Region
Abruzzo
Abruzzo's 73 towns in our catalogue split across the L'Aquila, Chieti, and Teramo provinces; 34 carry the Parco Nazionale designation.
73 towns · highest: Pescocostanzo 1,395m · smallest: Montelapiano 75 people
73 of 73 towns
73 of 73 towns
Alba Adriatica
Province: Teramo
The northernmost of the Teramo coast's seven sisters, a 1956 spin-off from Tortoreto with a fine-sand beach known as the Spiaggia d'Argento.
Alfedena
Province: L'Aquila
At 914 meters at the head of the upper Sangro valley, the Samnite Aufidena, with a 15,000-tomb necropolis and a Roman conquest in 298 BC.
Anversa degli Abruzzi
Province: L'Aquila
At 604 meters above the Sagittario Gorges, a cliff village built around a Norman castle rebuilt by the Counts of Sangro.
Archi
Province: Chieti
A 492-meter rocky spur called the Terrazza sul Sangro, fief of del Balzo, Cantelmo, Colonna and Carafa, now Città del Tartufo and Città dell'Olio.
Atri
Province: Teramo
At 442 meters on three hills ten kilometers from the Adriatic, ancient Hadria, source of the emperor Hadrian's family name and the Adriatic's.
Balsorano
Province: L'Aquila
A pentagonal fortress above the Liri river that became a backdrop for 1970s Italian horror cinema.
Barrea
Province: L'Aquila
A 1,066-meter spur above an artificial lake at the heart of the Abruzzo National Park, with a Samnite necropolis and an 11th-century di Sangro castle.
Calascio
Province: L'Aquila
A village of 125 people under the highest castle in the Apennines, cast as the monk's refuge in Ladyhawke.
Campli
Province: Teramo
A 393-meter town under the Monti della Laga, held by the Farnese for two centuries, with a Scala Santa carrying papal indulgence.
Campo di Giove
Province: L'Aquila
At 1,064 meters under the southwestern Maiella, the highest village in the park, named for a Roman temple to Jupiter.
Capestrano
Province: L'Aquila
A hilltop village at 465 meters above the Tirino valley, where in 1934 a farmer turned up the 6th-century BC limestone Warrior of Capestrano.
Capistrello
Province: L'Aquila
At 734 meters where the upper Liri valley meets the Marsica, the village where an emperor's tunnel emptied a lake into a river.
Cappadocia
Province: L'Aquila
A 575-resident Marsican borgo at 1,102m in Abruzzo's western mountains, known for a cave system many mistake for the wrong country entirely.
Caramanico Terme
Province: Pescara
A 650-meter Majella spa village at the confluence of the Orfento and Orta rivers.
Carsoli
Province: L'Aquila
A 616-meter mountain town in the Marsica, built next to the ruins of a 4th-century BC Roman fortress town.
Casoli
Province: Chieti
A 378-meter hill town above the Aventino under the Maiella, with a pentagonal Norman tower that once hosted a court of artists.
Castel del Monte
Province: L'Aquila
At 1,346 meters under Monte Bolza facing Rocca Calascio, the capital of shepherds, whose wool reached the Medici and whose witches return each August.
Castel di Sangro
Province: L'Aquila
At 805 meters where the Sangro meets the Zittola, a Samnite-Roman town whose amateur football club reached Serie B and whose hilltop was fought over in 1943.
Castelvecchio Calvisio
Province: L'Aquila
118 people at 1,067 meters on a ridge above the Tirino, inside a fortified ellipse of stone walls with alleys orthogonal to its perimeter.
Castelvecchio Subequo
Province: L'Aquila
At 409 meters in the Subequana valley, the Roman Superaequum and Franciscan station where the saint himself was given land for a convent built between 1221 and 1261.
Città Sant'Angelo
Province: Pescara
A hilltop borgo at 320 meters between the Vestina hills and the Adriatic, named for the Archangel and known since 1352 as a Collegiata seat.
Civita d'Antino
Province: L'Aquila
At 904 meters above the Roveto valley, the ancient Marsi town that became a Danish painters' colony from 1883 until the 1915 earthquake.
Civitella Alfedena
Province: L'Aquila
At 1,123 meters above Lake Barrea, 285 residents, the trailhead for the Camosciara reserve and home of the Apennine Wolf Museum.
