I can only really speak from personal experience, but Italy is pretty great. Cheap cost of living, tons and tons and tons of historical sites and museums for practically any time period you could want, easy and cheap transport between cities, and even to other countries depending on where in Italy you are. The food is great, not just the typically Italian foods like pastas, but also their fast food options that you don't see outside Italy as much, arancini being the standout example in my mind. Finally, there's almost always something interesting going on. Even the small town I stayed in had several street festivals, concerts and other large events at the local bars. Larger cities of course trump the smaller ones in that regard.
Italian isn't a difficult language to learn coming from a Spanish background, though if you want something completely different, that may be off-putting. The people are generally very nice, though while I was over there my female friends were a little nervous, since cat calls and getting followed for a few streets were somewhat common occurrences, but that's pretty much the only bad thing I have to say about my stay there.
The biggest deciding factor should be what program you want to take, though. As much as you might want a new different experience, it's good if you can get a great education out of it as well, since that's something you can carry with you wherever else you may want to go. From personal experience, if you want to take your studies further, saying you studied archaeology in Italy or art history in France or anything like that goes a long way.
Log in to comment