The 8 best hill towns with a serious restaurant in Lazio
Lazio away from the sea is a landscape of tufa, the soft grey volcanic stone that the hill towns are cut from and built with, so the walls and the cliffs they stand on are the same material. The country between the Cimini hills, the Sabina and the Ciociaria gives the kitchens their range: olive oil pressed in November, artichokes in spring, hazelnuts, chestnuts, sheep's cheese, lake fish from Bolsena and Bracciano, pork roasted whole with rosemary and pepper. Restaurants here tend to be family-run rooms with a short menu and a long wine list of Cesanese and Est! Est!! Est!!!. Autumn is the season the food makes most sense, when the woods are wet and the porcini and the game arrive together.
Almost everyone who eats well in Lazio eats in Rome, which is fair enough, because Testaccio and Trastevere and the Monti backstreets hold more good tables than most countries do. The consequence is that the city's best rooms book out weeks ahead, the trattorie that appear on lists are full of people who read the same list, and lunch runs at a pace nobody enjoys. The famous countryside version of the same problem sits at the Castelli Romani wine cellars on a Sunday, coach parties included.
The cooking does not stop at the ring road. The same hills, the same suppliers and often the same producers continue north into the Tuscia and east towards the Apennines, into towns where a serious kitchen is the main event rather than one option among hundreds. Fewer people drive out to eat in them, and the tables are easier to get. These are the hill towns where the restaurant is worth the road.
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Of the 60 communes we have mapped in Lazio, 8 qualify as hill towns with a serious restaurant: each is an inland hill settlement, and each holds a restaurant listed by the most demanding of the guides. The smallest, Magliano Sabina, has 3,433 residents.
Elsewhere in the catalogue: The best towns you can reach by train that have a serious restaurant in Lazio and The best small towns in Lazio for dinner.
Magliano Sabina
Why visit Magliano Sabina
Magliano Sabina sits at 222 meters on a terrace above the Tiber valley, fifty kilometers north of Rome on the border between Lazio and Umbria. The hill above the river was Sabine ground; the Roman town of Ocriculum, just across in modern Umbria, was the regional anchor.
The medieval centre grew up under the Benedictine abbey of Farfa and passed to the Holy See in the fourteenth century, and the diocesan seat later moved up from the older episcopal site at Vescovio, in the comune's own territory, to the town's upper church. The upper town, walled and gathered around the Palazzo Comunale and the cathedral, occupies the terrace edge; the Vescovio remains lie apart in the surrounding countryside, marking where the diocese first sat before the seat moved uphill into Magliano itself.
From the ridge the ground gives way west to the Tiber and then climbs into Monte Soratte on the far bank, a view that alone earned the town membership in the Borghi più belli d'Italia in 2003. The town's standing, then, rests less on any single monument than on the relation between an old river crossing, an abbey's authority, and a line of sight that has drawn notice since antiquity.
Degli Angeli have been named by a guide.
What to see in Magliano Sabina
- Cattedrale di San Liberatore. The cathedral stands on Piazza Duomo, its stone façade the dominant note of the square and the seat around which the diocese has organized itself since the medieval period.
- Chiesa di San Pietro. Twelfth-century Romanesque church, one of the oldest standing buildings in town, with its original masonry preserved.
- Centro storico. Medieval upper town on the Tiber terrace, with the Palazzo Comunale, the diocesan seat and surviving sections of the village walls.
How to get to Magliano Sabina
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Terni is roughly 41 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September through October are the strongest months in the Tiber valley. The Sabine olive country is green in spring and the panorama toward Monte Soratte opens cleanest after rain clears the haze. July and August touch the mid-thirties; the centro storico stays cooler than the river plain below, but the open ridge walks empty around midday.
Caprarola
Why visit Caprarola
Caprarola stands at about 510 meters on the volcanic slopes of the Cimini, six kilometers east of Lago di Vico. The town is built on a single axis that climbs from the lower village to the Villa Farnese, the pentagonal Renaissance palace that organises everything below it.
Antonio da Sangallo the Younger designed the original fortress in 1530; after Sangallo's death the work was suspended, and Cardinal Alessandro Farnese the Younger reassigned it to Vignola in 1559. Vignola kept the pentagonal plan but turned it from a fortress into a Mannerist residence, with a circular colonnaded courtyard at its center, a scala regia spiraling between floors and the fresco cycles of the Zuccari brothers.
