The 7 best small mountain towns you can reach by train in the province of L'Aquila
Seven towns: what each is best for, what a home costs, and the catch. A square meter runs from €370 in Goriano Sicoli to €1,000 in Carsoli.
From the 1,000 towns picked by Peter Benei.
92 towns written about, 908 to go. Follow along, free: Subscribe on Substack
The province of L'Aquila is mountain country in the fullest sense: limestone ridges holding snow into spring, high pastures grazed by sheep that still move on the old drovers' routes, and villages built from the pale gray stone quarried out of the slope behind them. The food follows the altitude, with lentils from the Fucino plain, saffron threads dried over embers, mutton stewed slowly, and pecorino aged in cellars cut into rock. Winter brings genuine cold and reliable snow; summer up here is cool enough to sleep under a blanket in August. The railway lines that thread these valleys were engineered through gradients and tunnels that make the journey itself worth the ticket.
The name most people attach to the region is Gran Sasso, and the Campo Imperatore plateau below it fills with cars every clear weekend from June onwards, coaches at the funivia station, walkers queuing at the trailhead for Corno Grande. It earns the attention. The plateau is one of the great high landscapes in Italy and the approach road is spectacular. But it is also the one place in the province that everybody has already put on the list, and the car park tells you so.
The same mountains carry on south and west, into the Marsica and the Roveto valley, and the trains carry on with them. Sante Marie, Scurcola Marsicana, Pescina and Goriano Sicoli sit along the Rome to Pescara line as it crosses the Marsica and climbs east; Capistrello and Civita d'Antino are on the line that follows the Liri down the Roveto valley toward Sora. Fewer people get off at these stations, which is mostly a matter of habit rather than merit. Every town here sits in the mountains, and we have confirmed each one can be reached without a car.
Of the 40 communes we have mapped in the province of L'Aquila, 9 qualify as mountain towns you can reach by train: each sits in the mountains, and we have confirmed each is reachable without a car. This list is the small ones, 7 in all, ordered smallest first. The smallest, Goriano Sicoli, has 512 residents.
Elsewhere in the catalogue: The best mountain towns you can reach by train within 90 minutes of Rome and The best hidden mountain towns within 90 minutes of Rome.
All the towns within a day trip: day trips from L'Aquila.
1. Goriano Sicoli
Best for a small town. 512 people live here.
1 h 8 min from Pescara · homes €370 to €540 a m² in the center · 512 people
Why visit Goriano Sicoli
Goriano Sicoli sits in the eastern Marsica between L'Aquila and the Adriatic. Italian documents reference the village from 816, though local tradition claims a Roman foundation.
Population is about 512 and falling. The village is built on a slope, its stone houses climbing from the valley floor toward the ridge, with the piazza and its fountain as the fixed point where the streets converge and the town's social life gathers.
Below and around it, the Subequana valley opens into agricultural land and pasture running between Sulmona and L'Aquila, with Sirente rising over the eastern Marsica. The village survives on its position rather than its size: the Terni-Sulmona railway runs through it, the A25 autostrada is twenty minutes away, and Pescara is within an hour.
A place this small, sitting on a rail line and near a motorway between two larger cities, has stayed inhabited by being passed through rather than sought out, which is also how a printmaker's sketch and a Greek-Cretan agrarian myth both ended up attached to it.
What to see in Goriano Sicoli
- Santuario di Santa Gemma. Sanctuary that holds the annual ritual, the busiest fixed point on the village calendar and the reason the piazza and streets around it fill each May.
- Piazza della Fontana. Central piazza, the social heart of the village, built around the stone fountain.
- Borgo medievale. Stone village climbing the slope, the same view drawn by M.C. Escher in a print now in the National Gallery of Art.
How to get to Goriano Sicoli
It has its own railway station. Pescara is about 1 h 8 min away by road. The full route from Rome.
Our tip
May through October is the active window. The Santa Gemma feast falls in early May and is the moment the village fills, with returning emigrants and locals from neighboring villages walking the streets all day. June, September and early October are the cleanest months for walking: cool mornings, long evenings, and the Subequana valley still green.
2. Civita d'Antino
Best for a small town. 939 people live here.
1 h 40 min from Rome · homes €380 to €550 a m² in the center · 939 people
Why visit Civita d'Antino
The plateau at 904 meters sits above the Roveto valley with the Liri running below it, and the natural rock barrier that rings the village is the same wall that once enclosed the Marsi town whose Latin name, Antinum, Pliny recorded. The inscriptions built into the modern walls are the physical continuity between the ancient settlement and the village that stands on it now: one place, occupied and rebuilt on itself for centuries rather than abandoned and resettled elsewhere.
The Scandinavian colony that formed here from 1883 was not incidental to the setting. The painters came for the light over the valley and stayed because the plateau offered the same view, session after session, for thirty years.
The 1915 Marsica earthquake ended it in a single day. What is left is a village whose Roman fragments and painters' colony both depend on the same geography: a defensible height above a valley, isolated enough to hold a community, whether Marsi or Danish, for as long as circumstance allowed.
