The best hill towns in the province of Roma
The land behind Rome rises fast. Volcanic craters hold Lake Albano and Lake Nemi, chestnut and oak woods climb the Monti Prenestini, and the Aniene cuts down through limestone towards the plain, so the towns above it are built on tufa, in tufa, the same grey-brown blocks quarried out of the hill they sit on. This is porchetta country, the pork roasted whole with rosemary and wild fennel and sold in slabs from a counter at eleven in the morning, alongside white wine from the volcanic slopes and bread from wood ovens. Autumn brings chestnuts, grape must and the first cold air off the mountains; spring brings water thundering through the gorges after the snowmelt. The heat of the city drops away noticeably with every hairpin bend.
The obvious move is Frascati. It is close, the train runs there in half an hour, the villas are grand and the cellars are set up for visitors, so coaches arrive all summer and the streets around the cathedral fill by lunchtime with day-trippers doing the wine-and-porchetta circuit before heading back down. It is a good town and the reputation is earned. It is also, on a Sunday in June, the most crowded high ground in Lazio.
The ridges do not stop at Frascati. The same craters, the same tufa walls, the same roast pork and the same cold spring water continue east into the Aniene valley, north towards the Tiber and south along the rim of the Alban Hills, past monasteries cut into rock faces and gardens engineered around waterfalls. Fewer people go to these places, which are smaller, steeper and often reached by a single road. They are the towns in this list.
Of the 15 communes we have mapped in the province of Roma, 7 qualify as hill towns: each is an inland hill settlement built on ground too steep to spread. The smallest, Percile, has 219 residents.
If you are still choosing, we have also written The best hill towns inside a nature park in Lazio and The best towns inside a nature park in the province of Roma.
Percile
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 219, spread across a comune territory of 24 square kilometers, which makes Percile a small fixed point inside a much larger stretch of protected woodland.
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
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Roma is roughly 54 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September through October are the best months at 575 meters. The Lucretili woods are green into June and the walks up to the Lagustelli are at their best when the karst basins are full from spring rain. July and August are workable; the village stays cooler than Rome forty kilometers downhill, but the open trails go silent in midday heat.
Canale Monterano
Why visit Canale Monterano
Canale Monterano sits at 376 meters on a tuff hill forty-five kilometers northwest of Rome, between the Bracciano basin and the Tolfa hills. The inhabited town is small, four thousand residents, built around a working bakery tradition.
Two kilometers away, on a separate tuff bluff above the confluence of the Mignone and Bicione rivers, is the reason most people make the trip: the ghost town, set on the far side of a valley the living town does not touch. The relationship between the two places is one of distance and separation rather than continuity.
Canale Monterano went on being a town; the settlement on the bluff did not, and the two kilometers between them mark the difference between a place that was rebuilt after the fire and one that never was. What is left on the bluff is masonry with the roofs and interiors gone, watched over from its highest point by the palace facade, with the fountain still running below in an otherwise empty piazza.
The regional reserve now holds the whole valley, ruin and river system together, so that the abandoned village survives inside protected land rather than beside a working one.
What to see in Canale Monterano
- Ruderi di Monterano. Ghost town two kilometers from Canale, burned by French Republican troops in 1799, never rebuilt; now the centerpiece of the regional reserve.
- Chiesa e Convento di San Bonaventura. Roofless, facing an open sky where the roof beams once sat. The façade and convent block still stand at the edge of the ruined village, built for the Altieri family by Gian Lorenzo Bernini.
- Fontana Ottagonale del Leone. Still flowing through the stone lion's mouth in the middle of an otherwise empty piazza, the only thing in the ghost town that still functions as built.
How to get to Canale Monterano
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Roma is roughly 70 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September through October are the best months for the reserve. The trail from the parking lot to the ruins is exposed, and spring and autumn keep the temperatures comfortable. July and August push past thirty degrees on the tuff plateau, and the open ruins offer no shade after eleven in the morning; early-morning visits are the workaround. Sagra del Lombrichello a Canale Monterano falls in July.
Subiaco
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
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Roma is roughly 70 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September through October are the months for Subiaco: the Aniene runs full, the cliff sanctuaries are open from morning, and the pilgrim road south fills with walkers on the Cammino di San Benedetto. July and August are warm in town and cool in the monasteries; the cave at the Sacro Speco holds twelve degrees year-round. November through March is the quiet pilgrim season, mist on the river and few coaches in the lots. Festa Madonna di Pompei Rione Colle falls in August.
Castelnuovo di Porto
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
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Roma is roughly 37 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September through October are the strongest months. The Tiber valley is green in spring and the rocca terraces open cleanest at low sun. July and August touch the upper thirties; the centro storico stays cooler than Rome twenty-five kilometers downhill but the Veio park trails go silent in midday heat.
Ariccia
Why visit Ariccia
Ariccia sits on the rim of the Alban Hills volcanic complex, and the crater geography organizes everything about the place. The town centre occupies the ridge; below it on the eastern side the ground drops into the deep crater valley of Vallericcia, crossed by the viaduct linking the town to the next ridge.
The gorge itself became notorious after a series of suicides in the 1990s, now blocked with high railings. Further east and below, the volcanic lakes and the papal estate sit in a cluster within a few kilometres of the town centre, part of the same crater system that shaped Ariccia's position in the first place.
The Roman past predates the Baroque town by centuries: Aricia was the southern terminus of the original Via Appia, laid out in 312 BC, and the neighbouring lake was the site of the Latin League's federal sanctuary of Diana Aricina. The porchetta tradition is separate again: whole pork loin, deboned and seasoned with rosemary, garlic, pepper and wild fennel, slow-roasted on rotating spits in wood-fired ovens and served at room temperature in panini or by the etto.
