A hundred towns, five from every region.
Chosen by one rule from the thousand: the designations a town holds, what the restaurant guides say about its tables, how often Google is asked for it, whether we have been, and how far it sits from an airport. The most visited fifth of Italy is left out, so the hundred are the quiet ones. 19 of them have their letter already.
- ✷ We've been
Brugnato
Region: Liguria · 115 m
The medieval ecclesiastical capital of an inland Ligurian valley, seat of a diocese from 1133 to 1820, with a co-cathedral built over a Columban monastery.
- ✷ We've been
Peccioli
Region: Tuscany · 144 m
Borgo dei Borghi 2024 in the Valdera hills, a medieval village that funded a public contemporary-art program with revenue from its landfill plant.
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Viareggio
Region: Tuscany · 2 m
The Versilia capital, a Carnival city on the Tuscan coast that turned into a Belle Époque resort when the railway arrived.
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Ronciglione
Region: Lazio · 441 m
A tufa-brick borgo above Lake Vico, fortified by the Prefects of Vico and crowned Borgo dei Borghi in 2023.
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Sestri Levante
Region: Liguria · 10 m
The Tigullio town of two bays, split by a peninsula where a river once silted an island to the shore.
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Barga
Region: Tuscany · 410 m
A medieval hilltop town at 410 meters in the Serchio valley, where Giovanni Pascoli wrote his last poems and the August festival serves fish and chips.
Norcia
Region: Umbria · 604 m
Birthplace of San Benedetto at 604 meters on a Sibillini plateau, leveled by the 2016 earthquake and rebuilt stone by stone.
- ✷ We've been
Caprarola
Region: Lazio · 510 m
A Cimini hill town above Lago di Vico, dominated by the pentagonal Villa Farnese that Vignola built for the Farnese cardinals between 1559 and 1573.
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Chiavari
Region: Liguria · 3 m
The Tigullio capital between Portofino and the Cinque Terre, a 27,000-person Genoese trading town built around a thirteenth-century grid of porticoed streets.
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Ameglia
Region: Liguria · 89 m
A hilltop borgo at 89 meters above the mouth of the Magra, the Lunigiana edge of Liguria where the river meets the Gulf of Poets.
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Camaiore
Region: Tuscany · 34 m
The Versilia commune that runs from the mountains to the sea, a Roman Campus Maior on the Via Francigena with a beach at its western end.
Follina
Region: Veneto · 191 m
A Prosecco-hills borgo at 191 meters around the Cistercian Abbey of Santa Maria, with a cloister finished in 1268.
Bra
Region: Piedmont · 290 m
A Roero town at 290 meters where the world's first gastronomic university now teaches food systems.
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Pietrasanta
Region: Tuscany · 14 m
The marble-processing town under the Apuan Alps, worked by Michelangelo, Henry Moore, Joan Miró and Fernando Botero.
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Montecatini-Terme
Region: Tuscany · 27 m
Eleven thermal springs in a Liberty-style park at the foot of the Apennines.
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Lerici
Region: Liguria · 10 m
A fishing harbour under a Pisan-Genoese castle, with the frazione of Tellaro hanging over the rocks at the commune's southern edge.
Palazzolo Acreide
Region: Sicily · 670 m
An 8,000-resident hilltop town on the Iblei plateau at 670m, rebuilt entirely in late Baroque after the 1693 earthquake and founded over the Greek Akrai colony in 664 BC, with a Greek theatre and a cluster of rock carvings unlike anything else nearby.
Asolo
Region: Veneto · 205 m
A walled hill town at 205 meters that Caterina Cornaro ran as her court after trading Cyprus to Venice in 1489.
- ✷ We've been
Portovenere
Region: Liguria · 37 m
A Genoese fortress guards the western mouth of the Gulf of Poets, above the rock where a Roman temple to Venus once stood.
Guardiagrele
Region: Abruzzo · 576 m
The 576-meter terrazza d'Abruzzo on the Majella's foothills, hometown of fifteenth-century goldsmith Nicola da Guardiagrele and seat of the Majella park.
Cingoli
Region: Marche · 631 m
The Balcone delle Marche at 631 meters, a hilltop borgo where on clear days the view runs from the Sibillini to the Croatian coast.
- ✷ We've been
Monteriggioni
Region: Tuscany · 274 m
A circular Sienese fortress built between 1213 and 1219 on a natural hill, fourteen towers on a 570-meter wall, intact and unbroken.
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Castellina in Chianti
Region: Tuscany · 578 m
A Chianti hill town at 578 meters on the watershed between the Arno and the Ombrone, with an Etruscan tumulus, a Brunelleschi-reinforced wall and a covered medieval walkway around its edge.
