Designation
Bandiera Arancione
218 towns across 20 regions
Browse by region
Abruzzo4
Civitella Alfedena
Province: L'Aquila · 1,123 m
At 1,123 meters above Lake Barrea, 285 residents, the trailhead for the Camosciara reserve and home of the Apennine Wolf Museum.
Fara San Martino
Province: Chieti · 440 m
A pasta-making town at 440 meters, where the Verde river runs out of a two-meter slot in the Majella wall.
Lama dei Peligni
Province: Chieti · 669 m
A 669-meter Majella village known for chamois, the Cavallone cave, and a prehistoric burial dug from Fonterossi dated 7000 to 5000 BC.
Scanno
Province: L'Aquila · 1,057 m
A 1,057-meter Sagittario valley village where women in black still walk the alleys photographed by Cartier-Bresson and Giacomelli.
Aosta Valley2
Etroubles
Province: Aosta Valley · 1,280 m
A 478-person Alpine village at 1,280 metres, with an open-air contemporary art museum and the region's first dairy.
Gressoney-Saint-Jean
Province: Aosta Valley · 1,385 m
A Walser village in the Lys valley where Titsch is still spoken and the Lyskamm glacier closes the view.
Apulia8
Biccari
Province: Foggia · 450 m
A Subappennino Dauno borgo at 450 meters under Monte Cornacchia, the highest peak in Puglia at 1,151 meters, with a Byzantine tower at its core.
Bovino
Province: Foggia · 646 m
A Daunian Mountains hill town at 646 meters above the Cervaro valley, Roman Vibinum, with a Norman-Swabian castle later turned into a Guevara ducal palace.
Cisternino
Province: Brindisi · 394 m
An Itria valley borgo on the southern Murgia at 394 meters, whitewashed and looking down over drystone walls and trulli.
Corigliano d'Otranto
Province: Lecce · 95 m
A Griko-speaking town twenty-five kilometers south of Lecce, built around a 1500s Lecce-stone castle of circular towers around a quadrangular plan.
Locorotondo
Province: Bari · 410 m
The round white town on the Itria valley ridge at 410 meters, with cummerse roofs the rest of Puglia does not have.
Oria
Province: Brindisi · 166 m
A Messapian acropolis between Taranto and Brindisi crowned by Frederick II's triangular castle, home to one of medieval Europe's oldest Jewish communities.
Pietramontecorvino
Province: Foggia · 456 m
A village at 456 meters on a tufa spur with a 30-meter Norman-Angevin tower and houses carved into the rock.
Specchia
Province: Lecce · 130 m
A medieval Salento borgo on the Serra Magnone at 130 meters, named for the Messapian stone lookouts that once watched the coast.
Basilicata5
Aliano
Province: Matera · 555 m
The clay-hill village at 555 meters above the Agri valley where Carlo Levi served his 1935 exile and is buried in the cemetery.
Castelmezzano
Province: Potenza · 750 m
A medieval village wedged into sandstone teeth at 750 meters, linked to Pietrapertosa by a 1,452-meter zipline since 2007.
Guardia Perticara
Province: Potenza · 678 m
The stone village at 678 meters above the Sauro valley, rebuilt block by block in Gorgoglione sandstone after the 1980 earthquake.
Sasso di Castalda
Province: Potenza · 949 m
A 949-meter village in the Lucanian Apennines whose emigrants produced the engineer who launched Apollo 11, now crossed by a 300-meter Tibetan footbridge.
Valsinni
Province: Matera · 250 m
A 1,344-resident Lucanian borgo on a hilltop above the Sinni river, where a 16th-century Renaissance poet was murdered by her brothers in 1545, marked today by a Touring Club Bandiera Arancione and a place inside the Pollino park.
Calabria5
Bova
Province: Reggio di Calabria · 820 m
The capital of the Bovesìa, a 416-resident Aspromonte hilltop borgo at 820m and the cultural centre of the Grecanic minority, where the Calabrian-Greek dialect descended from Byzantine-era Greek is still spoken by elders.
Gerace
Province: Reggio di Calabria · 470 m
A 470-meter conglomerate rock above the Locride, holding Calabria's largest cathedral.
Morano Calabro
Province: Cosenza · 694 m
A conical hill of stone houses stacked under a Norman-Swabian castle at the southern gate of the Pollino, called Italy's nativity village.
