The 9 best hidden hill towns in Veneto

1. Arquà Petrarca

Best for a soak. The comune has thermal baths.

28 min from Padua · homes €1,100 to €1,500 a m² in the center · 1,779 people

Why visit Arquà Petrarca

Arquà sits between Monte Ventolone and Monte Castello, in the Euganean Hills south of Padova. The name dates to medieval records; the suffix Petrarca was added in 1868, after the Veneto's annexation to the Kingdom of Italy, as a public homage to the poet who chose to die here.

Francesco Petrarca arrived in 1370 and lived in a thirteenth-century house he renovated himself across two stories, the Casa del Petrarca, now a museum with frescoes from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. He died at his desk on the night of 18-19 July 1374.

His tomb, an ark in red Verona marble inspired by Roman sarcophagi, was placed in the churchyard of Santa Maria Assunta in 1380 and reset in 1965. The village kept its medieval layout: two piazzas linked by a stepped path, the Casa above and the church and tomb below.

The hills around it grow Colli Euganei DOC wine, olives, and the giuggiole that go into the local liqueur Brodo di Giuggiole.

What to see in Arquà Petrarca

• Casa di Francesco Petrarca. The poet's thirteenth-century house, renovated by him on two floors and now a museum with frescoes added by later owners in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
• Tomba di Petrarca. Sarcophagus in red Verona marble in the churchyard of Santa Maria Assunta, placed in 1380, six years after the poet's death.
• Chiesa di Santa Maria Assunta. Parish church first documented in 1026, enlarged through the centuries, with frescoes of the Venetian-Byzantine school up to the fifteenth century.

How to get to Arquà Petrarca

Padua is about 28 min away by road. The full route from Venice.

Everything we know about Arquà Petrarca

2. Cison di Valmarino

Best for a slow weekend. The Touring Club gives it its orange flag for small inland towns.

1 h 19 min from Venice · 2,478 people

Why visit Cison di Valmarino

Cison di Valmarino sits at 261 meters at the foot of CastelBrando, the medieval fortress that rises above the village on a dolomite spur. The castle is one of the largest in Europe, with origins as a Roman watch post on the Via Claudia Augusta and an unbroken occupation that runs through the Da Camino, the Brandolini, and into the present-day hotel and conference complex that opened in the 1990s.

The borgo below kept the layout the Brandolini gave it after they took the fief from Venice in 1436. Via XXIV Maggio runs through stone houses with arched portals; Piazza Roma holds the eighteenth-century Loggia.

The comune holds four designations at once (Borghi più belli, UNESCO for the Prosecco hills, Bandiera Arancione and Città del Vino), and the parish church of Santa Maria Assunta anchors the upper village. The Artigianato Vivo fair fills the streets for ten days each August, with around three hundred craft stalls drawing fifty thousand visitors and ranking among the largest artisanal events in Veneto.

What to see in Cison di Valmarino

• CastelBrando. Medieval fortress on a dolomite rock at 370 meters above the village, with Roman foundations and continuous occupation, now hotel and conference center.
• Piazza Roma. Main square of the borgo with the eighteenth-century Loggia and the Palazzo Barbi, the historic seat of municipal administration.
• Chiesa di Santa Maria Assunta. Parish church in the upper village, rebuilt in the eighteenth century on an earlier medieval structure, with frescoes from the Tiepolo school.

How to get to Cison di Valmarino

Venice is about 1 h 19 min away by road.

Everything we know about Cison di Valmarino

3. Follina

Best for a walk through the old town. It is on the list of Italy's most beautiful villages.

1 h 13 min from Venice · 3,607 people

Why visit Follina

Follina sits at 191 meters where a stream cuts out of the Treviso Prealps into the upper Prosecco hills, sixty-five kilometers north of Padova. The name comes from follare, to full wool, and the Sanavalle stream powered fulling mills here from antiquity through the nineteenth century.

A monastic complex existed before the Cistercians arrived in the mid-twelfth century, likely a Benedictine house dependent on San Fermo di Verona. The Cistercians built the Abbey of Santa Maria from 1170; the cloister was completed in 1268.

The abbey is now a minor basilica and parish seat, a national monument since 1921, with frescoes of the Veneto-Byzantine school in the chapter house and a thirteenth-century stone Madonna inside the church. The Brandolini family, lords of nearby Cison di Valmarino, used Follina as a textile center through the Venetian period.

