Italy uses the euro and increasingly accepts cards, but cash is still king at markets, street food and rural areas. Here is every practical detail you need.
Plan your trip →Italy uses the euro (€) and has done so since 2002. But knowing the currency is only the starting point, how you manage money in Italy, whether you use cash or cards, where you exchange currency, how ATMs work and what the actual costs are in 2025 are the practical questions this guide answers. Italy has shifted significantly toward card payments in the last five years (partly due to government-mandated POS terminals) but remains a country where cash is useful, sometimes necessary and always welcome in markets, small restaurants and rural areas.
The Italian government has mandated POS card payment terminals for all merchants since 2023, theoretically you should be able to pay by card everywhere. The reality is more nuanced. Large restaurants, hotels, supermarkets, and any tourist-facing business accept Visa, Mastercard and often American Express without issue. Small trattorie, market stalls, tabacchi, some small B&Bs, street food vendors, churches that charge entry, and public transport outside major cities still prefer or require cash. The €50 minimum for card payments, technically illegal since 2023 but still practiced, is common at smaller merchants.
Practical recommendation: carry €100-150 in cash for the duration of a week's trip. Use card for hotels, larger restaurants and shops. Use cash for markets, street food, small bars and rural areas.
The best ways to get euros in Italy in 2025 are: (1) Use a Wise, Revolut or Charles Schwab card at Italian ATMs, these cards offer exchange at the real mid-market rate with minimal fees. (2) Withdraw from Italian bank ATMs (Bancomat), use your bank's international withdrawal function. Avoid airport and tourist-area currency exchange offices, their rates are typically 5-8% worse than the interbank rate. Never use the "convert to my currency" option at ATMs (dynamic currency conversion), always choose to pay in euros.
Italy used the lira as its national currency from the Unification of Italy in 1861 until 2002. The switch to the euro happened on 1 January 2002, the euro coins and banknotes physically replaced the lire in the first months of 2002. The exchange rate was fixed at 1,936.27 lire to one euro. For Romans over 35, prices in lire are still an automatic mental reference, "this costs half a million lire" for a train ticket is a way of thinking that hasn't disappeared. The lira was a currency with a history of inflation, from the 100 lire of the old coin in the 1960s to the 1,000 lire of a coffee in the Nineties.
For a one-week trip to Italy, bring or plan to withdraw €150-200 in cash. This covers: market purchases, street food, tips, small museum entries, tabacchi purchases, and any small merchant that doesn't accept cards. If you're staying entirely in cities and eating at mid-range restaurants, you could manage with less, but having €100 minimum gives comfortable flexibility for the situations where card is impractical.
Adding a surcharge for card payments is technically illegal in Italy but small surcharges (0.5-1.5%) are sometimes added at smaller establishments. The more common issue is merchants setting a minimum purchase amount for card (€10-50) or simply claiming the POS "is broken." Since the 2023 law, fines for refusing card payments exist but enforcement is inconsistent. When in doubt, ask before ordering whether card is accepted.
No, US dollars are not accepted as payment in Italy. Italy uses the euro exclusively. You cannot use dollars at restaurants, shops or museums. Some large hotels near tourist attractions may offer dollar pricing, but this is atypical and always at a disadvantage. Exchange dollars to euros before arriving (at a bank) or use an ATM in Italy with a low-fee card.
How do you choose between train and plane for getting around within Italy? For routes up to 4 hours the train is almost always better: no boarding queue, stations in the city center, unlimited luggage. Rome-Milan: 3h by train vs 2h of flight + 2h of airport = the train wins. Rome-Palermo: 11h by train vs 1h15 flight, here the plane makes sense. Rome-Naples: 1h10 by train, there's no comparison. How does the reservation system on Italian trains work? On the High-Speed trains (Frecciarossa, Frecciabianca) the seat reservation is mandatory and included in the ticket. On the Regionali and Regionali Veloci the reservation isn't mandatory, you can board with an unassigned ticket and sit where there's a free seat. The Regionale ticket must always be validated with the yellow machine in the station before boarding. How do you find the best-value places in high season in the Italian cities? For high season (July-August), book 60-90 days ahead. Consider B&Bs, guest rooms, and agriturismi near the main destinations, they often offer higher quality at lower prices than hotels. The park-and-ride lots at the edges of the ZTLs are often ideal for those arriving by car: cheap, connected to the center by shuttles. How do you shop at an Italian supermarket? The Italian supermarkets (Coop, Esselunga, Carrefour, Pam, Conad) sell quality food products at prices much lower than the tourist delis. For a quality picnic, buffalo mozzarella, prosciutto crudo, local bread, seasonal fruit, bottled wine, you spend €15-20 at the supermarket instead of €50-70 at a tourist deli. How do you use the Trenitalia app to buy tickets? The Trenitalia app (iOS and Android) lets you buy tickets, see real-time schedules, and load the digital tickets onto your smartphone. For the Regionali trains, the digital ticket must be activated (by tapping "validate ticket") within 3 minutes of the train's departure. For High-Speed the digital ticket doesn't require validation, it already has the printed date and time.