Oriolo
Province: Cosenza · 450 m
A medieval borgo on a sandstone outcrop at 450 meters, on the eastern slopes of Pollino, twenty kilometers from the Ionian coast.
Taverna
Province: Catanzaro · 530 m
A hilltown at the foot of a mountain plateau, its stone core arranged around a fifteenth-century Dominican church.
Campania5
Cerreto Sannita
Province: Benevento · 290 m
A Sannio ceramics town at 290 meters, replanned on an orthogonal grid after the 1688 earthquake leveled the old hill.
Letino
Province: Caserta · 961 m
At 961 meters the highest commune in the province of Caserta, where in April 1877 anarchists declared a Republic of Letino in the village hall.
Morigerati
Province: Salerno · 340 m
A 608-person Cilento village above the Bussento gorge, the river surfacing from underground caves directly beneath the cliffs.
Sant'Agata de' Goti
Province: Benevento · 156 m
A medieval town built on a tuff cliff between two gorges, the houses standing flush with the edge over the Isclero river below.
Zungoli
Province: Avellino · 657 m
An Irpinia ridge between the Ufita valley and the Daunian hills, with walls above and tuff caves below the houses.
Emilia-Romagna21
Bagno di Romagna
Province: Forlì-Cesena · 491 m
A 491-meter thermal town at the head of the Savio valley, drawing on springs that have run at 47 degrees since Roman times.
Bobbio
Province: Piacenza · 272 m
A 272-meter Trebbia-valley town built around an abbey founded in 614, named Borgo dei Borghi by RAI in 2019.
Brisighella
Province: Ravenna · 115 m
A Lamone-valley borgo at 115 meters under three selenite hills crowned by a fortress, a clock tower, and a sanctuary.
Busseto
Province: Parma · 40 m
A 40-meter town where Giuseppe Verdi grew up, with a 300-seat opera house in the Rocca he refused to enter.
Castell'Arquato
Province: Piacenza · 224 m
A 224-meter hilltop borgo in the Val d'Arda, kept intact since the tenth century and crowned by Luchino Visconti's 1342 fortress.
Castelvetro di Modena
Province: Modena · 152 m
A 152-meter hill borgo south of Modena whose checkerboard piazza sits above the slopes that grow Lambrusco Grasparossa.
Castrocaro Terme e Terra del Sole
Province: Forlì-Cesena · 68 m
A pairing of two towns: a ninth-century fortress on a hill and Cosimo I de' Medici's planned Renaissance garrison town on the plain below, founded 1564.
Dozza
Province: Bologna · 190 m
A 190-meter painted borgo above the Sellustra valley, where contemporary artists have repainted the house walls every two years since 1960.
Fanano
Province: Modena · 640 m
A 640-meter stone-working town set among Monte Cimone, Libro Aperto and the upper Frignano peaks.
Fiumalbo
Province: Modena · 935 m
A 935-meter stone village in the Modenese Apennines on the Tuscan border, at the confluence of two rivers under Monte Cimone.
Fontanellato
Province: Parma · 45 m
A Parma-plain town built around the Rocca Sanvitale, the moated fortress at its center.
Longiano
Province: Forlì-Cesena · 179 m
A 179-meter Malatesta borgo on the hills between Cesena and Rimini, holding a major twentieth-century art collection inside the family castle.
Montefiore Conca
Province: Rimini · 385 m
A 385-meter Malatesta hilltop above the Conca valley, dominated by a fourteenth-century fortress that was once a summer residence of the lords of Rimini.
Pennabilli
Province: Rimini · 629 m
A 629-meter Montefeltro borgo between the Roccione and the Rupe, remade as an open-air museum after 1989.
Portico e San Benedetto
Province: Forlì-Cesena · 309 m
A three-tier medieval borgo at 309 meters on the Montone river, capital of Florence's Romagna territories from 1386.
Premilcuore
Province: Forlì-Cesena · 459 m
A 459-meter walled borgo on the Rabbi river, an entry point to the Foreste Casentinesi from the Romagna side.
San Leo
Province: Rimini · 583 m
A borgo of 2,820 residents built on a vertical 583m limestone outcrop in the Montefeltro, 35 km from Rimini, with a frontier panorama over Romagna and Marche from every wall.