The borgo holds five designations at once: Borghi più belli, UNESCO for the Prosecco hills, Bandiera Arancione, Cittaslow and Città del Vino. The frazione of Pedeguarda holds the older parish church; the centro of Follina runs along the abbey wall and the stream that powered the mills.

What to see in Follina

• Abbazia di Santa Maria. Cistercian abbey built from 1170, with the cloister completed in 1268, raised to minor basilica and a national monument since 1921.
• Chiostro dell'Abbazia. Cistercian cloister of 1268, with twin colonnettes, sculpted capitals and a central well, intact in its medieval form.
• Sala del Capitolo. Abbey chapter house with frescoes of the Veneto-Byzantine school from the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.

How to get to Follina

Venice is about 1 h 13 min away by road.

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4. Farra di Soligo

Best for a World Heritage site. UNESCO lists a site in the comune.

1 h 8 min from Venice · 8,510 people

Why visit Farra di Soligo

The Conegliano-Valdobbiadene Prosecco Hills take their local name, rive, from the steep hogback ridges that corrugate the landscape, terraced by hand over more than a thousand years and planted almost entirely to Glera. The whole landscape was inscribed as 'Le Colline del Prosecco di Conegliano e Valdobbiadene' in 2019, recognizing both the vineyard cultivation system and the long history of hillside terracing behind it.

Farra di Soligo sits at the literal center of this territory, one of 15 comuni inside the inscribed area, an 8,510-resident commune at 161m altitude positioned between Conegliano (10 km east) and Valdobbiadene (5 km west), with the most-photographed stretch of the rive running through its own ground. The hill between Farra and Col San Martino holds the Torri di Credazzo, reached by marked paths climbing directly from the village rather than by road.

Beyond the towers and the vineyards, the territory holds two Romanesque parish churches, one in Farra itself with its campanile standing detached from the main body, another at Col San Martino with later frescoes added to its 12th-century fabric, and, just over the border in Refrontolo, a working wooden watermill on the Lierza river, the photogenic centrepiece of a Sunday walking circuit that closes vineyard roads to cars between April and October. The Cistercian abbey at Follina extends the same religious-medieval layer about 8 km to the north, ranking among the more important monastic ensembles in the Veneto.

The comune also carries the Cittaslow and Città del Vino marks alongside the UNESCO inscription, a rare triple signal for a town this size. Wine production runs through all of it: over 200 producers work the DOCG zone across the comune and its immediate neighbors, making the extra-dry Prosecco Superiore, the dry Cartizze grand-cru, and the rarer col fondo, unfiltered and naturally cloudy, the traditional version before the modern method took over.

Food follows the same prealpine register: spaghetti with duck ragù, baccalà alla vicentina, formaggio di Malga, tiramisù, invented 30 km south at Treviso. The Festa del Vino in May and the Sagra dell'Uva in October mark the calendar's two fixed points.

What holds the place together is the terracing itself: a landscape shaped by a single, continuous agricultural practice long enough that the medieval towers, the parish churches, and the working mill all read as features of one worked hillside rather than separate monuments set into it.

What to see in Farra di Soligo

• Conegliano-Valdobbiadene Prosecco Hills (UNESCO). The corrugated rive landscape of steep hogback ridges with Glera vineyards, inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage in 2019. Farra sits centrally in the inscribed area, with the most-photographed stretch running through its territory.
• Torri di Credazzo. The towers stand above Soligo, a frazione of Farra, reached by marked paths climbing from the village itself rather than by road.
• Molinetto della Croda. The mill's wheel still turns on the Lierza river at Refrontolo, a short drive east, its wooden works exposed to view. It anchors the Rive Vive walking route, when vineyard roads nearby close to cars.

How to get to Farra di Soligo

Venice is about 1 h 8 min away by road.

Everything we know about Farra di Soligo

5. Asolo

Best for a long lunch. Food guides list three tables here.

57 min from Vicenza · homes €1,800 to €2,900 a m² in the center · 8,911 people

Why visit Asolo

Asolo perches at 205 meters on a ridge between the Asolan hills and the Veneto plain, forty kilometers north of Padova. Pliny knew it as Acelum.