- ✷ We've been
Castiglione del Lago
Region: Umbria · 304 m
Trasimeno's western promontory, once the lake's fourth island, fortified in 1247 and later frescoed for a marquis of Corgna.
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Castelnuovo Magra
Region: Liguria · 188 m
A ridge village on the Liguria-Tuscany border where a marquisate treaty ended decades of conflict with the bishops of Luni.
Cherasco
Region: Piedmont · 288 m
A walled grid-plan town on the river terrace where the Stura di Demonte meets the Tanaro, on the western edge of the Langhe.
Cividale del Friuli
Region: Friuli-Venezia Giulia · 138 m
The Lombard capital on the Natisone, founded as Forum Iulii by Julius Caesar, where an eighth-century chapel still holds six stucco saints.
Nemi
Region: Lazio · 521 m
The smallest comune in the Castelli Romani, perched at 521 meters above a volcanic crater lake the Romans called the mirror of Diana.
Castell'Arquato
Region: Emilia-Romagna · 224 m
A 224-meter hilltop borgo in the Val d'Arda, kept intact since the tenth century and crowned by Luchino Visconti's 1342 fortress.
Grottammare
Region: Marche · 4 m
A double town on the Riviera delle Palme, with a palm-lined seafront and a medieval upper borgo where Pope Sixtus V was born.
Mondolfo
Region: Marche · 144 m
A walled hill borgo at 144 meters above the Adriatic, with the frazione of Marotta and its beach below.
Panicale
Region: Umbria · 431 m
A walled hill town at 431 meters on Monte Petrarvella, where a 1505 Perugino fresco covers the back wall of San Sebastiano.
Spilimbergo
Region: Friuli-Venezia Giulia · 132 m
A 132-meter Friulian town on the Tagliamento, home since 1922 to the Scuola Mosaicisti.
Zungoli
Region: Campania · 657 m
An Irpinia ridge between the Ufita valley and the Daunian hills, with walls above and tuff caves below the houses.
Castelmezzano
Region: Basilicata · 750 m
A medieval village wedged into sandstone teeth at 750 meters, linked to Pietrapertosa by a 1,452-meter zipline since 2007.
Alba
Region: Piedmont · 172 m
The Langhe capital at 172 meters on the Tanaro, world reference for white truffle and Nebbiolo, headquarters of Ferrero.
- ✷ We've been
Castiglione d'Orcia
Region: Tuscany · 540 m
A stone borgo at 540 meters in the UNESCO Val d'Orcia, with two fortresses guarding the road from Amiata to the Via Francigena.
Sabbioneta
Region: Lombardy · 25 m
A Renaissance ideal city on the Po, built in thirty years by Vespasiano I Gonzaga and laid out as a six-pointed star.
Agnone
Region: Molise · 840 m
At 840 meters, town of the pontifical bell foundry and the fire procession that lights its streets every Christmas Eve.
Pacentro
Region: Abruzzo · 650 m
A medieval village at 650 meters under the Caldora castle towers, where every September a barefoot race honors a Madonna and a pop singer's grandparents.
Valdobbiadene
Region: Veneto · 253 m
The Prosecco Superiore capital at 253 meters in the Treviso Prealps, where Glera grown on Cartizze's 108 hectares produces the most expensive Italian sparkling wine.
Sarnano
Region: Marche · 539 m
A 539-meter medieval borgo of baked brick at the foot of the Sibillini, with thermal springs that ran for 84 years until the 2016 earthquake.
Barolo
Region: Piedmont · 301 m
A Langhe borgo at 301 meters whose Castello Falletti gave its name to the wine the Marchesi turned dry in the 1830s with Cavour's help.
Petralia Soprana
Region: Sicily · 1,147 m
The highest village in the Madonie at 1,147 meters, RAI Borgo dei Borghi 2018 winner, sitting above 80 kilometers of salt tunnels.
Sutri
Region: Lazio · 291 m
An Etruscan and Roman town on a tuff spur, with a rock-cut amphitheater carved straight from the volcanic stone of the Cimini.
Vernasca
Region: Emilia-Romagna · 457 m
A Val d'Arda commune in the Piacenza Apennines, holding the walled village of Vigoleno and one of the most compact castled borghi in Emilia.
Cormons
Region: Friuli-Venezia Giulia · 51 m
The capital of the Collio wine zone at the foot of the Friulian-Slovenian hills.
Gerace
Region: Calabria · 470 m
A 470-meter conglomerate rock above the Locride, holding Calabria's largest cathedral.
