Mountain towns
Mountain towns in Marche
5 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
Arquata del Tronto
Province: Ascoli Piceno · 777 m
At 777 meters between two national parks, the Marche commune levelled by the 2016 earthquakes and still rebuilding nine years on.
Carpegna
Province: Pesaro e Urbino · 748 m
A Montefeltro mountain town under Monte Carpegna, home of the DOP prosciutto and the seventeenth-century Carpegna family seat.
San Ginesio
Province: Macerata · 680 m
The Balcony of the Sibillini at 680 meters, where a 1295 pilgrim hospital and the only flowery gothic collegiate church in the Marche stand within the same walls.
Camerino
Province: Macerata · 661 m
A university city at 661 meters on the ridge between the Chienti and Potenza, rebuilding after 2016.
Visso
Province: Macerata · 607 m
The northern Sibillini gate at 607 meters where the Nera meets the Ussita, holding one of two surviving manuscripts of Leopardi's L'Infinito.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns
Piancastagnaio
Province: Siena
A chestnut-belt borgo at 772 meters on the southern slope, where four contrade still race horses for the Palio every 18 August.
Oristano
Province: Oristano
The old capital of the Giudicato di Arborea, city of Eleonora and the Carta de Logu, host of Sa Sartiglia equestrian joust at Carnival.
Positano
Province: Salerno
The vertical village of the Amalfi Coast, terraced houses climbing four hundred meters to the Lattari ridge under an eighteenth-century majolica dome.
Guarene
Province: Cuneo
A Roero hilltop village at 360 meters above the Tanaro, whose Roero family baroque castle is now a luxury hotel and contemporary art destination.
Arrone
Province: Terni
Medieval castle village on the left bank of the Nera at 243 meters, upstream from the largest man-made waterfall in the world.