The Ezzelini family held it in the early Middle Ages; the Rocca on the hill above town dates from the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries and was restored in 2020 after a 2016 storm damaged the walls. The defining episode came in 1489, when the Republic of Venice gave Asolo as a fiefdom to Caterina Cornaro, the deposed Queen of Cyprus, in exchange for her island.

She kept a court here for twenty years until the League of Cambrai sacked the town in 1509. Her circle included Gentile Bellini, the humanist Pietro Bembo and the poet Andrea Navagero.

Robert Browning wintered in a villa here from 1838 onward, and the actress Eleonora Duse retired to Asolo and is buried in the local cemetery. The town holds six designations at once: Borghi più belli, Bandiera Arancione, Cittaslow, Città del Vino, Città dell'Olio and Città del Miele.

What to see in Asolo

• Rocca di Asolo. Late twelfth and early thirteenth-century fortress on the hill above the town, restored in 2020 with €300,000 in ministry funding.
• Castello di Caterina Cornaro. Medieval castle in the town, court of the Queen of Cyprus from 1489 to 1509, now home to the Eleonora Duse theater.
• Duomo di Asolo. Cathedral rebuilt in 1747 with an Assunta altarpiece by Lorenzo Lotto, standing on the foundations of a Roman bath complex.

How to get to Asolo

Vicenza is about 57 min away by road.

Everything we know about Asolo

6. Valdobbiadene

Best for Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore DOCG. The town gives its name to Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore DOCG.

1 h 25 min from Venice · 9,918 people

Why visit Valdobbiadene

Valdobbiadene sits at 253 meters in the Treviso Prealps, fifty-five kilometers northwest of Venice, on the western edge of the Conegliano-Valdobbiadene UNESCO landscape inscribed in 2019. The town gives its name to the Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore DOCG, and its own centro storico sits above a cluster of frazioni, among them the hilltop parcel that ranks as the zone's peak cru and the hamlet of Colderove with its sixteenth-century church.

Producers work these slopes on a shared calendar: the Antica Fiera di San Gregorio opens the working year on the second Monday of March, the frazioni of Santo Stefano and San Pietro di Barbozza hold their DOCG wine shows in spring, and cellar doors along the signed wine route stay open through the warm months as the harvest advances. The rhythm of the town follows the vine from one edge of the appellation to the other, with the hilltop parcel standing as the point the whole zone is measured against.

What to see in Valdobbiadene

• Cartizze. Rocky, south-facing hilltop with vineyards from 200 to 350 meters, worked in classified parcels above San Pietro di Barbozza.
• Duomo di Santa Maria Assunta. Neoclassical cathedral on Piazza Marconi, the civic anchor of the centro storico.
• Villa dei Cedri. Nineteenth-century villa and park at the foot of the centro storico, for forty years the seat of the Mostra Nazionale degli Spumanti and since 2019 of the association for the UNESCO Prosecco Hills.

How to get to Valdobbiadene

Venice is about 1 h 25 min away by road.

Everything we know about Valdobbiadene

7. Pieve di Soligo

Best for a wine weekend. It belongs to the national association of wine towns.

1 h 4 min from Venice · homes €1,050 to €1,500 a m² in the center · 11,500 people

Why visit Pieve di Soligo

Pieve di Soligo sits at 132 meters, fifty-five kilometers north of Venice, where the Soligo and Lierza rivers meet on the commune's flat valley floor. The territory splits roughly two-thirds level ground to one-third hillside, the lower edge of a hogback landscape that rises toward the vineyard slopes to the north.

The market town occupies the flat stretch between the two watercourses; the upper village, where the old paved street of Cal Santa runs, sits apart from the newer centro that has grown around the cathedral and its campanile. An eighteenth-century country estate on the edge of town, with Venetian stuccoes and a private chapel, now serves an administrative function tied to the wine that covers the northern hills, while the Solighetto frazione keeps its own smaller nineteenth-century parish church, campanile detached from the nave, built for the Brandolini family that gave the villa its name.

The poet who was born here and grew up on the Cal Santa gave his late work a mapped version of the upper village, renaming its street in verse. Between the rivers below and the vineyard hills above, the commune reads as a working valley floor with a market town at its center, its administrative reach over regional wine production and its literary claim both rooted in the same small geography.

