To eat well
Where to eat well in Emilia-Romagna
22 towns
Towns holding at least one place a guide put its name to. The ones several guides agree on come first.
The towns
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.
Cesenatico
Province: Forlì-Cesena · 3 m
An Adriatic fishing port whose canal was redrawn on commission from a Borgia patron, with ten historic sailboats moored as a floating museum.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Faenza
Province: Ravenna · 34 m
The city that gave its name to faïence, with a tin-glazed maiolica tradition since the fourteenth century and the world ceramics museum since 1908.
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.
Castel San Pietro Terme
Province: Bologna · 75 m
A 75-meter thermal town east of Bologna, its sulphurous waters in use since 1137.
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.
Busseto
Province: Parma · 40 m
A 40-meter town where Giuseppe Verdi grew up, with a 300-seat opera house in the Rocca he refused to enter.
Pennabilli
Province: Rimini · 629 m
A 629-meter Montefeltro borgo between the Roccione and the Rupe, remade as an open-air museum after 1989.
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.
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.
Castell'Arquato
Province: Piacenza · 224 m
A 224-meter hilltop borgo in the Val d'Arda, kept intact since the tenth century and crowned by Luchino Visconti's 1342 fortress.
Castrocaro Terme e Terra del Sole
Province: Forlì-Cesena · 68 m
A pairing of two towns: a ninth-century fortress on a hill and Cosimo I de' Medici's planned Renaissance garrison town on the plain below, founded 1564.
Montefiore Conca
Province: Rimini · 385 m
A 385-meter Malatesta hilltop above the Conca valley, dominated by a fourteenth-century fortress that was once a summer residence of the lords of Rimini.
Montegridolfo
Province: Rimini · 290 m
A walled borgo of fewer than a thousand residents on the Romagna-Marche border, held alternately by the Malatesta and the Montefeltro through the fifteenth century.
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.
Sestola
Province: Modena · 1,020 m
A 1,020-meter Apennine town in the Frignano, with a Lombard-era castle above and Emilia-Romagna's largest ski area on the slopes.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns
Civitella del Tronto
Province: Teramo
A rocky crest at 589 meters above the Tronto valley, crowned by the last Bourbon fortress to surrender to united Italy in March 1861.
Barolo
Province: Cuneo
A Langhe borgo at 301 meters whose Castello Falletti gave its name to the wine the Marchesi turned dry in the 1830s with Cavour's help.
Licciana Nardi
Province: Massa-Carrara
A Lunigiana Malaspina village at 215 meters in the Apennine Tosco-Emiliano park, named in 1933 for the Risorgimento patriot Anacarsi Nardi.
Montecatini-Terme
Province: Pistoia
Eleven thermal springs in a Liberty-style park at the foot of the Apennines.
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.