Alternatives to
Alternatives to Capri: every island town in Italy, in one list
16 towns · 6 regions · the complete list
La Maddalena, Sardinia
Capri is an island that has become a shop. Italy has around forty inhabited islands and the towns on the others still sell fish rather than handbags: the Aeolians off Sicily, Ponza and Ventotene off Lazio, Procida across the bay from Capri itself, La Maddalena, the Egadi, Elba's harbours.
This is every town in our catalogue that sits on an island, 16 of them, with Capri and Anacapri removed. Best-recognised first.
Instead of Capri
Capri · 6,804 residents · Campania
- La MaddalenaSassari
Island town · Borghi più belli d'Italia
- From Capri
- 23h 24m by car
- Residents
- 10,592
- When to go
- May–Oct
- LipariMessina
Island town · UNESCO
- Residents
- 12,565
- When to go
- May–Oct
- Isola del GiglioGrosseto
Island town · Borghi più belli d'Italia
- From Capri
- 6h 42m by car
- Residents
- 1,330
- When to go
- May–Sep
- CarloforteSud Sardegna
Island town · Borghi più belli d'Italia
- From Capri
- 28h 5m by car
- Residents
- 5,925
- When to go
- May–Oct
- Isole TremitiFoggia
Island town · Bandiera Blu
- From Capri
- 14h 20m by car
- Residents
- 479
- When to go
- May–Sep
The 5 best-recognised of the 16 towns that match. Drive times measured by road from Capri. More of them follow below.
La Maddalena
Province: Sassari · 19 m
The only inhabited town of a sixty-island granite archipelago between Sardinia and Corsica, and the place Giuseppe Garibaldi chose to die.
Lipari
Province: Messina · 44 m
The largest Aeolian island and the only municipality that administers six of the seven, with a clifftop castle citadel rising above two harbors.
Isola del Giglio
Province: Grosseto · 405 m
A granite island in the Tyrrhenian Archipelago, walled village on the ridge, port below, where the Costa Concordia ran aground in January 2012.
Carloforte
Province: Sud Sardegna · 10 m
A Ligurian-speaking fishing town on the Isola di San Pietro, founded in 1738 by coral fishers returning from Tunisian Tabarka.
Isole Tremiti
Province: Foggia · 116 m
An Adriatic archipelago of five islands twenty-two kilometers off the Gargano, the only Italian commune scattered across an open-sea group.
Pantelleria
Province: Trapani · 8 m
A volcanic island closer to Tunisia than Sicily, where dry-stone dammusi sit among bush-trained Zibibbo vines listed by UNESCO.
Capraia Isola
Province: Livorno · 19 m
A volcanic island of 370 residents and one village, a penal colony from 1873 to 1986 and a national park since.
Forio
Province: Napoli · 18 m
The largest Ischia commune by area, a Tyrrhenian coastal town facing the island's only sunset.
Casamicciola Terme
Province: Napoli · 81 m
Ischia's thermal town on the flank of Monte Epomeo, levelled by the 1883 earthquake and again in 2017, rebuilt on the Gurgitello springs.
Ponza
Province: Latina · 5 m
The main island of the Pontine archipelago, a volcanic crescent 40 km off Formia with white tuff cliffs, Roman fishpond tunnels at Pilato, Cala Feola's natural pools, and a 3,200-resident borgo curving around a horseshoe harbour painted in 18th-century Bourbon-pastel.
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