Hill towns
Hill towns in Campania
17 towns
The ridge and hilltop borghi, sitting around 400 meters. Vineyards below, one road up, walkable once you are there. Good in almost any season.
The towns
Zungoli
Province: Avellino · 657 m
An Irpinia ridge between the Ufita valley and the Daunian hills, with walls above and tuff caves below the houses.
Lapio
Province: Avellino · 590 m
A 1,426-resident Irpinia hilltop borgo at 590m in the hills east of Avellino, recognized by a rare four-signal combination (Città del Vino + Olio + Miele + Nocciola) for the whole local agricultural ecosystem.
Roscigno
Province: Salerno · 570 m
A Cilento ghost town at 570 meters, emptied by a 1902 landslide and known as the Pompeii of the twentieth century.
Mercogliano
Province: Avellino · 550 m
A 550-meter Irpinia town on the slope of Partenio, gateway to the Montevergine Sanctuary 1,270 meters above.
Calitri
Province: Avellino · 530 m
A ceramic town at 530 meters, half-emptied by the 1980 earthquake and rebuilt around an August festival of music, words and ritual.
Castelcivita
Province: Salerno · 526 m
A small Alburni hill town at 526 meters in the Cilento national park, the surface entrance to a 4,800-meter karst cave inhabited 40,000 years ago.
Perito
Province: Salerno · 480 m
A Cilento ridge town at 480 meters above the Alento valley, once a center of black-powder production for hunting, defense and brigands.
Cusano Mutri
Province: Benevento · 475 m
A Sannio hill borgo at 475 meters on the south face of the Matese, one of the few towns in the area spared by the 1688 earthquake.
Taurasi
Province: Avellino · 400 m
An Irpinia wine village at 400 meters above the Calore valley, the southern home of Aglianico called Barolo of the South.
Morigerati
Province: Salerno · 340 m
A 573-person Cilento village above the Bussento gorge, the river surfacing from underground caves directly beneath the cliffs.
Tramonti
Province: Salerno · 321 m
The inland side of the Amalfi Coast, thirteen hamlets on the Lattari slopes producing wine and an exported pizza dough.
Montesarchio
Province: Benevento · 300 m
Ancient Caudium at 300 meters, a Roman defeat still attached to the name two thousand years later.
Cerreto Sannita
Province: Benevento · 290 m
A Sannio ceramics town at 290 meters, replanned on an orthogonal grid after the 1688 earthquake leveled the old hill.
Auletta
Province: Salerno · 280 m
A Tanagro hill town above the Cilento-Vallo di Diano park, fortified by 1000 AD, scene of an 1861 anti-Piedmont massacre and an 1857 earthquake.
Tufo
Province: Avellino · 250 m
A 250-meter Irpinia hill town on sulfur-rich limestone slopes, twenty kilometers north of Avellino.
Sessa Aurunca
Province: Caserta · 203 m
Ancient Suessa Aurunca on the south slope of an extinct volcano, with a Romanesque cathedral of Cosmatesque mosaics built in 1103.
Caiazzo
Province: Caserta · 200 m
A Cittaslow hill above the Volturno, turned by Franco Pepe's pizza into a destination for 800 covers a day in eighteenth-century rooms.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns
Mormanno
Province: Cosenza
A Pollino mountain borgo at 840 meters between the Costa and Vernita ridges, known for lentils, white poverelli beans and the bocconotto pastry.
San Daniele del Friuli
Province: Udine
Italy's prosciutto capital, a 7,900-resident hill town in the Friuli morainic amphitheatre where the Tagliamento valley's south winds meet the alpine downdraughts, producing the San Daniele DOP raw-cured ham (31 producers, 14-month minimum cure) and where Pellegrino da San Daniele's 1497–1522 frescoes inside Sant'Antonio Abate are the regional Renaissance set-piece.
Città di Castello
Province: Perugia
A walled town of 38,000 in the upper Tiber valley where Raphael painted his first independent commissions and the white truffle season is the year's headline food event.
Ferrazzano
Province: Campobasso
A hilltop borgo at 872 meters above Campobasso, called the Sentinel of Molise, where Robert De Niro's great-grandparents lived before sailing in 1887.
Velletri
Province: Roma
The Castelli Romani town where Augustus grew up, and the home of its own Velletri DOC wine since 1972.