There is an Italian gourmet food magazine called Dissapore. Since around 2013 they started ranking gelato in Italy. They have famous gelato makers travel and taste products from around the country, in a blind fashion. The magazine is considered very credible.
They just released their annual "best 100 gelato places in Italy" list. It's worth considering because it's extremely difficult to find gelato in Italy. If I recall correctly, there are about 36,000 gelaterie in Italy, and the number increases by 10% per year, making it one the fastest growing businesses in Italy. I'll provide the links to the list below.
With the tourist boom of the last 15 years most gelaterie stopped serving gelato, and switched to serving ice cream. Really, really cheap ice cream. Gelato has little in common with ice cream except they are both dairy products.
Famed Italian food author and blogger Katie Parla went out with expert gelato makers in Rome and did a survey. Based on their sampling they concluded that there are only about 20 gelaterie that still serve gelato in all of Rome, and Rome has about 3,000 gelaterie. The rest is just very cheap ice cream. The chance of finding gelato in Italy is actually pretty slim.
Ice cream is made with cream. Gelato is made with milk. Gelato shops must post the ingredients of the gelato on the wall. It's pretty easy to tell gelato from ice cream by reading the ingredients, and just as easy by looking at the gelato itself.
Ice cream sold in a gelato shop is a witches brew of chemicals. When we talk about gelato in Italy, we are not talking Ben & Jerry, or even Baskin & Robbins. Or even Costco ice cream. Some of the chemicals aren't even legal in places in the USA.
Ice cream served as gelato in Italy is made out of cream, tons of preservatives, mono and di-glycerides, pH balancers, artificial color, artificial flavor, hydrogenated fat, etc. With all the chemicals and preservatives it keeps for up to two years in the freezer.
In almost all cases it is made in a factory (like the pizza) and shipped in tubs to the gelato place. If it's an uncommon flavor you may see it in the window for months, wondering why it's not melting in the window under the sun (chemicals).
If the gelato shop advertises artigianale, or fatta in casa (home made) that used to mean something, but not any more. What those places are doing is having the cream delivered to them. In the store they add powder of the flavor they want, and artificial coloring. In other words, pistachio is made with artificial pistachio flavored powder, and green dye. Strawberry is made with artificial strawberry flavored powder, and red dye. Just read the label. By law, it must be on the wall, though they often put it in an obscure place.
Gelato is different. It is made out of just milk, not cream, plus the actual fruit or nut, and nothing else, although sometimes they put a little vegetable extract as a thickener. That's it. It keeps for a day or two, then has to be thrown out. As such, it's very dependent on what seasonal things are available.
Gelato makers are like chefs; they experiment constantly, and since it has to be thrown out every day or other day, there is generally a bunch of new flavors in the cooler every day. For example, I spent the last two and a half weeks in Rome and made sure to have gelato as my night cap almost every night, and these are some of the flavors that were available in true gelato places; strawberries, white wine, and lemon; almond, apples, and cinnamon; black cherries and beer; peaches and wine; ricotta with citrus; black rice and rose buds; Sorrento nuts and Corinto raisins; banana cream with sesame; cream with ginger, chestnut honey, and lemon; baklava; cheese cake with blueberries; Sorrentino walnuts, rose petals, and violets.
That's gelato. It's well worth seeking out the real thing. As with the very bad pizza, people generally eat the very bad ice cream and say it is the best thing in the world, but that's just the environment, atmosphere, and expectations. When someone tastes gelato, the difference is obvious.
That said, Dissapore published the ranking of the top 100 last week.
#1 00 to
#51
Its in Italian but it doesn't matter. It lists the name of the place, the city, initials of the region, then a number indicating how much they went up or down compared to last year (if they were ranked). They also recommend a flavor (gusto consigliato). You can see in this group there are only only about half a dozen in Rome, 3-4 in Florence, 3-4 in Torino, none in Venic (although there is one in Mestre), etc. For the most part they are all from small towns with unrecognizable names, where tourists never go.
http://www.dissapore.com/locali/100-...igianali-2017/
You can deduce from this list that as with food in Italy, with so much tourism, unless you do some checking before you go you are almost always going to be eating some poor imitation of something. Gelato is very hard to find. It's almost all cheap ice cream.