Civitella del Tronto
Province: Teramo
A rocky crest at 589 meters above the Tronto valley, crowned by the last Bourbon fortress to surrender to united Italy in March 1861.
Controguerra
Province: Teramo
A 267-meter hill village whose name is legal shorthand for a small Montepulciano and Trebbiano-Passerina DOC.
Corfinio
Province: L'Aquila
A village of under a thousand on the Peligna valley floor at 346 meters, sitting on the Italic League's would-be capital Italia.
Crecchio
Province: Chieti
A 209-meter hill town between the Adriatic and the Maiella, capital of Italy for one night in 1943 when the king slept in its castle.
Fara San Martino
Province: Chieti
A pasta-making town at 440 meters, where the Verde river runs out of a two-meter slot in the Majella wall.
Giulianova
Province: Teramo
Coastal town split between hilltop Paese at 68 meters and the Lido below, one rebuilt as a Renaissance ideal city, the other grown around a working fishing fleet.
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.
Guardiagrele
Province: Chieti
The 576-meter terrazza d'Abruzzo on the Majella's foothills, hometown of fifteenth-century goldsmith Nicola da Guardiagrele and seat of the Majella park.
Introdacqua
Province: L'Aquila
At 670 meters in the Valle Peligna, the spring-fed village whose Latin name means inside the waters, now a magnet for foreign residents.
Isola del Gran Sasso d'Italia
Province: Teramo
At 415 meters at the foot of a massif holding the Apennines' highest peak outside Sicily, the commune's sanctuary ranks among the world's fifteen most-visited Catholic shrines.
L'Aquila
Province: L'Aquila
The regional capital at 721 meters, founded by Frederick II around 1240 and still reconstructing after the 2009 earthquake.
Lama dei Peligni
Province: Chieti
A 669-meter Majella village known for chamois, the Cavallone cave, and a prehistoric burial dug from Fonterossi dated 7000 to 5000 BC.
Loreto Aprutino
Province: Pescara
A hilltop town at 290 meters in the Aprutino olive country, with a fourteenth-century Judgment fresco and a Castelli majolica collection.
Manoppello
Province: Pescara
A hill town above the Pescara river, custodian since 1620 of the byssus veil known as the Volto Santo.
Miglianico
Province: Chieti
A wine hill town at 125 meters between Pescara and the Adriatic, with the sanctuary of San Pantaleone above an unbroken horizon of vineyards.
Monteferrante
Province: Chieti
At 800 meters on a terrace above the Sangro valley, a 12th-century Caracciolo feud of 106 people facing the Maiella.
Montelapiano
Province: Chieti
At 740 meters on a limestone marl ridge in the middle Sangro valley, the smallest non-Alpine comune in Italy, population 67.
Morino
Province: L'Aquila
A village at 440 meters on the Lazio border, beneath the central Apennines' second-highest waterfall at over 80 meters.
Navelli
Province: L'Aquila
At 760 meters above the Navelli plain, the pyramid of stone houses growing the saffron a 13th-century Dominican brought from Spain.
Ofena
Province: L'Aquila
A 531-meter Vestian basin called the Forno d'Abruzzo, where Montepulciano ripens on what may be the oldest of its slopes.
Ovindoli
Province: L'Aquila
At 1,375 meters on the Altopiano delle Rocche, the closest serious ski station to Rome, working since 1959 on the slopes of Monte Magnola.
Pacentro
Province: L'Aquila
A medieval village at 650 meters under the Caldora castle towers, where every September a barefoot race honors a Madonna and a pop singer's grandparents.
Penne
Province: Pescara
The brick city at 438 meters between the Tavo and Fino, ancient capital of the Vestini, rebuilt after Allied bombing and awarded the Silver Medal of Civic Merit.
Pescasseroli
Province: L'Aquila
At 1,167 meters at the head of the Sangro valley, capital of Italy's oldest national park and birthplace of Benedetto Croce.
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.
Pescocostanzo
Province: L'Aquila
A planned Renaissance town at 1,395 meters on the Quarto Grande plateau, with bobbin lace, wrought iron, and the wood ceilings of a five-nave church.
Pettorano sul Gizio
Province: L'Aquila
At 656 meters above the Gizio river, a Cantelmo fortress town that guarded the gateway to the Peligna valley for four hundred years.