What to see in Civita d'Antino
- Centro storico. Stone village on a plateau at 904 meters, ringed by a natural rock barrier that has survived into the present.
- Casa-museo Zahrtmann. Cerroni family house where Kristian Zahrtmann lodged every summer from 1883 to 1911, now a memorial museum to the painters' colony. Zahrtmann was made an honorary citizen in 1902, and in 1908 held a Copenhagen exhibition marking 25 years of the connection.
- Resti di Antinum. Roman-era inscriptions and fragments of the ancient Marsi municipal town, scattered through the modern village walls.
How to get to Civita d'Antino
It has its own railway station. Rome is about 1 h 40 min away by road. The full route from Rome.
Our tip
May through October is the open stretch for Civita d'Antino. At 904 meters the village stays cool in July and August when the Roveto valley below climbs into the mid-thirties, and the plateau light, the one that drew the Danish painters, is at its longest in June and September. Early July through mid-August fills the few rental rooms with returning families.
3. Sante Marie
Best for truffle season. It belongs to the national association of truffle towns.
1 h 8 min from Rome · homes €510 to €760 a m² in the center · 1,059 people
Why visit Sante Marie
Sante Marie sits at 950 meters in the western Marsica, at the border between L'Aquila and Rieti provinces. The town is the capoluogo of six fractions scattered through the hills: Scanzano, Castelvecchio, Val dei Varri, Santo Stefano, Tubione, and San Giovanni.
Its medieval history runs with the Fief of Tagliacozzo, held in turn by the Counts of Marsi, the De Pontibus, the Orsini and finally the Colonna. The Grotte di Luppa Reserve, established in 2005, sits in the surrounding karst country of the Simbruini and Carseolani mountains.
The town is best known now as the starting point of the Cammino dei Briganti, a seven-day circular trail at altitudes between 800 and 1,300 meters that follows the routes of the Cartore brigands, the post-Risorgimento bands who used these forests as cover. Walkers pick up a safe-conduct pass at the reserve office in the village before setting out.
What to see in Sante Marie
- Cammino dei Briganti. Seven-day circular hiking trail at 800 to 1,300 meters along the routes of the Cartore brigands, starting from Sante Marie.
- Riserva Naturale Grotte di Luppa. Karst reserve established in 2005 protecting caves and Apennine landscape on the Simbruini and Carseolani mountains border.
- Centro storico. Medieval hill village above the modern lower town, the historic core of the Tagliacozzo fief held by Marsi, Orsini and Colonna.
How to get to Sante Marie
It has its own railway station. Rome is about 1 h 8 min away by road. The full route from Rome.
Our tip
May through October is the hiking window. Late May and early June bring the slopes into bloom and the Cammino dei Briganti at its best, with cool morning starts and 1,300-meter ridge crossings still open. September and October dry out the trail and turn the chestnut woods gold.
4. Scurcola Marsicana
1 h 11 min from Rome · homes €470 to €700 a m² in the center · 2,686 people
Why visit Scurcola Marsicana
Scurcola Marsicana sits on the western rim of what was once the Fucine lake. The earliest finds in the area date to the ninth and eighth centuries BC; the toponym is Lombard and shows up around 1150, long before the events that made the place known.
The village and its castle sit on the hill, the abbey and the battlefield lie on the plain below, and the mountain rises behind the whole arrangement: high ground, open ground, and the ruin that commemorates what happened on the open ground, all within sight of one another on the plain. The commune has 2,686 residents today, and the Festone every August reenacts the Madonna della Vittoria tradition.
A small town, then, built around a plain that settled a dynastic war.
What to see in Scurcola Marsicana
- Ex Abbazia di Santa Maria della Vittoria. Now ruined but still readable: broken walls and arches standing in the open plain, the clearest physical trace left of the 1268 victory and the monks who once held the site.
- Castello Orsini. Medieval fortress on the hill above the village, later passed to the Colonna family with the rest of the marquisate.
- Piani Palentini. The wide plain stretches flat in front of the village, open ground with little to break the sightline, the kind of terrain that explains why an army would meet another here rather than in the hills.
How to get to Scurcola Marsicana
It has its own railway station. Rome is about 1 h 11 min away by road. The full route from Rome.
Our tip
May through October is the working window on the Marsica plateau. The Piani Palentini and Monte San Nicola open to walkers, the August Festone fills the streets with the Madonna della Vittoria procession, and the air at 700 meters stays cool through summer. June and September are the cleanest months for the battlefield walk and the abbey ruins.
5. Pescina
1 h 6 min from Pescara · homes €370 to €550 a m² in the center · 3,648 people
Why visit Pescina
Pescina sits on the rim of the Marsica basin, the dry plain left when Lago Fucino was drained in the nineteenth century. The town splits into two eras rather than two quarters: an upper settlement, now a field of ruins reached by a literary trail, and a lower town rebuilt after 1915 around the sixteenth-century cathedral that held the seat of the diocese of Marsi until 1924.
