Two home bases in Italy to tour the country in three weeks.

I wouldn’t use Bologna as a base. There are countless nicer cities / towns.

Where exactly do you want to go? Which cities and towns do you want to cover? Without this information, no one can suggest a good home base for your plans.

I will be traveling in Italy..... for 3 weeks and need two good home bases to be able to cover most of the country.......We really want to see as much as we can and will travel a lot by train.

If you limit yourself to 2 bases and want to 'cover most of the country', you really will "travel a lot by train", and not much else.

Hope you can help the three of us.

You cannot see 'most of the country' in 3 weeks. You need to decide what it is you really want to see, plot out a path of how to link those together to make a 'start here end there' and minimize back tracking.

Here is how RS covers a lot of Italy in 17 days--- https://www.ricksteves.com/tours/italy/best-italy
You will see that trying to do it from just 2 places isn't practical.

Have to agree with the previous posters.

This is like trying to see all of California from two bases like LA and San Francisco. You will miss much of the state is that outside of a reasonable day trip radius from these locations. There is absolutely nothing wrong with splitting 3 weeks between 2 locations, but you need to adjust your goals in terms of how much of the country you will be able to see.

The classic Italian trip is Venice, Florence, Rome and with three weeks you can tailor or change that as interests you. I'd define what most interests you as a group, list "must see" and "would love to see" things and then do your best to fit as many of them in as you can while maintaining your travel style and sanity.

Planning means making some hard decisions but your trip is up to you - enjoy it,
=Tod

These are the reasonable day trips by train. Look through them and see if those are places you want to see.

”and need two good home bases to be able to cover most of the country.” The list below shows that’s not possible.

Verona gives you Lake Garda, Vicenza, Padova, Venice, Mantova, and possibly a town heading towards Trento.

Bologna gives you Modena, Parma, Ravenna & Florence.

Florence gives you Pisa, Lucca, Montecatini Terme, Arezzo, Siena (by bus), Bologna, Perugia.

Perugia gives you Assisi, Spello, Spoleto and other small towns.

Rome gives you Orvieto, Tivoli, Caserta.

Choose either Northern or Southern Italy with only three weeks. Otherwise you will be seeing mostly the insides of trains, be exhausted and not getting a real feel for Italy.
Northern Italy:Our favorite area, 8 trips there.
In no particular order here are enough special places to more than fill three weeks.
Rome Florence and Venice. Bologna and north to one of the Italian Lakes. We especially love Lake Como.
The western coast visit Santa Margherita Ligure and Camogli.

Tuscany( Panzano, Castellina, Siena) and Umbria (Spello). I listed some of favorite places that we have stayed. We have been to Southern Italy and prefer the north. Sicily is its own category and we love it !
I would be happy to answer more of your questions.

Hi there, Sue from Tampa. :O)
Wise, wise words from the gang above: you simply cannot "cover" most of Italy in 3 weeks from just two bases. As already said, you'd spend a lot of time sitting on transport and less of it actually sightseeing. So sure, choosing two bases which offer a variety of day trips within reasonable distances is fine. Some very good options were offered up above. Just understand that there's going to be a limit on what you can, and SHOULD, try to do. I wouldn't be crazy about day trips that take approx. 2-hours, one way, from a base but that's just me. Shoot, I'd have to look long and hard at any day trip that would eat up 4 hours in the getting there and back. YMMV.

You haven't told us anything about your interests? That also needs to be a consideration when choosing a base. And what time of year?

I see from a prior post that you were planning on spending 4 days in Como this past fall. Did you make that trip, did you go to any other locations in Italy, and what did you end up doing/seeing while you were there? In another post back in 2014 you said you were going to Stresa, Venice and Rome. Did you go?

That’s mission impossible. Italy is too large to be visited from just two locations on day trips. There are hundreds of miles from north to south. Decide what you want to see first, then we can see where it makes sense to stay.

Thank you all for your replies.
We are going in early Oct in 2025. Yes, I did go to Como recently and loved it. My two friends who I will be traveling with really don't want to go there. I was just there so that works for me. We are interested in Bologna, Moderna, Parma, Florence, Verona ,Venice San Marino,
Tuscany. They also now want to do Amalfi Coast, Naples and end up in Civitavecchia to catch a cruise that takes us back to the Us.
So, any continued help with home bases would be helpful. Maybe, we should have 3 different bases each doing a week but we could break it up the best way possible. We will not have a car.
Once again, any suggestions is appreciated. We all have been to Rome many times, so we can skip that this trip. Venice is a must for them though for a few days.
Thanks.
Suebarrie19

I think you can at least take San Marino out of the mix. SInce the train doesn't go there (you have to take a bus up from the coast), I don't think it's worth the travel time.

A week in Venice, a week in Bologna and somewhere near Amalfi, either Sorrento or right on the Amalfi? This doesn't really give you Tuscany, but gives you most of the rest of your goals. With 3 weeks I think you could do 4 bases as well, add Siena in to the mix and do 4-5 nights each.

It sounds like y'all have quite a bit of Italy under your belts already.

Have all three of you traveled together before? Do you plan to rent apartments for your home bases? Or stay in hotels? Or a combo of both?

Your desired lodgings and budget for them could affect where you can actually go and when. That and all the suggestions others have made will likely add to the need to do some serious prioritizing.

Not knowing what you've done so far, it might be useful for each of you to separately make your own prioritized list of what you want to see and do where. Then compare your lists. You might find a lot of similarities which could help make the planning easier. You might not which could make it more challenging.

Fortunately you have a lot of time to work through the planning process.