Region
Sardinia
Sardinia's 40 towns in our catalogue split across the Nuoro, Sassari, and Oristano provinces; 13 carry the Borghi Autentici designation.
40 towns · highest: Fonni 1,000m · smallest: Montresta 438 people
40 of 40 towns
40 of 40 towns
Aggius
Province: Sassari
A Gallura granite village at 514 meters under the Monti di Aggius, with the largest ethnographic museum in Sardegna and three centuries of bandit history.
Alghero
Province: Sassari
The Catalan city of northwest Sardinia, repopulated by Peter IV of Aragon in 1354.
Aritzo
Province: Nuoro
A Mandrolisai mountain village at 800 meters in chestnut and hazelnut forest, where snow once travelled out in straw and came back as lemon sorbet.
Atzara
Province: Nuoro
A Mandrolisai wine village on the western Gennargentu, painted in the early twentieth century by Spanish costumbristas and the Sardinian Scuola di Atzara.
Badesi
Province: Sassari
A Gallura commune founded by shepherding families in the 1700s, its territory running from a hilltop village down to eight kilometers of dunes at the Coghinas river mouth.
Barumini
Province: Sud Sardegna
A Marmilla village whose nuraghe became Sardegna's first UNESCO site.
Baunei
Province: Nuoro
A village at 480 meters on the Monte Santo limestone ridge, its territory holding a national-monument beach and a trek regularly called Italy's hardest.
Bosa
Province: Oristano
A colour-washed riverside town on Sardinia's only navigable river, with a Malaspina castle on the hill and the tanneries of Sas Conzas along the Temo.
Calasetta
Province: Sud Sardegna
The Ligurian town founded by Tabarka exiles in 1770 on the northwest tip of Sant'Antioco, where Tabarchino is still spoken in the streets.
Carloforte
Province: Sud Sardegna
A Ligurian-speaking fishing town on the Isola di San Pietro, founded in 1738 by coral fishers returning from Tunisian Tabarka.
Castelsardo
Province: Sassari
A Doria sea fortress at 114 meters above the Gulf of Asinara, Genoese from 1100, Aragonese from 1448, Savoyard from the 1700s.
Cuglieri
Province: Oristano
A Montiferru town at 428 meters, with the first minor basilica in Sardegna above it and the ruins of Punic Cornus below.
Dorgali
Province: Nuoro
A Supramonte town at 387 meters, with a coastal frazione, a Nuragic village hidden in a sinkhole, and a limestone gorge cut through the massif to the south.
Fonni
Province: Nuoro
The highest village in Sardinia at 1,000 meters on the Gennargentu, with ski lifts climbing above the town and the Madonna dei Martiri sanctuary at its edge.
Galtellì
Province: Nuoro
Grazia Deledda's 'Canne al vento' set: a 2,354-resident Baronia borgo in Sardinia's northeast, with the entire centro recognised as the Parco Letterario Grazia Deledda for being the literal setting of her 1913 Nobel-trajectory novel.
Gavoi
Province: Nuoro
A 777-meter Barbagia hilltop village above Lake Gusana with a Bandiera Arancione of the Touring Club, the country's most-attended summer literary festival (L'Isola delle Storie), and the PDO Fiore Sardo pecorino made here for at least three centuries.
Iglesias
Province: Sud Sardegna
Sardinia's medieval mining capital: a 25,000-resident Pisan-Aragonese walled town in the Sulcis-Iglesiente metalliferous district, with an intact Gothic centro storico and UNESCO-recognised mining heritage at Monteponi just outside town.
Jerzu
Province: Nuoro
The Cannonau capital of Ogliastra, perched at 450 meters in the eastern Ogliastra interior.
La Maddalena
Province: Sassari
The only inhabited town of a sixty-island granite archipelago between Sardinia and Corsica, and the place Giuseppe Garibaldi chose to die.
Mamoiada
Province: Nuoro
The Barbagia village where the Mamuthones come out on January 17, twelve men in black sheepskins carrying thirty kilos of cowbells.
Masullas
Province: Oristano
A Marmilla village at 129 meters where a 17th-century Capuchin convent houses fossils, minerals, and volcanic history.
