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
Visso
Province: Macerata
The northern Sibillini gate at 607 meters where the Nera meets the Ussita, holding one of two surviving manuscripts of Leopardi's L'Infinito.
Goriano Sicoli
Province: L'Aquila
At 720 meters in the Subequana valley, a medieval village drawn by M.C. Escher in 1929 keeps a May ritual folklorists trace to Demeter.
Ugento
Province: Lecce
A Messapian-Roman town five kilometers from the Ionian, where a Baroque castle sits on the walls of the ancient city of Ozan.
Fontanellato
Province: Parma
A Parma-plain town built around the Rocca Sanvitale, the moated fortress at its center.
Pescina
Province: L'Aquila
A Marsica town at 735 meters, on the rim of the drained Fucino basin, that lost five thousand of six thousand people in a single morning in 1915.