The 8 best hill towns you can reach by train in Campania
Eight towns: what each is best for, what a home costs, and the catch. A square meter runs from €500 in Sessa Aurunca to €2,050 in Nola.
From the 1,000 towns picked by Peter Benei.
92 towns written about, 908 to go. Follow along, free: Subscribe on Substack
Away from the bay, Campania rises into ridges of gray tuff and pale limestone, terraced with vines and broken by chestnut woods that turn copper in late October. The houses are built from the same volcanic stone they stand on, which keeps the rooms cool through the long inland summers and holds the damp through winter. This is buffalo mozzarella country on the lower slopes and greco and fiano country higher up, with slow-cooked pork, hand-cut pasta and bitter greens on the table when the heat breaks. Regional trains thread the valleys, following rivers that carved the routes long before the rails did.
Most people arriving in Campania go straight for the coast: Naples, then the Amalfi road, Sorrento, Pompeii, Capri on the hydrofoil. The Amalfi Coast in particular absorbs an enormous share of everyone who lands at Capodichino, and in August the single road above Positano moves at walking pace. It is spectacular, and it is also the reason the region's reputation stops at the water.
The same volcanic soil, the same wine, the same cooking carries on inland, up the Volturno, the Calore and the Sele, and that is where these towns are. Some sit on Roman roads, some on Samnite hilltops, some beside abbeys and aqueducts that predate the coastal resorts by centuries. Fewer people go, and every one of them is on a line you can ride from Naples without hiring anything.
Of the 67 communes we have mapped in Campania, 8 qualify as hill towns you can reach by train: each is an inland town, most of them on high ground, and we have confirmed each is reachable without a car. The smallest, Tufo, has 756 residents.
If you are still choosing, we have also written The best hill towns you can reach by train within 90 minutes of Naples and The best hill towns within 75 minutes of Naples.
1. Tufo
Best for a small town. 756 people live here.
55 min from Salerno · homes €580 to €680 a m² in the center · 756 people
Why visit Tufo
The name Tufo comes from the volcanic tuff stone the hill is built on, the same stone that runs through the slopes below and gives the local wine its mineral edge. The village sits on top of that stone at 250 meters, with the cellars at its foot and the vineyards spreading out around both.
Sulfur was mined in shafts cut into the cliffs beneath the village, work that shaped the local economy for over a century before it stopped. Most visitors are wine buyers, not tourists.
They drive in for a tasting, walk the steep main street to the medieval castle on top, and leave by dinner. The village stays quiet after they go.
What the stone gave the place economically it also gave it physically: a hill town built from the same rock that flavors what it grows, mined until the ground itself ran out of use.
The catch: It has lost 15% of its people since 2015.
What to see in Tufo
- Castello di Tufo. Medieval castle from the eleventh century on the volcanic rock at the top of the hill, the core the village grew around.
- Cantine di Marzo. The cellars sit at the foot of the village, where Greco di Tufo has been produced commercially since the family took up winemaking here.
- Ex Miniere di Zolfo. Abandoned mines in the cliffs below the village, their shafts left the rock marked with rust-colored scars after closure.
How to get to Tufo
It has its own railway station. Salerno is about 55 min away by road. The full route from Naples.
Our tip
April through June covers the green months in Irpinia: vine leaves unfurling on the slopes, mild evenings on the main street. September through early October is harvest, when the cellars open more often than usual and the village smells of crushed Greco. July and August get hot in the valley, though 250 meters keeps the worst of it off.
2. Caiazzo
Best for olive oil. It belongs to the national association of olive oil towns.
53 min from Naples · homes €700 to €950 a m² in the center · 5,083 people
Why visit Caiazzo
Caiazzo sits at 200 meters on a small hill above the Volturno, forty kilometers north of Naples, between the Matese foothills and the Caserta plain. The town is older than the surrounding province: Caiatia was already a Samnite then Roman center, and the medieval cathedral preserves a Lombard crypt under its eleventh-century floor.
What pulls visitors today is not the cathedral but a pizzeria. In 2012 Franco Pepe, third-generation baker, opened Pepe in Grani in an eighteenth-century palazzo on Vico San Giovanni Battista, working long-fermented doughs with local Pallagrello flour, Conciato Romano cheese and Caiazzo olive oil.
Tre spicchi from Gambero Rosso for ten straight years and a Michelin world-best ranking in 2018 turned the centro storico into a destination that handles 800 pizzas a day. Caiazzo is a Cittaslow, a Città del Vino for Pallagrello and Casavecchia, and a Città dell'Olio.
What to see in Caiazzo
- Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta. Eleventh-century cathedral with a Lombard crypt beneath the floor, baroque interior and the relics of San Stefano Minicillo, patron of Caiazzo.