Montresta
Province: Oristano
A Planargia hill village of 438 people founded in 1746 by Maniot Greek families who left Corsica for new land in Sardinia.
Oliena
Province: Nuoro
A Supramonte village at the foot of the massif's highest peak, source of Cannonau Nepente, base camp for Tiscali and the Lanaitto valley.
Orgosolo
Province: Nuoro
A Barbagia village at 620 meters with over 150 political murals painted on its walls since the 1969 Pratobello revolt.
Oristano
Province: Oristano
The old capital of the Giudicato di Arborea, city of Eleonora and the Carta de Logu, host of Sa Sartiglia equestrian joust at Carnival.
Orosei
Province: Nuoro
A small Baroque town at 19 meters in the Cedrino valley, two kilometers from the limestone gulf whose southern coves are reached only by boat.
Orroli
Province: Sud Sardegna
A Sarcidano village at 550 meters on the Pranemuru basalt plateau, home of the Nuraghe Arrubiu, the only five-tower nuraghe in Sardinia.
Palau
Province: Sassari
The Gallura port with a weather-shaped granite bear on the headland that gave the town its emblem.
Posada
Province: Nuoro
The capital of the Baronia, a 3,000-person village on a 71-meter rock with a 13th-century tower over the valley.
Sadali
Province: Sud Sardegna
A Barbagia di Seulo borgo at 750 meters with the only waterfall in Sardegna that drops through the inhabited centre.
Samugheo
Province: Oristano
Sardinia's textile-weaving capital: a 2,757-resident Mandrolisai borgo where the MURATS regional textile museum, the Tessingiu woven-art biennale, and an active community of weavers on traditional looms keep a knot-stitch tradition alive.
Santa Teresa Gallura
Province: Sassari
The northernmost town in Sardinia, founded in 1808 on a Turin-style grid above the Strait of Bonifacio and 11 kilometers from Corsica.
Santu Lussurgiu
Province: Oristano
A Montiferru village at 503 meters where the Carnival horse race runs through a steep stone street and saddlery has been made since 1923.
Sardara
Province: Sud Sardegna
A Campidano thermal town where Nuragic well-temples, Roman Aquae Neapolitanae and a hilltop Arborea castle share the same hot springs.
Sedini
Province: Sassari
A 1,245-resident Anglona borgo built around a prehistoric rock-cut tomb complex carved into a limestone outcrop inside the village itself, later reused as a Romanesque church and now a small museum.
Seneghe
Province: Oristano
An olive-oil village on the eastern slope of Montiferru, 25 km from Oristano, that doubles as Sardegna's poetry capital each September.
Stintino
Province: Sassari
The northernmost tip of north-west Sardinia and the gateway to Asinara National Park, fronted by a shallow-shelf beach under an Aragonese watchtower.
Tempio Pausania
Province: Sassari
The granite capital of Gallura at the foot of Monte Limbara, known for cork, Vermentino DOCG and the largest Carnival in northern Sardinia.
Tortolì
Province: Nuoro
Co-capital of Ogliastra on the central-east coast, paired with the port of Arbatax and its red porphyry cliffs.
Ulassai
Province: Nuoro
The highest village in Ogliastra, at 775 meters on a ledge beneath the Tacchi.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover
Fonni
Province: Nuoro
The highest village in Sardinia at 1,000 meters on the Gennargentu, with ski lifts climbing above the town and the Madonna dei Martiri sanctuary at its edge.
Lerici
Province: La Spezia
A fishing harbour under a Pisan-Genoese castle, with the frazione of Tellaro hanging over the rocks at the commune's southern edge.
Posada
Province: Nuoro
The capital of the Baronia, a 3,000-person village on a 71-meter rock with a 13th-century tower over the valley.
Sadali
Province: Sud Sardegna
A Barbagia di Seulo borgo at 750 meters with the only waterfall in Sardegna that drops through the inhabited centre.
Cassano delle Murge
Province: Bari
A Murge foothills town at 341 meters at the gate of the Alta Murgia park, with the 1,300-hectare Foresta Mercadante mostly inside its territory.