The 6 best hidden towns inside a nature park in the province of Roma

1. Percile

Best for a small town. 217 people live here.

54 min from Rome · homes €550 to €800 a m² in the center · 217 people

Why visit Percile

Percile sits sixty kilometers from Rome, on the border between the Roma and Rieti provinces. The name derives from gens Porcia, a Roman family of the area, and the earliest documented evidence of habitation dates between 314 and 335, in the biography of Pope Sylvester I.

The village occupies the rocky spur itself, walled stone houses and vaulted passages built to the shape of the ground; above it the slopes rise into oak and beech woods that belong to the wider park, climbing toward Monte Pellecchia. The relation between the two levels is the whole of the place: the settlement below, compact and defensible on its spur, and the water held above it in limestone basins fed by underground springs.

What the borgo protected on the ground, the park has protected in the hills. The population today is 217, spread across a comune territory of 24 square kilometers, which makes Percile a small fixed point inside a much larger stretch of protected woodland.

The catch: It has lost 23% of its people since 2015.

What to see in Percile

• Lagustelli di Percile. The walk up from the village runs through oak forest and ends at clear water held in two limestone basins between 674 and 704 meters, filled by underground springs.
• Centro storico. Medieval stone village on a rocky spur, with vaulted passages, surviving gates and the panorama from the upper terrace.
• Parco Naturale dei Monti Lucretili. Regional park covering oak and beech woods on the karst slopes around the village, with marked trails to the lakes and toward Monte Pellecchia.

How to get to Percile

Rome is about 54 min away by road.

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2. Nemi

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

52 min from Rome · homes €1,150 to €1,650 a m² in the center · 1,861 people

Why visit Nemi

Nemi sits at 521 meters on the rim of a volcanic crater, the smallest of the Castelli Romani and thirty kilometers southeast of Rome. The lake below was the Speculum Dianae, the mirror of Diana, with a sanctuary on its northern shore that covered around 45,000 square meters and drew pilgrims from across Latium.

Emperor Caligula built two ceremonial ships on the lake, ninety meters of timber and bronze that sat on the water until they sank. Mussolini drained part of the lake between 1929 and 1932 to recover them.

They were destroyed by fire in 1944, almost certainly by retreating German troops. The Museo delle Navi Romane, built in 1940 to hold them, now shows scaled reconstructions and salvaged fragments.

Palazzo Ruspoli, a ninth-century castle restored by Valadier, anchors the centro storico. The wild strawberries grown on the inner slopes of the crater are sold from stalls along Via Roma and celebrated each June at the Sagra delle Fragole.

What to see in Nemi

• Palazzo Ruspoli. Ninth-century castle of the Counts of Tuscolo, restored by Valadier, with cylindrical tower and hanging garden over the lake.
• Museo delle Navi Romane. Lakeshore museum built in 1940 for Caligula's two recovered ships, destroyed by fire in 1944, now housing scaled models and fragments.
• Santuario di Diana Nemorense. Remains of the federal sanctuary on the lake's northern shore, once 45,000 square meters of temple, porticoes and theater.

How to get to Nemi

Rome is about 52 min away by road.

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3. Trevignano Romano

Best for a swim. The comune's beach holds a Blue Flag.

57 min from Rome · homes €1,450 to €2,100 a m² in the center · 5,766 people

Why visit Trevignano Romano

Trevignano Romano sits on the northern shore of Lake Bracciano, the volcanic crater lake thirty-five kilometers northwest of Rome. The town climbs from the lakefront to the ruined Rocca Orsini, the medieval fortress that once controlled the northern approach.

The Chiesa dell'Assunta, halfway up the hill, holds a sixteenth-century apse fresco painted by a follower of Raphael. The lake itself is the second largest in Lazio and supplies a portion of Rome's drinking water, which is why motorboats are banned: only sail and electric craft cross the surface.

Three communes share the shore, Bracciano, Anguillara Sabazia, and Trevignano, and Trevignano is the smallest and quietest of the three. The waterfront promenade fills on summer weekends with Romans escaping the city for a swim and grilled coregone, the lake whitefish.

Outside the summer months it returns to the residents.

What to see in Trevignano Romano

• Rocca Orsini. Medieval fortress ruins above the town, built by the Orsini family in the fifteenth century to control the lake's northern approach.
• Chiesa dell'Assunta. Sixteenth-century church on the hillside with an apse fresco of the Assumption painted by a follower of Raphael.
• Lago di Bracciano lakefront. Volcanic crater lake at 164 meters above sea level, swimmable and reserved for sail and electric boats; Rome's secondary water reservoir.

How to get to Trevignano Romano

Rome is about 57 min away by road.

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4. Subiaco

Best for a ski week. There is a mapped ski area in the comune.

1 h 10 min from Rome · homes €700 to €1,050 a m² in the center · 8,499 people

Why visit Subiaco

Subiaco sits at 408 meters along the upper Aniene, seventy-three kilometers east of Rome and forty from Tivoli. Nero built a villa here in the first century, damming the river into artificial lakes known as Sublaqueum, below the lake, and the name outlasted the villa and the emperor both.

