The best hill towns you can reach by train within 90 minutes of Roma
The country behind Roma is built from tufo, the soft grey volcanic stone that quarries easily and darkens with rain, so whole streets come up the same colour as the rock they stand on. Beyond the ring road the land folds into the Sabine and Tolfa hills, the crater lakes of Bracciano and Vico, and chestnut and beech woods that turn copper in November. Lunch means porchetta cut off the bone, fettuccine with giblets, coratella, ricotta from sheep grazing volcanic pasture, and a jug of pale Lazio white that nobody bottles for export. Spring and late autumn are the seasons for it, when the heat lifts off the plain and the terraces look south over vineyards and olive.
Frascati absorbs most of the day-trip traffic out of Roma, partly because it is close, partly because the wine cellars are set up for coaches, and by Sunday afternoon the cantine along the main street are working at capacity. It is a fair enough day out, and it is also the version of the Castelli that everyone has already had described to them.
The same hills, the same tufo, the same trains keep going. Regional lines run north towards the crater lakes and the Etruscan coast, east up the Aniene valley towards the monasteries, and south into Ciociaria, and they stop at inland towns where the bar by the station is not there for visitors. These are the hill towns on those lines, all of them reachable without a car.
Of the 30 communes we have mapped in within 90 minutes of Roma, 9 qualify as hill towns you can reach by train: each is an inland hill settlement, and we have confirmed each is reachable without a car. The smallest, Oriolo Romano, has 3,702 residents.
Two more lists worth reading alongside this one: The 8 best hidden hill towns within 90 minutes of Roma and The best hill towns that eat well within 90 minutes of Roma.
Oriolo Romano
Why visit Oriolo Romano
Oriolo Romano sits at 420 meters in the Sabatini hills, between Lake Bracciano and the volcanic Cimini, not far from the old Via Clodia. The village is unusually new for the Tuscia: in 1560 the Orsini family ceded a wooded fief to the nobleman Giorgio Santacroce, who began clearing the forest and founded a planned agricultural settlement.
The first inhabitants were farmers, shepherds and woodcutters drawn from Tuscany and Umbria, so the local accent kept Umbrian inflections for generations. The palace at the center of the village gave the settlement its shape, with the parish church and the main square arranged around it as the plan intended.
The forest that once covered the whole fief survives now at the margins, an exceptionally low-altitude stand for an Apennine beech wood, while hazelnut groves have taken over the lower slopes that were cleared for farming. The village, in effect, is the cleared half of a wooded fief, its cultivated ring still framed by the wood the Santacroce family left standing.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Oriolo Romano
- Palazzo Altieri. Sixteenth-century palace enlarged in 1674 under Pope Clement X, with Old Testament frescoes and painted views of the Altieri fiefs.
- Faggeta di Monte Raschio. Primeval beech forest of about eighty hectares between 400 and 550 meters, UNESCO World Heritage since 2017.
- Piazza Umberto I. Central square of the 1560 plan, anchored by the palace and the parish Chiesa di Sant'Anna at the head of the village.
How to get to Oriolo Romano
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 75 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the months for the beech forest, when the canopy is full and the trails on Monte Raschio are at their cleanest. The exceptionally low altitude of the faggeta means autumn color arrives earlier and lasts longer than in higher Apennine beech woods. July and August push the lower hills into the low thirties; the forest holds shade and stays five or six degrees cooler than the surrounding farmland. Oriolo Romano Porcini Mushroom Festival falls in September.
Capranica
Why visit Capranica
Capranica sits in the Tuscia at the fifty-fifth kilometer of the Via Cassia, on a hill overlooking the Sutri valley between Lake Bracciano and Lake Vico. The Etruscans worked this ground; the medieval borgo grew along the Cassia after the road was rebuilt in the second century BC.
The Anguillara family appeared in 1305 and held the town through most of the fourteenth century. In 1337, under Orso degli Anguillara, Francesco Petrarca stayed here on his way south, the moment local memory still attaches to the place.
Castrovecchio is the oldest quarter, a wedge of stone houses and stepped streets above the Castello degli Anguillara. The town is one of the Italian comuni crossed by the Via Francigena, with a marked stage running north toward Sutri and Vetralla.
Hazelnut groves cover the surrounding slopes; Capranica is a member of the Città della Nocciola network and supplies the Tonda Gentile Romana, the local DOP variety.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Capranica
- Castello degli Anguillara. Medieval fortress at the head of Castrovecchio, seat of the Anguillara family from 1305 and the place Petrarch stayed in 1337.
