Region
Lombardy
Lombardy's 65 towns in our catalogue split across the Brescia, Bergamo, and Mantova provinces; 25 carry the Borghi più belli d'Italia designation.
65 towns · highest: Livigno 1,816m · smallest: Monteviasco 12 people
65 of 65 towns
65 of 65 towns
Angera
Province: Varese
A Lake Maggiore town on the southern shore, anchored by a fortified castle on a limestone spur above the water, with a museum trail running from prehistory to the medieval period along the waterfront.
Bagolino
Province: Brescia
A mountain village at 778 meters in the Valle del Caffaro, with a three-day February carnival of masked dancers and violins.
Bellagio
Province: Como
On the promontory where Lake Como splits into three arms, with Villa Serbelloni on the high ground and Villa Melzi on the western shore.
Bellano
Province: Lecco
An eastern shore town where the Pioverna cut a gorge through fifteen million years of rock before reaching the water.
Bergamo
Province: Bergamo
A two-city Lombard capital where a Venetian walled hilltown sits 85 meters above its modern twin on the plain, 45 kilometers northeast of Milan.
Bienno
Province: Brescia
A medieval ironworking village where water hammers driven by the Grigna stream have shaped wrought iron since the 1200s.
Bormio
Province: Sondrio
An Alpine spa town at 1,225 meters where three high passes meet and Roman thermal water has fed the baths for two thousand years.
Capriate San Gervasio
Province: Bergamo
The Bergamasco town that holds Crespi d'Adda, the late-nineteenth-century company village inscribed by UNESCO in 1995 as a model workers' settlement.
Cassinetta di Lugagnano
Province: Milano
A commune west of Milan with fifteen surviving ville di delizia and Italy's first zero-growth urban plan, adopted in 2007.
Castellaro Lagusello
Province: Mantova
A walled medieval borgo south of Lake Garda, ringed by 13th-century stone walls and overlooking a small heart-shaped natural lake that gives the village its second name and most-photographed silhouette.
Castione della Presolana
Province: Bergamo
A high-valley commune at 870 meters under the limestone peak the Bergamasque call the Queen of the Orobie.
Cernobbio
Province: Como
The town where Villa d'Este has been a luxury hotel since 1873.
Chiavenna
Province: Sondrio
An Alpine town at 333 meters on the Mera river, the historical Splügen Pass crossroads named for its key position and its rock-cellar crotti.
Cimbergo
Province: Brescia
A village of 533 at 851 meters above the Oglio, with castle ruins on a spur and UNESCO petroglyphs on the slopes below.
Clusone
Province: Bergamo
At 648 meters, capital of the macabre fresco and the 1583 planetary clock above its civic tower.
Cornello dei Tasso
Province: Bergamo
A car-free medieval frazione of Camerata Cornello in the Val Brembana, reachable only on foot, built around the family that ran Europe's first integrated postal network.
Curtatone
Province: Mantova
A commune of eight frazioni west of Mantova, anchored by the Grazie sanctuary and the 1848 battle that delayed Radetzky's advance.
Darfo Boario Terme
Province: Brescia
A spa town where the Oglio leaves the mountains for the plain, next to one of Italy's oldest rock-engraving sites.
Dervio
Province: Lecco
A peninsula on upper Lake Como's eastern shore at the Varrone delta, with a Romanesque bell tower and one of the lake's best sailing winds.
Fortunago
Province: Pavia
A 365-resident village on a 482-meter ridge, with stone façades, porphyry streets and the production zone of Salame di Varzi at its doorstep.
Gardone Riviera
Province: Brescia
A western Garda lakeshore town whose hillside holds an estate turned into a monument to one man's self-image.
Gorgonzola
Province: Milano
The town that gave its name to the cheese, a 21,000-resident commune 24 km east of Milan and the documented birthplace of Gorgonzola DOP since AD 879, now the eastern terminus of Milan's M2 metro line.
Gromo
Province: Bergamo
A medieval iron-forging town at 676 meters on a rock spur above the Serio, once called the little Toledo for its sword smiths.
Iseo
Province: Brescia
The main town on the southeast shore of Lake Iseo, gateway to the Franciacorta sparkling wine country.
Laveno-Mombello
Province: Varese
The eastern Lake Maggiore port town that produced Lombardia's industrial ceramics for a century, under the cliff that hangs over it.
Limone sul Garda
Province: Brescia
The northernmost lemon-growing town in the world, at 46 degrees north on the western shore of Lake Garda, reached by road only in 1932.
Livigno
Province: Sondrio
At 1,816 meters in the Italian Alps near the Swiss border, a duty-free ski valley that drains north into the Black Sea, not the Mediterranean.
Lonato del Garda
Province: Brescia
A hilltop commune on the southwestern Garda morainic ridge, with a Visconti castle and a private library of 52,000 volumes.
Lovere
Province: Bergamo
An amphitheater town at the north end of a Lombard lake, in Borghi più belli since 2003, holding Canova plasters inside the Accademia Tadini.
Madesimo
Province: Sondrio
A ski village at 1,550 meters at the head of Valle Spluga, with lifts to 2,880 meters and an off-piste descent rated among the hardest marked lines in the Italian Alps.
Manerba del Garda
Province: Brescia
A Valtenesi commune anchored by a limestone cliff that held a Roman temple to Minerva and a medieval fortress.
