The prettiest villages you can reach by train in Lazio
Lazio is built out of volcanoes. The stone under the old villages is tufo, soft and warm-coloured, cut into blocks that have weathered into ochre and grey, and the towns sit on crater rims and spurs above lakes, gorges and the Tiber valley. Autumn is the season the region makes sense in, when the chestnut woods of the Cimini go copper, the porchetta stalls appear at village fairs and the new olive oil comes down from the Sabina hills. Regional trains run out of Rome in every direction, so a great deal of this is reachable on a ticket that costs less than lunch.
Almost everyone stays in Rome and treats the rest of the region as a day trip to Tivoli, where Villa d'Este and Hadrian's Villa absorb coachloads from morning to closing. The gardens deserve the attention, but the queues at the ticket office and the crush on the terrace fountains are the price of being the one place in Lazio that every guidebook agrees on. Beyond it, most travellers head straight for Naples or Florence.
The same volcanic hills and the same rail lines carry on well past all that. North of the city the trains run up towards the Sabina and the Tiber, west towards the lakes of Bracciano and Vico, south into the Castelli Romani and the Ciociaria valleys, and the villages along them are smaller, quieter and easier to walk in an afternoon. Fewer people go, which is mostly a matter of habit rather than difficulty.
Of the 60 communes we have mapped in Lazio, 8 qualify as prettiest villages you can reach by train: each has passed the national assessment of Italy's most beautiful villages, and we have confirmed each is reachable without a car. The smallest, Greccio, has 1,495 residents.
Elsewhere in the catalogue: The best hidden towns you can reach by train that eat well in Lazio and The prettiest villages you can reach by train within 90 minutes of Terni.
Greccio
Why visit Greccio
Greccio sits at 705 meters on a forested ridge above the Rieti valley, fifteen kilometers from Rieti in the Sabina. Francis of Assisi came here in December 1223, recalling his pilgrimage to Bethlehem fifteen years earlier, and asked the local lord Giovanni Velita for a cave where he could stage a representation of the Nativity.
On Christmas Eve the friars and villagers gathered in the rock chamber with a manger, an ox and a donkey; one of the friars said Mass and Francis preached. Greccio has been making versions of that scene every Christmas for eight centuries, and the Cappella del Presepio was built into the cave itself in 1228, the year of Francis's canonisation.
The medieval village runs along the ridge above the sanctuary, separated from it by the wooded slopes of the Monte Salto del Cieco reserve, so the walled center and the cave church remain two distinct places linked by a single climb through beech and oak woodland. Greccio is one of four shrines forming the Sacred Valley of Rieti, and the arrangement of a hilltop village standing apart from its own founding cave is what gives the place its shape: a settlement that grew beside a site it did not begin as, built to keep watch over a single night eight centuries old.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Greccio
- Santuario Francescano. Sanctuary built around the rock chamber where the manger, ox and donkey were assembled, its Cappella del Presepio carved directly into the cave wall.
- Museo Internazionale del Presepio. Crèches and presepi from cultures across the world, gathered inside the sanctuary complex.
- Centro storico medievale. Walled medieval village on the ridge above the sanctuary, with stone houses, vaulted passages and the original village gates.
How to get to Greccio
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 28 minutes away by road.
Our tip
May through September is the main outdoor window at 705 meters. The Rieti valley is green into June and the cool ridge stays workable through midsummer. October draws walkers for the autumn colour in the Salto del Cieco reserve.
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.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
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.
Castro dei Volsci
Why visit Castro dei Volsci
Castro dei Volsci sits at 385 meters on a ridge above the Sacco river valley, ninety kilometers southeast of Rome and fourteen from Frosinone. The Volsci, an Italic tribe Rome spent two centuries subduing, held this hill before the Latins took it; the name preserves both occupants, Castrum and Volsci, castle and people.
After the year 1000 the village fell to the Papal States and stayed inside that orbit until unification. The valley floor below the ridge holds Roman-era foundations and mosaics, remains of a settlement separate from the hill village above it.
The slopes between the two carry the olive groves that still supply the town's oil. The upper village, where the clock tower and castle ruins stand, is where Nino Manfredi was born in 1921 before the family's path led him to Rome and to postwar cinema; the town he left behind kept its stacked houses, its gates and its position over the valley, and it is that unbroken layout, hill above, groves on the slope, valley floor beneath, that the Borghi più belli d'Italia listing recognizes.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Castro dei Volsci
- Torre dell'Orologio. Medieval clock tower in the upper village. Inside, a permanent exhibition holds Nino Manfredi's films, scripts and personal effects.