Sant'Agata Feltria
Province: Rimini · 607 m
A 607-meter Montefeltro borgo crowned by a fortress on a sandstone outcrop, host of the national white truffle fair since 1985.
Sestola
Province: Modena · 1,020 m
A 1,020-meter Apennine town in the Frignano, with a Lombard-era castle above and central Italy's largest ski domain on the slopes.
Vernasca
Province: Piacenza · 457 m
A Val d'Arda commune in the Piacenza Apennines, holding the walled village of Vigoleno and one of the most compact castled borghi in Emilia.
Verucchio
Province: Rimini · 330 m
A spur over the lower Marecchia valley, cradle of the Villanovan civilization and birthplace of the Malatesta lordship of Romagna.
Friuli-Venezia Giulia4
Cividale del Friuli
Province: Udine · 138 m
The Lombard capital on the Natisone, founded as Forum Iulii by Julius Caesar, where an eighth-century chapel still holds six stucco saints.
Frisanco
Province: Pordenone · 415 m
A 572-resident commune in the Val Colvera whose frazione Poffabro, at 525 meters, became a model of Prealpine stone-and-wood vernacular architecture.
San Vito al Tagliamento
Province: Pordenone · 30 m
A medieval Tagliamento-plain town inside three rings of moats and three towers.
Sappada
Province: Udine · 1,250 m
A German-speaking alpine village at 1,250 meters near the source of the Piave, settled from East Tyrol in the eleventh century and Italian since 1852.
Lazio16
Arpino
Province: Frosinone · 450 m
The Volscian-Roman hill town in the Liri valley that produced Marius and Cicero, with a pre-Roman acropolis above the modern center.
Bassiano
Province: Latina · 562 m
The highest village in the province of Latina at 562 meters, birthplace of Aldo Manuzio, who shrank the book to pocket size.
Bolsena
Province: Viterbo · 350 m
A medieval town at 350 meters on the eastern shore of Europe's largest volcanic lake, where a Bohemian priest reported a Eucharistic miracle in 1263.
Bomarzo
Province: Viterbo · 263 m
The Tuscia village below a garden built by a grieving condottiero for his dead wife, all stone monsters and no apology for it.
Calcata
Province: Viterbo · 220 m
A tufa-cliff village forty kilometers north of Rome, condemned and abandoned in the 1930s, then occupied by artists and never left.
Caprarola
Province: Viterbo · 510 m
A Cimini hill town above Lago di Vico, dominated by the pentagonal Villa Farnese that Vignola built for the Farnese cardinals between 1559 and 1573.
Casperia
Province: Rieti · 397 m
A Sabina hill village named Aspra in Virgil's Aeneid, called that until 1947, ringed by walls from 1282.
Labro
Province: Rieti · 628 m
A 355-person stone borgo at 628 meters, restored since the 1960s by a Belgian architect and his descendants.
Nemi
Province: Roma · 521 m
The smallest comune in the Castelli Romani, perched at 521 meters above a volcanic crater lake the Romans called the mirror of Diana.
Picinisco
Province: Frosinone · 725 m
A medieval village at 725 meters on the eastern edge of Lazio, the source of much of Italo-Scottish emigration.
San Donato Val di Comino
Province: Frosinone · 728 m
A medieval village at 728 meters at the gateway to Forca d'Acero, the pass into the Abruzzo National Park.
Sermoneta
Province: Latina · 257 m
A walled medieval town on a Lepini spur above the Pontine Plain, seat of the Caetani since a 1297 purchase and still ruled from a 42-meter tower.
Subiaco
Province: Roma · 408 m
The Aniene valley town where Benedict spent three years in a cliff cave, and where Italy's first printed book appeared in 1465.
Sutri
Province: Viterbo · 291 m
An Etruscan and Roman town on a tuff spur, with a rock-cut amphitheater carved straight from the volcanic stone of the Cimini.
Trevignano Romano
Province: Roma · 173 m
A volcanic-crater lake town on the northern shore of Bracciano, thirty-five kilometers from Rome, with a medieval rocca above the water.
Vitorchiano
Province: Viterbo · 285 m
A peperino borgo built on a single volcanic boulder near Viterbo.