- Castello di Caiazzo. Medieval castle of Lombard origin on the highest point of the centro storico, remodelled under the Normans and later princes of Caiazzo.
- Pepe in Grani. Franco Pepe's pizzeria in an eighteenth-century palazzo on Vico San Giovanni Battista, ranked best in the world by Michelin in 2018.
How to get to Caiazzo
It has its own railway station. Naples is about 53 min away by road. The full route from Naples.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the cleanest months in Caiazzo, when the Volturno valley is green and the Pepe in Grani tables are easier to book at lunch. July and August push the Caserta plain past thirty-five degrees and the centro storico empties between two and six in the afternoon. Harvest runs September and October for Pallagrello and Casavecchia and pulls weekend wine visitors.
3. Vairano Patenora
Best for a long lunch. A food guide lists Vairo del Volturno here.
59 min from Naples · homes €650 to €850 a m² in the center · 6,368 people
Why visit Vairano Patenora
The castle is a shell and that is the point of coming. Innico II d'Avalos built it between 1491 and 1503 on the footings of the Norman one, four round towers with the largest at the south-east corner, and the inside has fallen in: you can still read the floor levels off the walls, the kitchens, the prisons, the old cistern.
Below it the medieval borgo runs downhill in gray stone, and its wall once carried fourteen cylindrical towers and three gates. People have been passing through here for a very long time.
The Samnites held the hills, the Romans took them in 290 BC, the Normans put up the first castle, and Frederick II, Charles II of Anjou and Pope Gregory X all stayed in it. Two miles out, the Abbazia della Ferrara was built by a Cistercian monk between 1171 and 1179 and keeps a thirteenth-century fresco of a funeral.
The town below sits in flat, farmed country between the Matese and the Roccamonfina park, with a small volcanic lake on the Presenzano boundary.
What to see in Vairano Patenora
- Castello aragonese. Built 1491 to 1503 by Innico II d'Avalos on the Norman and Swabian footings. Four round towers; the interior is ruined, but the floor divisions, kitchens, prisons and cistern are still legible.
- The borgo walls. The medieval circuit once ran to fourteen cylindrical towers on battered bases, opened by three gates: porta Oliva, porta di Mezzo and porta Castello.
- Abbazia della Ferrara. A Cistercian abbey of 1171 to 1179 that housed Frederick II and the future Pope Celestine V, holding a thirteenth-century fresco of the funeral of Malgerio Sorel.
How to get to Vairano Patenora
It has its own railway station. Naples is about 59 min away by road. The full route from Naples.
Our tip
April to October is the season down here at 168 meters, and July and August are hot in the valley in a way the hill towns further east are not. Spring is the best of it, when the scrub on Catreola and Montauro is green and the castle can be walked around without the heat. The feast of San Bartolomeo falls on 24 August.
4. Alife
Best for walks in a national park. Part of the comune lies in a national park.
1 h 16 min from Naples · homes €550 to €800 a m² in the center · 7,316 people
Why visit Alife
Alife sits at 110 meters at the southern foot of the Matese, the rectangular Roman walls of the first century BC still tracing the grid of the town Rome rebuilt after the Samnite Wars. The circuit runs 1.9 kilometers, with evenly spaced round and square towers and four gates on the cardo and decumanus.
Just outside the walls lies the partly buried Roman amphitheatre, its arena about 70 by 45 meters, recently brought back to light. The Cryptoporticum, a 100-meter underground gallery, has been kept legible by recent excavation.
The town gives its name to the Cipolla di Alife, a heirloom red onion documented locally since Roman times and still cultivated on the irrigated plain along the Volturno. Modern Alife sits inside the Parco Nazionale del Matese and along the Via Francigena del Sud, with extra-virgin olive oil and Pallagrello and Casavecchia wines on the surrounding slopes.
What to see in Alife
- Mura romane di Alife. Rectangular Roman walls of the first century BC running 1.9 kilometers, with evenly spaced towers and four gates on the original cardo and decumanus.
- Anfiteatro Romano. Partly buried amphitheatre just outside the walls, arena about 70 by 45 meters, a mid-sized arena of the early imperial town.
- Criptoportico Romano. Underground gallery more than 100 meters long, well preserved beneath the centro storico, kept open after recent archaeological excavation.
How to get to Alife
It has its own railway station. Naples is about 1 h 16 min away by road. The full route from Naples.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the open months along the Matese foothills, when the Volturno plain is green and the Roman walls walk at a reasonable temperature. July and August push the inland Caserta past thirty-five degrees and the amphitheatre site closes mid-afternoon to protect visitors and stone. The onion harvest comes in August, and the town's onion festival at the turn of August and September pulls weekend visitors from Naples and Caserta.
