Region
Piedmont
Piedmont's 65 towns in our catalogue split across the Cuneo, Verbano-Cusio-Ossola, and Alessandria provinces; 29 carry the Bandiera Arancione designation.
65 towns · highest: Usseaux 1,416m · smallest: Ostana 85 people
65 of 65 towns
65 of 65 towns
Acqui Terme
Province: Alessandria
A Roman spa town at 156 meters on the Bormida, where a sulphurous spring still surfaces at 74.5 degrees under an 1870 pavilion.
Agliè
Province: Torino
A Canavese borgo at 330 meters whose Castello Ducale, a UNESCO Savoy residence since 1997, has been held by the d'Agliè since 1259.
Alagna Valsesia
Province: Vercelli
A Walser village at 1,191 meters, at the head of the Valsesia, known to off-piste skiers worldwide.
Alba
Province: Cuneo
The Langhe capital at 172 meters on the Tanaro, world reference for white truffle and Nebbiolo, headquarters of Ferrero.
Arona
Province: Novara
A town at the southern tip of a lake, watched over by a colossus finished in 1698.
Avigliana
Province: Torino
A medieval Savoy town at 383 meters at the mouth of the Susa Valley, between two glacial lakes and the abbey on the mountain above.
Barolo
Province: Cuneo
A Langhe borgo at 301 meters whose Castello Falletti gave its name to the wine the Marchesi turned dry in the 1830s with Cavour's help.
Baveno
Province: Verbano-Cusio-Ossola
A lake town at 205 meters whose quarries supplied columns for Milan's cathedral and a major basilica in Rome.
Belgirate
Province: Verbano-Cusio-Ossola
A small Lake Maggiore village at 199 meters whose Chiesa Vecchia di Santa Maria has held its 11th-century Romanesque bell tower for nine hundred years.
Biella
Province: Biella
A wool city at 417 meters in the Alpine foothills, where the medieval Piazzo sits above the modern Piano, connected by a funicular since 1885.
Bra
Province: Cuneo
A Roero town at 290 meters where the world's first gastronomic university now teaches food systems.
Candelo
Province: Biella
A Biellese commune at 350 meters whose Ricetto, a 13th-century fortified shelter of two hundred stone cellule, is the best-preserved in Piedmont.
Canelli
Province: Asti
The Asti Spumante town at 157 meters in the Belbo valley, where 20 kilometers of underground tuff cellars hold millions of bottles at constant temperature.
Cannero Riviera
Province: Verbano-Cusio-Ossola
A commune of 900 on the western shore, fronted by three rocky islets whose Borromeo ruins are the town's signature view.
Cannobio
Province: Verbano-Cusio-Ossola
A medieval lake town at 214 meters on Maggiore's western shore, host to one of the largest Sunday markets on the lake.
Casale Monferrato
Province: Alessandria
The historic capital of the Marchesato del Monferrato at 116 meters on the Po, where the Paleologi castle and the Baroque synagogue still stand.
Castagnole delle Lanze
Province: Asti
An Asti hill town at 298 meters between Langhe and Monferrato, with two Baroque churches and a nineteenth-century astronomical tower.
Castiglione Falletto
Province: Cuneo
A Barolo hilltop commune in the Langhe, ringed by vineyards on both sides of its ridge.
Cella Monte
Province: Alessandria
A 465-person Monferrato Casalese borgo at 268 meters, built entirely from a sandstone found only here, riddled underneath with cellars carved into the same stone.
Cherasco
Province: Cuneo
A walled grid-plan town on the river terrace where the Stura di Demonte meets the Tanaro, on the western edge of the Langhe.
Chiusa di Pesio
Province: Cuneo
The valley mouth town at 575 meters where the Pesio leaves the mountains, founded around a Carthusian monastery donated in 1173.
Cocconato
Province: Asti
A Monferrato ridge town at 491 meters with a microclimate mild enough to grow palms and olives this far north.
Cortemilia
Province: Cuneo
An Alta Langa town at 247 meters split by the Bormida, capital of the Tonda Gentile di Langa hazelnut.
Dogliani
Province: Cuneo
A two-tier Langhe town at 295 meters, the Borgo by the Rea stream and the Castello on the hill, capital of Dolcetto di Dogliani DOCG.
Domodossola
Province: Verbano-Cusio-Ossola
The Ossola capital at 272 meters at the foot of the Simplon Pass.
Fenestrelle
Province: Torino
A village below the largest alpine fortress in Europe, three kilometers of stone climbing the ridge above it.
Garbagna
Province: Alessandria
A borgo at 270 meters with tall Ligurian-style houses, held together by narrow stone streets and carved portals.
Garessio
Province: Cuneo
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.
Gattinara
Province: Vercelli
The Alto Piemonte Nebbiolo town on volcanic soil between the Sesia and Monte Rosa, DOCG since 1990, with a tenth-century watchtower above the vines.
Gavi
Province: Alessandria
The Cortese di Gavi town below a Genoese star fortress, where Piemonte white wine was first recorded as Ligurian court tribute in 972.
