Day trips
Day trips from Palermo
13 towns within 90 minutes
Closest first. Piana degli Albanesi is 36 minutes out. Drive times are computed on real roads, so they are a fair estimate rather than a promise about traffic.
Piana degli Albanesi
Province: Palermo · 720 m
36 minutes from Palermo. The principal Arbëresh town of Sicily at 720 meters, founded in the fifteenth century by Albanians fleeing the Ottomans and still speaking arbëresh.
Monreale
Province: Palermo · 310 m
44 minutes from Palermo. Above the Conca d'Oro at 310 meters, the cathedral William II built between 1174 and 1182 holds 6,340 square meters of Norman mosaics.
Santa Cristina Gela
Province: Palermo · 692 m
45 minutes from Palermo. The smallest and youngest of Sicily's three Arbëreshë villages, founded in 1691 by 82 Albanian colonists from neighbouring Piana.
Mezzojuso
Province: Palermo · 534 m
54 minutes from Palermo. An Arbëreshë village of two mother churches, one Latin, one Byzantine, whose Arabic name means the houses of Joseph.
Cefalù
Province: Palermo · 16 m
63 minutes from Palermo. A Norman cathedral at the foot of a 270-meter rock on the Tyrrhenian coast, founded in 1131.
Corleone
Province: Palermo · 542 m
70 minutes from Palermo. A town of 10,364 in the Palermo hinterland that gave its name to Mario Puzo's Don Vito and now runs Italy's national antimafia documentation centre.
Polizzi Generosa
Province: Palermo · 917 m
72 minutes from Palermo. A Madonie town at 917 meters, hazelnut country and the birthplace of Domenico Dolce.
Castelbuono
Province: Palermo · 423 m
74 minutes from Palermo. A Madonie town at 423 meters around the Ventimiglia castle, where manna is still tapped from ash trees and Fiasconaro bakes the panettone.
Sambuca di Sicilia
Province: Agrigento · 350 m
81 minutes from Palermo. An Arab-founded hill town in the Belice valley, still called Zabut in living memory before 1923.
Menfi
Province: Agrigento · 119 m
83 minutes from Palermo. Sicily's triple-signal western coast town: 11,800 residents on a low ridge above 9 km of protected sand at Porto Palo, backed by cellars and olive groves that between them carry Italy's three major small-town quality marks.
Cammarata
Province: Agrigento · 700 m
88 minutes from Palermo. A Sicani town at 700 meters on the northeast slope of the peak that gives the comune its name and shape.
Petralia Soprana
Province: Palermo · 1,147 m
88 minutes from Palermo. The highest village in the Madonie at 1,147 meters, RAI Borgo dei Borghi 2018 winner, sitting above 80 kilometers of salt tunnels.
Salemi
Province: Trapani · 446 m
90 minutes from Palermo. The Trapani hill town where Garibaldi raised the tricolor on 14 May 1860 and proclaimed Salemi the capital of Italy for a day.
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From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover
Cicala
Province: Catanzaro
A village of 887 people at 829 meters, founded in 1616 by farmers asking for land.
Fossombrone
Province: Pesaro e Urbino
An inland Marchigiano town on the Metauro river, layered over a Roman colony with a Renaissance ducal court rising above it.
Bagnoli del Trigno
Province: Isernia
The 'Pearl of Molise', a 637-resident borgo built into and around a massive limestone outcrop above the Trigno valley, with a medieval castle rebuilt on its summit.
Varenna
Province: Lecco
A fishing village founded in 769 on the Lecco arm of Lake Como, with a steep grid of streets falling into the water.
Rocca di Botte
Province: L'Aquila
At 750 meters on the Carseolani slopes between Abruzzo and Lazio, the birthplace of an eleventh-century hermit and a fief of the Colonna.