ITALIAN ODYSSEY ATLAS

Rome was founded, legend says, by Romulus in 753 BC, and for a thousand years it ruled an empire from Britain to Mesopotamia. You can still stand in the Forum where Caesar was stabbed in 44 BC, look up into the 43-metre concrete dome of the Pantheon, rebuilt under Hadrian around AD 125, and walk the arena of the Colosseum, which held some 50,000 spectators. Across the Tiber, Vatican City holds St Peter's Basilica and Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling, painted 1508–12. Finish with a coin in the Trevi Fountain and a plate of cacio e pepe in Trastevere.

Florence is where the Renaissance was born. Under the Medici bankers in the 1400s, the city paid for Brunelleschi's dome on the cathedral, completed in 1436 without scaffolding from the ground, and for the paintings of Botticelli, Leonardo and Michelangelo. The Uffizi, built as Medici offices in 1560, now holds The Birth of Venus, while the Accademia keeps Michelangelo's 5-metre David, carved 1501–04. Cross the Ponte Vecchio, still lined with goldsmiths as it has been since 1593, then climb to Piazzale Michelangelo for sunset over the red-tiled roofs.

Venice is a city of 118 small islands in a lagoon, built on millions of wooden piles by people fleeing mainland invasions after the fall of Rome. For a thousand years the Venetian Republic was a trading superpower, and its wealth shows in St Mark's Basilica, covered with more than 8,000 square metres of gold mosaics, and the pink-and-white Doge's Palace next door. There are no cars: you travel by vaporetto down the Grand Canal or on foot over some 400 bridges. Take a boat to Murano for glassblowing and Burano for its painted houses, then eat cicchetti standing up at a bàcaro.

Milan was Mediolanum, a capital of the Western Roman Empire, where Constantine issued the Edict of Milan in AD 313 granting tolerance to Christians. Its cathedral, the Duomo, took nearly six centuries to finish (1386–1965) and carries some 3,400 statues; you can walk on its marble roof among the spires. Leonardo da Vinci worked here for the Sforza dukes and painted The Last Supper (1495–98) on a refectory wall at Santa Maria delle Grazie, which you must book weeks ahead. Today it is Italy's capital of fashion and design, with opera at La Scala since 1778.

Genoa was 'La Superba', a maritime republic that rivalled Venice, founded trading colonies from Crimea to the Aegean and became the banker of Spain's empire. Christopher Columbus was born here around 1451. Its medieval centre is one of Europe's largest, a maze of narrow alleys called caruggi, while the Strade Nuove of the 1500s are lined with merchant palaces now protected by UNESCO. The Lanterna lighthouse, rebuilt in 1543, still guards the port, where Renzo Piano's aquarium sits in the old harbour. Genoa is also the home of pesto and the gateway to Portofino and the Cinque Terre.

Naples began as Neapolis, the 'new city' founded by Greek colonists around 600 BC, and its grid of streets in the historic centre still follows their plan. Above it looms Vesuvius, which buried Pompeii and Herculaneum in AD 79; the finest mosaics and frescoes from both are in the National Archaeological Museum, including the Alexander Mosaic. Go underground into Greek and Roman tunnels at Napoli Sotterranea, see the veiled Christ sculpture in the Sansevero Chapel, and eat pizza where it was invented. Day trips reach Pompeii, the Amalfi Coast and the island of Capri.