5. Sessa Aurunca
Best for truffle season. It belongs to the national association of truffle towns.
1 h 12 min from Naples · homes €500 to €750 a m² in the center · 20,093 people
Why visit Sessa Aurunca
Sessa Aurunca sits at 203 meters on the southwest slope of the extinct volcano Roccamonfina, between the Garigliano river and the Aurunci hills, forty kilometers west-northwest of Caserta. The Aurunci, the Italic people who held this land before Rome, gave the town its name; the Latin colony of Suessa Aurunca was founded here in 313 BC on the road between Capua and Rome.
The Roman theater on the slope below the cathedral is one of the largest in southern Italy, with stage decoration found in the 2000s excavations now on display in the Castello Ducale. The Cattedrale dei Santi Pietro e Paolo was built in 1103 over an Augustan-era temple, with twelve antique columns in the nave, an ambon and Easter candelabrum covered in Cosmatesque marble inlay, and a Byzantine-influenced apse.
The commune is Città dell'Olio for the Aurunci olive groves, Città del Tartufo for the truffles of the Roccamonfina foothills, and lies on the Via Francigena del Sud between Rome and Brindisi.
What to see in Sessa Aurunca
- Cattedrale dei Santi Pietro e Paolo. Romanesque cathedral consecrated in 1113 with twelve antique columns, a Cosmatesque ambon and paschal candelabrum, and a Byzantine apse.
- Teatro Romano di Sessa Aurunca. First-century Roman theater on the slope below the cathedral, one of the largest in southern Italy, with sculpted stage decoration recovered after 2000.
- Castello Ducale. Medieval fortress rebuilt by the Lombards, the Normans and the Aragonese, now housing the civic museum with Roman finds from the theater.
How to get to Sessa Aurunca
It has its own railway station. Naples is about 1 h 12 min away by road. The full route from Naples.
Our tip
April through early June and September into October are the strongest months. The Roccamonfina slopes green and the trails through the chestnut woods open. The Cattedrale opens longer hours and the Roman theater is walkable in shirt sleeves.
6. Nola
Best for a day out from Naples. It is 28 min by car.
28 min from Naples · homes €1,350 to €2,050 a m² in the center · 34,111 people
Why visit Nola
Nola sits at 34 meters on the plain between Vesuvius and the Apennines, twenty kilometers east of Napoli. It was an Oscan and Samnite town before Rome, and the place where Augustus died in AD 14, in the same house his father had died in.
Giordano Bruno was born here in 1548, the Nolano who called his philosophy nolana before he was burned at the Campo de' Fiori in 1600. The town is best known today for the Festa dei Gigli, a UNESCO Intangible Heritage celebration on the Sunday after June 22 in which eight twenty-five-meter wooden obelisks, each weighing over two tonnes, are carried through the streets by teams of about 128 bearers.
The festival honors Paolino di Nola, the fifth-century bishop whose return from captivity, as the legend tells it, the townspeople greeted with lilies. Outside the festival, Nola is a working town of warehouses and commerce.
What to see in Nola
- Cattedrale di Nola. Cathedral of the Assunta and San Paolino, rebuilt between 1869 and 1909 after the fire of 1861, with relics of the patron bishop.
- Festa dei Gigli. UNESCO Intangible Heritage festival in June: eight 25-meter wooden obelisks carried through the streets by teams of about 128 bearers.
- Anfiteatro Romano di Nola. Roman amphitheater of the first century BC, 138 by 108 meters, about a third of it excavated, open to visitors by booking.
How to get to Nola
It has its own railway station. Naples is about 28 min away by road. The full route from Naples.
Our tip
April through June covers the green months and culminates in the Festa dei Gigli on the Sunday after June 22, the one weekend when Nola fills with hundreds of thousands of visitors. September and October are warm and quieter, with the wine and hazelnut harvests in nearby Irpinia bringing activity to the markets. July and August are hot and humid on the plain.
7. Benevento
Best for a stage of a long walk. The Via Francigena passes through.
1 h 24 min from Salerno · homes €800 to €1,550 a m² in the center · 55,712 people
Why visit Benevento
Benevento sits at 130 meters at the confluence of the Calore and Sabato rivers, fifty-five kilometers northeast of Naples, the historic capital of the Sannio. The Lombard Duchy of Benevento was founded in 571, well before the small circular church that survives from around 760, and the city center still carries that double layer of Roman provincial capital and Lombard duchy seat.
Walking from the cathedral down Corso Garibaldi, past the cloister sculptures set against the medieval wall, ends at the triumphal arch, so the route itself moves from the Lombard and medieval town toward the point where the Roman road left for Brindisi. The countryside around the city is Aglianico del Taburno wine and the herbal liqueur distilled here since 1860.
