Region
Umbria
Umbria's 47 towns in our catalogue split across the Perugia and Terni provinces; 31 carry the Borghi più belli d'Italia designation.
47 towns · highest: Monteleone di Spoleto 978m · smallest: Vallo di Nera 345 people
47 of 47 towns
47 of 47 towns
Acquasparta
Province: Terni
A hill town at 350 meters above the Naia valley, where a Renaissance duchy briefly became the seat of Europe's first scientific academy.
Allerona
Province: Terni
A stone borgo at 472 meters between the Paglia valley and the Valdichiana, an Orvieto outpost whose Monaldeschi castle fell to Charles V.
Amelia
Province: Terni
A pre-Roman hilltown ringed by polygonal walls, with ten barrel-vaulted Roman cisterns beneath its main square.
Arrone
Province: Terni
Medieval castle village on the left bank of the Nera at 243 meters, upstream from the largest man-made waterfall in the world.
Assisi
Province: Perugia
A pink limestone town at 424 meters on the western flank of a mountain above the plain, the birthplace of Francis and a UNESCO site since 2000.
Bettona
Province: Perugia
A hill town at 353 meters between the Topino and Chiascio rivers, the only Etruscan settlement ever built east of the Tiber.
Bevagna
Province: Perugia
Roman Mevania on the Umbrian plain at 225 meters, four medieval quarters that compete every June in a reconstructed market of the 13th century.
Campello sul Clitunno
Province: Perugia
Springs of the Clitunno and the Lombard Tempietto on the valley floor at 290 meters, the temple inscribed by UNESCO in 2011.
Cascia
Province: Perugia
Santa Rita's town at 653 meters in the upper Valnerina, in the seismic corner of Umbria that the 2016 earthquake reopened.
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Castiglione del Lago
Province: Perugia
Trasimeno's western promontory, once the lake's fourth island, fortified in 1247 and later frescoed for a marquis of Corgna.
Citerna
Province: Perugia
A medieval borgo at 480 meters above the upper Tiber valley, holding the only sculpture by Donatello in Umbria.
Città della Pieve
Province: Perugia
A red-brick hill town at 508 meters above the Valdichiana, the birthplace of Perugino and the home of Italy's narrowest alley.
Città di Castello
Province: Perugia
A walled town of 38,000 in the upper Tiber valley where Raphael painted his first independent commissions and the white truffle season is the year's headline food event.
Corciano
Province: Perugia
A walled medieval castello at 408 meters eight kilometers west of Perugia, where Saint Francis stopped on his way back from a Lent spent fasting on the island in 1223.
Deruta
Province: Perugia
A hill town at 218 meters on the left bank of the Tiber, the maiolica capital of central Italy since the late thirteenth century.
Foligno
Province: Perugia
A valley town at 235 meters on the Topino, where Dante's Divine Comedy was first printed in 1472.
Fossato di Vico
Province: Perugia
A medieval village on Mount Mutali at 581 meters, where the Via Flaminia's Roman waystation Hellvillum became a tenth-century castle still threaded by covered alleyways.
Giano dell'Umbria
Province: Perugia
A hill commune between Foligno, Spoleto and Todi, anchored by a Romanesque abbey built over the tomb of a fourth-century martyr.
Gubbio
Province: Perugia
Pre-Roman Ikuvium of the Umbri, where seven bronze tablets carry the longest text of the Umbrian language.
Lugnano in Teverina
Province: Terni
A ridge town at 441 meters above the lower Tiber valley, with a 1230 Romanesque collegiata and a late-Roman infant cemetery on the hill below.
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Magione
Province: Perugia
A hill town east of Trasimeno built around a medieval Order's fortified base.
Massa Martana
Province: Perugia
Umbria's Via Flaminia BPB — a 3,613-resident borgo on the original Roman consular road between Rome and Rimini, with the intact 9th-c Abbazia dei Santi Fidenzio e Terenzio above town, a network of Roman-era catacombe Cristiane (Catacombe di Villa San Faustino, the only ones in Umbria), and the Borghi più belli inscription restored after the 1997 Marche-Umbria earthquake.
