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00 Tufo
Stemma di Tufo

Campania · Avellino

Tufo

A 250-meter Irpinia hill town on sulfur-rich limestone slopes, twenty kilometers north of Avellino.

Best time
Apr–Oct
By car
55 min from Salerno
By train
Station in the comune
Population
772

Known for

  • GRECO DI TUFO

    Campania DOCG since 2003, white wine grown on sulfur-laced tuff slopes across eight Irpinian communes named for this one. The grape has been grown here since at least the eighth century.

  • SULFUR MINES

    Industrial sulfur extraction shaped the local economy from the nineteenth century until the mines closed in the 1980s.

  • DI MARZO 1647

    The Di Marzo family has bottled Greco di Tufo since 1647, the oldest continuous winery in the Campania region.

When to visit

Best · Apr–Oct

  • J11°
  • F14°
  • M15°
  • A18°
  • M23°
  • J29°
  • J33°
  • A33°
  • S28°
  • O23°
  • N17°
  • D13°
  • Best
  • Hot or crowded
  • Quiet
  • Mostly closed

Daytime averages, 2020–2024. Weather data by Open-Meteo.com.

The festa: Michele, 8 May

Why come

The name Tufo comes from the volcanic tuff stone the hill is built on, the same stone that runs through the slopes below and gives the local wine its mineral edge. The village sits on top of that stone, with the cellars at its foot and the vineyards spreading out around both. Sulfur was mined in shafts cut into the cliffs beneath the village, work that shaped the local economy for over a century before it stopped.

Most visitors are wine buyers, not tourists. They drive in for a tasting, walk the steep main street to the medieval castle on top, and leave by dinner. The village stays quiet after they go. What the stone gave the place economically it also gave it physically: a hill town built from the same rock that flavors what it grows, mined until the ground itself ran out of use.

The Sunday letter

Tufo is on our list. Its letter is still to come.

We are writing about all 1,000 of these towns, one at a time, in a free letter every Sunday: the photo, the food, the festa. That is our mission. Sign up and you will be there when Tufo comes up. By Peter & Sophia, from Turin.

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Read on

Tufo in our articles

How to get there

From Naples / Salerno (NAP), about 1 hour by car.

Bari / Brindisi (BRI) is about 2h 28m away.

By car from the centre of Salerno 55 minutes, Naples 1 hour or Bari 2h 32m.

There is a railway station in the comune, so you can arrive without a car.

Coming from Naples?

Coming by train into Salerno? Tufo is about 58 minutes away by road.

Every town within reach of Naples / Salerno airport.

Tufo, photo 1
Tufo, photo 2

What to see

  • Castello di Tufo

    Medieval fortress on the top of the hill, rebuilt after the 1732 and 1980 earthquakes that damaged the village below.

  • Cantine di Marzo

    The cellars sit at the foot of the village, where Greco di Tufo has been produced commercially since the family took up winemaking here.

  • Ex Miniere di Zolfo

    Abandoned mines in the cliffs below the village, their shafts left the rock marked with rust-colored scars after closure.

  • Chiesa di Sant'Onofrio

    Eighteenth-century parish church in the centro storico, restored after damage in the 1980 Irpinia earthquake.

  • Vigneti del Greco

    The tuff and sulfur slopes around the village that give the local wine its mineral character, walkable in spring and autumn.

The slow-trip planner

Building a trip? Find where Tufo fits in a slow Italy circuit.

Answer five questions. We will shape a geographically coherent slow trip from the 1,000 Italian towns most travelers skip. Yours to save and share.

Plan your trip

Living here

  • Population 772, down 15.2% since 2015 (Italy's emptying towns)
  • Commuter belti
  • Pharmacy: none mapped
  • High school within a 30-minute drive
  • Train station in the comune
  • Nearest public hospital Avellino, 11 km as the crow flies
  • Full fibre reaches 28% of homes
  • Primary school in the comune
  • Earthquake zone 1, Italy's highest hazard
  • Nearest airport Naples / Salerno, 1 h 3 min drive
  • Regional capital Napoli, 1 h 6 min drive

Could you live here?

Tufo is at the end of the road.

  • A village of 772. The nearest town of 5,000 people, Atripalda, is 20 minutes away: past our 15-minute rule, which makes this the end of the road.
  • Avellino, a city of 52,198, is 23 minutes by car. Closer than our 30 to 60 minutes: handy for everything, so check the town still keeps a life of its own.
  • A station of its own. Trains are the overlooked way to get around Italy: no parking, straight into the centre.

The rules come from our series Where to Move in Italy, written from the places we have lived: Part 1, The End of the Road · Part 2, The Small Town · Part 3, The City. The rest of the series, and the best towns to move to, arrive in the Sunday letter.

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Common questions

What is Tufo known for?
Tufo is a 250-meter Irpinia hill town on sulfur-rich limestone slopes, twenty kilometers north of Avellino.
Where is Tufo?
Tufo is a comune in the province of Avellino, in Campania, at 250 meters above sea level.
What is the nearest airport to Tufo?
Naples / Salerno (NAP), about 1 hour by car.
Can you get to Tufo without a car?
Yes. There is a railway station in the comune, so you can arrive by train.
How long is the drive from Salerno to Tufo?
About 55 minutes by car.
When is the best time to visit Tufo?
Best in Apr–Oct. July is the warmest month, averaging 33 degrees, and November the wettest, with about 14 rain days.
Is there a sagra or a festival in Tufo?
The town keeps its patron saint's day: Michele, 8 May.
Which other towns are like Tufo?
Roccacasale, Caiazzo and Pretoro.
How many people live in Tufo?
772 at the 2023 count.
Is Tufo a good place to live?
By the rules in our Where to Move in Italy series, Tufo is at the end of the road: the nearest town of 5,000 people, Atripalda, is 20 minutes away. The nearest city, Avellino, is 23 minutes away by car. The nearest public hospital is in Avellino, 11 km as the crow flies. Full fibre reaches 28% of homes.
Tags & datadesignations · numbers · sources

Recognised as

The numbers

  • Elevation: 250 m
  • Population: 772
  • Surface area: 5.96 km²

These figures were compiled from public directories: ISTAT, OpenStreetMap and Wikidata, and from the official listings of the guides named on this page. Town details change; verify with official sources before you travel.

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