Region
Sicily
Sicily's 61 towns in our catalogue split across the Palermo, Messina, and Catania provinces; 27 carry the Riserva Naturale designation.
61 towns · highest: Petralia Soprana 1,147m · smallest: Sperlinga 674 people
61 of 61 towns
61 of 61 towns
Aci Castello
Province: Catania
A coastal town just north of Catania on the Riviera dei Ciclopi, where the basalt headland holds the 1076 Norman Castello d'Aci and the seven volcanic Faraglioni dei Ciclopi rise from the sea, the rocks the Cyclops threw at Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey.
Agira
Province: Enna
Birthplace of the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus and burial site of 490 Canadian soldiers of the 1943 campaign.
Buccheri
Province: Siracusa
The highest village in the province of Syracuse, world capital of Tonda Iblea olive oil at the 2015 Sol d'Oro.
Calascibetta
Province: Enna
A promontory town at 691 meters facing Enna across a ravine, founded in the ninth century as a Muslim camp to besiege Byzantine Henna.
Caltagirone
Province: Catania
Sicily's ceramic capital at 611 meters on the Erei ridge, 142 majolica-tiled steps to Santa Maria del Monte and a Val di Noto UNESCO baroque rebuild.
Cammarata
Province: Agrigento
A Sicani town at 700 meters on the northeast slope of the peak that gives the comune its name and shape.
Castel di Lucio
Province: Messina
A Nebrodi village at 750 meters on the borderline of three provinces, with a Ventimiglia castle from 1090 and a Fiumara d'Arte sculpture by Paolo Schiavocampo.
Castelbuono
Province: Palermo
A Madonie town at 423 meters around the Ventimiglia castle, where manna is still tapped from ash trees and Fiasconaro bakes the panettone.
Castelmola
Province: Messina
A rock village at 529 meters directly above Taormina, the upper acropolis of ancient Tauromenium with a Norman castle and a 1947 almond-wine bar.
Castelvetrano
Province: Trapani
The Belice valley town that owns Selinunte, the largest archaeological park in Europe, and bakes black bread from grain found in its tombs.
Castiglione di Sicilia
Province: Catania
A hill town on the north flank of Etna at 621 meters, base camp for the Alcantara valley and the volcano's most serious red wines.
Castroreale
Province: Messina
A ridge town at 394 meters above the Milazzo plain, holding the royal name given to it in the fourteenth century and a second-place finish in the 2018 Borgo dei Borghi.
Catania
Province: Catania
Sicily's second city and the cultural anchor of the Ionian coast, a UNESCO late-Baroque centro storico rebuilt in lava-black stone after the 1693 earthquake, sitting at the foot of Etna with a 17th-century elephant fountain (U Liotru) as its civic symbol.
Cefalù
Province: Palermo
A Norman cathedral at the foot of a 270-meter rock on the Tyrrhenian coast, founded in 1131.
Corleone
Province: Palermo
A town of 10,364 in the Palermo hinterland that gave its name to Mario Puzo's Don Vito and now runs Italy's national antimafia documentation centre.
Erice
Province: Trapani
An Elymian mountaintop city at 751 meters above Trapani, with a Norman castle on the site of the temple of Venus Erycina and a Cold War physics centre.
Favignana
Province: Trapani
The largest of the Egadi Islands off western Sicily, ringed by calcarenite cliffs and flooded quarries in place of beaches, with a 19th-century tuna fishery at its center.
Ferla
Province: Siracusa
A baroque village at 500 meters on the Monte Lauro slopes, the western gateway to the UNESCO necropolis of Pantalica eleven kilometers downhill.
Forza d'Agrò
Province: Messina
A ridge village of 835 people at 420 meters above the Ionian, its Norman fortress silhouette gave the place its name centuries before a film crew arrived.
Gangi
Province: Palermo
A Madonie hill town stacked in concentric rings at 1,011 meters, RAI's Borgo dei Borghi 2014 and the launching pad for the one-euro-house programme.
Geraci Siculo
Province: Palermo
A Madonie ridge village at 1,077 meters, capital of the Ventimiglia marquisate from 1258 and the first marquisate granted in Sicily.
Giarre
Province: Catania
An Etna town that split from Mascali in 1815 and built a neoclassical duomo, with two bell towers framing the volcano behind it.
Ispica
Province: Ragusa
A Val di Noto Baroque hilltown on the southern Iblei plateau anchored by the 13-km Cava d'Ispica canyon with its 3,000+ rock-cut tombs and prehistoric dwellings, one of the largest cave-necropolis sites in the Mediterranean.
Lampedusa e Linosa
Province: Agrigento
Italy's southernmost comune, three islands on the African continental shelf, closer to Tunisia than to Sicily.
Lipari
Province: Messina
The largest Aeolian island and the only municipality that administers six of the seven, with a clifftop castle citadel rising above two harbors.
Marsala
Province: Trapani
Sicily's westernmost city, born from the Phoenician refugees of Mozia, where Garibaldi landed in 1860 and English merchants invented Marsala wine.
Menfi
Province: Agrigento
Sicily's triple-signal western coast town: 11,800 residents on a low ridge above 9 km of protected sand at Porto Palo, backed by cellars and olive groves that between them carry Italy's three major small-town quality marks.
Mezzojuso
Province: Palermo
An Arbëreshë village of two mother churches, one Latin, one Byzantine, whose Arabic name means the houses of Joseph.