Liguria13
Apricale
Province: Imperia · 273 m
A medieval hill village in the Nervia Valley, named for the Latin apricus, sunny, with a tenth-century castle shaped like a lizard on the rock.
Badalucco
Province: Imperia · 179 m
A medieval village wrapped in a bend of the Argentina torrent, with murals on its caruggi and a Slow Food bean on its terraces.
- ✷ We've been
Brugnato
Province: La Spezia · 115 m
The medieval ecclesiastical capital of an inland Ligurian valley, seat of a diocese from 1133 to 1820, with a co-cathedral built over a Columban monastery.
- ✷ We've been
Castelnuovo Magra
Province: La Spezia · 188 m
A ridge village on the Liguria-Tuscany border where a marquisate treaty ended decades of conflict with the bishops of Luni.
Castelvecchio di Rocca Barbena
Province: Savona · 420 m
A stone village of 130 residents at 420 meters, built into the southern foot of a 1,142-meter limestone outcrop.
Dolceacqua
Province: Imperia · 51 m
A two-banked medieval village split by a single-arch bridge from 1400, the one Monet came to paint in 1884.
Perinaldo
Province: Imperia · 572 m
A ridge village at 572 meters, birthplace of Giovanni Domenico Cassini and home to a working astronomical observatory in his name.
Santo Stefano d'Aveto
Province: Genova · 1,012 m
Liguria's highest commune, set in the Ligurian-Emilian Apennines with a Malaspina-Doria castle and the region's only ski resort.
Sassello
Province: Savona · 381 m
A baroque borgo at 381 meters in the Parco del Beigua, split by a stream and known for a soft almond biscuit invented in its own kitchens.
Seborga
Province: Imperia · 517 m
A hilltop village at 517 meters above Bordighera that calls itself a principality, 276 residents, its own coins and stamps since 1963.
Toirano
Province: Savona · 35 m
A medieval village at the mouth of the Val Varatella, four kilometers inland from Loano, with karst caves holding 14,000-year-old human footprints.
Triora
Province: Imperia · 776 m
The witches' village at 776 meters in the upper Valle Argentina, where the Inquisition put around 200 women on trial between 1587 and 1589.
Varese Ligure
Province: La Spezia · 358 m
The Val di Vara's medieval seat at 358 meters, the first European municipality with ISO 14001 certification, anchor of Italy's largest organic district.
Lombardy15
Bellano
Province: Lecco · 202 m
An eastern shore town where the Pioverna cut a gorge through fifteen million years of rock before reaching the water.
Bienno
Province: Brescia · 445 m
A medieval ironworking village where water hammers driven by the Grigna stream have shaped wrought iron since the 1200s.
Castione della Presolana
Province: Bergamo · 870 m
A high-valley commune at 870 meters under the limestone peak the Bergamasque call the Queen of the Orobie.
Chiavenna
Province: Sondrio · 333 m
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.
Clusone
Province: Bergamo · 648 m
At 648 meters, capital of the macabre fresco and the 1583 planetary clock above its civic tower.
Gardone Riviera
Province: Brescia · 71 m
A western Garda lakeshore town whose hillside holds an estate turned into a monument to one man's self-image.
Gromo
Province: Bergamo · 676 m
A medieval iron-forging town at 676 meters on a rock spur above the Serio, once called the little Toledo for its sword smiths.
Menaggio
Province: Como · 203 m
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.
Monzambano
Province: Mantova · 88 m
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.
Pizzighettone
Province: Cremona · 46 m
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.
Sabbioneta
Province: Mantova · 25 m
A Renaissance ideal city on the Po, built in thirty years by Vespasiano I Gonzaga and laid out as a six-pointed star.
Sarnico
Province: Bergamo · 197 m
A medieval lake town at the southern tip of Lago d'Iseo, where the Oglio leaves the lake and Liberty villas line the shore.
Solferino
Province: Mantova · 124 m
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.
Tignale
Province: Brescia · 560 m
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.
Torno
Province: Como · 225 m
A medieval village on the eastern shore of Lake Como, built around a spring whose rhythm has drawn attention for centuries.
Marche22
Acquaviva Picena
Province: Ascoli Piceno · 359 m
A walled hill borgo at 359 meters, six kilometers from the Adriatic, anchored by a cylindrical fortress keep and the surviving pajarola craft.