What holds the city together is this sequence along one line of streets: two civic identities, Roman and Lombard, laid end to end and still walkable in that order.
What to see in Benevento
- Arco di Traiano. The marble reliefs facing the town show Trajan's peacetime policy, those facing the road out of the city his military and provincial deeds, a pairing read as deliberate rather than decorative. The Via Traiana ran from this point to Brindisi.
- Chiesa di Santa Sofia. The circular plan is unusual for the period, and the interior keeps traces of the original Lombard fabric beneath later additions. It stands apart from the rectangular churches common elsewhere in the city.
- Teatro Romano. Roman theater inaugurated under Hadrian in 126 and enlarged under Caracalla, capacity for ten thousand spectators, still used for summer performances.
How to get to Benevento
It has its own railway station. Salerno is about 1 h 24 min away by road. The full route from Naples.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the city's dry months, with mild evenings along the Calore and summer performances in the Roman theatre. July and August push the inland Sannio past thirty-five degrees, and the old town empties between three and six in the afternoon while the riverbanks become the local refuge. November through March is wet, foggy at dawn, with rain a constant in February.
8. Caserta
Best for a World Heritage site. UNESCO lists a site in the comune.
38 min from Naples · homes €1,000 to €1,700 a m² in the center · 72,793 people
Why visit Caserta
Caserta sits at 68 meters on the Campanian plain, 25 kilometers north of Naples at the foot of the Tifatini hills. The city exists because Charles III of Bourbon decided in 1750 to build a palace that would rival Versailles and the Royal Palace of Madrid, far enough inland to be safe from naval bombardment.
King Charles of Bourbon laid the first stone of Luigi Vanvitelli's palace in 1752: five floors, 1,200 rooms, 1,742 windows, 34 staircases. The gardens stretch three kilometers from the back façade to a cascade fed by the Carolino Aqueduct, also Vanvitelli's design.
The complex was listed by UNESCO in 1997 together with the silk village of San Leucio, the utopian industrial colony Ferdinand IV built on a hill four kilometers away. Up the road, Casertavecchia, the medieval village abandoned when the Bourbons moved everyone down to the plain, keeps its 12th-century Romanesque cathedral at 401 meters.
The modern city below is a working provincial capital, not a tourist town.
What to see in Caserta
- Reggia di Caserta. Bourbon royal palace begun in 1752 by Luigi Vanvitelli, five floors, 1,200 rooms, UNESCO-listed since 1997 with the park and the Carolino Aqueduct.
- Parco Reale e Giardino Inglese. Three-kilometer formal park ending in a cascade, with an English Garden added by Maria Carolina in 1786, the first of its kind in Italy.
- Casertavecchia. Medieval hilltop village at 401 meters, 10 km from the city, abandoned when the Bourbons relocated the population to the plain.
How to get to Caserta
It has its own railway station. Naples is about 38 min away by road. The full route from Naples.
Our tip
April through June and September through October are the comfortable months on the plain. The Reggia gardens are at their best in May, when the parterres bloom and the cascade runs full. July and August push into the high thirties; Vanvitelli's three-kilometer walk from palace to cascade becomes a heat exposure rather than a pleasure, though the shuttle bus runs.
If you only pick one
Which town is yours
One town for each kind of trip, and the reason in a line.
Without a car
Caserta
The train stops in the commune, so you can arrive and leave without a car.
For everyday life on foot
Benevento
Six of the ten everyday services we look for, from a grocer to a pharmacy, are on the map within 500 meters of the center.
For a short trip
Nola
28 min by car from Naples, the shortest drive from a city on this list.
For a small town
Tufo
756 people, the smallest town on this list.
Read a sample letter
Chioggia | Everyone is wrong about this town
It’s not an alternative to Venice
Letters from the towns we visit. Free.
More from Anywhere Italy
- The best hill towns you can reach by train within 90 minutes of NaplesNear Napleshill townby trainwithin 90 min7 towns · smallest 5,083 residents · closest 28 min away
- The best hill towns within 75 minutes of NaplesNear Napleshill townwithin 75 min9 towns · smallest 756 residents · closest 28 min away
- The 7 best hill towns that eat well in CampaniaCampaniahill towneats well7 towns · smallest 5,083 residents
- The 6 best wine towns you can reach by train in CampaniaCampaniawineby train6 towns · smallest 756 residents
- The best hill towns that eat well within 90 minutes of NaplesNear Napleshill townwithin 90 mineats well8 towns · smallest 4,096 residents · closest 28 min away
- The best towns with a serious restaurant that you can reach by train in CampaniaCampaniaby trainserious restaurant10 towns · smallest 2,410 residents