To eat well
Where to eat well in Lombardia
30 towns
Towns holding at least one place a guide put its name to. The ones several guides agree on come first.
The towns
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 the Canalone, an off-piste descent counted among the most demanding in the 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.
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.
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.
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 meters 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.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns
Porto San Giorgio
Province: Fermo
A 15,000-resident beach town on the Adriatic between Ancona and Pescara, with one of the largest tourist marinas in the central Adriatic, the medieval Rocca Tiepolo above the harbor, and a long fine-sand seafront under date palms.
Casamassima
Province: Bari
The blue town of the Murge, twenty kilometers south of Bari, its centro storico painted with copper-blue lime after the 1658 plague spared its residents.
Bomarzo
Province: Viterbo
The Tuscia village below a garden built by a condottiero and later dedicated to his dead wife, all stone monsters and no apology for it.
San Pancrazio
Province: Bolzano
A South-Tyrolean village at 736 meters on the entrance of the Ultental/Val d'Ultimo, German-speaking St. Pankraz, the gateway to one of the most isolated alpine valleys in the Adige basin and the centuries-old larch forests of the Lahnerlärchen.
Capistrello
Province: L'Aquila
At 734 meters where the upper Liri valley meets the Marsica, the village where an emperor's tunnel emptied a lake into a river.