Mountain towns
Mountain towns in Piedmont
10 towns
Towns inside a named range: the Alps, the Dolomites, the Apennines, the Pollino, the Aspromonte. Around 800 metres and up, where the season decides the trip.
Usseaux
Province: Torino · 1,416 m
A Val Chisone village at 1,416 meters with four scattered borgate and more than forty murals painted across the stone facades.
Macugnaga
Province: Verbano-Cusio-Ossola · 1,327 m
A Walser village at 1,327 meters at the foot of the east wall of Monte Rosa, founded in the 13th century by colonists from Valais.
Ostana
Province: Cuneo · 1,280 m
An 85-resident Occitan-speaking alpine borgo at 1,280m in the upper Po valley, rebuilt from near-abandonment into an architecturally celebrated mountain village with a direct frontal view of Monviso.
Alagna Valsesia
Province: Vercelli · 1,191 m
A Walser village at 1,191 meters, at the head of the Valsesia, known to off-piste skiers worldwide.
Fenestrelle
Province: Torino · 1,154 m
A village below the largest alpine fortress in Europe, three kilometers of stone climbing the ridge above it.
Limone Piemonte
Province: Cuneo · 1,000 m
A ski village at 1,000 meters in the Vermenagna valley, the southern end of the Alps where the Tenda tunnel drops toward the Côte d'Azur.
Ronco Canavese
Province: Torino · 956 m
A 271-inhabitant Francoprovenzale village at 956 meters on the Piemonte side of the Gran Paradiso National Park.
Ormea
Province: Cuneo · 736 m
A heart-shaped Ligurian-Alps borgo at 736 meters in the upper Tanaro valley, the southernmost town in Piemonte before the Imperia ridge.
Garessio
Province: Cuneo · 621 m
A four-borgo medieval town at 621 meters on the Liguria-Piemonte border, built on the salt road and the source of the Acqua San Bernardo.
Villar San Costanzo
Province: Cuneo · 605 m
A Val Maira village at 605 meters, with a reserve of 479 mushroom-shaped erosion columns.
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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.