How much does getting by in English matter to you, at least at the start?

Answer as you are, not as you’d like to be. There’s no shame in needing English early on. But knowing the real picture, where it’s enough and where it isn’t, will steer you to the right place and save you a hard first year.

The truth about getting by in English in Italy

The short version: Italy speaks less English than you probably expect, and where it’s spoken varies a lot. You can absolutely start here on English alone, in the right places. But English gets you through the front-of-house of Italian life, the restaurants, the hotels, the shops, while almost everything that actually matters, the paperwork, the doctor, the neighbors, happens in Italian. So this question isn’t about whether you’ll survive. It’s about how walled-off or woven-in your first year will feel, and where to land so it feels right.