When we choose to visit a place in spring, perhaps we are not simply planning a trip. We are searching for something we already know—an inner landscape asking to take shape. Psychiatrist Vittorio Lingiardi reminds us that places are not merely geographical coordinates: they are mindscapes, maps of the psyche. 

The cities and villages that draw us during the season of renewal answer a deep echo, giving visible form to the need for rebirth we carry within. We begin with Brescia, unfairly overlooked as a tourist destination, recalling that it was an Italian Capital of Culture in 2023 and that its territory contains three UNESCO sites. We explore several towns in the province of Brescia, then venture towards other lakes and mountains—Lake Maggiore, Lake Orta and the Ossola valleys—before returning to Italy’s villages. From north to south, we travel to Caorle, with its Venetian historic centre overlooking the Adriatic; Castell’Arquato in Emilia; San Marino, an international guest of The Most Beautiful Villages in Italy; Montescudaio and Montemerano in Tuscany; Trevi in Umbria; Palena and Città Sant’Angelo in Abruzzo; Furore and Castellabate in Campania; and Pietrapertosa in the Lucanian Dolomites. Among the seven most recently certified villages, we take readers to Termoli’s Borgo Vecchio—the only seaside village in Molise—and to Cusano Mutri in the Matese mountains of the Benevento area. 

When a corner of the landscape catches our eye, we almost merge with what we see, as in an act of love. We recognise beauty in the elegant decay of a peeling wall where red valerian grows; we join the play of light in narrow lanes where the sun enters at an angle; we wander across the Sila plateau and through Trebisacce in Calabria, visit South Tyrolean villages such as Lagundo and San Genesio, as well as Egna and Chiusa, renowned for their wines, and finally reach Buccheri and Cefalù in Sicily. As in a film by Riccardo Milani—whom we interview—we find ourselves in places that seem to have neither present nor future: tiny villages lost in the Apennines, yet sustained by a powerful sense of community, where it would be wonderful to stay and watch children grow.