Pianella
Province: Pescara
A Cittaslow hill town at 236 meters between the Tavo and Pescara rivers, anchor of the Aprutino oil triangle and home of the dritta olive.
Pietracamela
Province: Teramo
A village of 218 people clinging at 1,005 meters under the north wall of Corno Piccolo, birthplace of Italian Apennine climbing in 1925.
Pineto
Province: Teramo
A planned twentieth-century beach town named for D'Annunzio's poem, with the sixteenth-century Cerrano tower anchoring Abruzzo's first marine protected area.
Pretoro
Province: Chieti
A village of 856 stacked at 530 meters on the eastern Maiella, where wolves live behind fencing and woodturners still work on Via Roma.
Rivisondoli
Province: L'Aquila
At 1,320 meters on the Cinque Miglia plateau, a village known for its Epiphany living nativity.
Rocca di Botte
Province: L'Aquila
At 750 meters on the Carseolani slopes between Abruzzo and Lazio, the birthplace of an eleventh-century hermit and a fief of the Colonna.
Rocca San Giovanni
Province: Chieti
A walled hill town at 155 meters, founded around 1060 by an abbot guarding the Abbey of San Giovanni in Venere.
Roccacasale
Province: L'Aquila
A village of 597 under the ruins of a castle blown up by Napoleon's army in 1803.
Roccamorice
Province: Pescara
A village at 520 meters in the Majella foothills, gateway to the rock-cut hermitages carved into the surrounding limestone.
Roccaraso
Province: L'Aquila
At 1,236 meters, the south of Italy's largest ski resort, leveled in 1943 and rebuilt from rubble.
Roseto degli Abruzzi
Province: Teramo
An Adriatic beach town of 25,500 with ten kilometers of low-rise sand, a hilltop frazione at 285 meters, and Blue Flags since 1995.
Sante Marie
Province: L'Aquila
A 950-meter Marsica village and the trailhead of the Cammino dei Briganti, the seven-day brigand trail through the Cartore band's territory.
Santo Stefano di Sessanio
Province: L'Aquila
A Medici outpost at 1,250 meters, restored building by building since 1999 into Italy's first scattered hotel.
Scanno
Province: L'Aquila
A 1,057-meter Sagittario valley village where women in black still walk the alleys photographed by Cartier-Bresson and Giacomelli.
Scontrone
Province: L'Aquila
A 1,038-meter borgo above the Sangro gorge, with two dozen emigration-themed murals and a paleontological site of European importance.
Scurcola Marsicana
Province: L'Aquila
At 700 meters below Monte San Nicola, the field where a medieval battle ended Swabian power in southern Italy.
Silvi
Province: Teramo
A split town on the Teramo coast, medieval Silvi Paese at 242 meters above a nine-kilometer beach that built itself on licorice in the 1930s.
Sulmona
Province: L'Aquila
At 405 meters in the Valle Peligna, birthplace of Ovid in 43 BC and home of the sugared-almond confetti industry since the 14th century.
Tagliacozzo
Province: L'Aquila
A Marsica town at 740 meters, built around a ducal palace and a battle that once decided the fate of southern Italy.
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.
Vasto
Province: Chieti
At 144 meters on a hill above the Adriatic, Vasto is home of the brodetto vastese, invented in 1800.
Villalago
Province: L'Aquila
A 930-meter village above three lakes, named for the nine that once filled the valley, with a hermit's cave on the water's edge.
Villetta Barrea
Province: L'Aquila
At 975 meters on the shore of Lake Barrea, a village inside the Abruzzo National Park where red deer walk the streets alongside residents.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover
Cicala
Province: Catanzaro
A village of 887 people at 829 meters, founded in 1616 by farmers asking for land.
Fossombrone
Province: Pesaro e Urbino
An inland Marchigiano town on the Metauro river, layered over a Roman colony with a Renaissance ducal court rising above it.
Bagnoli del Trigno
Province: Isernia
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.
Varenna
Province: Lecco
A fishing village founded in 769 on the Lecco arm of Lake Como, with a steep grid of streets falling into the water.
Rocca di Botte
Province: L'Aquila
At 750 meters on the Carseolani slopes between Abruzzo and Lazio, the birthplace of an eleventh-century hermit and a fief of the Colonna.