The following is a city-by-city guide to some of Italy's top art exhibitions: ALESSANDRIA - Palazzo Monferrato: Le Corbusier, Drawings and Sketches; Italy's first look at the lesser-known side of the great architect (1887-1965); until March 30.
BRESCIA - Museo di Santa Giulia: America! Painting Stories from the New World; 250 works by the 19th-century artists who celebrated the grandeur of the American landscape and life in the West, including Edwin Church, Frederic Remington and Charles Russell; until May 4.
FERRARA - Palazzo dei Diamanti: Joan Miro': The Earth, 80 works in Italy's first retrospective in 25 years; until May 25.
FLORENCE - Palazzo Strozzi: 200 works of the long 'Chinese renaissance' from the Han to Tang dynasties (25-907 AD), many on show for the first time in Europe; until June 8.
- Palazzo Pitti: Another Beauty; 40 works by 17th- century Florentine painter Francesco Furini; to April 26.
- Casa Buonarroti: Michelangelo's Face, 16th-18th century images of an artist who sat for very few portraits; April 22-July 30.
FORLI' - Museo San Domenico: 'Guido Cagnacci, Protagonist of The 17th Century Between Caravaggio And Reni', 80 works including 44 Cagnaccis; until June 22.
GENOA - Palazzo Bianco: 'From The Cradle To The Altar: Scenes Of Female Life In The Belle Epoque'; until October 10.
MILAN - Palazzo Reale: Francis Bacon, more than 100 works in a foretaste of next year's centenary celebrations; until June 29. - same venue: Canova At The Court Of The Tsars, Masterpieces From The Hermitage; seven Canovas including famous Three Graces and Winged Venus plus 30 other Italian neoclassical masters from famed St Petersburg museum; until June 2.
- same venue: The Art Of Women, 200 works by 110 artists from 16th to 20th centuries including Sofonisba Anguissola, Artemisia Gentileschi, Camille Claudel, Vanessa Bell, Tamara De Lempicka, Frida Kahlo; until March 9.
- same venue: Giacomo Balla, 200 works from 1900 to 1929 including loans from New Yorks MoMa, Paris's National Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern, Stuttgart's Staatsgalerie and Madrid's Thyssen-Bornemisza gallery; until May 18.
- Spazio Forma gallery: Richard Avedon 1946-2004, 250 photos ranging from post-war Italy to Fall of Berlin Wall; until June 8.
- Spazio Obderdan: Noise, A Hole In Silence; 22 avant-garde artists including Joseph Beuys, John Cage, Mircea Cantor and Yoko Ono; until May 25.
- Fondazione Stelline: 70 late works by Mario Sironi; until May 25.
- Fondazione Mazzotta: Andy Warhol-Joseph Beuys, 30 Warhol works, 40 by Beuys, all inspired by 1980 Campania earthquake; until March 30.
- same venue: The Seventies, A Long Decade in the Short Century; installations on words like Body, Conflict and Demo and symbols like Aldo Moro and Pasolini, plus a wide-ranging look at '70s culture; until March 30.
ROME - Palatine Hill: Augustus's House on view for first time in 25 years.
- Vittoriano: Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Tradition and Innovation; 150 works from world's major collections; until June 29.
- same venue: Rare and Precious; first look at recently opened Holy Inquisition files; until March 16.
- Scuderie del Quirinale: From Canova to The Fourth Estate, 100 works showcasing often-neglected movements in 19th-century Italian art; until June 10.
- Colosseum: Roman Triumphs; some 100 works including bas-reliefs, sculpted marble slabs, statues, bronzes and coins on loan from Italian and foreign museums, tracing evolution of triumphs from Etruscans to Constantine; until September 14.
- Palazzo Massimo: Rosso Pompeiano, 108 paintings and three reconstructed rooms from the golden age of Pompeii; until March 30.
- Museo del Corso: The Forbidden City; more than 300 works from the reign of the cultured Emperor Qianlong; including paintings by Jesuit monk and court painter Giuseppe Castiglione; until March 20.
- Palazzo Venezia: Sebastiano Del Piombo; first major Italian retrospective of neglected Renaissance artist (1485-1547), a contemporary and colleague of Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian. The exhibit features most of Del Piombo's surviving works; until May 18.
- National Gallery of Modern Art (GNAM): Lucio Fontana the Sculptor, 70 sculptures, ceramics, drawings from the early 1930s to the late '60s; until May 10.
- same venue: Celebrated heads of Pergamon kings Attalus I and Attalus III, loaned from Berlin, on show for first time in Italy; until March 16.
- National Central Library: Unescoitalia, unique chance to see photos of Italy's 41 World Heritage Sites, from Leaning Tower of Pisa and Pompeii to Amalfi Coast and Aeolian Islands, in one go; until March 14.
ROVIGO - Palazzo Roverella: The Belle Epoque, Art In Italy 1880-1915; 110 paintings including Boldini, De Nittis, Zandomeneghi; until July 13.
TRAPANI - Museo Pepoli: The Idea of the Divine in Caravaggio, 14 masterpieces including one recently discovered by Sir Denis Mahon; until March 14.
VENICE - Palazzo Grassi: Rome And The Barbarians, The Birth Of A New World: with 1,700 pieces from 24 countries, show offers a comprehensive re-assessment of Rome's relations with invading cultures; until July 20.
- Gallerie dell'Accademia: Late Titian And The Sensuality Of Painting: 28 masterpieces from 1550 until artist's death in 1576 including last work La Pieta', an ex-voto against plague; until April 20.
