Hill towns
Hill towns in Friuli-Venezia Giulia
3 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
Frisanco
Province: Pordenone · 415 m
A 588-resident commune in the Val Colvera whose frazione Poffabro, at 525 meters, became a model of Prealpine stone-and-wood vernacular architecture.
San Daniele del Friuli
Province: Udine · 252 m
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.
Venzone
Province: Udine · 230 m
A 230-meter walled medieval town in the Tagliamento valley, leveled by the 1976 earthquakes and rebuilt as it had been, winner of Borgo dei Borghi 2017.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns
Camerota
Province: Salerno
A Cilento hill town of 422 meters above the Costa degli Infreschi, its caves holding one of the longest prehistoric stratigraphies on the southern Tyrrhenian.
Castiglione di Sicilia
Province: Catania
A hill town on the north flank of Etna at 621 meters, base camp for the Alcantara valley and the volcano's most serious red wines.
Roccavivara
Province: Campobasso
A 652-meter village above the Trigno river valley, home to the Romanesque Santuario della Madonna del Canneto with its 1223 ambone and 14th-century gothic Madonna del Sorriso.
Allerona
Province: Terni
A stone borgo at 472 meters between the Paglia valley and the Valdichiana, an Orvieto outpost whose Monaldeschi castle fell to Charles V.
Sermoneta
Province: Latina
A walled medieval town on a Lepini spur above the Pontine Plain, seat of the Caetani since a 1297 purchase and still ruled from a 42-meter tower.