The plan was the model later copied for the Pentagon in Washington. Behind the villa, the Giardini Farnese climb into the chestnut and beech woods of the Cimini.
Caprarola is part of the Città della Nocciola and Città del Castagno networks, a recognition of the volcanic soils that produce both.
Trattoria del Cimino, Vineria Vignola Salumeria e cucina have been named by a guide.
What to see in Caprarola
- Villa Farnese. Pentagonal Mannerist palace by Vignola, built 1559-1573 on Sangallo's earlier fortress plan, with a circular colonnaded courtyard.
- Giardini Farnese. Sixteenth-century formal garden and casino di caccia behind the villa, climbing into the chestnut woods of the Cimini.
- Lago di Vico. Volcanic crater lake at 510 meters, one of the highest of the major Italian lakes, shared with Ronciglione.
How to get to Caprarola
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Terni is roughly 67 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the months for the villa and the Cimini woods, when the chestnut canopy holds shade and Lago di Vico is at its clearest. July and August push the lower town into the low thirties; the high ceilings of the Villa Farnese keep visitors cool through the heat. The hazelnut harvest runs late August and September, the chestnut harvest follows in October, and both fill the surrounding sagre. Hazelnut Festival falls in August.
Acquapendente
Why visit Acquapendente
Acquapendente sits at the northern edge of Lazio, where the Paglia river marks the boundary with Tuscany. The name first appears in a document of Emperor Otto I dated 964, taken from the small waterfalls that drop the river toward the plain.
The town grew up along the pilgrim road that runs north to south through it, and the church at its center, with its Romanesque crypt and sacellum copying the tomb in Jerusalem, gave the settlement its old nickname, the Green Jerusalem. The built-up center holds the basilica and the streets that carry the floral mosaics each May, while outward from it the town's territory stretches to two very different edges: the frazione of Torre Alfina to the north, with its own restored castle and a listing among the country's most beautiful villages, and the forest of the Monte Rufeno reserve beyond that, nearly 3,000 hectares of oak and beech reached by marked trails.
A river border, a pilgrim route, and a nickname earned by a copied tomb: together they describe a town shaped less by what it produced than by what passed through it and what was built to receive those travelers.
La Parolina have been named by a guide.
What to see in Acquapendente
- Basilica Concattedrale del Santo Sepolcro. Twenty-four columns divide the crypt into nine naves. The sacellum sits carved into the rock at the center, a form pilgrims would have recognized as a copy of the tomb it names.
- Pugnaloni. Panels built from flower petals pressed into wooden frames, carried through the streets by each quarter of the town on the third Sunday of May.
- Castello di Torre Alfina. Neo-Gothic restored fortress in the frazione of Torre Alfina, itself listed among I Borghi più belli d'Italia.
How to get to Acquapendente
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Terni is roughly 96 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the months for walking the Via Francigena and the trails of Monte Rufeno. The Pugnaloni festival fills the streets on the third Sunday of May and is the single best weekend in the calendar. July and August touch the mid-thirties in the Paglia valley; pilgrims start earlier and finish by mid-morning.
Sutri
Why visit Sutri
Sutri sits at 291 meters on a narrow tuff spur, fifty kilometers north of Rome on the old road linking the two. The Etruscans held it before the Romans took it in the fourth century BC, and it was among the colonies that refused further military contributions to Rome during the Second Punic War in 209 BC.
The rock-cut monuments that define the town, the arena, the temple turned sanctuary, the chamber tombs, all come from the same tuff spur the town is built on, so the stone that gives Sutri its ground is also what its Etruscan and Roman residents carved into. The high ground above, where the eighteenth-century villa and its gardens sit, looks down over that older excavated town rather than sitting apart from it.
Local tradition ties the town's beans to Charlemagne, who passed through and was supposedly relieved of an attack of gout by Sutri's variety. What the place adds up to is a settlement where the town and its excavation are the same rock: nothing was built so much as removed.
N'uovo Vino e Cucina have been named by a guide.
What to see in Sutri
- Anfiteatro Romano. Elliptical amphitheater about forty-nine by forty meters, carved directly out of the tuff rock rather than built on it.
- Mithraeum / Madonna del Parto. Roman temple to Mithras hewn into the tuff and reused as a Marian sanctuary, accessed through the medieval rock-cut church.