- Castrovecchio. Oldest quarter of the town, a wedge of stone houses and stepped streets rising above the Cassia toward the castle.
- Chiesa di San Francesco. Fourteenth-century Franciscan church on the edge of Castrovecchio, with fresco fragments and Anguillara family tombs.
How to get to Capranica
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 72 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the walking months in the Tuscia, when the hazelnut groves are green and the Cassia is light. July and August push the slopes into the low thirties; the medieval centro storico holds shade well enough, but afternoons stay quiet. The hazelnut harvest runs through late August and September and the air around the town smells of toasted nuts for weeks.
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.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
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.
Ronciglione
Why visit Ronciglione
The town stands on a tufa spur at 441 meters, five kilometers from the lake, with the Cimini hills and their hazelnut groves closing in around it on every side. The first record of it dates to 1103.
The Prefetti di Vico held it before the Farnese took it as a Duchy, and the sixteenth-century pontiff who granted the town its Carnival did so during that same passage of rule from prefects to dukes. The fortress's towers control the single natural approach to the historic center, so the medieval town and its defenses are really one structure: whoever held the towers held the road in.
Everything built afterward, the cathedral, the contrade, the Carnival itself, sits inside that same defended perimeter. What the RAI title recognized in 2023 was less a single monument than that whole arrangement still intact: a fortified approach, a walled center, and a lake and hills that have not changed shape around it.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Ronciglione
- Rocca dei Borgia (I Torrioni). Medieval fortress of the Prefects of Vico, twin round towers guarding the only natural approach to the centro storico.
- Duomo dei Santi Pietro e Caterina. Baroque cathedral of 1671, polychrome marble altar, fifteenth-century triptych by a Viterbo painter, wooden statue of San Bartolomeo.
- Lago di Vico. Volcanic lake ringed by the Cimini hills, its waters filling the crater below the level of the town on its spur.
How to get to Ronciglione
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 64 minutes away by road.
✷ We have written about Ronciglione
“Suddenly, we weren't running around. Ronciglione has nothing, and I mean zero things to show you. It's a pretty generic medieval town near Rome. It doesn't have a big piazza. There is a gate, a duomo, 2-3 main streets, and pretty much that's it. Yet, it was the center of our attention at that time. After spending just a few days there, we went back to Rome without wrinkles, with an oddly weird smile on our faces.”
Read our piece on Ronciglione →Ronciglione | Baptism into the Other Italy
Our tip
April through June brings the Cimini hills into green, hazelnut groves in flower and Lake Vico cool enough for the morning. September and October are the harvest months, dry, mild, with the air clear enough to see Monte Cimino from the Rocca. July and August touch the upper thirties and fill the lake with Romans on weekends. Palio di Ronciglione falls in July.
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.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
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.
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.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
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.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
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.
Anagni
Why visit Anagni
Anagni sits on a hilltop at 424 meters in Ciociaria, fifty-five kilometers southeast of Rome, looking over the Sacco valley and the Hernici mountains. It is one of four communes called the Città dei Papi, the others being Segni, Ferentino, and Veroli; four medieval popes were born here, Innocent III, Gregory IX, Alexander IV, and a fourth who would later be attacked in his own palace.
Agents of Philip IV of France, acting on his orders, stormed that palace on the hill and physically assaulted the reigning pope inside it. The centralized medieval papacy died with him within the month, and within five years the papal court had moved to Avignon.
The town's medieval fabric runs along Via Vittorio Emanuele, where the communal loggia, a frescoed church, and a house layered with nineteenth-century inscriptions sit within walking distance of each other on the same climb up from the lower town to the cathedral above. A single event inside a single palace on this hill is the reason the town's name outgrew its size: four popes were born here, but it is one pope's injury, not birth, that historians still date the end of an era to.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Anagni
- Cattedrale di Santa Maria. Romanesque cathedral on the highest point of the hill, with Gothic additions, a campanile, and a Cosmati pavement underfoot.
- Cripta di San Magno. The crypt beneath the cathedral floor, walls covered edge to edge in painting, dim enough that the colors need a moment to settle into view.
- Palazzo di Bonifacio VIII. The papal palace where Sciarra Colonna struck Boniface VIII during the Outrage of Anagni, its thirteenth-century rooms still standing on the hill.
How to get to Anagni
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 55 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September through October are the strong months. The hilltop position keeps Anagni cooler than the Sacco valley below, and the cathedral and crypt are best seen in the soft light of spring and autumn. July and August push past thirty-two degrees and the centro storico empties between two and five in the afternoon. Sagra dei Maltagliati falls in July.
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.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
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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