Went to Ciro and Sons and had pizza and it was excellent. I did tons of research prior to the trip and had a list of restaurants to go to that had good reviews on Find Me GF and the AIC app for Italy (Plus I'd look at reviews on Google Maps). I'd also recommend Wheatless Wanderlust as he has a great website with a lot of GF guides for cities around the world. Wish we were in Florence longer as there were a number of places that looked great.

I found the recognition at restaurants to be mostly okay and some great. Some not so great in terms of recognition though, which made me a bit nervous. There were always GF options to choose from, but if I wanted pasta or pizza the quality varied. Some places had fresh GF pasta or pizza dough they made, but most were packaged varieties and a couple places were too busy to cook the GF pasta.

The hotels we also stayed at had advertised or said they had GF options for breakfast. With a lot of the items naturally GF that was pretty easy, but the ones who said they had bread products, those were individually packaged breads or muffins in sealed packages. Same at most restaurants if they had a GF bread option, they'd bring a packaged and sealed slice or two of bread.

We did a pasta making class in San Gimignano (DOC Cooking School) and they were able to accommodate me and another celiac individual. We had our own station with GF flour to make our pastas and they cooked them separately. I can't recommend them highly enough both for celiac and non-celiac people. Our group loved the experience.

We also did a pizza making class just outside Sorrento. That was a lot harder to find, but this place had me make the regular dough like everyone else (they asked and I'm okay with handling gluten, just not eating it), and then they cooked me a GF pizza from a prepared crust in a separate oven. Much thanks to them too. (Their name slips my mind right now....sorry)

In general some of the best Italian food we had on past trips were in the small mom and pop places, but that was harder this trip to get GF at those places, especially pasta or pizza. I am thankful though that there are enough options to eat GF in Italy and we found some awesome places to eat at.

As an aside I am not super sensitive to cross contamination, so it makes it a bit easier for me to eat out in restaurants. So, I can't comment too much on that if you are super sensitive to CC. One comment mentioned the type of wheat used in Italy is different, which might be helpful for gluten intolerant people, but wouldn't be much help for celiac individuals as there is still gluten in the product.

Enjoy your trip and hope this information is helpful!

Edit: See the mention of Risotteria Melotti in Rome. We ate at their Milan location and it was awesome!