Italy

Walking tours in Italy are perhaps the most honest way to understand a country where every street has its own personality and every square remembers at least two thousand years of history. You can't just "see the sights" here — Italy has to be walked, felt through the cobblestones underfoot, discovered at a fountain you weren't looking for, stumbled upon in a church nobody warned you about. From the imperial ruins of Rome to the canals of Venice, from the Gothic lanes of Milan to the whitewashed houses of Puglia, the country offers so many different backdrops for a stroll that no two routes ever feel alike. With an audio guide, every walk becomes a conversation with the city.

Rome deserves several separate walks, which is exactly why it's worth breaking the city into pieces. The My Rome route takes you through the city's main layers — from antiquity to the Baroque — at the unhurried pace the Eternal City really deserves. If you're less interested in architecture than in water, or rather in how Romans have spent centuries taming it for beauty, the The Best Fountains of Rome route reveals the city's most striking fountains, including the ones most tourists walk straight past. And for anyone craving greenery over stone, there's The Gardens of Villa Borghese — a walk through one of Italy's most beautiful park ensembles.

Milan is often written off as a purely business-minded city, but on foot it reveals a completely different side. The Milan: In the Footsteps of Leonardo da Vinci route follows the streets Leonardo himself once walked, showing how the city shaped his work — and how his work shaped the city. And if you have a spare day, it's worth heading out to the lake: the The Secrets of Como route winds along the promenades and old lanes of one of Lombardy's most elegant corners, far from the rhythm of the city.

Venice can only really be known on foot: it reveals itself through bridges, narrow calli, and old water doors — entrances straight from the canal that once served as front doors instead of streets. The The Best of Venice route takes you through the city's most essential corners so that in a single day you grasp its true character, rather than getting lost among lanes that all look the same at first glance. Naples plays by different rules — louder, denser, more temperamental — and that's exactly what you need to feel on your own two feet. The A Weekend in Naples route is built for a short trip, which is usually all the time this city gets anyway.

Sicily deserves a trip of its own, and two cities in particular are worth exploring on foot. Syracuse, with its island heart of Ortigia and its ancient Greek theaters, fits neatly into one full day — which is exactly how the Syracuse in 1 Day route is designed. Palermo, meanwhile, is a city of contrasts, where Arab, Norman, and Baroque architecture stand side by side on the same street; the The Best of Palermo route helps you make sense of this layered city without the chaos.

Turin rarely makes it into the opening lines of Italian travel guides, and that's a shame — this is a city with a mysterious reputation all its own, elegant arcades, and 19th-century cafés; the Mystical Turin route uncovers this lesser-known side of Piedmont. In the southeast, in Puglia, two very different towns are worth lingering over: Alberobello will surprise you with entire neighborhoods of trulli, with their whitewashed walls and cone-shaped roofs, while Bari shows a completely different rhythm — an old port town where the streets still belong to people, not cars.

The most comfortable time for walking in Italy is April to June and September to October, when the heat isn't draining yet and the streets aren't as packed as in July and August. Pack comfortable shoes with a good sole — the cobblestones in historic centers can trip up even seasoned travelers. Between cities, the easiest way to get around is by high-speed train, Trenitalia or Italo, which connect Rome, Milan, Naples, and Turin in just a few hours, leaving more time for exploring the cities themselves on foot.

Each of these cities can be explored your own way — quickly or slowly, map in hand or simply trusting the voice in your headphones. Download the route you want in the YOWAY app and set off to explore Italy at your own pace, stopping wherever you feel like it.