With events
Sagre and feste in Emilia-Romagna
18 towns
Each town page lists what happens there and the month it happens in, with the source. Always check with the town before you travel.
Ferrara
Province: Ferrara · 9 m
A Renaissance capital planned on a grid rather than grown by accident, small enough to cross by bicycle in twenty minutes, and ringed by walls that still stand whole.
Comacchio
Province: Ferrara
A canal town on thirteen islets, with brackish lagoons that hold three hundred bird species.
Bagno di Romagna
Province: Forlì-Cesena · 491 m
A 491-meter thermal town at the head of the Savio valley, drawing on springs that have run at 47 degrees since Roman times.
Borgo Val di Taro
Province: Parma · 411 m
The Cittaslow capital of the upper Taro valley at 411 meters, where the Fungo di Borgotaro IGP porcini has been protected since 1996.
Ravenna
Province: Ravenna · 4 m
A 4-meter coastal capital of three successive empires, with eight UNESCO mosaic monuments from the fifth and sixth centuries.
Bobbio
Province: Piacenza · 272 m
A 272-meter Trebbia-valley town built around an abbey founded in 614, named Borgo dei Borghi by RAI in 2019.
Brisighella
Province: Ravenna · 115 m
A Lamone-valley borgo at 115 meters under three selenite hills crowned by a fortress, a clock tower, and a sanctuary.
Castelvetro di Modena
Province: Modena · 152 m
A 152-meter hill borgo south of Modena whose checkerboard piazza sits above the slopes that grow Lambrusco Grasparossa.
Cervia
Province: Ravenna · 2 m
The Adriatic salt town with 827 hectares of working saline, planned in 1697 around a grid of salt workers' houses.
Fontanellato
Province: Parma · 45 m
A Parma-plain town built around the Rocca Sanvitale, the moated fortress at its center.
Imola
Province: Bologna · 47 m
Bologna's Romagna twin, a medieval brick centro anchored by the Caterina Sforza-fortified Rocca, with the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari (the Imola F1 circuit) wrapping the Santerno river at the southern edge of town.
Longiano
Province: Forlì-Cesena · 179 m
A 179-meter Malatesta borgo on the hills between Cesena and Rimini, holding a major twentieth-century art collection inside the family castle.
Parma
Province: Parma · 57 m
A 57-meter Po-plain capital on the Via Emilia, where Correggio painted the Duomo dome and Parmigiano ages in vaults across the province.
Pennabilli
Province: Rimini · 629 m
A 629-meter Montefeltro borgo between the Roccione and the Rupe, remade as an open-air museum after 1989.
Portico e San Benedetto
Province: Forlì-Cesena · 309 m
A three-tier medieval borgo at 309 meters on the Montone river, capital of Florence's Romagna territories from 1386.
Premilcuore
Province: Forlì-Cesena · 459 m
A 459-meter walled borgo on the Rabbi river, an entry point to the Foreste Casentinesi from the Romagna side.
Santarcangelo di Romagna
Province: Rimini · 42 m
A Via Emilia hill town on the Marecchia plain, with over 150 tufa caves under the centro and a Malatesta fortress on its summit.
Sasso Marconi
Province: Bologna · 128 m
A 128-meter pre-Apennine town at the confluence of the Setta and Reno, renamed in 1938 for the radio pioneer whose family estate stands in its Pontecchio frazione.
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From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover
Campi Salentina
Province: Lecce
A Salento plain town fifteen kilometers north of Lecce, rebuilt after the Saracen raids of 926 and later raised to a marquisate.
Loreto Aprutino
Province: Pescara
A hilltop town at 290 meters in the Aprutino olive country, with a fourteenth-century Judgment fresco and a Castelli majolica collection.
Ascea
Province: Salerno
Two villages, a hilltown at 230 meters and a Cilento marina, with Parmenides and Zeno's Eleatic school in the ruins of Greek Velia below.
Vico del Gargano
Province: Foggia
A Gargano hill town at 445 meters where a Norman castle, a kiss alley, and DOP citrus terraces step down toward the Adriatic.
Mantova
Province: Mantova
A Gonzaga capital at 19 meters, encircled on three sides by lakes the Mincio formed in the twelfth century, UNESCO-listed together with Sabbioneta since 2008.