Modica
Region: Sicily · 296 m
A vertical Baroque city in the Hyblean Mountains, rebuilt from the 1693 earthquake and home to a chocolate recipe brought from Aztec Mexico.
Pozzuoli
Region: Campania · 28 m
A Roman port on a volcanic caldera, the Greek Dicearchia and the Roman Puteoli, where a market's columns first proved that the ground itself rises and falls.
Palmanova
Region: Friuli-Venezia Giulia · 26 m
A nine-pointed Venetian star fortress on the Friuli plain, its geometry closed three centuries after it began.
Venzone
Region: Friuli-Venezia Giulia · 230 m
A 230-meter walled medieval town in the Tagliamento valley, leveled by the 1976 earthquake and rebuilt stone by stone, winner of Borgo dei Borghi 2017.
Città Sant'Angelo
Region: Abruzzo · 320 m
A hilltop borgo at 320 meters between the Vestina hills and the Adriatic, named for the Archangel and known since 1352 as a Collegiata seat.
Castel Gandolfo
Region: Lazio · 426 m
A papal town on the rim of Lake Albano's volcanic crater, summer residence of the popes since 1626.
Sterzing
Region: Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol · 948 m
A bilingual mining town at 948 metres on the Brenner road, where a 46-metre tower built in 1472 still divides the old town from the new.
Neive
Region: Piedmont · 308 m
A hilltop borgo at 308 meters in the Barbaresco zone, named for the Roman gens Naevia, with four wines in commercial volume.
Soncino
Region: Lombardy · 88 m
A walled borgo on the Oglio, held by a brick Sforza fortress and a printing house that once worked in Hebrew.
Dolceacqua
Region: Liguria · 51 m
A two-banked medieval village split by a single-arch bridge from 1400, the one Monet came to paint in 1884.
Torgiano
Region: Umbria · 219 m
A walled river town at 219 meters at the confluence of the Tiber and the Chiascio, the first DOC and DOCG zone in Umbria.
Otranto
Region: Apulia · 20 m
Italy's easternmost city, eighty kilometers from Albania, with a Norman mosaic floor and the bones of 813 martyrs in the cathedral.
Courmayeur
Region: Aosta Valley · 1,224 m
The Italian base of the 4,810-meter peak, a Roman waystation on the Via delle Gallie that became the country's highest commune and its best-known ski address.
Carloforte
Region: Sardinia · 10 m
A Ligurian-speaking fishing town on the Isola di San Pietro, founded in 1738 by coral fishers returning from Tunisian Tabarka.
Calcata
Region: Lazio · 220 m
A tufa-cliff village forty kilometers north of Rome, condemned and abandoned in the 1930s, then occupied by artists and never left.
Valtournenche
Region: Aosta Valley · 1,524 m
The valley under the Cervino, home of the guides who raced Whymper up the mountain in 1865.
Castelbuono
Region: Sicily · 423 m
A Madonie town at 423 meters around the Ventimiglia castle, where manna is still tapped from ash trees and Fiasconaro bakes the panettone.
Termoli
Region: Molise · 15 m
Molise's only port, a walled promontory of fishermen's houses on the Adriatic, with the ferry pier for the Tremiti islands.
Pizzo
Region: Calabria · 44 m
A tuff-cliff town over the Gulf of Sant'Eufemia, where a king was shot in 1815 and the tartufo gelato was invented a century later.
Gubbio
Region: Umbria · 522 m
Pre-Roman Ikuvium of the Umbri, where seven bronze tablets carry the longest text of the Umbrian language.
Bard
Region: Aosta Valley · 400 m
A 108-person village under the largest Savoy fortress in the Alps.
Loreto
Region: Marche · 127 m
A hilltop pilgrimage town at 127 meters above the Adriatic where, since 1294, the Marian sanctuary has guarded the Holy House of Nazareth.
Cortona
Region: Tuscany · 494 m
An Etruscan lucumonia at 494 meters, with two kilometers of walls older than Rome.
Morano Calabro
Region: Calabria · 694 m
A conical hill of stone houses stacked under a Norman-Swabian castle at the southern gate of the Pollino, called Italy's nativity village.
Cerveteri
Region: Lazio · 81 m
An Etruscan capital seven kilometers inland from the Tyrrhenian coast, with the Banditaccia necropolis holding 1,000 tombs in the largest ancient cemetery in the Mediterranean.
Monte Isola
Region: Lombardy · 600 m
The largest lake island in southern and central Europe, 4.5 square kilometers in Lake Iseo, with no cars and eleven fishing villages on its shore.