Modica
Province: Ragusa
A vertical Baroque city in the Hyblean Mountains, rebuilt from the 1693 earthquake and home to a chocolate recipe brought from Aztec Mexico.
Monreale
Province: Palermo
Above the Conca d'Oro at 310 meters, the cathedral William II built between 1174 and 1182 holds 6,340 square meters of Norman mosaics.
Montalbano Elicona
Province: Messina
A Nebrodi castle town at 907 meters, Frederick III of Aragon's summer residence and gateway to the Argimusco megalithic plateau.
Nicolosi
Province: Catania
The southern gateway to Etna at 698 meters, twice destroyed by the 1669 eruption.
Nicosia
Province: Enna
A Byzantine-Norman royal city at 720 meters on four hills, one of Sicily's principal Gallo-Italic centres where the Lombard dialect nkoukkà still survives.
Noto
Province: Siracusa
The capital of Sicilian Baroque, rebuilt entirely in golden limestone after 1693.
Novara di Sicilia
Province: Messina
A stone village at 650 meters where the Peloritani meet the Nebrodi, with a UNESCO-listed cheese race tumbling down the main street at Carnival.
Pachino
Province: Siracusa
Sicily's southernmost town, on the Capo Passero promontory, and the name behind the Pomodoro di Pachino PGI cherry tomato.
Palazzolo Acreide
Province: Siracusa
An 8,000-resident hilltop town on the Iblei plateau at 670m, rebuilt entirely in late Baroque after the 1693 earthquake and founded over the Greek Akrai colony in 664 BC, with a Greek theatre and a cluster of rock carvings unlike anything else nearby.
Pantelleria
Province: Trapani
A volcanic island closer to Tunisia than Sicily, where dry-stone dammusi sit among bush-trained Zibibbo vines listed by UNESCO.
Petralia Soprana
Province: Palermo
The highest village in the Madonie at 1,147 meters, RAI Borgo dei Borghi 2018 winner, sitting above 80 kilometers of salt tunnels.
Petralia Sottana
Province: Palermo
A Madonie village at 1,000 meters, the only Bandiera Arancione in Sicily, and the headquarters of the Parco delle Madonie.
Piana degli Albanesi
Province: Palermo
The principal Arbëresh town of Sicily at 720 meters, founded in the fifteenth century by Albanians fleeing the Ottomans and still speaking arbëresh.
Polizzi Generosa
Province: Palermo
A Madonie town at 917 meters, hazelnut country and the birthplace of Domenico Dolce.
Ragusa
Province: Ragusa
Two cities split by a ravine on a Hyblean plateau at 502 meters, both rebuilt after 1693 and both UNESCO Baroque.
Randazzo
Province: Catania
A medieval town in black lava stone at 750 meters on Etna's north foot, with three quarter churches for Latins, Greeks and Lombards.
Realmonte
Province: Agrigento
The Agrigento coast commune with the white marl cliff of the Scala dei Turchi and a salt mine carved into 5-million-year-old halite.
Riposto
Province: Catania
The Ionian port whose name comes from the Sicilian for cellar, where the wine of Mascali and Giarre was stored before shipping.
Salemi
Province: Trapani
The Trapani hill town where Garibaldi raised the tricolor on 14 May 1860 and proclaimed Salemi the capital of Italy for a day.
Sambuca di Sicilia
Province: Agrigento
An Arab-founded hill town in the Belice valley, still called Zabut in living memory before 1923.
San Marco d'Alunzio
Province: Messina
A hilltop borgo at 540 meters in pink Aluntina marble, founded by the Greeks and later Robert Guiscard's first Sicilian base.
San Vito Lo Capo
Province: Trapani
A three-kilometer white-sand beach at Sicily's northwest tip, the town that turned cous cous into a September festival.
Sant'Alfio
Province: Catania
An Etna village at 537 meters where the world's largest and oldest chestnut tree has been measured at over 57 meters in girth.
Santa Cristina Gela
Province: Palermo
The smallest and youngest of Sicily's three Arbëreshë villages, founded in 1691 by 82 Albanian colonists from neighbouring Piana.
Savoca
Province: Messina
A hilltop borgo at 300 meters above the Ionian, its ridge lined with stepped lanes and balconied stone houses.
Sciacca
Province: Agrigento
A terraced fishing harbor on Sicily's southwestern coast, built on a spa town of the fifth century BC and a ceramics center since the fourteenth.
Siracusa
Province: Siracusa
Ortigia island, wrapped in honey-coloured Baroque stone, sits at the heart of the city Cicero called the most beautiful in the world, on the eastern Sicilian coast south of Catania.
Sortino
Province: Siracusa
The eastern gateway to UNESCO Pantalica at 438 meters in the Iblei, Sicily's city of honey and home of the stuffed Sortino pizzolo.
Sperlinga
Province: Enna
A sandstone borgo at 750 meters in the Nebrodi foothills where a Norman castle and dwellings are carved into the rock as one continuous mass.
Sutera
Province: Caltanissetta
A medieval village clinging to the base of a 800-meter monolith in the Nisseno interior, with an Arab quarter and a sanctuary on the summit.
Taormina
Province: Messina
A terrace on Monte Tauro above the Ionian, with Etna on the southern horizon.
Troina
Province: Enna
At 1,121 meters on the Nebrodi ridge, the first capital and first bishopric the Normans set up in Sicily after taking it from the Arabs.
Ustica
Province: Palermo
A volcanic island fifty-two kilometers north of Palermo with Italy's first marine protected area, lentil fields on lava, and a long memory as a prison.
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.