For foodies
Where to eat well in Lombardy
30 towns
Towns holding at least one place a guide put its name to. The ones several guides agree on come first.

Bergamo
Province: Bergamo · 249 m
A two-city Lombard capital where a Venetian walled hilltown sits 85 meters above its modern twin on the plain, 45 kilometers northeast of Milan.

Cernobbio
Province: Como · 201 m
The town where Villa d'Este has been a luxury hotel since 1873.

Gardone Riviera
Province: Brescia · 71 m
A western Garda lakeshore town whose hillside holds an estate turned into a monument to one man's self-image.

Livigno
Province: Sondrio · 1,816 m
At 1,816 meters in the Italian Alps near the Swiss border, a duty-free ski valley that drains north into the Black Sea, not the Mediterranean.

Sirmione
Province: Brescia · 91 m
A 4-kilometer peninsula reaching into the southern Garda, its tip closed by a fortified port and a Roman villa.

Bellagio
Province: Como · 229 m
On the promontory where Lake Como splits into three arms, with Villa Serbelloni on the high ground and Villa Melzi on the western shore.

Madesimo
Province: Sondrio · 1,550 m
A ski village at 1,550 meters at the head of Valle Spluga, with lifts to 2,880 meters and an off-piste descent rated among the hardest marked lines in the Italian Alps.

Salò
Province: Brescia · 65 m
On the deepest gulf of the lake, with the longest waterfront promenade and the cathedral of the Riviera di Salò.

Mantova
Province: Mantova · 19 m
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.

Iseo
Province: Brescia · 198 m
The main town on the southeast shore of Lake Iseo, gateway to the Franciacorta sparkling wine country.

Curtatone
Province: Mantova · 25 m
A commune of eight frazioni west of Mantova, anchored by the Grazie sanctuary and the 1848 battle that delayed Radetzky's advance.

Manerba del Garda
Province: Brescia · 132 m
A Valtenesi commune anchored by a limestone cliff that held a Roman temple to Minerva and a medieval fortress.

Torno
Province: Como · 225 m
A medieval village on the eastern shore of Lake Como, built around a spring whose rhythm has drawn attention for centuries.

Capriate San Gervasio
Province: Bergamo · 190 m
The Bergamasco town that holds Crespi d'Adda, the late-nineteenth-century company village inscribed by UNESCO in 1995 as a model workers' settlement.

Laveno-Mombello
Province: Varese · 200 m
The eastern Lake Maggiore port town that produced Lombardia's industrial ceramics for a century, under the cliff that hangs over it.

Bormio
Province: Sondrio · 1,225 m
An Alpine spa town at 1,225 meters where three high passes meet and Roman thermal water has fed the baths for two thousand years.

Varenna
Province: Lecco · 220 m
A fishing village founded in 769 on the Lecco arm of Lake Como, with a steep grid of streets falling into the water.

Cassinetta di Lugagnano
Province: Milano · 120 m
A commune west of Milan with fifteen surviving ville di delizia and Italy's first zero-growth urban plan, adopted in 2007.

Chiavenna
Province: Sondrio · 333 m
An Alpine town at 333 meters on the Mera river, the historical Splügen Pass crossroads named for its key position and its rock-cellar crotti.

Clusone
Province: Bergamo · 648 m
At 648 meters, capital of the macabre fresco and the 1583 planetary clock above its civic tower.

Limone sul Garda
Province: Brescia · 65 m
The northernmost lemon-growing town in the world, at 46 degrees north on the western shore of Lake Garda, reached by road only in 1932.

Lonato del Garda
Province: Brescia · 188 m
A hilltop commune on the southwestern Garda morainic ridge, with a Visconti castle and a private library of 52,000 volumes.

Morimondo
Province: Milano · 109 m
A Cistercian abbey village on the edge of the Ticino park, twenty-five kilometers southwest of Milano, founded by French monks in 1134.

Pizzighettone
Province: Cremona · 46 m
A walled town on the Adda below Cremona, where Francis I of France was held for fifty days in the Torre del Guado after Pavia.

Sondrio
Province: Sondrio · 307 m
The capital of Valtellina at 307 meters, where Castel Masegra watches over terraced vineyards that produce Sassella and Grumello Nebbiolo.

Teglio
Province: Sondrio · 856 m
A Valtellina hilltown at 856 metres whose Latin name gave the entire valley its own.

Tignale
Province: Brescia · 560 m
A six-hamlet commune on a high terrace above Lake Garda's western shore, anchored by a clifftop sanctuary and the last working limonaie north of Salò.

Toscolano-Maderno
Province: Brescia · 72 m
Twin lakeside villages on the western shore of Garda, paper mill suppliers to the Republic of Venice from the 14th century onward.

Tremezzina
Province: Como · 209 m
The 2014 merger of four Lake Como villages that holds Villa Carlotta, Isola Comacina and the UNESCO Sacro Monte di Ossuccio.

Varzi
Province: Pavia · 416 m
A medieval Malaspina town at 416 meters in the Staffora valley of the Oltrepò Pavese, the seat of one of Italy's first DOP cured meats.
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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.