The fraschette that serve it were originally outdoor wine vendors, marked with frasche, branches, as signs, and the town's status as a Città del Vino within the Frascati zone explains why the wine on the table is local rather than incidental. What makes Ariccia distinct among the Castelli towns is that these layers, Roman road terminus, crater rim settlement, unified Baroque set piece, and porchetta town, sit on top of each other in one small place rather than being scattered across the region.
What to see in Ariccia
- Palazzo Chigi + Piazza di Corte (Bernini). The Chigi family's Baroque summer residence. The palazzo, the piazza and the church facing it were designed as one ensemble. The palazzo is preserved as a 17th-c interior museum.
- Santa Maria dell'Assunzione (Bernini). Bernini's circular church, domed and modelled on the Pantheon: small, perfect, often empty.
- Ponte Monumentale. 1854 triple-tier brick viaduct spanning the 312m-deep Vallericcia crater. Walk across for the panoramic view; the gorge below is wooded and undeveloped.
How to get to Ariccia
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Roma is roughly 41 minutes away by road.
Our tip
Ariccia is year-round — the Castelli Romani are Rome's cooler escape in summer (400m altitude buys 5-7 degrees off the city heat) and the porchetta is cold-served so it works in any weather. October–November is the Sagra dell'Uva and the Sagra della Porchetta (first weekend in September) — fraschette spill into the streets. Saturday lunch in any season is the locals' main event.
Velletri
Why visit Velletri
The town sits at 332 meters, thirty-five kilometers from Rome, on the southeastern rim of a volcanic ring of craters and lakes. Before it was a papal possession and a diocesan seat, it was a Volscian stronghold, and before that the home ground of the Octavii, the paternal family of the man who became Augustus: Suetonius records a street here called Octavian and an altar consecrated by an Octavius, and the future emperor passed his childhood in the town under its old name, Velitrae.
That layering, Volscian settlement, imperial family seat, papal diocese, is what the center still shows once the war is accounted for: an army broke through a German defensive line here in May 1944, and much of the town was destroyed in the process. What stands now above the old piazza and around the rebuilt town hall is largely reconstruction fitted around what survived, with a wine trade going back to the volcanic soil that predates all of it.
A town whose name changed twice, whose family produced an emperor, and whose center was rebuilt from a battle line, but whose vineyards on the same slopes never stopped being the constant.
What to see in Velletri
- Torre del Trivio. 50-meter Romanesque bell tower from the 14th century, the only structure to come through the 1944 bombing intact, still the shape by which the town is recognized from a distance.
- Palazzo Comunale. Renaissance town hall designed by Giacomo Della Porta, rebuilt after wartime damage, facing the piazza named for the emperor born to the town.
- Cattedrale di San Clemente. Cathedral seat of the suburbicarian Diocese of Velletri-Segni, a title held today by the Dean of the College of Cardinals.
How to get to Velletri
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Latina is roughly 35 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June brings the Alban Hills at their greenest, vineyards in leaf, and mild evenings on the piazzas. September and October are the wine months: the Festa dell'Uva, one of the oldest grape festivals in Italy, runs in the first week of September. July and August are hot in the lower town and at their best after sunset, when the volcanic slopes hold the breeze. Calici sotto le stelle falls in August.
Tivoli
Why visit Tivoli
Tivoli sits at 235 meters on the Aniene where it drops 120 meters off the Tiburtini hills, twenty-five kilometers east of Rome. The Romans called it Tibur and built it up as their summer station; the moneyed classes carried on building here for two thousand years afterward.
Two of those projects became UNESCO sites, listed separately despite standing close together. Hadrian's estate, four kilometers below town, covers 120 hectares with the remains of thirty monumental buildings the emperor built between 117 and 138 AD to recreate the architectural memories of Egypt, Greece and Asia Minor.
The Renaissance garden inside the upper town was laid out from 1550 onward for a cardinal of the Este family; its grounds carry 51 fountains powered entirely by gravity from the Aniene. The cardinal stripped much of the marble from Hadrian's estate to decorate his own grounds, so the imperial villa on the plain and the garden in the upper town are bound together by more than proximity: one was quarried to build the other.
Below them both, the Villa Gregoriana park drops into the gorge where the river was diverted in 1832 to create the 120-meter Cascata Grande. The travertine quarries that built Rome are still working in the plain below.
The upper town, the lower estate, and the gorge between them form a single continuous cut through two thousand years of building, borrowing, and quarrying around the same fall of water.
What to see in Tivoli
- Villa d'Este. The fountains step down the hillside in tiers, fed by nothing but gravity, so the sound of falling water carries through the whole garden. Cardinal Ippolito d'Este stripped much of the marble for it from Hadrian's villa down the hill.
- Villa Adriana. The remains of thirty monumental buildings spread across the Tiburtine plain, among them the Canopo and the Teatro Marittimo, a walled island retreat inside the larger estate.
- Villa Gregoriana. The park drops into the gorge cut by the Aniene, where the river was diverted through Monte Catillo to feed the fall below town.
How to get to Tivoli
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Roma is roughly 31 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September through October are when the Aniene gardens look the way Cardinal Ippolito wanted them to. The Villa d'Este fountains run hardest in spring after the winter rains; the Villa Adriana hectares are walkable in shoulder weather without burning. July and August touch the upper thirties and the unshaded ruins at Villa Adriana become punishing by mid-morning; the gorge at Villa Gregoriana stays cooler. Festa dell'Inchinata falls in August.
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