San Benedetto Po
Region: Lombardy · 19 m
A former river island whose entire existence traces back to the Benedictine abbey founded on it in 1007.
Montegridolfo
Region: Emilia-Romagna · 290 m
A walled borgo of fewer than a thousand residents on the Romagna-Marche border, held alternately by the Malatesta and the Montefeltro through the fifteenth century.
Padula
Region: Campania · 699 m
A hill town at 699 meters, holding the Certosa di San Lorenzo and the world's largest cloister.
Vieste
Region: Apulia · 43 m
The Gargano headland of whitewashed alleys on a white limestone cliff, with the Pizzomunno sea stack standing 26 meters offshore.
Viggiano
Region: Basilicata · 975 m
A 975-meter Val d'Agri ridge town, home of the Black Madonna of Lucania and the Italian folk harp, on Europe's largest onshore oil field.
Urbino
Region: Marche · 451 m
The Montefeltro capital at 451 meters on twin hills, where Federico II built the Renaissance court that produced Raffaello.
Dervio
Region: Lombardy · 220 m
A peninsula on upper Lake Como's eastern shore at the Varrone delta, with a Romanesque bell tower and one of the lake's best sailing winds.
Kastelruth
Region: Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol · 1,060 m
South Tyrolean village on a shelf below the Sciliar, eighty-two-metre bell tower over the square, home of the Kastelruther Spatzen.
Todi
Region: Umbria · 398 m
A walled hill town at 398 meters on the Tiber, with Etruscan, Roman, and medieval rings stacked one above the other.
Badolato
Region: Calabria · 240 m
A medieval borgo of thirteen churches at 240 meters above the Ionian, which took in 350 Kurdish refugees in 1997 and started its own slow rebirth.
Glurns
Region: Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol · 907 m
A ringed sixteenth-century circuit of walls encloses a city of 937 inhabitants near the Swiss border.
Castelsardo
Region: Sardinia · 114 m
A Doria sea fortress at 114 meters above the Gulf of Asinara, Genoese from 1100, Aragonese from 1448, Savoyard from the 1700s.
Barumini
Region: Sardinia · 202 m
A Marmilla village whose nuraghe became Sardegna's first UNESCO site.
Bomarzo
Region: Lazio · 263 m
The Tuscia village below a garden built by a grieving condottiero for his dead wife, all stone monsters and no apology for it.
Guardialfiera
Region: Molise · 285 m
A hilltop village at 285 meters above the largest artificial lake in Molise.
Bosa
Region: Sardinia · 10 m
A colour-washed riverside town on Sardinia's only navigable river, with a Malaspina castle on the hill and the tanneries of Sas Conzas along the Temo.
Barrea
Region: Abruzzo · 1,066 m
A 1,066-meter spur above an artificial lake at the heart of the Abruzzo National Park, with a Samnite necropolis and an 11th-century di Sangro castle.
Castel del Monte
Region: Abruzzo · 1,346 m
At 1,346 meters under Monte Bolza facing Rocca Calascio, the capital of shepherds, whose wool reached the Medici and whose witches return each August.
Santa Teresa Gallura
Region: Sardinia · 44 m
The northernmost town in Sardinia, founded in 1808 on a Turin-style grid above the Strait of Bonifacio and 11 kilometers from Corsica.
Scilla
Region: Calabria · 91 m
Homer's sea-monster headland on the Costa Viola, the Castello Ruffo on the cliff above Chianalea and the swordfish boats working the Strait below.
Chioggia
Region: Veneto · 2 m
Italy's second fishing port, on an island at the south end of the Venetian Lagoon, called Little Venice for its canal.
Fénis
Region: Aosta Valley · 537 m
The Castello di Fénis, with its double ring of crenellated walls, eight cylindrical towers, and frescoed inner courtyard, sits at the centre of a small Aostan commune east of Aosta, with an Apennine reserve climbing south to 3,000m.
Gallipoli
Region: Apulia · 12 m
The Ionian beach city on a limestone island, Greek Kallipolis meaning beautiful city, tied to the mainland by a seventeenth-century bridge.
Alfedena
Region: Abruzzo · 914 m
At 914 meters at the head of the upper Sangro valley, the Samnite Aufidena, with a 15,000-tomb necropolis and a Roman conquest in 298 BC.
Isole Tremiti
Region: Apulia · 116 m
An Adriatic archipelago of five islands twenty-two kilometers off the Gargano, the only Italian commune scattered across an open-sea group.
Bagnoregio
Region: Lazio · 484 m
The Etruscan-founded hill town in Tuscia whose frazione Civita di Bagnoregio sits on an eroding tuff plateau, reachable only by footbridge.