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One of the top five tourist meccas on the planet, Italy is welcoming all the world to visit this year, especially those who can trace their family there. Last fall, Italy declared 2024 the year of “tourism of the roots” and launched an ongoing campaign to encourage visitors with Italian heritage to come to the country.

A number of stars can trace their roots to Tuscany — the beacon of the Renaissance as well as the birthplace of DaVinci, Michelangelo, Machiavelli and poet Dante Alghieri — including Rose McGowan and Susan Sarandon, who has family in towns that are near the capital city of Florence. Roberto Begnini, born in nearby Prato, is an honorary citizen of Florence.

One of the city’s finest hotels is Sina Villa Medici, formerly a 19th-century palazzo. Stay in the Royal Suite, starting at $2,135 (more booking options at Expedia and Trip Advisor), with its high ceilings and spacious living room, including a fireplace and a study, priceless ornamentation, antiques and artworks. 

If your wallet is feeling less than royal, try the Superior Room, furnished in classical or contemporary style with parquet flooring and a view of the serene internal courtyard or the garden of the St. Anna Convent, starting at $480.

Head downstairs to Harry’s Bar, a Florentine institution for seventy years. In 2021, Sina additionally opened Harry’s Bar The Garden by the swimming pool. Start with carpaccio di manzo alla Harry’s, beef carpaccio with light mustard sauce, and move on to a main course of code di gamberi al curry with riso pilaf e mango chutney, (prawns in aromatic curry and rice pilaf). Top it off with a chardonnay, the Tormaresca Puglia, or the Sauvignon-Trebbiano Felsina Toscana IGT.

A little closer to the action is Hotel Savoy, a luxury boutique establishment just steps from Il Duomo, the Uffizi and Ponte Vecchio. Its Il Duomo Presidential Suite, with views of the world renowned basilica, sleeps six guests when connected to a premium room and a junior suite. Starting at $1,600, it occupies its own wing and features a spacious sitting room with chic bronze tables and gold leaf mirrors. The separate dining room includes a well-stocked private bar.

If you’re not a President, try the Superior Room at $770 (more booking options at Expedia and Trip Advisor). With parquet floors underfoot, look out over Piazza della Repubblica or the city’s charming historic center.

Downstairs at Irene’s, you can sit in the bar, which opens onto the street, or dine al fresco on the edge of the Piazza. There, chef Fulvio Pierangelini, best known for his former two Michelin-starred restaurant Gambero Rosso, worked with Irene’s head chef, Giovanni Cosmai, to create a menu based on Tuscan classics.

Start with the red prawn tartare with burrata cheese and artichokes. For your main course you can’t go wrong with linguine and Mediterranean blue lobster. And for dessert the only thing more tempting than the one you’re with is tiramisú with a scoop of coffee ice cream. 

In the bar you can sample mixologist Federico Galli’s many specialities, including the Garibaldi (Campari bitter with orange juice) or the Campari Americano (Campari bitter, vermouth and soda water). But you’re in Florence, so you must sip a Negroni, invented there. With Campari, Rosso Martini vermouth and Tanqueray gin, it provides enough kick to make you think you speak Italian.

Other areas of Italy worth planning a visit to include the region of Emilia-Romagna (birthplace of filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni), which stretches east-west across the country and includes cities like Bologna and Modena in Motor Valley, home to Enzo Ferrari and where Michael Mann shot his 2023 film, Ferrari. in Modena, stay at Milano Palace Hotel (more booking options at Expedia and Trip Advisor), a short walk to Piazza Roma past the Ducal Palace, a Baroque castle currently housing a portion of the Italian Military Academy. Nearby is Duomo di Modena, consecrated in 1184, the former seat of the Diocese, later Archdiocese, of Modena.

Emilia-Romagna’s coastal town of Rimini is the birthplace of legendary filmmaker Federico Fellini for whom a new museum was opened in 2021. Stay at the Mercure Rimini Lungomare (more booking options at Expedia and Trip Advisor), a boutique hotel on the beach that inspired such Fellini movies as I Vitelloni and Amarcord. From there it’s a short walk to the theater where he saw his first movie at the age of four.

The museum is housed in Castel Sismondo, designed by Il Duomo architect Filippo Brunelleschi, and includes clips and props from his many films in an illustrious career spanning 1950-1990. There’s a giant stuffed Britt Ekland, as sumptuously seen in La Dolce Vita, and there are countless character sketches from the director’s notebooks as well as an abundance of archival materials. 

From there, it’s a few steps from the museum, just over the Ponte di Tiberio (21 AD) to Borgo San Giuliano, a fishing village that boasts murals depicting images from Fellini’s films. Nearby cafes offer Sangiovese, the local red wine, as well as plates of strozzapreti, the region’s pasta, which translates to “priest choker.”

It doesn’t have to be the year of “tourism roots” to take a trip to Italy, abundant with art and culture highlighting fundamental ideals at the root of Western Civilization. It’s reflected in Brunelleschi’s dome, for which he studied Rome’s Parthenon, in the contrapposto stance of Michelangelo’s David in Florence’s Accademia and in Caravaggio’s Medusa hanging in the Uffizi. All of which means you don’t necessarily have to be Italian to find one’s roots in Italy.