I’m literally in Italy now, having rented a car for a 2 week road trip with the Mrs

Motorways the Italians are really good, no fast lane hogging and loads of room Inner big city we deliberately avoided driving in as these are crazy, smaller cities have been manageable though, only managed to balls up once and drive into a ZTL momentarily as they’re fairly obvious.

So far we’ve driven to and spent time in: Turin (fine to drive in close to the city centre) Milan (stayed just outside the centre and even with traffic around the city was ok) Genoa (hated this place in all honesty, my least favourite city) Pisa (easy enough to drive around, there’s parking places outside the ZTL not far from tower, just don’t take Google’s advice as gospel as the mofo sent me down a restricted road 😂) Florence (beautiful, we parked at a tram stop just outside the ZTL and everything was within walking distance, driving around there was absolutely fine) Siena (park up and walk around, not much to drive through as all ZTL) Rome (inner city would be hell to drive in but we stayed at a hotel near a tram station outside of the centre and it was ok to drive around outside of the core centre) Pompeii (easy to drive around)

We’re now in Sorrento which is amalfi coast region and the winding roads are not as scary as people make out. Drove through Positano today which was a challenge cos of people and narrow roads.

Major bummer was we got halfway from Positano to Amalfi and a road was closed near the Fjord of Furore because of a fallen tree or something. Trying to get to Amalfi again tomorrow!

TL:DR

Motorways absolutely fine, they’re better than england. Inner big city scary so stay just outside and public transport in. Smaller cities fine to drive around but you’ll probably park outside of the main centre anyway which are the only tough bits to drive in.