What to see in Pieve di Soligo

• Villa Brandolini. Eighteenth-century country estate with Venetian stucco interiors and a private chapel, now headquarters of the Consorzio di Tutela del Prosecco Superiore DOCG.
• Duomo di Santa Maria Assunta. Neo-Romanesque cathedral with neo-Gothic elements designed by Domenico Rupolo, consecrated in 1924, with a campanile of about 70 meters, inaugurated in 1955, over the centro.
• Colline del Prosecco. UNESCO World Heritage hogback hills on the northern edge of the commune, inscribed in 2019, with Prosecco Superiore DOCG vineyards between 150 and 300 meters.

How to get to Pieve di Soligo

Venice is about 1 h 4 min away by road.

Everything we know about Pieve di Soligo

8. Sant'Ambrogio di Valpolicella

Best for a trip without a car. The train stops in the commune.

34 min from Verona · homes €1,150 to €1,700 a m² in the center · 11,880 people

Why visit Sant'Ambrogio di Valpolicella

Sant'Ambrogio di Valpolicella sits at 174 meters in the heart of the Valpolicella DOC, fifteen kilometers northwest of Verona, on the rolling hills that close the eastern shore of Lake Garda. The commune groups five frazioni around the main village: Domegliara, Gargagnago, Monte, Ponton and the ridge settlement above them.

Gargagnago sits at the foot of the hills, its cellars closest to the valley floor; the ridge frazione occupies the higher limestone ground, reached by a climb steep enough to have earned the church its nickname. Between them the Serego Alighieri estate has worked the same parcels since Pietro Alighieri, Dante's son, who had followed his father into exile in Verona, bought the property in 1353, and the family still grows Corvina, Rondinella and Molinara there, with the Vaio Armaron Amarone counted among the appellation's cru benchmarks.

The pattern of the commune is one of a valley economy and a hill economy sharing a single administrative roof: wine pressed and aged below, an older, stiller settlement kept above it, with the quarries that once supplied Verona still worked on the slopes that join the two.

What to see in Sant'Ambrogio di Valpolicella

• Pieve di San Giorgio Ingannapoltron. Romanesque parish church whose ciborium columns carry an inscription naming the master builder Orso and his disciples Juventino and Juviano.
• San Giorgio di Valpolicella. Frazione on the limestone ridge above the valley, in the Borghi più belli d'Italia network, nicknamed Ingannapoltron for the steep climb up to it.
• Villa Serego Alighieri. Estate still owned by the Alighieri descendants; produces Vaio Armaron Amarone from Corvina, Rondinella and Molinara grown on the same parcels the family has worked.

How to get to Sant'Ambrogio di Valpolicella

It has its own railway station. Verona is about 34 min away by road. The full route from Verona.

Everything we know about Sant'Ambrogio di Valpolicella

9. Marostica

Best for olive oil. It belongs to the national association of olive oil towns.

42 min from Vicenza · homes €1,100 to €1,400 a m² in the center · 14,052 people

Why visit Marostica

Marostica sits at 103 meters at the foot of the Asolan hills, forty-five kilometers northwest of Padova. Cangrande della Scala took the town in 1311, building his lower fortress on the plain and a second stronghold on the hill above it, then joining the two with a wall long enough to carry two dozen towers and four gates between them.

The arrangement is unusual: most walled towns fortify a single point, but here the defense runs uphill, turning the slope itself into the connecting structure between plain and ridge. The upper stronghold did not survive the artillery of the War of the League of Cambrai in 1510 and has stood as a ruin since, while the lower one remained inhabited and working, which is why the town's public life, its square, its church, its chess board, still gathers at the base of the hill rather than at its summit.

The cherries grown on the slopes to the north, since given IGP status, are the one product of the surrounding land that made it into the local kitchen as the crostata. What the town amounts to is a fortification that never stopped being a town: the walls did not seal Marostica off from its hillside, they organized it, and the square where the chess is played every two years sits exactly where the two castles' lines of sight once met.

What to see in Marostica

• Castello Inferiore. Built from 1311 on Piazza Castello, its keep rising 44 meters over the square, with a museum inside on the chess match traditions.
• Castello Superiore. Ruined by Venetian artillery in 1510, standing on Monte Pausolino and reached by a footpath through the walls, with views over the Brenta valley.
• Mura di Marostica. Fourteenth-century walls running two kilometers between the two castles, with twenty-four towers and four gates; the parapet walk is open to the public.

How to get to Marostica

Vicenza is about 42 min away by road.

Everything we know about Marostica