The best hidden towns you can reach by train in Emilia-Romagna
Emilia-Romagna is flat where the trains run fast and folded where they climb, and the good eating changes with the gradient. On the plain you get culatello cured in damp cellars, Parmigiano from dairies that open at dawn, tortelli filled with herbs and ricotta. In the Apennine foothills the menu shifts to chestnut flour, borlotti beans, wild boar and mushrooms picked in the beech woods after autumn rain. Houses are built of river cobble and warm brick, sometimes plastered ochre, and the hill towns above the vineyards hold onto their towers. Spring smells of lilac and wet clay, October of grape must and woodsmoke.
Most people arrive on the fast line and stop in Bologna, then treat the region as a corridor to somewhere else. Bologna deserves the attention, with its porticoes and its market streets and its ragù, but the historic centre absorbs an enormous number of day visitors, and the queues at the famous tables now start in the middle of the morning. Rimini takes the summer overflow onto its beach. The result is a region read almost entirely through two stations.
The same railways keep going. Regional services thread up the Reno and Taro valleys, along the Via Emilia between the cathedral cities, and inland from the coast towards the Marecchia hills, and they stop at places where nobody gets off. These are the towns in this list, each one confirmed reachable without a car, most of them small enough to walk end to end in the time it takes for the next train to arrive.
Of the 45 communes we have mapped in Emilia-Romagna, 20 qualify as towns you can reach by train: we have confirmed each is reachable without a car. This list is the hidden ones, 10 in all, ordered smallest first. The smallest, Canossa, has 3,759 residents.
Two more lists worth reading alongside this one: The best hill towns you can reach by train in Emilia-Romagna and The best towns you can reach by train within 75 minutes of Parma.
Canossa
Why visit Canossa
Canossa sits on the Apennine slope thirty kilometers south of Parma and twenty-five southwest of Reggio Emilia, at 219 meters at the seat in Ciano d'Enza. The commune is named for the ruined fortress on a white limestone outcrop eight kilometers east, built before 950 by Adalbert Atto of Lucca and held by Matilde di Canossa until her death in 1115.
The fortress was destroyed by Reggio Emilia in 1255. The commune was itself called Ciano d'Enza until 1992, when it took the older name back, so the seat in the valley and the ruin on the hill now share one name across two places.
Vineyards on the surrounding slopes produce Lambrusco and the Spergola white grape, and the path between Ciano and the castle ruin remains the Sentiero Matilde, the same climb that once carried Henry IV to the gate where Gregory VII made him wait. A commune this small holds an outsized memory: a valley seat, a demolished hilltop stronghold, and a name discarded and then reclaimed, all turning on three days that happened at the top of the path.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Canossa
- Castello di Canossa. Fortress on a white sandstone outcrop, its walls reduced to a ruin standing over the valley since the demolition of 1255. The site now houses the Museo Nazionale Naborre Campanini.
- Castello di Rossena. Best-preserved of the Matildic castles, built in the tenth century on volcanic rock to guard the western approach to the ruin on the neighboring hill.
- Torre di Rossenella. Square watchtower a kilometer from Rossena, built on a separate basalt pinnacle as a forward observation post for the defensive system below.
How to get to Canossa
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Reggio Emilia is roughly 43 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June brings green hills, Spergola flowering, and clear views from the castle ruin down to the Po plain. September and October dry the slopes into gold for the harvest of Lambrusco and Spergola, the busiest weekends at the Matildic castles. July and August touch thirty-four degrees and the path up from Ciano empties between two and five.
Borgo Val di Taro
Why visit Borgo Val di Taro
Borgo Val di Taro sits at 411 meters in the upper Taro valley, sixty-three kilometers southwest of Parma at the point where the province meets Liguria and Tuscany on the Apennine ridge. The town was a Roman waystation, then a possession of the Bobbio abbey, then of the Landi and Doria-Landi families through the medieval centuries.
Modern Borgotaro built itself around the porcini trade: the Boletus mushrooms gathered in the surrounding chestnut woods were already famous in the nineteenth century, exported by emigrants to the Americas, and in 1996 the European Union granted the Fungo di Borgotaro Protected Geographical Indication status, the first European recognition for a wild mushroom. The Consorzio per la Tutela del Porcino di Borgotaro was founded the same year.
The Cittaslow movement admitted the town in the 2000s. The September Fiera del Fungo di Borgotaro is the calendar event; population has dropped under seven thousand but the porcini trade still anchors the local economy.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Borgo Val di Taro
- Centro storico. Medieval town center along the Taro, with the Palazzo Tardiani, the Piazza Manara, and the porticos lining the old market street.
- Chiesa di Sant'Antonino. Sixteenth-century parish church with a Baroque interior, holding a fifteenth-century crucifix and a wooden image of the Madonna del Carmelo.
