Do I need to speak Italian to travel in Italy?

No — in cities and tourist areas English is widely spoken, and you'll manage everywhere with none. But twenty words change how you're treated, and that's not sentimentality, it's observable. Learn buongiorno, buonasera, per favore, grazie, scusi, il conto, quanto costa, and vorrei. Open every interaction in Italian even if you switch immediately: walking into a shop and saying buongiorno before anything else is the single highest-return thing you can learn. Outside the tourist circuit — small towns, the deep south, family trattorias — English thins out fast, and a translation app on your phone earns its place.