- Necropoli rupestre. Etruscan necropolis with dozens of rock-cut chamber tombs in the cliff face along the Via Cassia.
How to get to Sutri
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Roma is roughly 57 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the best months in the tuff country, when the amphitheater grass is green and the gardens of Villa Savorelli are open. July and August push afternoons into the mid-thirties; the rock-cut Mithraeum and tomb chambers stay cool and become the part of the visit that doesn't need to be timed. November through March is quiet.
Arpino
Why visit Arpino
Arpino sits at 450 meters on two hills in the Liri valley, in the Ciociaria region of southern Lazio. The ancient city of Arpinum, on the upper hill now called Civitavecchia, was a Volscian-Samnite stronghold captured by Rome in 305 BC.
The lower hill is the medieval and modern town. Two Roman consuls were born here: Gaius Marius, the military reformer who fought the Cimbri and Teutones, and Marcus Tullius Cicero, the orator and senator killed in 43 BC.
The villa where Cicero was born stood just north, on the Liri, in what is now Isola del Liri. The upper acropolis is ringed by polygonal cyclopean walls of the sixth or fifth century BC, with the Arco a Sesto Acuto, a pointed-arch gate cut into the same stone work.
Arpino is on the Bandiere Arancioni list and on the Cammino di San Benedetto, the long pilgrim route from Norcia to Montecassino.
Mingone, La Perla have been named by a guide.
What to see in Arpino
- Acropoli di Civitavecchia. Pre-Roman upper city on the hill above modern Arpino, surrounded by cyclopean polygonal walls of the sixth or fifth century BC.
- Arco a Sesto Acuto. Pointed-arch gate cut into the cyclopean walls of the acropolis, the only known pre-Roman ogival arch in central Italy.
- Torre di Cicerone. Medieval tower on the acropolis, traditionally linked to Cicero by local memory though built more than a thousand years after his death.
How to get to Arpino
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 94 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September through October are the strong months. Spring brings green hills along the Liri and clear views from the acropolis; autumn is dry and gold. July and August push past thirty degrees in the valley, although Arpino's 450-meter position offers some relief in the upper town. Il Gonfalone falls in July.
Tarquinia
Why visit Tarquinia
Tarquinia sits on a plateau at 133 meters above the Maremma plain in northern Lazio, six kilometers inland from the Tyrrhenian coast. The Etruscan city of Tarquinii stood on the adjacent Colle della Civita and was one of the twelve great Etruscan capitals, ringed by eight kilometers of sixth-century walls enclosing 135 hectares.
What survives above ground is mostly medieval: the present town moved here in the Middle Ages and was renamed Corneto until 1922, when Mussolini's regime restored the ancient name. What survives below ground is what made the place a UNESCO site in 2004.
The Monterozzi necropolis on the hill east of town holds 6,000 rock-cut tombs from the seventh century BC onward, and around two hundred of them carry painted interiors. The frescoed banquets, dancers, hunters and musicians inside Tarquinia's tombs are the largest body of pre-Roman painting in the Mediterranean.
The Palazzo Vitelleschi in the upper town houses the national museum and the Winged Horses terracottas.
Namo Ristobottega have been named by a guide.
What to see in Tarquinia
- Necropoli dei Monterozzi. UNESCO Etruscan necropolis on the hill east of the medieval town, 6,000 rock-cut tombs with around 200 painted interiors from the 7th century BC onward.
- Museo Archeologico Nazionale Tarquiniense. Housed in the 15th-century Palazzo Vitelleschi, with Etruscan sarcophagi, painted slabs and the famous Cavalli Alati terracottas.
- Palazzo Vitelleschi. Early Renaissance palace built between 1436 and 1439 for Cardinal Vitelleschi, blending Gothic and Renaissance elements in a single façade.
How to get to Tarquinia
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 77 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September through October are the strongest months. The Maremma light is clean, the tomb interiors stay cool, and the wind off the Tyrrhenian keeps the plateau comfortable. July and August are workable but hot; the underground necropolis is the right place to be in the middle of the day, and Lido di Tarquinia six kilometers downhill takes the evening crowd.
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.
Sintesi have been named by a guide.
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.
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.
Li Somari, NUH Osteria Contemporanea, Sibilla and 2 more have been named by a guide.
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.
More from Anywhere Italy
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