- Palazzo Tardiani. Eighteenth-century palace on the main street, now housing the municipal library and the cultural offices.
How to get to Borgo Val di Taro
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Parma is roughly 67 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June brings the Taro at full water and the chestnut woods in early green. September and October are the working months: the porcini emerge after the autumn rains, the Fiera del Fungo fills the centro on the last two weekends of September, and the trade carries the town's economy into November. July and August touch thirty degrees and the centro empties between two and five, though the river is cold enough for swimming. Porcigatone in festa falls in August.
Busseto
Why visit Busseto
The town sits twenty-five kilometers northwest of Parma, in the flat farming country of the Bassa Parmense between the Po and the Apennine foothills. It was the capital of the Stato Pallavicino for almost five hundred years before the territory was absorbed into the Duchy of Parma, and the fortress built for that state still anchors the main piazza today.
Roncole, the frazione where Verdi was born, lies three kilometers east; he moved into Busseto proper as a boy in 1824, and Villa Sant'Agata, the house he later bought and kept until his death, lies five kilometers north of the center. The three places trace a line outward from the town: birth to the east, boyhood at the center, and the household of his adult life to the north.
The Bassa around the town is also farming country in a more literal sense, producing the Culatello di Zibello and the Parmigiano Reggiano that the local consortium has aged here since the nineteenth century. A small provincial capital, in other words, whose built center was shaped by one family's rule and whose long afterlife has been shaped by one composer's, with the surrounding plain supplying the food economy underneath both.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Busseto
- Teatro Giuseppe Verdi. The stage sits inside the fortress walls, reached through the courtyard rather than a freestanding facade. The empty box he kept is still pointed out.
- Rocca dei Pallavicino. Fifteenth-century fortress on the main piazza, seat of the Stato Pallavicino for centuries. It now holds the theatre in one wing and the town hall in another.
- Casa Natale di Verdi. A modest house at Roncole, three kilometers east, kept much as it would have been, with the rooms where a child grew up rather than the trappings of later fame.
How to get to Busseto
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Parma is roughly 38 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September through October are the working months in the Bassa. The Po Valley sky clears and the cured-meat acetaie reopen their tasting rooms after winter. July and August are heavy.
Brisighella
Why visit Brisighella
Brisighella sits in the Lamone valley at 115 meters, forty-five kilometers southeast of Bologna, on the Apennine slope where Romagna meets the gypsum vein the UNESCO list added in 2023. Three selenite hills rise above the rooftops, each carrying a building: the Rocca Manfrediana, built in 1310 by Francesco Manfredi and reinforced by the Venetians after 1503; the Torre dell'Orologio, rebuilt in 1850 with a six-hour dial instead of twelve; and the Santuario del Monticino above the town.
The Via degli Asini runs through the centro storico as a covered elevated street, originally a fourteenth-century patrol walkway, later excavated into stables for the donkeys that hauled gypsum down from the quarries. The Nostrana di Brisighella olive, grown on the same hills, makes the Brisighello DOP oil that has carried European protection since 1996.
The town holds four institutional signals at once: Borghi più belli, Bandiera Arancione, Cittaslow, Città dell'Olio.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Brisighella
- Rocca Manfrediana. Hilltop fortress begun in 1310 by Francesco Manfredi of Faenza, reinforced by Astorgio II in the 1460s and held by Venice after 1503.
- Torre dell'Orologio. Clock tower rebuilt in 1850 on an earlier defensive structure, with a dial that marks six hours rather than the usual twelve.
- Santuario del Monticino. Eighteenth-century sanctuary on the third selenite hill, overlooking the town and the Lamone valley below.
How to get to Brisighella
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Forlì is roughly 55 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September through October are the working months in Brisighella. The hills around the Lamone valley turn green in spring and gold in autumn; the olive harvest in November fills the frantoi along the road to Faenza. July and August touch thirty-five degrees and the centro storico empties between two and five. Sagra Della Collina E Del Cinghiale falls in July.
Longiano
Why visit Longiano
Longiano sits at 179 meters on the first hill line between Cesena and Rimini, eleven kilometers inland from Cesenatico and within sight of the Adriatic. The town shifted from the plain to the hill in the seventh and eighth centuries, when the local population moved up to escape Lombard raids, and the settlement that resulted is the hilltop borgo still walled today, with the castle at its center and the theater just below it.
Longiano passed to the Church in 1581 and stayed under papal rule until unification, before the castle came to the commune in 1989. The sanctuary stands apart from this hilltop cluster, built around its painted crucifix and held by Franciscan presence for over seven centuries, a separate thread of the town's history running alongside the Malatesta line and the civic one.
