Hill towns
Hill towns in Lombardy
9 towns
The ridge and hilltop borghi, sitting around 400 metres. Vineyards below, one road up, walkable once you are there. Good in almost any season.
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.
Zavattarello
Province: Pavia · 525 m
A Val Tidone borgo at 525 meters clinging to a ridge below a tenth-century Apennine fortress with walls four meters thick.
Fortunago
Province: Pavia · 482 m
A 365-resident village on a 482-meter ridge, with stone façades, porphyry streets and the production zone of Salame di Varzi at its doorstep.
Bienno
Province: Brescia · 445 m
A medieval ironworking village where water hammers driven by the Grigna stream have shaped wrought iron since the 1200s.
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.
Montesegale
Province: Pavia · 400 m
A 258-person hill village at 400 meters, built around a castle that today holds a contemporary art collection.
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.
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.
Polpenazze del Garda
Province: Brescia · 207 m
A Valtenesi hilltop commune above a drained lake basin, where Italy's oldest continuous wine fair has poured Groppello since 1947.
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From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover
Giano dell'Umbria
Province: Perugia
A hill commune between Foligno, Spoleto and Todi, anchored by a Romanesque abbey built over the tomb of a fourth-century martyr.
Assisi
Province: Perugia
A pink limestone town at 424 meters on the western flank of a mountain above the plain, the birthplace of Francis and a UNESCO site since 2000.
Servigliano
Province: Fermo
An eighteenth-century ideal city at 215 meters in the Tenna valley, rebuilt by papal commission on a 137-by-144-meter quadrangle after the old hill village collapsed.
Labro
Province: Rieti
A 355-person stone borgo at 628 meters, restored since the 1960s by a Belgian architect and his descendants.
San Nicola Arcella
Province: Cosenza
A cliff village above the Tyrrhenian Riviera dei Cedri, where a sea arch fronts a cove only reachable on foot or by boat.