The town that grew up here reads in layers going up the valley side: the river and the bridge at the bottom, the abbey partway up the hill, the fortress at the summit, and the cliff sanctuary further out along the cliff face that gave the hermit's cave its shelter, each one built at a different remove from the water and from the town center. What holds these layers together is a single life.

A man who came here as a young man to live alone in a cave gave his name to a monastery down the hill, and centuries later that same monastery's press put the first printed book on Italian soil into circulation. The fortress above answers to a different history, the abbots who ruled here as feudal lords, one of whom fathered a child who became one of the most written-about women of her age.

A river valley that supplied an emperor's pleasure lakes became, without much overlap, the ground where monastic life took its early shape.

What to see in Subiaco

• Monastero del Sacro Speco. Built into the cliff face of Monte Taleo, the sanctuary rises in tiers over the cave itself, and the frescoes by Conxolus and the school of Cimabue cover walls that follow the rock rather than a flat plan.
• Abbazia di Santa Scolastica. The only one of Benedict's twelve original monasteries still standing, sixth century in origin; its library holds three hundred manuscripts, including a copy of the Lactantius run off the abbey's own press.
• Rocca Abbaziale (Rocca dei Borgia). Set on the highest ground of the borgo, the fortress was raised by abbot Giovanni V in the twelfth century and later gave Lucrezia Borgia, daughter of the abbot Rodrigo Borgia, a birthplace in 1480.

How to get to Subiaco

Rome is about 1 h 10 min away by road. The full route from Rome.

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5. Castel Gandolfo

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

35 min from Rome · homes €1,600 to €2,400 a m² in the center · 8,543 people

Why visit Castel Gandolfo

The town sits at 426 meters on the rim of the Lake Albano crater, twenty-five kilometers southeast of Rome among the Castelli Romani. It stands on the site of Alba Longa, the city Aeneas's son Ascanius is said to have founded.

The lake below was formed by the fusion of two volcanic craters and reaches 170 meters deep. The Villa Barberini stands adjacent to the palace, acquired by Taddeo Barberini in 1631, its gardens running down toward the water.

Pope Francis kept the palace as a museum after 2016; Leo XIV restored it to residential use in June 2025 and resides in the Villa Barberini next door, while the Borgo Laudato Si', created by Francis in 2023, carries ecological education across 55 hectares of the same estate. A town built on legend, given over for a time to public viewing, and returned to private residence: three uses of the same ground, laid one on top of the other without erasing what came before.

What to see in Castel Gandolfo

• Palazzo Apostolico. The palace Carlo Maderno raised between 1623 and 1626 stood open as a museum from 2016, its rooms given over to display cases and visitors. In June 2025 it returned to residential use, the museum arrangement dismantled to make way for a household again.
• Ville Pontificie e Giardini Barberini. Fifty-five hectares of papal villas and gardens running down to Lake Albano, with the seventeenth-century Villa Barberini at their center.
• Lago Albano. The crater lake sits at 293 meters above sea level and covers five square kilometers, its rim shared between this town and Albano Laziale.

How to get to Castel Gandolfo

It has its own railway station. Rome is about 35 min away by road. The full route from Rome.

Everything we know about Castel Gandolfo

6. Castelnuovo di Porto

Best for a day out from Rome. It is 37 min by car.

37 min from Rome · homes €900 to €1,350 a m² in the center · 8,658 people

Why visit Castelnuovo di Porto

Castelnuovo di Porto sits at 250 meters on a tufa spur between the Chiarano and Mola valleys. The first fortification went up before the year 1000 under the senator Alberico, and the medieval village grew around it in concentric loops that still shape the centro storico today.

The Colonna family took the fief in the late Middle Ages and built the fortress that occupies the highest point of the ridge, the keep from which the whole settlement takes its layout, houses and passages stepping down the slope in rings. The town's name preserves its administrative link to the river: this was the Castrum Novum of the bishop of Porto, the old diocesan seat at the Tiber mouth, a naming that ties a tufa hilltop village to an ecclesiastical authority seated on the coast.

The Borghi più belli d'Italia membership covers the centro storico and the fortress together, while Etruscan and Roman archaeology runs through the Veio park that surrounds both. The result is a village whose name records a bishop's jurisdiction, whose form records a medieval defense, and whose surroundings record two much older civilizations, all still legible on the same ridge.

What to see in Castelnuovo di Porto

• Rocca Colonna. Ducal palace inside the keep at the highest point of the ridge, used by Marcantonio Colonna after Lepanto and later by Christina of Sweden passing through to Rome.
• Centro storico. Tufa houses and vaulted passages along the concentric loops, with the surviving village gates still marking the old perimeter.
• Chiesa di Santa Lucia. Parish church inside the walls, with Renaissance frescoes and a baptismal font dating to the period of the fortress above it.

How to get to Castelnuovo di Porto

Rome is about 37 min away by road. The full route from Rome.

Everything we know about Castelnuovo di Porto