The best towns inside a nature park in the province of Roma
The province of Roma keeps more woodland than its reputation suggests. Volcanic craters hold cold lakes ringed by chestnut and oak, the Aniene valley cuts through limestone into beech forest, and the tufa the houses are built from is the same grey-brown rock the hills are made of. Spring brings wild strawberries and the small dark cherries of the Alban Hills; autumn brings porchetta carved on trestle tables, new wine, mushrooms and chestnuts roasted in the street. In winter, the lake towns empty out and the water goes the colour of slate.
Most visitors give the countryside a single afternoon, and they give it to Tivoli, where Villa d'Este and Hadrian's Villa absorb coach parties from the capital all year. It is a reasonable choice, since both sites are extraordinary and the train from Roma Tiburtina is short. The result is queues at the ticket office, a main street of set-menu restaurants and a hard stop at closing time. The hills carry on well beyond the gardens.
Those same hills, lakes and forests sit inside protected parks, and the towns written up here are all within their boundaries: crater rims above Nemi and Albano, the tufa cliffs of the Valle del Tevere, the beech ridges of the Monti Lucretili, the shore of Bracciano. Some are known to Romans on a Sunday and barely at all to anyone else. Fewer people go, the walking starts at the edge of town, and lunch is cheaper.
Of the 15 communes we have mapped in the province of Roma, 10 qualify as towns inside a nature park: each sits inside a regional nature park. The smallest, Percile, has 219 residents.
If you are still choosing, we have also written The best hidden towns inside a nature park in the province of Roma and The best towns you can reach by train in the province of Roma.
Percile
Why visit Percile
Percile sits sixty kilometers from Rome, on the border between the Roma and Rieti provinces. The name derives from gens Porcia, a Roman family of the area, and the earliest documented evidence of habitation dates between 314 and 335, in the biography of Pope Sylvester I.
The village occupies the rocky spur itself, walled stone houses and vaulted passages built to the shape of the ground; above it the slopes rise into oak and beech woods that belong to the wider park, climbing toward Monte Pellecchia. The relation between the two levels is the whole of the place: the settlement below, compact and defensible on its spur, and the water held above it in limestone basins fed by underground springs.
What the borgo protected on the ground, the park has protected in the hills. The population today is 219, spread across a comune territory of 24 square kilometers, which makes Percile a small fixed point inside a much larger stretch of protected woodland.
What to see in Percile
- Lagustelli di Percile. The walk up from the village runs through oak forest and ends at clear water held in two limestone basins between 674 and 704 meters, filled by underground springs.
- Centro storico. Medieval stone village on a rocky spur, with vaulted passages, surviving gates and the panorama from the upper terrace.
- Parco Naturale dei Monti Lucretili. Regional park covering oak and beech woods on the karst slopes around the village, with marked trails to the lakes and toward Monte Pellecchia.
How to get to Percile
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Roma is roughly 54 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September through October are the best months at 575 meters. The Lucretili woods are green into June and the walks up to the Lagustelli are at their best when the karst basins are full from spring rain. July and August are workable; the village stays cooler than Rome forty kilometers downhill, but the open trails go silent in midday heat.
Nemi
Why visit Nemi
Nemi sits at 521 meters on the rim of a volcanic crater, the smallest of the Castelli Romani and thirty kilometers southeast of Rome. The lake below was the Speculum Dianae, the mirror of Diana, with a sanctuary on its northern shore that covered around 45,000 square meters and drew pilgrims from across Latium.
Emperor Caligula built two ceremonial ships on the lake, ninety meters of timber and bronze that sat on the water until they sank. Mussolini drained part of the lake between 1929 and 1932 to recover them.
They were destroyed by fire in 1944, almost certainly by retreating German troops. The Museo delle Navi Romane, built in 1940 to hold them, now shows scaled reconstructions and salvaged fragments.