What ties the parts together is the hill itself: a defensive move made in the seventh and eighth centuries left Longiano with a compact center where a former ruling family's fortress, a nineteenth-century theater and a walled medieval borgo all sit within reach of each other, while the sanctuary's much older devotional history runs on its own separate track nearby.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Longiano
- Castello Malatestiano. Fortified hilltop seat of the Malatesta of Rimini, later passing to the Church and then the commune. Its rooms now hold the Fondazione Tito Balestra, so the walls that once housed a ruling family now hold paintings, drawings and sculpture.
- Teatro Petrella. Sits just below the castle. Restored in 1986, it is known today for its acoustics inside the horseshoe-shaped hall.
- Santuario del Santissimo Crocifisso. Franciscan sanctuary built around a thirteenth-century painted crucifix on oak panel, with continuous Franciscan presence for over seven centuries.
How to get to Longiano
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Rimini is roughly 30 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September through October are the months for Longiano. The hilltop catches a breeze the coastal plain below does not, and the views run from the Apennines to the Adriatic on clear days. July and August touch the low thirties and the centro storico empties between two and five; many visitors come up from Cesenatico and Cervia in the late afternoon for the cooler air and the castle. Crocetta 30 in Festa falls in August.
Verucchio
Why visit Verucchio
Verucchio sits on a 330-meter spur over the lower Marecchia valley, eighteen kilometers from Rimini and within sight of the Adriatic plain. A Villanovan settlement occupied this ridge from the twelfth to the seventh century BC and left a necropolis whose chamber tombs, amber, bronze, and worked wood form the Museo Civico Archeologico collection now housed in the former Augustinian convent.
The town is also the home ground of the Malatesta, named for Malatesta da Verucchio, founder of the lordship that would rule Rimini, Cesena, Pesaro, Fano and Fossombrone for two centuries; his Rocca Malatestiana, also called Castel del Sasso, is one of the largest and best-preserved Malatesta fortifications and his birthplace. A second fortress, the Rocca del Passerello, holds the lower end of the ridge.
The commune extends to the frazione of Villa Verucchio, where the cypress planted by Saint Francis of Assisi during a 1213 visit still grows in the convent cloister.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Verucchio
- Rocca Malatestiana. Twelfth-to-sixteenth-century fortress on the highest point of the ridge, birthplace of Malatesta da Verucchio and one of the largest Malatesta fortifications surviving.
- Museo Civico Archeologico. Villanovan archaeology museum in the former Augustinian convent, holding amber jewellery, bronze armour and a wooden throne from the seventh-century BC necropolis.
- Rocca del Passerello. Second Malatesta fortress at the lower end of the ridge, smaller than the Sasso but built into the same defensive system in the fourteenth century.
How to get to Verucchio
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Rimini is roughly 27 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through October are the strongest months in Verucchio. Spring brings green slopes and clear views down the Marecchia to Rimini; September and October are the dry months when the Sangiovese harvest begins on the surrounding hills. July and August can touch thirty-four degrees on the ridge but the spur catches the Adriatic breeze the coastal flat does not.
Castelvetro di Modena
Why visit Castelvetro di Modena
Castelvetro di Modena sits on a hill at 152 meters, eighteen kilometers southeast of Modena and at the northern edge of the Apennine foothills. The medieval centro storico rises around the Piazza Roma, paved in alternating white and black stones that earned it the name Piazza della Dama, the checkerboard piazza, framed by the four surviving towers of the old castle.
The Grasparossa grape grows on the clay slopes around the town, the sandy soil and the south-facing aspect producing the deepest, most tannic of the three main Lambruschi; Lambrusco Grasparossa di Castelvetro received DOC status in 1970. Above the piazza, the Palazzo Rinaldi houses the Museo del Vino and the Museo dell'Aceto Balsamico, the second tracing the same Modenese tradition that nearby Spilamberto codifies.
The municipality holds three institutional signals: Borghi più belli, Bandiera Arancione, Città del Vino. The Sagra dell'Uva e del Lambrusco runs the last weekend of September, when the streets fill with the chess players from the surrounding Lambrusco towns dressed as living pieces on the piazza.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Castelvetro di Modena
- Piazza Roma. Checkerboard piazza paved in alternating white and black stones, framed by the four surviving towers of the medieval castle.
- Castello di Levizzano Rangone. Tenth-century fortified frazione four kilometers north, with a tower built in the 990s and a fully preserved medieval village.
- Museo del Vino. Wine museum inside the Palazzo Rinaldi, tracing the Grasparossa production cycle and the DOC zone established in 1970.
How to get to Castelvetro di Modena
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Modena is roughly 28 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September through October are the Castelvetro months. The hills around the borgo turn green in spring and red in autumn when the Grasparossa vines colour up before the harvest. July and August are hot, thirty-five degrees in the valley, less in the hills above, and the cantine slow down.
Spilamberto
Why visit Spilamberto
Spilamberto sits at 69 meters on the right bank of the Panaro, fifteen kilometers southeast of Modena, on the line of the ancient Via Romea that ran from northern Europe to Rome. The town is documented from 776.
