OP means Original Poster, which in this case is your good self. There shouldn't have to be uglyness, but it seems to be part of our society unfortunately. Some people have very strongly held opinions. There have been some very informative things posted, whether about using panoramic approaches or using wide angle lenses. Both approaches are valid, and both take some skill and practice.

Personally I always travel with an ultra wide (10 -22 for APS-C) and a fish eye lens. I am not at all averse to Gene's approach of panos, but don't have the time to learn the technique at this point in time.

This is a very poor quality scanned reproduction, but I was very happy to have a 20mm ultra wide for my T90 when I went to San Pietro.

The problem is, at least to my eye, ultra wide lenses, while "getting it all in" rarely provide a result that represents what I am getting.

I often draw a parallel with the 19 century landscape masters, especially in the Hudson River School of painting. Not a single one, especially the wider view landscapes, look like they were using an ultra-wide perspective. In order to "take in" a wider view they turned their heads. They only had their "normal focal length" eyes to view the world and that was their perspective. Ultra-wides are nice every once in a while in landscape use when you want to exaggerate a foreground element, like below. But I think that they are used far too often. Most of the time I end up with smaller images, partly because of keystone correction and partly because of having too much sky and foreground.

Using a longer lens gives me the correct "perspective" - rendering foreground and background elements appropriately sized relative to each other, but often too narrow a view. So, I turn my camera to take in more width (and on occasion height) to "take it all in" as a saw it.

If you are not familiar with pano stitching, especially on the fly and hand held, then I'd say you might want to give it a try. Taking several pictures to cover a scene takes only a few more seconds than it takes to do it with a single take with a wide lens. Besides I have traveled to many places, urban and natural and often prefer to shoot wide views as a pano rather than switch lenses.

You may want to learn how to do panos before you criticize someone for suggesting it. You can try this if you have a cellphone, which generally have pano capability or you can download a pano app. It is a perfectly valid way to minimize your gear and get better shots. Try and keep an open mind.

Here are a few panos I did, on the fly, no tripod, while traveling in Dublin, Ireland, during a Jameson Distillery tour and afterwards. These were all shot with a 45mm/D800, the only lens I had with me at the time. The Jameson bottle Christmas tree was a double row pano. I suspect traveling in Italy offers similar photo ops and the technique could be used there as well.

Does this answer the question of why I bothered to bring it up? I am not sure why you would make the statement, "I doubt it is any good for the OP's trip", or bother to criticize me for bringing it up. I suspect it because you have difficulty with panorama stitching. The OP has plenty of time to decide if this will be a viable approach for him before his trip.

Wow! Good catch! I must have looked at this image dozens of times and never saw that. You certainly have a career as a Creative Director in a high-end advertising firm.

Here is the young lad two years later after his limb was reattached!

As far as any difficulty involved in on-the-fly hand-held panos - it really doesn't matter if the camera is level or not. What does matter is that there is enough overlap for the stitching program to find and blend boundaries. What got me on this shot was the barkeep's expression, and frankly it was my first shot. I decided that a wider view would put a bit more context into it so I took two more shots and stitched them.

I used Lr to stitch (but could have used PS), and used PS for the surgery. You will not see stitch lines, but you may find some legs have gone missing.

It's really easy. Point. Snap. Move and point. Snap. and so on. Camera needs to be on manual exposure and focus. For metering you find the part of the "pano to be" that has the brightest highlight and adjust your exposure to not blow it out. This will help when you blend the images later. If you use a lens that has considerable corner drop off (not vignetting), you may want to tag the image with the correct lens profile before merging.

The problem is, at least to my eye, ultra wide lenses, while "getting it all in" rarely provide a result that represents what I am getting.

I often draw a parallel with the 19 century landscape masters, especially in the Hudson River School of painting. Not a single one, especially the wider view landscapes, look like they were using an ultra-wide perspective. In order to "take in" a wider view they turned their heads. They only had their "normal focal length" eyes to view the world and that was their perspective. Ultra-wides are nice every once in a while in landscape use when you want to exaggerate a foreground element, like below. But I think that they are used far too often. Most of the time I end up with smaller images, partly because of keystone correction and partly because of having too much sky and foreground.

Using a longer lens gives me the correct "perspective" - rendering foreground and background elements appropriately sized relative to each other, but often too narrow a view. So, I turn my camera to take in more width (and on occasion height) to "take it all in" as a saw it.

I think this has gone a little beyond the OP's initial question, but is a fascinating discussion about human perception, mapping how the eye and the brain view and record visual impressions, and how to replicate that with photography. It isn't merely about lenses, nor about techniques such as pano. They are all equally valid, but at least in my personal opinion all take some effort and practice to achieve the kind of results that makes the viewer say 'Wow!'

Isn't that what the essence of the photographer's art is about?