Hi! I just wanted to see if anyone has any advice/thoughts on various cities in Italy - I'm trying to decide where to live and, never having spent more than a day or two in any one place in Italy, it would be so helpful to have some comments on how it feels to live in these places.

Briefly, I decided after lots of research that I want to spend a year (or maybe more) in Italy. I plan to support myself teaching English, so I foresee being quite poor, and I'd also like to take a class at a university, if at all possible. So my thoughts so far are towns with colleges in them where I can afford the rent... and places that are not uber-dangerous(I'm not very street-smart).

Other criteria:
- If I could live in a place with nice-ish weather, that would be lovely. Year round sun would be great, but even a place where the temperature doesn't go too far below freezing in the winter would be fine. As long as there's sun sometimes.
- If there are places where the local residents are more friendly to foreigners than in other places, that might be nice. I'm a little shy myself, so a place where they don't dislike you to begin with would be good.

Here are the ones I've thought of so far off the top of my head (based just on cities that I had already heard on, so do feel free to suggest others!):

Bologna
Perugia
Siena

Maybe Rome (but I hear it's molto expensive)

And Salerno... just because someone in another thread mentioned it, and I googled it and there were palm trees and that looked nice. Any thoughts on the southern half of Italy in general? I don't know much about it.

On the other hand (to make some sweeping generalizations), I've heard that Milano is very big-city-ish and that Napoli can be scary (even though it intrigues me...) so those are two I'm not really considering.

Any advice? Thoughts? Grazie mille in advance.

Welcome raindrop,

Of course personally I prefer Siena, small enough but not too small, great Uni, open minded people for the most part etc. It is not cheap here though. Bologna and Perugia I hear are also good like this.

How do you plan on coming over? DO you have dual citizenship? If not you wil need to have a visa to eter and staymore than 90 days. If you are not retired with a decent monthly income from retirement, you would either have to get a work visa or a study visa. Work visas are close to impossible to obtain, study visas allow you to work 20 hours per week. Once you arrive in Italy you will have to get a permesso di soggiorno (permit to stay) as the visa only allows you entry and the possibility to apply for the PdiS.

As the tides are currently changing in Italy, you will have to work very hard to get a visa (word has it from friends in the police force here that they will be denying study visas to those who seem to really want to come and work and just stay.

Hi raindrop,
Have you thought about some of the smaller cities? Being in Abruzzo, obviously Chieti and Pescara come to mind. Not a lot of crime, near the ocean, etc. If you want to read more about the university, you can go hereor here

There are also links on the last site that will tell you about the cities.

TBH given your self-description I would not choose Bologna. It is pretty city-ish and not really small and friendly.

Many thanks to all of you for your input! I really appreciate it.

To answer your question, Cristina, I do have dual citizenship with France and it seems that most jobs I've been looking at require an EU passport, so hopefully that's good enough. From what I understand (which could easily be wrong) I would need to present myself to the police within a week or so of arriving in Italy in order to be allowed to stay. I was thinking I would go to the Italian consulate when I go to Paris and get started on the paperwork there. (I think probably the Italian consulate in New York would be less helpful, since I wouldn't be trying to go over using my US passport and stuff.)

Thank you also for the suggestions of Pescara and Chieti - I'm not really familiar with them, so it's great to hear of new places to research! One question, though: do you think there's a demand for English teachers in smaller communities?

Thanks again to the three of you!

raindrop: you might not need to check in with the police. As an EU citizen, you only have to go to the Anagrafe of the Comune where you want to reside and apply for residency. This has to be done within 120 days of arrival, so no panic: you have plenty of time to get all your ducks in a row vis-à-vis address, codice fiscale, etc.

It's also unlikely you have to do anything regarding the Questura, but with new laws coming into effect every day, try to keep up on what's going on and how this impacts your own situation.

This site is pretty good for finding out what's new, so eyes peeled, and best of luck!

As for English teachers, I think they're needed just about everywhere in Italy since English is taught in all the schools. I do a little, basically helping students with their homework, and my town is tiny.

Many thanks again for the helpful input!! I have one more question about cities - how about Reggio Emilia? Does anyone have any thoughts/experience living there? Thanks again!!

i have a friend a couple ofprovinces away living in Ferrara. the region seems good, although you seem too like sun and it could get pretty cold in winter. people i knew there were nice and friendly great food also some of the best i've had in italy compares even to the southern cooking .and i think there would be some job prospects also. things will certaintly be alot easier with your french passport although i really don't know what Cristina means in reagrds to things are changing in Italy, certaintly the attitudes towards people from eastern europe they are but since you are from a western country i would assume you will have no problem.

raindrop revealed she had French citizenship after Cristina answered.

You are probably searching for a city a little less in the north than Trento, but there is a lot of demand for private english tutors out here. I work as one and I have been constantly having to turn people down. You can get a single room for about 270 euro and a double room for much less. We also have one of the best public universities in Italy.

I didn't like the town too much when I first got here (when I studied abroad), but it won me over and it's been 2 years since I moved back!