The town's two native sons left very different marks, one through his novels and one through his rise at a royal court, and both birth houses now hold museums: Mazarin's rebuilt in the 1970s, Silone's restored and opened in 2021. What the rebuilt town and the ruin together show is a place still organized around a single morning: everything standing today either predates it by centuries or was raised after it.
What to see in Pescina
- Torre Piccolomini. Pentagonal medieval tower of the ruined upper castle, known in the Middle Ages as Rocca Vecchia, ringed by what is left of its walls.
- Casa Museo Ignazio Silone. The birth house, a museum since 2021, holding documents and original editions of his books.
- Casa Museo Cardinale Mazzarino. Birthplace of Mazarin, rebuilt into a museum that traces the path from this house to the court of Louis XIV.
How to get to Pescina
It has its own railway station. Pescara is about 1 h 6 min away by road. The full route from Rome.
Our tip
May through October is when Pescina works. The Marsica plain is dry and warm in summer, with temperatures pleasant at 735 meters compared to the Fucino basin below. April can be cold and wet, and snow lingers on the surrounding peaks into May.
6. Capistrello
1 h 20 min from Rome · homes €390 to €580 a m² in the center · 4,649 people
Why visit Capistrello
The first settlements on the site date to the Neolithic, and the modern town grew up around the tunnel mouth rather than the other way around. Capistrello borders Avezzano and Tagliacozzo along with five other communes, sitting at the corner where Abruzzo meets Lazio, with Filettino just across the regional line.
The population is around 4,650. The old village sits above the river on the valley's upper lip, stone houses stepped toward a small piazza, while the tunnel outflow lies below at the level of the water itself.
Behind the rooftops the Simbruini slopes rise into chestnut wood, the same high ground that feeds the river its cold, constant flow before it turns south for Lazio. The town reads as a hinge point: plateau above, valley below, and underground, still doing the job it was built for, the channel that connects them.
What to see in Capistrello
- Cunicoli di Claudio. The tunnel runs six kilometers underground with a drop of about eight meters, an average gradient of 1.5 meters per kilometer, still traceable beneath the town.
- Borgo storico. Old village above the river, with stone houses stepped up the slope and a small piazza at the upper edge.
- Fiume Liri. Cold river that emerges from the Simbruini springs and runs south through the valley, picking up the Fucino outflow at Capistrello.
How to get to Capistrello
It has its own railway station. Rome is about 1 h 20 min away by road. The full route from Rome.
Our tip
May through October works for Capistrello: the chestnut woods on the Simbruini fully leaf out, the Liri runs clear, and the Roman tunnel mouth is accessible without snow risk. July and August bring heat in the lower valley and a steady stream of weekend visitors from the Avezzano basin. June and September are quieter and cooler, the better months for walking the upper village or the trails toward Cappadocia and Filettino.
7. Carsoli
Best for a long lunch. Food guides list two tables here.
1 h from Rome · homes €670 to €1,000 a m² in the center · 4,957 people
Why visit Carsoli
Carsoli sits at 616 meters in the Marsica, between the plain of the former Fucino lake and the valley of the Turano river, with Monte Velino and Monte Calvo both rising above 2,000 meters on its skyline. The modern town stands four kilometers northeast of Alba Fucens's neighbor Carsioli, the Roman colony founded between 302 and 298 BC as a stronghold to guard the road to Alba Fucens; walls and an aqueduct still stand at the locality of Muro Pertuso, surveyed in 1901 by the archaeologists Pfeiffer and Ashby.
The town's religious and military history sits closer to the modern center than the Roman ruins do. The Castle of Colle Sant'Angelo, raised around the year 1000 by the Counts of the Marsi, stood until later wars, and ruins of its adjoining church remain near the site.
Carsoli's autumn season runs on chestnut and polenta fairs with deep peasant roots, and the patron-saint feast of Santa Vittoria fills the streets with procession and stalls. The town's layout traces its own history: a Roman garrison post relocated over centuries into a medieval and then modern settlement, so that walking from the modern center outward means walking backward through the different periods that built it.
What to see in Carsoli
- Sito archeologico di Carsioli. The city walls and aqueduct still stand at the site, four km from the modern town, surveyed by archaeologists in 1901.
- Chiesa di Santa Maria in Cellis. The church stands on the edge of town, with a rose window set over the main portal.
- Chiesa di Sant'Antonio. 16th-century church inside the centro storico, used as a hospital and later as a nursery, with a frescoed altar inside.
How to get to Carsoli
It has its own railway station. Rome is about 1 h away by road. The full route from Rome.
Our tip
May through October is the strong window for Carsoli. Spring brings clear views toward Monte Velino and the high Marsica meadows in flower. June and September are the most comfortable months at 616 meters, with cool nights and dry days.
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
Carsoli
The train stops in the commune, so you can arrive and leave without a car.
For a short trip
Pescina
1 h 6 min by car from Pescara, the shortest drive from a city on this list.
For a small town
Goriano Sicoli
512 people, the smallest town on this list.
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