Amandola
Province: Fermo · 550 m
A Sibillini gateway at 550 meters on three hills above the Tenna valley, founded 1248 and damaged but not levelled in 2016.
Camerino
Province: Macerata · 661 m
A university city at 661 meters on the ridge between the Chienti and Potenza, rebuilding after 2016.
Cantiano
Province: Pesaro e Urbino · 374 m
A border borgo at 374 meters under Monte Catria, known for the Good Friday Turba and the sour-cherry visciola harvest.
Cingoli
Province: Macerata · 631 m
The Balcone delle Marche at 631 meters, a hilltop borgo where on clear days the view runs from the Sibillini to the Croatian coast.
Corinaldo
Province: Ancona · 203 m
A walled hill borgo at 203 meters, ringed by 912 meters of intact medieval walls, and the birthplace of Saint Maria Goretti.
Genga
Province: Ancona · 322 m
A small Sentino-valley commune at 322 meters whose territory holds the Frasassi caves, the largest karst show cave in Italy.
Gradara
Province: Pesaro e Urbino · 142 m
The walled hill borgo at 142 meters above the Adriatic where Dante set the deaths of Paolo and Francesca, with one of Italy's best-preserved castles.
Mercatello sul Metauro
Province: Pesaro e Urbino · 429 m
A walled borgo at 429 meters in the upper Metauro, autonomous since 1235, with a pieve exempt from any bishop.
Mondavio
Province: Pesaro e Urbino · 280 m
A hill borgo at 280 meters whose fortress never took a cannon shot.
Montecassiano
Province: Macerata · 188 m
A walled hill borgo north of Macerata, built around a terracotta altarpiece too large to move.
Montelupone
Province: Macerata · 272 m
A walled hill borgo at 272 meters above the lower Potenza valley, with a fourteenth-century civic loggia and a 1889 horseshoe theatre.
Morrovalle
Province: Macerata · 247 m
A hilltop borgo at 247 meters above the Chienti valley, its walled centro storico grown from a medieval castle called Mor-ro.
Offagna
Province: Ancona · 309 m
A hilltop borgo at 309 meters between Ancona and Osimo, dominated by a Rocca built in just two years by the Anconitans in 1454-56.
Ripatransone
Province: Ascoli Piceno · 494 m
The Belvedere del Piceno at 494 meters, ridgetop borgo with views to the Adriatic and the narrowest alley in Italy at 43 centimeters.
San Ginesio
Province: Macerata · 680 m
The Balcony of the Sibillini at 680 meters, where a 1295 pilgrim hospital and the only flowery gothic collegiate church in the Marche stand within the same walls.
San Severino Marche
Province: Macerata · 235 m
A two-level town where a 224-meter elliptical piazza in the lower city looks up at a fortified hill crowned by a medieval tower and Salimbeni-painted churches.
Sarnano
Province: Macerata · 539 m
A 539-meter medieval borgo of baked brick at the foot of the Sibillini, with thermal springs that ran for 84 years until the 2016 earthquake.
Serra San Quirico
Province: Ancona · 409 m
A stone borgo on Monte Murano at the entrance to the Gola della Rossa, ringed by 1300 walls with covered passageways called copertelle.
Staffolo
Province: Ancona · 442 m
The Verdicchio balcony at 442 meters above three valleys, with a near-circular medieval wall ring and a wine museum carved into the ramparts.
Valfornace
Province: Macerata · 441 m
A 909-resident Sibillini commune at 441 meters in the upper Chienti valley, born in 2017 from the merger of Pievebovigliana and Fiordimonte.
Visso
Province: Macerata · 607 m
The northern Sibillini gate at 607 meters where the Nera meets the Ussita, holding one of two surviving manuscripts of Leopardi's L'Infinito.
Molise5
Agnone
Province: Isernia · 840 m
At 840 meters, town of the pontifical bell foundry and the fire procession that lights its streets every Christmas Eve.
Ferrazzano
Province: Campobasso · 872 m
A hilltop borgo at 872 meters above Campobasso, called the Sentinel of Molise, where Robert De Niro's great-grandparents lived before sailing in 1887.
Frosolone
Province: Isernia · 894 m
A 900-meter blade-making town in the Matese foothills, called Italy's Toledo for the knives and scissors forged here since the 1800s.
