The 8 best hill towns with a serious restaurant in Veneto

1. 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.

La Corte (MICHELIN and Gambero Rosso), Osteria dai Mazzeri (MICHELIN and Gambero Rosso) and Al Castelletto (Gambero Rosso) are listed in food guides.

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.

Everything we know about Follina

2. 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.

Locanda da Condo (MICHELIN), Seda (Gambero Rosso) and Tino Gourmet dell'Hotel Villa Soligo (Gambero Rosso) are listed in food guides.

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

3. Asolo

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

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.

Caffè Centrale Asolo (Locali Storici), La Terrazza (MICHELIN) and Locanda Baggio (MICHELIN and Gambero Rosso) are listed in food guides.

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

4. 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.

Tre Noghere (MICHELIN), Alla Cima (Gambero Rosso) and Locanda Sandi (Gambero Rosso) are listed in food guides.

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

5. Sant'Ambrogio di Valpolicella

Best for a day out from Verona. It is 34 min by car.

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.

Dalla Rosa Alda (MICHELIN) and Masi Agricola (World's 50 Best) are listed in food guides.

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

6. Marostica

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

La Rosina (MICHELIN) and Madonnetta (Slow Food and MICHELIN) are listed in food guides.

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

7. Feltre

Best for walks in a national park. Part of the comune lies in a national park.

1 h 21 min from Trento · homes €1,050 to €1,450 a m² in the center · 20,631 people

Why visit Feltre

Feltre sits at 325 meters on a hill above the Stizzon, near its confluence with the Piave, seventy kilometers north of Padova. Roman Feltria was a municipium on the Via Claudia Augusta.

The defining episode in the city's appearance came in 1510, during the War of the League of Cambrai, when troops under Maximilian I of Habsburg sacked the town after the Venetian defeat at Agnadello, burning most of it. The city rebuilt over the next sixty years, and that reconstruction shapes how its parts relate to each other still.

The upper city, the citadel built around the main square, holds the seat of civic government, the medieval keep with its views to the peaks and forests north of the city, and the church of San Rocco. Below it, the long arcaded street through the lower city carries the same sixteenth-century idiom down the hill, so the whole centro storico reads as one build rather than a patchwork of eras.

What Feltre offers, in the end, is a rare case where destruction produced coherence: a single burning followed by a single, unhurried rebuilding, and the town has looked essentially like itself ever since.

Aurora (MICHELIN) and Enoteca Contemporanea (Gambero Rosso) are listed in food guides.

What to see in Feltre

• Piazza Maggiore. Main square of the upper city, at the highest point of the centro storico, surrounded by Renaissance palaces and the citadel walls.
• Palazzo della Ragione. Sixteenth-century town hall on the square with a loggia traditionally attributed to Andrea Palladio.
• Castello di Alboino. Medieval keep above the centro storico, named for the Lombard king Alboin, with views across the Piave valley to the peaks north of the city.

How to get to Feltre

It has its own railway station. Trento is about 1 h 21 min away by road. The full route from Venice.

Everything we know about Feltre

8. Vittorio Veneto

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

59 min from Venice · homes €1,100 to €1,400 a m² in the center · 27,259 people

Why visit Vittorio Veneto

Vittorio Veneto sits at 138 meters at the foot of the Cansiglio plateau, seventy-five kilometers north of Padova. The commune was formed in 1866 by merging Ceneda, on the plain, with Serravalle, in the narrow valley above, and named for King Vittorio Emanuele II.

The two centers kept their own identities rather than blending into one. Serravalle is the older, walled district, set higher in the valley, with its cathedral holding the altarpiece of the Virgin with two saints.

Ceneda lies lower down on the plain, holding the Loggia of the Comunità and an eighteenth-century cathedral of its own alongside the castle ruins on the hill above it. In July 1923 the town took the name it carries now, after the battle that had taken its name from it five years earlier: the offensive of 24 October 1918 broke the Austro-Hungarian line, and the Armistice of Villa Giusti, effective 4 November, closed the war on this front.

The renaming fixed a wartime event permanently onto a place that had, until then, been two separate medieval settlements sharing a valley. What stands today is that same double structure, upper town and lower town, walled district and plain, still legible as two places joined by one name.

Le Macine is listed in the MICHELIN Guide.

What to see in Vittorio Veneto

• Duomo di Serravalle. Rebuilt cathedral in the upper walled centro storico, holding the altarpiece of the Virgin with Saints Peter and Andrew in continuous liturgical use since it was painted.
• Museo della Battaglia. In the Loggia of the Comunità di Ceneda, built 1534-1538, with relics and documents of the offensive that ended the war on this front.
• Serravalle. Northern walled district above Ceneda, with sixteenth-century arcaded houses along the Meschio and the 1462 Loggia Serravallese.

How to get to Vittorio Veneto

It has its own railway station. Venice is about 59 min away by road. The full route from Venice.

Everything we know about Vittorio Veneto