Region

Calabria

Calabria's 45 towns in our catalogue split across the Cosenza, Catanzaro, and Reggio di Calabria provinces; 16 carry the Borghi più belli d'Italia designation.

45 towns · highest: San Giovanni in Fiore 1,049m · smallest: Alessandria del Carretto 357 people

45 of 45 towns

45 of 45 towns

Aiello Calabro
Province: Cosenza
A hilltop borgo at 502 meters in the Tyrrhenian hinterland of Cosenza, ruled for two centuries by the Cybo-Malaspina from Massa Carrara.
Aieta
Province: Cosenza
An eagle's-nest village in the western Pollino, with one of the few sixteenth-century Renaissance palazzi standing in Calabria.
Albidona
Province: Cosenza
A hill village at 810 meters between the Pollino and the Ionian, identified by ancient writers as Leutarnia, the city founded by Calchas after Troy.
Alessandria del Carretto
Province: Cosenza
The highest village in the Pollino at 1,043 meters, the only Italian commune carrying its founder's full name, with a fir-tree ritual every 3 May.
Altomonte
Province: Cosenza
A hill town in the Esaro valley built around the highest Gothic-Angevin church in Calabria.
Badolato
Province: Catanzaro
A medieval borgo of thirteen churches at 240 meters above the Ionian, which took in 350 Kurdish refugees in 1997 and started its own slow rebirth.
Bagnara Calabra
Province: Reggio di Calabria
A swordfish town on the Costa Viola where boats with lookout masts still hunt the Strait, and the IGP torrone has been made by hand since the eighteenth century.
Belvedere Marittimo
Province: Cosenza
A Riviera dei Cedri town on the Tyrrhenian, its castle set on the highest coastal hill above a convent that has kept a saint's relics for three centuries.
Bova
Province: Reggio di Calabria
The capital of the Bovesìa, a 416-resident Aspromonte hilltop borgo at 820m and the cultural centre of the Grecanic minority, where the Calabrian-Greek dialect descended from Byzantine-era Greek is still spoken by elders.
Caccuri
Province: Crotone
A 646-meter Presila borgo dominated by a sixth-century Byzantine castle with a cylindrical tower built in 1882, birthplace of Renaissance statesman Cicco Simonetta.
Cariati
Province: Cosenza
A walled Ionian fishing town on the Saracen Coast, its ramparts among the most intact in southern Italy.
Cerchiara di Calabria
Province: Cosenza
A village at 650 meters below a mountain rock sanctuary, with a sulphurous cave feeding the thermal springs beneath it.
Cicala
Province: Catanzaro
A village of 887 people at 829 meters, founded in 1616 by farmers asking for land.
Cirò
Province: Crotone
A hill village at 351 meters above the Ionian, the historic heart of Calabria's oldest wine appellation.
Corigliano-Rossano
Province: Cosenza
The Sibari plain city merged in 2018 from two older towns, one built around a Norman castle and the other around a Byzantine manuscript tradition.
Fiumefreddo Bruzio
Province: Cosenza
A Tyrrhenian hill town under Monte Cocuzzo, with a thirteenth-century castle frescoed in the 1990s.
Gerace
Province: Reggio di Calabria
A 470-meter conglomerate rock above the Locride, holding Calabria's largest cathedral.
Gizzeria
Province: Catanzaro
An Arbëreshë hill village at 600 meters above the Gulf of Sant'Eufemia, with kitesurf beaches and brackish lagoons on the Tyrrhenian below.
Isola di Capo Rizzuto
Province: Crotone
A promontory on the Ionian coast wrapped by Italy's largest marine reserve, with an Aragonese castle standing on a rock offshore.
Laino Borgo
Province: Cosenza
A village on the Lao river canyon, at the western entrance to Pollino National Park, known as Calabria's rafting capital.
Mendicino
Province: Cosenza
A silk-mill village at the foot of Monte Cocuzzo, ten kilometers from Cosenza, where water still drives the old spinning wheels.
Montegiordano
Province: Cosenza
