Silence
The quietest town in each region
The silence index scores every catalogued comune from the numbers alone: residents, people per square kilometre, drive time to the nearest airport hub, distance from the nearest big town, and whether a train reaches it. Higher means more silent. One town per region, the highest score in each. 20 regions shown.
Table no. 56 · Ranked by silence · 20 towns
Every region keeps at least one town the noise never reached, and it is almost never the one the guidebooks send you to. We scored the whole catalogue on population, density, airport distance, hub distance and rail reach, then took the single highest score in each region.
Twenty regions, twenty winners. Some you will know. Most you will not, which is rather the point.
- 1.Alessandria del Carretto96 / 100 silenceCosenza · CalabriaThe highest village in the Pollino at 1,043 meters, the only Italian commune carrying its founder's full name, with a fir-tree ritual every 3 May.
- 2.Civitacampomarano95 / 100 silenceCampobasso · MoliseThe Molisan ghost-borgo of 302 residents that turned its abandoned centro storico into an open-air street-art village.
- 3.Madesimo95 / 100 silenceSondrio · LombardyA ski village at 1,550 meters at the head of Valle Spluga, with lifts to 2,880 meters and an off-piste descent rated among the hardest marked lines in the Italian Alps.
- 4.Santo Stefano di Sessanio95 / 100 silenceL'Aquila · AbruzzoA Medici outpost at 1,250 meters, restored building by building since 1999 into Italy's first scattered hotel.
- 5.Capraia Isola94 / 100 silenceLivorno · TuscanyA volcanic island of 370 residents and one village, a penal colony from 1873 to 1986 and a national park since.
- 6.Macugnaga94 / 100 silenceVerbano-Cusio-Ossola · PiedmontA Walser village at 1,327 meters at the foot of the east wall of Monte Rosa, founded in the 13th century by colonists from Valais.
- 7.La Thuile94 / 100 silenceAosta Valley · Aosta ValleyItaly's gateway to the Petit Saint-Bernard pass: a 1,441m alpine village under Mont Blanc, with the Rutor glacier and its tiered waterfalls behind it and a Roman-Salassi history that goes back two millennia.
- 8.Triora94 / 100 silenceImperia · LiguriaThe witches' village at 776 meters in the upper Valle Argentina, where the Inquisition put around 200 women on trial between 1587 and 1589.
- 9.Guardia Perticara93 / 100 silencePotenza · BasilicataThe stone village at 678 meters above the Sauro valley, rebuilt block by block in Gorgoglione sandstone after the 1980 earthquake.
- 10.Morigerati87 / 100 silenceSalerno · CampaniaA 608-person Cilento village above the Bussento gorge, the river surfacing from underground caves directly beneath the cliffs.
- 11.Aritzo87 / 100 silence · NUORO
- 12.Sauris86 / 100 silence · UDINE
- 13.Monteleone di Spoleto85 / 100 silence · PERUGIA
- 14.Arquata del Tronto85 / 100 silence · ASCOLI PICENO
- 15.Sperlinga84 / 100 silence · ENNA
- 16.Fortezza84 / 100 silence · BOLZANO
- 17.Picinisco83 / 100 silence · FROSINONE
- 18.Celle di San Vito80 / 100 silence · FOGGIA
- 19.Rocca Pietore80 / 100 silence · BELLUNO
- 20.Compiano78 / 100 silence · PARMA
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