Roccamandolfi
Province: Isernia · 850 m
At 850 meters at the foot of Monte Miletto, a Matese village of brigand legends, Lombard ruins, and a Tibetan bridge over the Callora canyon.
Scapoli
Province: Isernia · 668 m
Italy's zampogna bagpipe capital: a 586-resident borgo in the Mainarde at 668m, with a centuries-old tradition of hand-building the zampogna and the Bandiera Arancione plus national park signals.
Piedmont29
Agliè
Province: Torino · 330 m
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 · 1,191 m
A Walser village at 1,191 meters, at the head of the Valsesia, known to off-piste skiers worldwide.
Arona
Province: Novara · 212 m
A town at the southern tip of a lake, watched over by a colossus finished in 1698.
Avigliana
Province: Torino · 383 m
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 · 301 m
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.
Candelo
Province: Biella · 350 m
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 · 157 m
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 · 225 m
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 · 214 m
A medieval lake town at 214 meters on Maggiore's western shore, host to one of the largest Sunday markets on the lake.
Castagnole delle Lanze
Province: Asti · 298 m
An Asti hill town at 298 meters between Langhe and Monferrato, with two Baroque churches and a nineteenth-century astronomical tower.
Cherasco
Province: Cuneo · 288 m
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 · 575 m
The valley mouth town at 575 meters where the Pesio leaves the mountains, founded around a Carthusian monastery donated in 1173.
Cocconato
Province: Asti · 491 m
A Monferrato ridge town at 491 meters with a microclimate mild enough to grow palms and olives this far north.
Fenestrelle
Province: Torino · 1,154 m
A village below the largest alpine fortress in Europe, three kilometers of stone climbing the ridge above it.
Gavi
Province: Alessandria · 233 m
The Cortese di Gavi town below a Genoese star fortress, where Piemonte white wine was first recorded as Ligurian court tribute in 972.
Grinzane Cavour
Province: Cuneo · 195 m
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 · 360 m
A Roero hilltop village at 360 meters above the Tanaro, whose Roero family baroque castle is now a luxury hotel and contemporary art destination.
La Morra
Province: Cuneo · 513 m
The hilltop above the Barolo zone, more Nebbiolo acreage than any other commune.
Limone Piemonte
Province: Cuneo · 1,000 m
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 · 1,327 m
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 · 204 m
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.
Moncalvo
Province: Asti · 305 m
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 · 480 m
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 · 308 m
A hilltop borgo at 308 meters in the Barbaresco zone, named for the Roman gens Naevia, with four wines in commercial volume.
Orta San Giulio
Province: Novara · 294 m
A promontory facing an islet basilica, with a UNESCO complex of Francis-of-Assisi chapels on the hill above.
Susa
Province: Torino · 503 m
The Roman gateway at 503 meters, seat of the Cozii under Augustus and Cottius.
Usseaux
Province: Torino · 1,416 m
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 · 450 m
The capital of Valsesia at 450 meters, crowned by a forty-five-chapel devotional complex on the rock above town.
Vogogna
Province: Verbano-Cusio-Ossola · 226 m
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.
Sardinia6
Aggius
Province: Sassari · 514 m
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.
Galtellì
Province: Nuoro · 49 m
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 · 777 m
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.
Oliena
Province: Nuoro · 380 m
A Supramonte village at the foot of the massif's highest peak, source of Cannonau Nepente, base camp for Tiscali and the Lanaitto valley.
Sardara
Province: Sud Sardegna · 163 m
A Campidano thermal town where Nuragic well-temples, Roman Aquae Neapolitanae and a hilltop Arborea castle share the same hot springs.
Tempio Pausania
Province: Sassari · 566 m
The granite capital of Gallura at the foot of Monte Limbara, known for cork, Vermentino DOCG and the largest Carnival in northern Sardinia.
Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol4
Levico Terme
Province: Trento · 520 m
A Habsburg spa town in the Valsugana at 520 metres, built on arsenic-iron thermal waters.
Molveno
Province: Trento · 864 m
The village at the north end of a deep blue alpine lake, with a pale limestone range rising straight out of the water.
Sterzing
Province: Bolzano · 948 m
A bilingual mining town at 948 metres on the Brenner road, where a 46-metre tower built in 1472 still divides the old town from the new.