Mantova
Province: Mantova
A Gonzaga capital at 19 meters, encircled on three sides by lakes the Mincio formed in the twelfth century, UNESCO-listed together with Sabbioneta since 2008.
Menaggio
Province: Como
On the western shore of Lake Como at the mouth of the Senagra, the lake's old Roman crossing point between Como, Bellagio and the Valtellina.
Monte Isola
Province: Brescia
The largest lake island in southern and central Europe, 4.5 square kilometers in Lake Iseo, with no cars and eleven fishing villages on its shore.
Montesegale
Province: Pavia
A 258-person hill village at 400 meters, built around a castle that today holds a contemporary art collection.
Monteviasco
Province: Varese
A near-abandoned mountain frazione of Curiglia con Monteviasco at 928 metres above the Veddasca valley — historically reached only by an aerial cable-car since 1989 (since suspended) or a 1,400-step stone staircase, with permanent population in the single digits.
Monzambano
Province: Mantova
A Mincio commune at 88 meters in the moraine hills west of Mantova, whose frazione Castellaro Lagusello sits on a heart-shaped lake inside fortified walls.
Morimondo
Province: Milano
A Cistercian abbey village on the edge of the Ticino park, twenty-five kilometers southwest of Milano, founded by French monks in 1134.
Pizzighettone
Province: Cremona
A walled town on the Adda below Cremona, where Francis I of France was held for fifty days in the Torre del Guado after Pavia.
Polpenazze del Garda
Province: Brescia
A Valtenesi hilltop commune above a drained lake basin, where Italy's oldest continuous wine fair has poured Groppello since 1947.
Pomponesco
Province: Mantova
A Mantova river village at 21 meters on the Po's left bank, with a late-Cinquecento Gonzaga grid and arcaded central piazza.
Ponte di Legno
Province: Brescia
The uppermost commune in the province, 1,257 meters up, where two streams meet under the Adamello range to form a river.
Porto Ceresio
Province: Varese
The Italian port on the southern shore where the Swiss border runs through the water below Monte San Giorgio.
Predore
Province: Bergamo
A small village on the Bergamo shore, sitting on a Roman villa with intact thermal baths underneath.
Sabbioneta
Province: Mantova
A Renaissance ideal city on the Po, built in thirty years by Vespasiano I Gonzaga and laid out as a six-pointed star.
Salò
Province: Brescia
On the deepest gulf of the lake, with the longest waterfront promenade and the cathedral of the Riviera di Salò.
San Benedetto Po
Province: Mantova
A former river island whose entire existence traces back to the Benedictine abbey founded on it in 1007.
San Pellegrino Terme
Province: Bergamo
A Liberty-era spa town in the Val Brembana, built around sulfur springs that give the world its mineral water.
Sarnico
Province: Bergamo
A medieval lake town at the southern tip of Lago d'Iseo, where the Oglio leaves the lake and Liberty villas line the shore.
Sesto Calende
Province: Varese
The town at the southern tip of the lake where the Ticino starts toward the Po, the type site of the pre-Roman Golasecca culture.
Sirmione
Province: Brescia
A 4-kilometer peninsula reaching into the southern Garda, its tip closed by a fortified port and a Roman villa.
Solferino
Province: Mantova
The morainic hill where 300,000 soldiers met on 24 June 1859, the battle whose wounded gave Henry Dunant the idea of the Red Cross.
Soncino
Province: Cremona
A walled borgo on the Oglio, held by a brick Sforza fortress and a printing house that once worked in Hebrew.
Sondrio
Province: Sondrio
The capital of Valtellina at 307 meters, where Castel Masegra watches over terraced vineyards that produce Sassella and Grumello Nebbiolo.
Teglio
Province: Sondrio
A Valtellina hilltown at 856 metres whose Latin name gave the entire valley its own.
Tignale
Province: Brescia
A six-hamlet commune on a high terrace above Lake Garda's western shore, anchored by a clifftop sanctuary and the last working limonaie north of Salò.
Tirano
Province: Sondrio
A Valtellina town at 441 meters where a railway from across the border reaches Italy, beneath terraced Nebbiolo vineyards.
Torno
Province: Como
A medieval village on the eastern shore of Lake Como, built around a spring whose rhythm has drawn attention for centuries.
Toscolano-Maderno
Province: Brescia
Twin lakeside villages on the western shore of Garda, paper mill suppliers to the Republic of Venice from the 14th century onward.
Tremezzina
Province: Como
The 2014 merger of four Lake Como villages that holds Villa Carlotta, Isola Comacina and the UNESCO Sacro Monte di Ossuccio.
Tremosine sul Garda
Province: Brescia
A cliff-top commune of 18 frazioni, spread across a limestone plateau above the western shore of its lake.
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.
Varzi
Province: Pavia
A medieval Malaspina town at 416 meters in the Staffora valley of the Oltrepò Pavese, the seat of one of Italy's first DOP cured meats.
Volta Mantovana
Province: Mantova
A morainic hill town between Mantua and the countryside where a Renaissance palace was built inside a medieval castle.
Zavattarello
Province: Pavia
A Val Tidone borgo at 525 meters clinging to a ridge below a tenth-century Apennine fortress with walls four meters thick.
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.