A 619-meter hill town with a hunting castle and a centro storico turned into a gallery of murals.
Morano Calabro
Province: Cosenza
A conical hill of stone houses stacked under a Norman-Swabian castle at the southern gate of the Pollino, called Italy's nativity village.
Mormanno
Province: Cosenza
A Pollino mountain borgo at 840 meters between the Costa and Vernita ridges, known for lentils, white poverelli beans and the bocconotto pastry.
Oriolo
Province: Cosenza
A medieval borgo on a sandstone outcrop at 450 meters, on the eastern slopes of Pollino, twenty kilometers from the Ionian coast.
Parghelia
Province: Vibo Valentia
A 1,300-person village on the Costa degli Dei at 70 meters, four kilometers from Tropea and quieter than its famous neighbour.
Pizzo
Province: Vibo Valentia
A tuff-cliff town over the Gulf of Sant'Eufemia, where a king was shot in 1815 and the tartufo gelato was invented a century later.
Praia a Mare
Province: Cosenza
A Tyrrhenian beach town in the Gulf of Policastro, backed by mountains and facing an offshore island.
Riace
Province: Reggio di Calabria
A 300-meter borgo on the Locride hills, famous for the 1972 bronzes pulled from its sea and the refugee resettlement project that doubled its population.
Rocca Imperiale
Province: Cosenza
Frederick II's Hohenstaufen fortress at the Calabria–Basilicata border, a Borgo più Bello d'Italia perched on a hill above the Ionian coast, with the castello at the summit and the locally-grown limone di Rocca Imperiale IGP scenting the orchards.
Roseto Capo Spulico
Province: Cosenza
A castle on a rock above the Ionian, in a village that began as a satellite of Sybaris in the seventh century BC.
San Benedetto Ullano
Province: Cosenza
An Arbëreshë village at 460 meters in the hills west of Cosenza, where the Byzantine rite is still sung.
San Giovanni in Fiore
Province: Cosenza
The capital of the Sila Grande at 1,049 meters, Italy's most populated commune above a thousand.
San Nicola Arcella
Province: Cosenza
A cliff village above the Tyrrhenian Riviera dei Cedri, where a sea arch fronts a cove only reachable on foot or by boat.
Santa Severina
Province: Crotone
A tufa-rock stone ship between the Sila and the Ionian, holding the only Byzantine baptistery still standing in Calabria.
Saracena
Province: Cosenza
A 606-meter Pollino borgo named for its Saracen souk and protected by Slow Food for a passito Moscato traced to the sixteenth century.
Scilla
Province: Reggio di Calabria
Homer's sea-monster headland on the Costa Viola, the Castello Ruffo on the cliff above Chianalea and the swordfish boats working the Strait below.
Serrastretta
Province: Catanzaro
The chair town of the Reventino massif, founded in 1383 in a narrow gorge between two mountain ranges, still weaving straw seats by hand.
Soverato
Province: Catanzaro
The wealthiest town per capita in Calabria, built around a white-sand stretch on the Ionian shore.
Spezzano della Sila
Province: Cosenza
A Sila plateau borgo at 800 meters, the gateway to the national park and its high forests.
Stilo
Province: Reggio di Calabria
A Byzantine hilltown on the slope below a ruined Norman ridge, home to the tenth-century Cattolica and the legendary inspiration for Campanella's City of the Sun.
Taverna
Province: Catanzaro
A hilltown at the foot of a mountain plateau, its stone core arranged around a fifteenth-century Dominican church.
Trebisacce
Province: Cosenza
A Bronze Age plateau above the Ionian Sea whose name comes from the Greek for small table, with a Byzantine mother church below.
Tropea
Province: Vibo Valentia
Cliff town on a tufa headland over the Tyrrhenian Coast of the Gods, with a Norman monastery on a sea rock.
Villapiana
Province: Cosenza
An Ionian commune where the Sibari plain meets the first slopes rising toward Pollino.

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