Hill towns
Hill towns in Molise
10 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.
Scapoli
Province: Isernia · 668 m
Italy's zampogna bagpipe capital: a 586-resident borgo in the Mainarde at 668m, with a centuries-old tradition of hand-building the zampogna and the Bandiera Arancione plus national park signals.
Bagnoli del Trigno
Province: Isernia · 661 m
The 'Pearl of Molise', a 637-resident borgo built into and around a massive limestone outcrop above the Trigno valley, with a medieval castle rebuilt on its summit.
Roccavivara
Province: Campobasso · 652 m
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.
Fornelli
Province: Isernia · 530 m
A walled medieval borgo at 530 meters with seven towers and the birthplace of Nancy Pelosi's mother, eight kilometers west of Isernia.
Civitacampomarano
Province: Campobasso · 520 m
The Molisan ghost-borgo of 302 residents that turned its abandoned centro storico into an open-air street-art village.
Isernia
Province: Isernia · 423 m
A provincial capital on a 423-meter rock spine, with a Paleolithic site dated 700,000 years and a thirteenth-century public fountain.
Guglionesi
Province: Campobasso · 369 m
A 369-meter hill town between the Biferno and Trigno valleys, founded by the Frentani in the fifth century BC and looking out toward the Adriatic.
Larino
Province: Campobasso · 341 m
A Frentani and Roman town of 341 meters in the lower Biferno valley, where a Roman arena and a Gothic cathedral stand a short walk apart.
Guardialfiera
Province: Campobasso · 285 m
A hilltop village at 285 meters above the largest artificial lake in Molise.
Venafro
Province: Isernia · 222 m
A 222-meter town near the Lazio border where an emperor founded a colony and Pliny called the local oil the best in the Empire.
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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.