Italy trip report

You can't fault Italy for being full of Italians ;-)

Sounds like a living nightmare! I doubt the OP meant anything by the Italian tourists comment.
It was just information as to the difference in the crowds from one place to another.

I’m sorry you had such an awful trip. My family and I are still looking forward to our trip there this summer. We are going there knowing that many people are finally getting a chance to make up for trips that had to be canceled over the last couple of years. Also, many of us with kids don’t have the luxury of going in January or February.

I find this trip report both frank and refreshing.

Thanks for posting it...summer is always crowded in Italy, and it sounds like the crowds are already out there this early in the summer season. We prefer the shoulder seasons for all Europe travel, and we also enjoy December for XMAS markets and such. I haven't been to Europe in the "summer" in at least 15 years, got burned too many times by crowds and heat prior to that.

I'm going next June. I hope EVERYONE reads this including those pesky Italians, and they all stay home so I'll have Rome and Sorrento all to myself.

Pompeii is NOT what it used to be.

You can say that again!!!

I'm glad I'm not planning to go to Rome during peak time. Sorry you had such a bad experience.

Thank you for that frank report.

We leave for Rome this Tuesday, so thanks for your post……..I think.

I have to agree with the OP. We were in Rome, Naples, Pompeii and the Amalfi coast 21 years ago. After having just been there, I can honestly say it is way too crowded now. Twenty-one years ago, there were no lines, no crowds, no security checks. It was fun and a pleasure to be there. I am so glad that we have already seen a good deal of the more touristed parts on Europe already. With the exception of Scandinavia in 2019, we have been traveling to more far flung places in the world so this recent trip was a bit of a shock. In the future we will travel off season or to places that are more outside the heavily touristed areas if those areas even exist anymore.

I am so glad that we have already seen a good deal of the more touristed parts on Europe already.

Mary said it all right there, and I will add that after the last 2+ years of staying at home, the world is entering a phase of excess tourism in the extreme among the "bucket list" set. Prior to the pandemic, this was being written about regularly in travel mags and on forums, the over saturation of the best known tourist destinations, especially in Europe, as different cities and countries debated measures to limit crowds. When the Chinese and other asian nation tourists hit the road again, as they were doing pre pandemic in record numbers, the crowds at popular tourist destinations will be miserably large in the prime travel months from May to September.

Like Mary, I am so glad that we have already "been there and done that" with respect to these destinations. We still enjoy travel to Europe, but we avoid the touristy stuff as much as possible, and we also travel outside of the prime summer tourist season.

Rome requires a lot of time and patience, as well as the ability to overlook her many flaws. The buses are a joke. Many times during our almost five years there we were “ghosted” by buses that our bus app said were coming that we just walked most of the time.

I am sorry you had such a poor impression. Nov or Jan May suit you better as crowds are lighter although still noticeable.

Thanks for sharing your experience and perspective, it's helpful to consider another's view on things. You've gotten great responses here, too (eyes on Kim). Regarding Italian buses, who's seen Bruno Bozetto's Europe vs Italy animated clip? Bus scene is spot on.

I wonder what the tourist crowds are like in Italy's less prominent and well know (internationally that is) places, like Bologna, or Perugia, or Bergamo or Turin or Padua or Ravenna etc. Probably a lot of more local tourism but much less overcrowding?

Thanks for that truthful report. I am positively allergic to crowds like you described (and I can't tolerate hot weather) and I would have hated Italy too. My only experience in Italy was five days in Rome one February. The weather was chilly, not cold, mostly sunny, and the crowds were very manageable - not deserted, but not mobbed either. I most definitely prefer shoulder season or off season travel and you encapsulated all my reasons right there in your post.

Pompeii is NOT what it used to be.

Yep, lava is notorious for drastically changing the landscape.

Don't think there is one square inch of Michelangelo's original work.

You may be relieved to know that no art historian agrees with you, anymore. Not even my butcher, who knows nothing about art but simply saw the Doni Tondo in Florence before the Chapel, agrees with you.

We were in Italy in March on a Viking cruise; it wasn't crowded at all. If I had to guess, we were among 40-50 people at most in the Sistine Chapel. The Vatican Museum wasn't crowded at all; Pompeii was wonderful; small crowds, an amazing visit. I don't know the fences that you saw--we went almost everywhere except for the baths, which are closed due to Covid.

Even Venice was nice; St. Mark's Square got crowded by 3pm, but it was virtually empty in the morning.

I guess we went in the right time of year...

Travel to a foreign country and complain about it being 'overrun with tourists'? Are you not part of 'the problem'?

As for the Sistine Chapel, the restoration was about removing all of what had accumulated since Mike finished his work on it.

Good to read that Southern Italy was less annoying

Oddly enough, I had seen the Sistine Chapel BEFORE they "restored" it. I have to say that it now looks more like something completed yesterday. Don't think there is one square inch of Michelangelo's original work. VERY disappointing.

Can anyone enlighten me about this?

I understood that a very small section of the Sistine Chapel was left unrestored; to provide comparison between the years of dirt, and the colourful original.
I'm sure when I went there just after the restoration I was told that.
I saw it in it's "dirty" state way before that, and it was still amazing.

I'm still going back to lovely Italy for my 12th visit there, at the end of this year.
Hang the crowds...you can always turn a couple of corners and be away from them.

Can anyone enlighten me about this?

Read the NYT piece I linked above. Some people and a couple of US "experts" were used to the dirty frescoes, but the controversy was settled... I don't know... in the late 90s?

Can you summarize that NYT article? It's behind a paywall.

Kim, when I read “Pompeii isn’t what it used to be,” I laughed out loud.