Palazzo Ruspoli, a ninth-century castle restored by Valadier, anchors the centro storico. The wild strawberries grown on the inner slopes of the crater are sold from stalls along Via Roma and celebrated each June at the Sagra delle Fragole.
What to see in Nemi
- Palazzo Ruspoli. Ninth-century castle of the Counts of Tuscolo, restored by Valadier, with cylindrical tower and hanging garden over the lake.
- Museo delle Navi Romane. Lakeshore museum built in 1940 for Caligula's two recovered ships, destroyed by fire in 1944, now housing scaled models and fragments.
- Santuario di Diana Nemorense. Remains of the federal sanctuary on the lake's northern shore, once 45,000 square meters of temple, porticoes and theater.
How to get to Nemi
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Roma is roughly 52 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the dry months on the crater rim, when the wild strawberries ripen and the lake holds its color. The Sagra delle Fragole runs the first Sunday of June and draws thousands. July and August push the basin into the low thirties; the centro storico stays cooler at 521 meters than the coast or the city, but weekends fill with day-trippers from Rome.
Trevignano Romano
Why visit Trevignano Romano
Trevignano Romano sits on the northern shore of Lake Bracciano, the volcanic crater lake thirty-five kilometers northwest of Rome. The town climbs from the lakefront to the ruined Rocca Orsini, the medieval fortress that once controlled the northern approach.
The Chiesa dell'Assunta, halfway up the hill, holds a sixteenth-century apse fresco painted by a follower of Raphael. The lake itself is the second largest in Lazio and supplies a portion of Rome's drinking water, which is why motorboats are banned: only sail and electric craft cross the surface.
Three communes share the shore, Bracciano, Anguillara Sabazia, and Trevignano, and Trevignano is the smallest and quietest of the three. The waterfront promenade fills on summer weekends with Romans escaping the city for a swim and grilled coregone, the lake whitefish.
Outside the summer months it returns to the residents.
What to see in Trevignano Romano
- Rocca Orsini. Medieval fortress ruins above the town, built by the Orsini family in the fifteenth century to control the lake's northern approach.
- Chiesa dell'Assunta. Sixteenth-century church on the hillside with an apse fresco of the Assumption painted by a follower of Raphael.
- Lago di Bracciano lakefront. Volcanic crater lake at 164 meters above sea level, swimmable and reserved for sail and electric boats; Rome's secondary water reservoir.
How to get to Trevignano Romano
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Roma is roughly 57 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June brings warm days and a quiet lakefront, the best window for swimming before the Roman weekend crowds arrive. July and August are hot, around thirty degrees, and the waterfront fills from Friday afternoon through Sunday evening; weekdays stay calmer. September and October return the lake to the residents, with water still warm enough for swimming into early October.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Bracciano
Why visit Bracciano
Bracciano stands at 280 meters above the southern shore of Lago di Bracciano, the volcanic crater lake known historically as Sabatino, the eighth largest in Italy. The Castello Orsini-Odescalchi was begun by Napoleone Orsini in 1470 and completed by his son Virginio Gentile in 1485; the architect was Francesco di Giorgio Martini.
It is one of the better-preserved examples of Renaissance military architecture in Italy, a five-towered pentagon on a polygonal base, with frescoes by Antoniazzo Romano and the Zuccari brothers. The Orsini lost it through debt in 1696 to Livio Odescalchi, nephew of Pope Innocent XI; the Odescalchi still own it.
Bracciano supplies a significant part of Rome's drinking water through the aqueduct that begins in the lake. The town is also a hazelnut commune, member of the Città della Nocciola network.
Tom Cruise married Katie Holmes in the castle in November 2006, which is how most people outside Italy heard of the place.
What to see in Bracciano
- Castello Orsini-Odescalchi. 1470-1485 Renaissance castle, five round towers on a pentagonal plan, frescoes by Antoniazzo Romano and the Zuccari brothers.
- Lago di Bracciano. Volcanic crater lake, eighth largest in Italy at 57 square kilometers, source of part of Rome's drinking water.