Ghiffa
Province: Verbano-Cusio-Ossola
A Lake Maggiore lakeside village facing the Lombard shore, with a UNESCO sanctuary on the slope above it and a century of hat-making behind it.
Govone
Province: Cuneo
A Roero hill village above the Tanaro, between Alba and Asti, built around a Savoy summer residence turned town hall.
Gozzano
Province: Novara
The town at the southern tip of Lake Orta, marked by a basilica and a twelfth-century signaling tower above the water.
Grinzane Cavour
Province: Cuneo
The Langhe village whose eleventh-century castle was Cavour's mayoral seat for seventeen years and now hosts the November Alba White Truffle World Auction.
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.
Ivrea
Province: Torino
Roman Eporedia, Olivetti's twentieth-century industrial city, UNESCO since 2018, where every February three hundred tons of oranges are thrown.
La Morra
Province: Cuneo
The hilltop above the Barolo zone, more Nebbiolo acreage than any other commune.
Limone Piemonte
Province: Cuneo
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.
Macugnaga
Province: Verbano-Cusio-Ossola
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.
Mergozzo
Province: Verbano-Cusio-Ossola
A village on the western shore of a small lake cut off from its larger neighbor by river sediment, with a centuries-old elm on its lakefront piazza.
Mombaldone
Province: Asti
A walled village of 197 residents, the only borgo in its area that still holds its full medieval perimeter.
Moncalvo
Province: Asti
Italy's smallest city by title, 2,730 residents on a Monferrato ridge, with a five-hundred-year truffle tradition and Guglielmo Caccia's home churches.
Monforte d'Alba
Province: Cuneo
A Barolo cru village at 480 meters where the Cathars were burned in 1028 and where the summer jazz festival fills the old piazza.
Neive
Province: Cuneo
A hilltop borgo at 308 meters in the Barbaresco zone, named for the Roman gens Naevia, with four wines in commercial volume.
Nizza Monferrato
Province: Asti
The capital of Barbera at 267 meters in the upper Monferrato, founded 1225.
Omegna
Province: Verbano-Cusio-Ossola
The Lake Orta town at 295 meters where Bialetti, Lagostina and Alessi turned a steel valley into Italy's household-goods capital.
Ormea
Province: Cuneo
A heart-shaped Ligurian-Alps borgo at 736 meters in the upper Tanaro valley, the southernmost town in Piemonte before the Imperia ridge.
Ornavasso
Province: Verbano-Cusio-Ossola
A Toce-valley town at 215 meters, marble quarry for a famous Milan cathedral and the southernmost Walser colony in the Ossola.
Orta San Giulio
Province: Novara
A promontory facing an islet basilica, with a UNESCO complex of Francis-of-Assisi chapels on the hill above.
Ostana
Province: Cuneo
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.
Ovada
Province: Alessandria
The Monferrato town at 186 meters where the Orba meets the Stura, the first Dolcetto DOC zone in Piemonte and now DOCG.
Racconigi
Province: Cuneo
A Po-plain town south of Torino built around the UNESCO Castello Reale, the Carignano Savoy residence whose park holds Italy's largest white-stork colony.
Ronco Canavese
Province: Torino
A 271-inhabitant Francoprovenzale village at 956 meters on the Piemonte side of the Gran Paradiso National Park.
Santo Stefano Belbo
Province: Cuneo
A Belbo valley village at 175 meters between the Langhe and Asti hills, birthplace of Cesare Pavese and the largest producer of Moscato d'Asti.
Serralunga d'Alba
Province: Cuneo
A 527-inhabitant Barolo cru village at 414 meters on a Langhe ridge, crowned by a 14th-century French-style donjon castle of the Falletti.
Serralunga di Crea
Province: Alessandria
A commune of 503 holding the Sacro Monte di Crea, a UNESCO Sacri Monti site of 23 chapels around a Marian sanctuary.
Stresa
Province: Verbano-Cusio-Ossola
A Lake Maggiore resort town at 200 meters, facing the Borromean Islands and running the Settimane Musicali since 1962.
Susa
Province: Torino
The Roman gateway at 503 meters, seat of the Cozii under Augustus and Cottius.
Usseaux
Province: Torino
A Val Chisone village at 1,416 meters with four scattered borgate and more than forty murals painted across the stone facades.
Varallo
Province: Vercelli
The capital of Valsesia at 450 meters, crowned by a forty-five-chapel devotional complex on the rock above town.
Venaria Reale
Province: Torino
A Savoy town on the edge of Torino, built around the Reggia di Venaria, a UNESCO baroque palace with sixty hectares of gardens.
Verduno
Province: Cuneo
A Langhe hilltop at 381 meters, the home village of the Pelaverga grape.
Villar San Costanzo
Province: Cuneo
A Val Maira village at 605 meters, with a reserve of 479 mushroom-shaped erosion columns.
Vogogna
Province: Verbano-Cusio-Ossola
An Ossola medieval capital at 226 meters on the Toce, with a castle of 1348 and five centuries as seat of the lower valley's jurisdiction.
Volpedo
Province: Alessandria
A Colli Tortonesi village at 182 meters where the Divisionist painter Giuseppe Pellizza lived and died at thirty-eight in 1907.
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.