ItalyClues that work anywhere in this area
Many signs are angular plates with a rounded-corner border line drawn on them. Road numbers, street-name signs, and supplementary plates share the same design, so spotting this look often gives Italy away by itself.
Road numbers like SP and SS, and the octagonal "A" road number (autostrada), are unique to Italy.
The backs of signs are often black or gray. The same goes for road-number signs.
Tobacco and stamp shops (tabacchi) are usually marked with a sign showing a "T".
Once you know the area: which part of it
Area Code
Phone area codes are assigned by region. When a number shows up on a sign, an advert or a van, its leading digits narrow the location down to a part of the country.
Coloured by leading digit
Where Agriculture clues apply7
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A flat, reddish-brown landscape planted endlessly with widely-spaced, old olive trees with twisted trunks — that's Puglia.
Completely flat land divided into square rice paddies, with slender poplars lining the levees, means the rice country of the Po Valley. Common in Piedmont (Vercelli province and others) and Lombardy.
Rice paddies or corn fields might mean the north.
A steep slope dropping to the sea, terraced with stacked stone, with lemons growing under wooden trellises and shade netting — that's the Amalfi Coast (the southern slope of the Sorrento Peninsula).
Dark green, low evergreen trees filling a field, ringed by tall stone walls or hedges — that's a Sicilian citrus grove. Known for the red-fleshed blood orange.
Gently rolling hills, almost bare of trees, filled entirely with wheat fields — golden in early summer, brown stubble or bare soil after harvest — mean the southern wheat belt (durum wheat). Especially extensive in northern Puglia and the interior of Sicily.
Low, multi-stemmed trees forming round, bushy clumps, planted at even spacing over flat, cleared ground — that's a hazelnut orchard. Common in the Langhe-Roero area of southern Piedmont and elsewhere.
Wind power is concentrated in a few areas, such as around Foggia province.
White huts with a conical, stacked-stone roof, lined up in fields or around town, are trulli. The heartland is the Itria Valley in Puglia (around Alberobello and elsewhere).
Whitish-gray rock rising in sheer vertical faces, forming needle- or tower-like peaks — that's the Dolomites.
Solar power installations are common on the flatlands around Puglia. A large-scale installation might point toward the "heel" of the boot.
You may find signs in both Sardinian and Italian, though they aren't especially common.
Sardinia is the only region of Italy with no autostrada, so you won't see the green octagonal road-number sign there. If this mark appears, Sardinia is unlikely.
You'll see mountains with bare rock faces, or peaks that are treeless only at the very top.
Once you know the region: which city or town
Around Mount Etna, Europe's largest active volcano, the roadsides are covered in very dark soil.
About 90% of Giglio Island is Mediterranean forest, with dense stands of pine.
Pantelleria Island (Isola di Pantelleria) has lots of cactus and dark stone walls. Much of it was shot with the Trekker.
In the Egadi Islands, Santa Caterina Castle atop a rocky peak is a landmark — you can usually see it unless houses block the view within town.
Lampedusa Island is far removed from the mainland, and its name appears on signs and bus stops. Buggies are common.
Campione d'Italia, an Italian exclave surrounded by Switzerland, has a low camera. The town uses the Swiss franc as its currency, but its license plates and signs are Italian.
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Hover a region on the map to see its name
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