The Rangoni family of Modena held it for more than 650 years, and the fortress they built still anchors the centro storico, with the medieval bell tower at the edge of the borgo holding both an archaeological museum and the headquarters of the walnut liqueur order. In 1967 a group of local enthusiasts founded the Consorteria dell'Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Modena here, and it still certifies the twelve- and twenty-five-year-aged DOP product through annual blind tastings.
An eighteenth-century Este road that ran from Modena to Massa leaves the town heading south, a reminder that Spilamberto has always sat at a crossing point: the old route running through it toward the north and Rome, another road departing from it toward the south, the river marking its edge. A plain town that became, almost by local initiative rather than geography, the place where a regional product got its rules written down.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Spilamberto
- Rocca Rangoni. The fortress anchors the centro storico, its walls facing onto the streets that grew up around it rather than set apart from them.
- Torrione. Medieval bell tower at the edge of the borgo, housing the Antiquarium museum and the headquarters of the Ordine del Nocino Modenese.
- Museo dell'Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale. Museum at Villa Fabriani laying out the production cycle in physical form: the cooked must, the graduated run of casks, the attic rooms where fifty years of seasoning take place.
How to get to Spilamberto
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Modena is roughly 24 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September through October are the months for Spilamberto. The Greenway del Panaro runs without crowds, the cantine open their tasting rooms, and the Mast Còt festival in October pulls together producers from the entire Modenese balsamic chain for two weekends of new-must boiling and old-cask tasting. July and August are heavy on the plain; thirty-five degrees and humidity that doesn't drop after dark.
Collecchio
Why visit Collecchio
Collecchio sits at 112 meters on the right bank of the Taro, thirteen kilometers southwest of Parma, where the Via Emilia and the Via Francigena run together. In medieval documents the town appears as Colliculum, a possession of the bishops of Parma.
The centro lies on the flat valley floor, with the parish church set apart on the hill above it, and the two industrial sites, the dairy headquarters and the football training ground, occupying the built-up town rather than the countryside around it. The southern half of the municipality is given over to parkland: a municipal riverside park along the Taro and, further out, the wooded former hunting reserve of the Dukes of Parma.
A town shaped by a bishop's holding and a pilgrim road has ended up defined by a milk company and a football club, with its church and its woods left to mark what came before.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Collecchio
- Pieve di San Prospero. The three-nave interior is reached by climbing the hill above the centro; the walls show the masonry seams of construction stretched across two centuries.
- Via Francigena. The Taro variant is marked with waystones through the centro, following the line pilgrims once walked toward the Cisa pass.
- Parco Boschi di Carrega. Wooded grounds once reserved for ducal hunting, now open with trails through the trees across the southern municipality.
How to get to Collecchio
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Parma is roughly 18 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September through October are the working months on the Parma plain. The Taro valley is green in spring and dry-gold in autumn, the months when the Via Francigena fills with pilgrims walking the Parma to Fornovo stage. July and August touch thirty-five degrees with high humidity, and the centro empties between two and five.
Sasso Marconi
Why visit Sasso Marconi
The Setta and Reno rivers meet below the rock that gives the town its name, at the point where the pre-Apennine hills begin their climb south of Bologna. The Sasso della Glosina dominates the bend, a Pliocene formation old enough to have shaped how the crossing below it was used long before the valley took its modern name.
The town itself was called Sasso Bolognese until 1938, when it was renamed for the family whose estate lies in the frazione of Pontecchio, on the valley floor rather than on the rock itself. The territory reaches from that river confluence up into the Apennine slopes, and the change in elevation shows in what the land produces: white truffle from the valley floor near the Reno, and vineyards on the hills around Pieve del Pino and Mongardino, recognition earned on two different registers of the same ground.
The lower town, built around the rivers and the old road to Pistoia, and the upper slopes, given to woods and terraced vines, read as one territory doing two different kinds of work.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Sasso Marconi
- Villa Griffone - Museo Marconi. Marconi family villa in the frazione of Pontecchio. The mausoleum sits alongside the attic laboratory, and the museum holds working reproductions of his early apparatus.
- Sasso della Glosina. The rock rises directly over the river bend, its bulk visible from the crossing below and from much of the surrounding valley.
- Confluenza Setta-Reno. Meeting of the two valleys at the foot of the rock, with the historic crossing of the Via Porrettana toward Pistoia.
How to get to Sasso Marconi
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Bologna is roughly 26 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through October is the working season in Sasso Marconi. Spring and early autumn are best on the Reno valley trails and at Villa Griffone, with mild temperatures and the Apennine foothills green or autumn-coloured. July and August can touch thirty-five degrees in the valley, though the higher frazioni stay cooler; many visitors come up from Bologna for a day on a weekend.
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