Hill towns
Hill towns in Lazio
32 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
Montefiascone
Province: Viterbo · 590 m
A 590-meter hill town on the highest hill of the Volsini, source of Est! Est!! Est!!!.
Percile
Province: Roma · 575 m
A 217-person medieval borgo at 575 meters, built on a rocky spur with two karst lakes hidden in the woods above it.
Bassiano
Province: Latina · 562 m
One of the highest villages in the province of Latina, at 562 meters, birthplace of Aldo Manuzio, who shrank the book to pocket size.
- Written about. No. 63.
Caprarola
Province: Viterbo · 510 m
A Cimini hill town above Lago di Vico, dominated by the pentagonal Villa Farnese that Vignola built for the Farnese cardinals between 1559 and 1573.
Atina
Province: Frosinone · 500 m
A polygonal-walled town at the foot of the Mainarde, and the DOC that makes Cabernet in central Italy.
Bagnoregio
Province: Viterbo · 484 m
The Etruscan-founded hill town in Tuscia whose frazione Civita di Bagnoregio sits on an eroding tuff plateau, reachable only by footbridge.
Arpino
Province: Frosinone · 450 m
The Volscian-Roman hill town in the Liri valley that produced Marius and Cicero, with a pre-Roman acropolis above the modern center.
Boville Ernica
Province: Frosinone · 450 m
A Ciociaria hilltop town with eighteen intact medieval towers, ringed by a walled circuit that has stood since the tenth century.
- Written about. No. 58.
Ronciglione
Province: Viterbo · 441 m
A tufa-brick borgo above Lake Vico, fortified by the Prefects of Vico and crowned Borgo dei Borghi in 2023.
Anagni
Province: Frosinone · 424 m
The hill town in Ciociaria where a September 1303 assault on a reigning pope inside his own palace ended the medieval claim to papal supremacy.
Acquapendente
Province: Viterbo · 420 m
One of the northernmost towns in Lazio, at 420 meters above the Paglia, named in 964 for its waterfalls.
Oriolo Romano
Province: Viterbo · 420 m
A planned sixteenth-century village in the Sabatini hills, laid out in 1560 by a Santacroce nobleman on land cleared from an ancient beech wood.
Ariccia
Province: Roma · 412 m
The Castelli Romani town where a single Baroque architect's ensemble sits on a volcanic crater rim above Rome, and Saturday lunch means porchetta.
Subiaco
Province: Roma · 408 m
The Aniene valley town where Benedict spent three years in a cliff cave, and where Italy's first printed book appeared in 1465.
Rieti
Province: Rieti · 405 m
The Sabine capital on the Velino, claimed as the center of Italy, under Monte Terminillo and the Franciscan sanctuaries of the Valle Santa.
Casperia
Province: Rieti · 397 m
A Sabina hill village named Aspra in Virgil's Aeneid, called that until 1947, ringed by walls from 1282.
Castro dei Volsci
Province: Frosinone · 385 m
A Ciociaria hilltop borgo at 385 meters in the Sacco valley, named for the pre-Roman Volsci.
Canale Monterano
Province: Roma · 376 m
A hilltop village next to the burned ghost town of Monterano, where a roofless Baroque church and fountain still stand.
- Written about. No. 64.
Capranica
Province: Viterbo · 370 m
A medieval hill town on the old Via Cassia, taken by the Anguillara family in 1305 and remembered as the place Petrarch stayed in 1337.
Velletri
Province: Roma · 332 m
The Castelli Romani town where Augustus grew up, and the home of its own Velletri DOC wine since 1972.
- Written about. No. 66.
Viterbo
Province: Viterbo · 326 m
The medieval capital of the Tuscia, papal seat from 1257 to 1281, when five popes were elected here, and home to the longest conclave in Church history.
Bassano in Teverina
Province: Viterbo · 304 m
A tufa-spur borgo of 1,273 above the Tiber valley between Lazio and Umbria, with a clock tower that hides an eleventh-century animated bell tower.
Sutri
Province: Viterbo · 291 m
An Etruscan and Roman town on a tuff spur, with a rock-cut amphitheater carved straight from the volcanic stone of the Cimini.
Vitorchiano
Province: Viterbo · 285 m
A peperino borgo built on a single volcanic boulder near Viterbo.
- Written about. No. 65.
Bomarzo
Province: Viterbo · 263 m
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.
Sermoneta
Province: Latina · 257 m
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.
Castelnuovo di Porto
Province: Roma · 250 m
A tufa-ridge borgo twenty-five kilometers north of Rome inside the Parco di Veio, dominated by a Renaissance fortress above the Tiber valley.
Tivoli
Province: Roma · 235 m
A travertine town on the Aniene falls twenty-five kilometers east of Rome, holding two separate UNESCO sites: Hadrian's villa below and the Villa d'Este above.
Magliano Sabina
Province: Rieti · 222 m
A 222-meter Sabine town on a Tiber terrace, cathedral seat of the Sabina diocese on the Lazio-Umbria border.
Calcata
Province: Viterbo · 220 m
A tufa-cliff village forty kilometers north of Rome, condemned and abandoned in the 1930s, then occupied by artists and never left.
Pico
Province: Frosinone · 220 m
Tommaso Landolfi's home town, a 2,588-resident Ciociaria borgo at 220m between Rome and Naples, with a BPB-inscribed medieval centro and a castle turned literary museum.
Isola del Liri
Province: Frosinone · 217 m
The Ciociaria town with a 27-meter waterfall in its centro storico and a paper-mill past once called the Manchester of Italy.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns
Fosdinovo
Province: Massa-Carrara
The southern Lunigiana stronghold at 500 meters, the Malaspina castle where Dante took shelter in 1306 and later set a Purgatorio canto.
Levanto
Province: La Spezia
The sixth Cinque Terre, a beach town and Cittaslow at the gateway of the national park, with a surf break and a striped Gothic church.
Galatina
Province: Lecce
The Salento town at 78 meters where the cult of San Paolo bred tarantism and gave the pizzica its origin myth.
Molveno
Province: Trento
The village at the north end of a deep blue alpine lake, with a pale limestone range rising straight out of the water.
Compiano
Province: Parma
A 519-meter walled borgo over the Taro, ruled by the same family for 425 years.