- Centro storico. Medieval town below the castle walls, organized in concentric rings around the rocca, with two surviving medieval gates.
How to get to Bracciano
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 58 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through October is the lake season. May and June bring the warmest weather without the August crowd from Rome; the shore villages of Anguillara and Trevignano fill on weekends and empty mid-week. July and August are hot and busy.
Anguillara Sabazia
Why visit Anguillara Sabazia
Anguillara Sabazia sits on a small volcanic cape that pushes into Lake Bracciano from the southern shore, twenty-five kilometers northwest of Rome. The medieval town climbs from the lake on stepped streets to the Porta Maggiore and the Collegiata di Santa Maria Assunta at the top.
The setting is older than the medieval town: La Marmotta, a few hundred meters offshore from the cape, is one of the oldest underwater archaeological sites in Europe, an Early Neolithic lakeshore village dated to 5700 BC, with preserved wooden canoes and grain stores in the lakebed mud. The Romans came later: Rutilia Polla, a Roman patrician, owned a villa on the cape in the first century BC, and the modern town name carries the surname of the medieval Anguillara family who took the place after the empire.
Anguillara is one of three communes on Lake Bracciano with Bracciano and Trevignano, and it is the closest to Rome of the three.
What to see in Anguillara Sabazia
- Porta Maggiore e centro storico. Medieval gate and stepped town climbing from the lakefront on the volcanic cape, with stone streets converging on the upper piazza.
- Collegiata di Santa Maria Assunta. Main church at the top of the cape, rebuilt in the sixteenth century on earlier foundations, with views over the lake from the parvis.
- Lungolago e cape. Lakefront promenade and small beaches along the cape, with views east to Trevignano and west to Bracciano across the volcanic basin.
How to get to Anguillara Sabazia
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 50 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September through October are the strong months. The cape is exposed and the wind off the lake keeps the temperature mild even in warm weeks. July and August are hot, around thirty degrees, and the lakefront fills on weekends with Romans driving up for a swim and grilled coregone. Sagra delle Pizzòle falls in August.
Velletri
Why visit Velletri
The town sits at 332 meters, thirty-five kilometers from Rome, on the southeastern rim of a volcanic ring of craters and lakes. Before it was a papal possession and a diocesan seat, it was a Volscian stronghold, and before that the home ground of the Octavii, the paternal family of the man who became Augustus: Suetonius records a street here called Octavian and an altar consecrated by an Octavius, and the future emperor passed his childhood in the town under its old name, Velitrae.
That layering, Volscian settlement, imperial family seat, papal diocese, is what the center still shows once the war is accounted for: an army broke through a German defensive line here in May 1944, and much of the town was destroyed in the process. What stands now above the old piazza and around the rebuilt town hall is largely reconstruction fitted around what survived, with a wine trade going back to the volcanic soil that predates all of it.
A town whose name changed twice, whose family produced an emperor, and whose center was rebuilt from a battle line, but whose vineyards on the same slopes never stopped being the constant.
What to see in Velletri
- Torre del Trivio. 50-meter Romanesque bell tower from the 14th century, the only structure to come through the 1944 bombing intact, still the shape by which the town is recognized from a distance.
- Palazzo Comunale. Renaissance town hall designed by Giacomo Della Porta, rebuilt after wartime damage, facing the piazza named for the emperor born to the town.
- Cattedrale di San Clemente. Cathedral seat of the suburbicarian Diocese of Velletri-Segni, a title held today by the Dean of the College of Cardinals.
How to get to Velletri
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 35 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June brings the Alban Hills at their greenest, vineyards in leaf, and mild evenings on the piazzas. September and October are the wine months: the Festa dell'Uva, one of the oldest grape festivals in Italy, runs in the first week of September. July and August are hot in the lower town and at their best after sunset, when the volcanic slopes hold the breeze. Calici sotto le stelle falls in August.
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