Mountain towns
Mountain towns in Lazio
10 towns
Towns inside a named range: the Alps, the Dolomites, the Apennines, the Pollino, the Aspromonte. All above 500 meters and half above 800, where the season decides the trip.
The towns
Collalto Sabino
Province: Rieti · 980 m
A 980-meter Sabine borgo dominated by a Barberini baronial castle, with a 360-degree panorama from the keep.
Capranica Prenestina
Province: Roma · 915 m
A 915-meter ridge village east of Rome, with a sanctuary above the Giovenzano valley at 1,018 meters.
Orvinio
Province: Rieti · 840 m
The highest borgo in the Monti Lucretili park at 840 meters, called Canemorto until 1863.
Castel San Pietro Romano
Province: Roma · 763 m
A 763-meter hill village above Palestrina, built on the acropolis of ancient Praeneste and inside the Colonna fortress walls.
Fiuggi
Province: Frosinone · 747 m
The Ernici-mountain thermal town where Boniface VIII and Michelangelo both came to dissolve kidney stones with the oligomineral spring water.
San Donato Val di Comino
Province: Frosinone · 728 m
A medieval village at 728 meters at the gateway to Forca d'Acero, the pass into the Abruzzo National Park.
Picinisco
Province: Frosinone · 725 m
A medieval village at 725 meters on the eastern edge of Lazio, the source of much of Italo-Scottish emigration.
Greccio
Province: Rieti · 705 m
A 705-meter borgo on a ridge above the Rieti valley, built around the cave of the first living nativity scene.
Labro
Province: Rieti · 628 m
A 346-person stone borgo at 628 meters, restored since the 1960s by a Belgian architect and his descendants.
Castel di Tora
Province: Rieti · 607 m
A village of 273 on Lago del Turano at 607 meters, with an eleventh-century polygonal tower and a ghost promontory called Antuni.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns
Tocco da Casauria
Province: Pescara
A 356-meter hill town between the Pescara river and the Maiella, built around a Carolingian abbey and an herb liqueur called Centerba.
Bisceglie
Province: Barletta-Andria-Trani
An Adriatic port town between Trani and Molfetta, named for Roman watchtowers, with five dolmens around it and a Norman cathedral begun in 1073.
Ferrara
Province: Ferrara
A Renaissance capital planned on a grid rather than grown by accident, small enough to cross by bicycle in twenty minutes, and ringed by walls that still stand whole.
Piano di Sorrento
Province: Napoli
The quieter Sorrentine plain four kilometers from Sorrento, autonomous since 1808, with prehistoric Gaudo pottery and a black-sand marina at the foot of the cliff.
Monte Castello di Vibio
Province: Perugia
A fifteenth-century walled village at 422 meters above the Tiber, home to the world's smallest all'italiana theater with 99 seats.