Monte Castello di Vibio
Province: Perugia
A fifteenth-century walled village at 422 meters above the Tiber, home to the world's smallest all'italiana theatre with 99 seats.
Monte Santa Maria Tiberina
Province: Perugia
An imperial-fief borgo at 688 meters, held by the Bourbon del Monte marquises from 1250 to 1815.
Montecchio
Province: Terni
A small hill commune at 377 meters above the Tiber, sitting on top of one of Umbria's largest Etruscan-tied necropolises.
Montefalco
Province: Perugia
The hilltop wine capital of Umbria at 472 meters, where Sagrantino is grown almost nowhere else.
Monteleone di Spoleto
Province: Perugia
A 555-resident hilltop borgo at 978m in the upper Nera valley, ranked among the Borghi più belli d'Italia, with a medieval castle for a skyline and a pilgrim route running through it.
Montone
Province: Perugia
A walled medieval hill town at 482 meters above the upper Tiber, birthplace of the condottiero Braccio Fortebracci.
Narni
Province: Terni
Narni is a hilltop town on a travertine outcrop above the Nera valley whose Latin name, Narnia, gave C.S. Lewis a word for a fictional kingdom he never set foot in.
Nocera Umbra
Province: Perugia
A hill town at 520 meters on the Apennine slope, leveled by the 1997 earthquake and rebuilt, with mineral springs flowing since the sixteenth century.
Norcia
Province: Perugia
Birthplace of San Benedetto at 604 meters on a Sibillini plateau, leveled by the 2016 earthquake and rebuilt stone by stone.
Orvieto
Province: Terni
Etruscan Velzna on a 325-meter tufa butte, later a medieval refuge of popes.
Paciano
Province: Perugia
Walled hill town of 957 people at 391 meters above the lake, three parallel streets, eight towers and three medieval gates intact.
Panicale
Province: Perugia
A walled hill town at 431 meters on Monte Petrarvella, where a 1505 Perugino fresco covers the back wall of San Sebastiano.
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Passignano sul Trasimeno
Province: Perugia
A near-peninsula on the northern shore of Lake Trasimeno, on the road Hannibal closed when he ambushed the Romans in 217 BC.
Pietralunga
Province: Perugia
A pre-Apennine hill town at 566 meters on the northeast Tiber ridge, ringed by truffle woods and white-potato fields.
Preci
Province: Perugia
A walled Valnerina village at 596 meters that ran Europe's leading school of surgery for three centuries until the 2016 quake brought the borgo down.
San Gemini
Province: Terni
A medieval borgo at 337 meters above ancient Roman paving, four kilometers below the ruins of Carsulae.
Scheggino
Province: Perugia
Triangular castle village on the banks of the Nera at 280 meters, where the first commercial Italian truffle company was founded in 1928.
Sellano
Province: Perugia
A medieval village in the upper Valnerina at 641 meters, twice flattened by earthquakes, now linked to Montesanto by Europe's highest pedestrian suspension bridge.
Spello
Province: Perugia
Augustan Hispellum sits at 280 meters on Monte Subasio, its Roman gates still standing over streets that Pinturicchio once painted a chapel for.
Spoleto
Province: Perugia
Lombard ducal capital at 396 meters under the Rocca Albornoziana, where a 230-meter aqueduct bridge crosses to Monteluco and Menotti founded the Festival in 1958.
Stroncone
Province: Terni
A walled medieval borgo at 451 meters eight kilometers south of Terni, with a Franciscan convent traditionally founded by Francis himself in 1213.
Todi
Province: Perugia
A walled hill town at 398 meters on the Tiber, with Etruscan, Roman, and medieval rings stacked one above the other.
Torgiano
Province: Perugia
A walled river town at 219 meters at the confluence of the Tiber and the Chiascio, the first DOC and DOCG zone in Umbria.
Trevi
Province: Perugia
A walled town at 412 meters above the Spoleto valley, ringed by 200,000 olive trees that make it the Umbrian capital of olive oil.
Vallo di Nera
Province: Perugia
Castle village of 345 people at 467 meters in the upper Valnerina, granted by Spoleto in 1217 and barely changed since.
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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.