I'm looking for your recommendations for where to buy new prescription eyeglasses here in Italy, specifically in the Veneto?

There are many eyeglass shops around, but which ones are have the best prices? My criteria in order of preference are as follows:

1. Price (value) Name brands are not important, just quality is necessary.

2. Lenses - I have a high prescription and I need a place with their own lab where they make the lenses on site and they can make latest ultra high index lenses, etc.

3. English-speaking optomotrist - I have a complicated prescription and I will require someone with a good grasp of English.

I see many glasses 'shops' around, but none seem to have have their own optics lab, and they're quite commercial (with high prices to match.

I have seen some glasses 'outlet' stores up in the mountains, specifically near Calalzo di Cadore - does anyone have any experience with places like these?

Thanks everyone.

I am a long way from you but I also have a complicated prescription. The thing to do is first make an appointment with an optometrista to check out your sight now and take your old prescription with you. He/she can recommend an optician with a workshop where glasses are made up. It's not expensive.

Can you give me your idea of 'not expensive'? I've been to several shops and I'm getting quotations of 400 euro and up, with frames about 100-150 euro... that seems very expensive to me, considering the ingredients cost 1/4 of that.

My neighbor recently got a new pair of bifocals- €400. My wife waited until she visited the States to buy her bifocals: $300.

Just got bifocals myself - nothing complicated, they cost me 240€ with the agreement that I would "try" them for at least 2 months and if I don't get used to them, I can return them and get 2 pairs of eyeglasses to replace them.

The place is in Leini, outskirts of Turin and called OK VISION. I think it's a chain so it may be present elsewhere on the Italian territory.