Best places to visit in italy

I'm not sure it's the best since it is the only part I have truly visited and my wife was visiting relatives and tracing her heritage, but Sicily is an interesting amalgam of cultures--from architecture and food to people and traditions --- given how many times it has been conquered. Or as they prefer to say, how many cultures they have absorbed, from Greeks to Moors to Celts and Vikings to Romans and more modern day Italians, French, and Brits. And for those inclined towards necrology, there is an almost morbid fascination with death from the huge, high-stacked crematoriums (ground is too precious or too rocky for cemeteries) to the "drying chairs" in the crypts beneath the cathedrals. You'll find pizza, but it may not be like anything you expected because it will carry the influence of other culture's cuisine as well. Or as my wife's aunt who grew up in the U.S. and we took with us kept saying, "they just don't cook Italian here". Sort of like saying the Chinese don't know how to cook Chinese because they don't have chop suey.