- Castello. Ruins of the medieval fortress at the top of the borgo, with a panorama over the Sacco valley and the Monti Ausoni.
- Centro storico. Stacked stone houses, vaulted passages and medieval gates that earned the borgo its Borghi più belli d'Italia membership.
How to get to Castro dei Volsci
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 71 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September through October are the best windows. The Sacco valley is green in spring and the panoramas from the castle ruins open clean once the haze burns off. July and August push past thirty-five degrees; the centro storico empties between two and five in the afternoon, and the olive groves on the slopes go silent until evening.
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.
Vitorchiano
Why visit Vitorchiano
Vitorchiano sits at 285 meters on a single bank of peperino. Two ravines flank the town and meet at the Vezza torrent below, which is why the old center reads as an island of dark stone with the land falling away on both sides.
The quarries below the town are still working, and Vitorchiano peperino now ships to Canada, Japan and the Middle East, so the same rock that holds up the walls and staircases overhead also travels out from underneath the town in the other direction. The statue on the ridge was carved from a single block of that local stone by sculptors who came from the other side of the world to work it, which is its own kind of trade: peperino leaving Vitorchiano to be known abroad, and a foreign hand arriving to shape what stayed.
Above the rooftops, the Belvedere gives the wider frame the streets below cannot, the Cimini hills and the Tiber valley spread out past the ravine. Vitorchiano holds three institutional signals at once: Borghi più belli, Bandiera Arancione TCI, Città della Nocciola.
A small town, then, defined less by any one of its parts than by how completely the stone underneath it accounts for all of them.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Vitorchiano
- Centro storico in peperino. Medieval old town cut from a single volcanic boulder, walls and houses built in dark Vitorchiano peperino quarried below.
- Moai di Vitorchiano. Six-meter peperino statue carved in 1990 by eleven sculptors of the Atan family from Easter Island, the only true Moai outside Rapa Nui.
- Belvedere. Cliff-edge terrace at the eastern end of the borgo, view across the Vezza ravine to the Cimini hills and the Tiber valley.
How to get to Vitorchiano
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 53 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June brings the Cimini hills into green and Vitorchiano into clear light, the peperino dark against new leaves. September and October are the harvest months for hazelnuts and the calmest period in the borgo. July and August touch the mid-thirties; the centro storico empties between two and five in the afternoon. Sagra del Cavatello falls in July.
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.
Castel Gandolfo
Why visit Castel Gandolfo
The town sits at 426 meters on the rim of the Lake Albano crater, twenty-five kilometers southeast of Rome among the Castelli Romani. It stands on the site of Alba Longa, the city Aeneas's son Ascanius is said to have founded.
The lake below was formed by the fusion of two volcanic craters and reaches 170 meters deep. The Villa Barberini stands adjacent to the palace, acquired by Taddeo Barberini in 1631, its gardens running down toward the water.
Pope Francis kept the palace as a museum after 2016; Leo XIV restored it to residential use in June 2025 and resides in the Villa Barberini next door, while the Borgo Laudato Si', created by Francis in 2023, carries ecological education across 55 hectares of the same estate. A town built on legend, given over for a time to public viewing, and returned to private residence: three uses of the same ground, laid one on top of the other without erasing what came before.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Castel Gandolfo
- Palazzo Apostolico. The palace Carlo Maderno raised between 1623 and 1626 stood open as a museum from 2016, its rooms given over to display cases and visitors. In June 2025 it returned to residential use, the museum arrangement dismantled to make way for a household again.
- Ville Pontificie e Giardini Barberini. Fifty-five hectares of papal villas and gardens running down to Lake Albano, with the seventeenth-century Villa Barberini at their center.
- Lago Albano. The crater lake sits at 293 meters above sea level and covers five square kilometers, its rim shared between this town and Albano Laziale.
How to get to Castel Gandolfo
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 35 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through October is the open season for Castel Gandolfo, with the gardens open and the lake at swimming temperature from June. June and September are the calmer months and the historic papal-residence weeks. July and August fill with Roman day-trippers and Vatican tourists; the lake shore is busy.
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.
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