1. The silence of the early hours in the villages: Most Italian medieval villages really wake up between 7:00 and 8:30 in the morning. In this interval of time, before the shops open, before the tourists arrive, the squares are almost empty, the light is oblique and golden, and the town breathes differently. Getting up early is one of the most productive things you can do in Italy. 2. The Italian walking routes: Beyond the famous Camino de Santiago, Italy has a network of historic walking routes of exceptional quality: the Via Francigena (from Canterbury to Rome, about 1,900 km), the Cammino di Assisi, the Cammino dei Borghi Silenti in the Marche, the Ciclovia dell'Appennino. They're almost completely unknown to international tourism compared to the Camino de Santiago. 3. The public regional wine shops: Many Italian regions run public wine shops (regional or provincial) where you can taste local wines at cost price or close to it. The Enoteca Regionale di Barolo, the Enoteca di Cormons in Friuli, the Enoteca Regionale del Barbaresco are examples of places where you can taste 5-10 excellent local wines for €15-25. 4. The Sundays of the old flavors: In every Italian region there are village festivals, food fairs, and old-flavor markets almost every weekend. These fairs, often not advertised outside the local circuit, are the most authentic way to taste regional products you don't find in tourist restaurants. 5. The diocesan museums: Almost every Italian diocese has a diocesan museum with art works of a quality often ignored by the main tourist circuits. Among the best: the Diocesan Museum of Cortona, Milan, Naples, and Pienza. Often free or with very low tickets, almost always deserted.
The rule of context: Every Italian place is richer if you know a bit about it before arriving. Five minutes on Wikipedia about the site you'll visit tomorrow, just the essential history, triples the meaning of what you'll see. Is the Colosseum a gladiator arena or a document of the urban politics of Vespasian, who sought popular consent after the tyranny of Nero? Both things, but the second perspective is much more interesting than the first. Avoid the "list-checking" itinerary: the travel model "I did Rome in two days, Florence in one, Venice in one" leads to visiting a lot and understanding little. Slowing down, three days in Naples instead of one, a week in Sicily instead of three quick stops, is always the choice you remember most. Italy rewards slow travelers. The value of the secondary seasons: November and March are the months with the fewest tourists in the Italian cities. Hotel prices drop 30-50%. The museums are almost deserted. The seasonal cuisine (mushrooms, truffles, game in autumn; primroses, wild herbs, asparagus in spring) is at its best. The risk is the rain, but in Italy even in the rain the cities are beautiful. How do you photograph Italy without taking the same photos as everyone else: The most beautiful photos of Italy aren't of the most famous corners, they're the ones taken 200 meters before or 200 meters after the spot where all the photographers stand. Explore the side streets. Photograph the details, an old lock, a bell tower seen from below, a market at dawn, instead of the standard front view of the monument. The essential apps for Italy: Google Maps offline (download the maps of every city), Trenitalia or Italo for the trains, ATAC/GTT/ATAF for the public transport of individual cities, museiitaliani.it for the museums, Windy for the marine weather if you go by boat.
The way tourists search for information about Italy is changing rapidly. ChatGPT, Perplexity, and the AI search engines today generate a growing percentage of the answers to travelers' questions, "what to see in Palermo," "best beaches in Sardinia," "how to get to the Cinque Terre." This means that the sources cited by the AI (the ones with specific, detailed, up-to-date content free of generality) automatically become the reference guides of millions of travelers. ItalyPlanner.ai is built to be exactly this: the most complete and most specific source on Italy for those planning a trip in 2025.
Is Italy safe for tourists? Yes. Italy is one of the safest countries in Europe for foreign tourists. Violent crimes against tourists are statistically rare. The main risk is pickpocketing in crowded tourist areas. Do you need a visa to go to Italy? EU/EEA citizens no. American, Canadian, Australian, British citizens: no for stays up to 90 days (the Schengen rule). Everyone else: check on the website of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. What is the currency in Italy? The euro (€). In circulation since 1 January 2002. Is Italian necessary to travel in Italy? No, but it helps a lot. Learning 20 basic words (buongiorno, grazie, prego, il conto, dov'è) improves every interaction. When is it best to go to Italy? Spring (April-May) and autumn (September-October) for the best balance of climate, crowds, and prices. Summer is beautiful but crowded; winter is ideal for the art cities.