Day trips
Day trips from Palermo
14 towns within 90 minutes
Closest first. Monreale is 13 minutes out. Drive times are computed on real roads, so they are a fair estimate rather than a promise about traffic.
The towns
Monreale
Province: Palermo · 310 m
13 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.
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.
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 name is thought to come from the Arabic for 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 10,231 in the Palermo hinterland that gave its name to Mario Puzo's Don Vito and now runs Italy's national antimafia documentation center.
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.
Petralia Sottana
Province: Palermo · 1,000 m
88 minutes from Palermo. A Madonie village at 1,000 meters, a Bandiera Arancione town, and the headquarters of the Parco delle Madonie.
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.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns
Castiglione di Garfagnana
Province: Lucca
A walled medieval town at 540 meters in the Garfagnana, the Lucca outpost that refused to submit to the Este and held the pass to San Pellegrino.
Rosolina
Province: Rovigo
A reclaimed commune where a nine-kilometer beach and a maritime pine forest sit between the Adige mouth and the Adriatic.
Belgirate
Province: Verbano-Cusio-Ossola
A small Lake Maggiore village at 199 meters whose Chiesa Vecchia di Santa Maria has held its 11th-century Romanesque bell tower for nine hundred years.
Nicosia
Province: Enna
A Byzantine-Norman royal city at 720 meters on four hills, one of Sicily's principal Gallo-Italic centers, where the dialect of its Lombard settlers is still spoken.
Castro dei Volsci
Province: Frosinone
A Ciociaria hilltop borgo at 385 meters in the Sacco valley, named for the pre-Roman Volsci.