Tenno
Province: Trento · 428 m
A hillside commune above Lake Garda where a medieval stone hamlet, a turquoise lake and the northernmost olive groves in Europe sit within reach of each other.
Tuscany31
- ✷ We've been
Abetone Cutigliano
Province: Pistoia · 1,388 m
The Apennine ski pass at 1,388 meters where the Granduca's two stone pyramids of 1778 mark the old Tuscan-Modenese border.
Anghiari
Province: Arezzo · 430 m
A walled medieval town at 430 meters over the upper Tiber valley, where Florence beat Milan in 1440 and Leonardo started the fresco he never finished.
- ✷ We've been
Barga
Province: Lucca · 410 m
A medieval hilltop town at 410 meters in the Serchio valley, where Giovanni Pascoli wrote his last poems and the August festival serves fish and chips.
Casale Marittimo
Province: Pisa · 214 m
A concentric stone borgo at 214 meters above the Val di Cecina, built where a seventh-century BC Etruscan outpost of Volterra once stood.
- ✷ We've been
Castelnuovo Berardenga
Province: Siena · 351 m
A commune of 351 meters, the last castle Siena built against Florence, in 1366.
Castelnuovo di Val di Cecina
Province: Pisa · 576 m
A copper and geothermal borgo at 576 meters in the Cecina valley, where natural steam vents and medieval towers sit on the same hill.
Castiglion Fiorentino
Province: Arezzo · 342 m
A walled hill town at 342 meters between Arezzo and Cortona, where Etruscan walls support the medieval Cassero.
Certaldo
Province: Firenze · 67 m
The brick-built upper town in the Valdelsa where Boccaccio spent his last years, twenty-five kilometers from Florence on the medieval road to Siena.
Cetona
Province: Siena · 384 m
A medieval borgo at 384 meters, sold by Cosimo I to the Vitelli in 1556 and the centro storico still shaped by their fortress reconstruction.
Chiusi
Province: Siena · 398 m
The Etruscan city of King Porsenna at 398 meters above the Val di Chiana, with one of Italy's major Etruscan museums and tunnels carved beneath the streets.
- ✷ We've been
Fosdinovo
Province: Massa-Carrara · 500 m
The southern Lunigiana stronghold at 500 meters, the Malaspina castle where Dante took shelter in 1306 and later set a Purgatorio canto.
Lucignano
Province: Arezzo · 400 m
A walled elliptical hill town at 400 meters between Siena and Arezzo, planned in medieval concentric rings around the goldsmith's reliquary called the Tree of Life.
- ✷ We've been
Manciano
Province: Grosseto · 444 m
A market town at 444 meters in the southern Maremma, with a Sienese fortress of 1424 and the thermal frazione of Saturnia in its territory.
Massa Marittima
Province: Grosseto · 380 m
A medieval mining town at 380 meters, free commune from 1255 to 1337, whose cathedral holds the relics of San Cerbone.
- ✷ We've been
Montalcino
Province: Siena · 564 m
A walled hill town at 564 meters above the Val d'Orcia, the last fortress to hold out for the Sienese Republic and the birthplace of Brunello.
Montecarlo
Province: Lucca · 163 m
A walled hill village at 163 meters above the Lucca plain, founded by Emperor Charles IV in 1333 and named for him, surrounded by twenty wineries.
Montepulciano
Province: Siena · 605 m
A Renaissance hill town at 605 meters on a limestone ridge, aging its Sangiovese-based red in vaulted cellars beneath the palazzi.
- ✷ We've been
Monteriggioni
Province: Siena · 274 m
A circular Sienese fortress built between 1213 and 1219 on a natural hill, fourteen towers on a 570-meter wall, intact and unbroken.
Murlo
Province: Siena · 314 m
A medieval bishops' fief twenty kilometers south of Siena, with an Etruscan princely palace on Poggio Civitate and the Cappellone statue as its symbol.
Peccioli
Province: Pisa · 144 m
Borgo dei Borghi 2024 in the Valdera hills, a medieval village that funded a public contemporary-art program with revenue from its landfill plant.
- ✷ We've been
Pienza
Province: Siena · 491 m
The first Renaissance ideal city, built from 1459 on the Val d'Orcia ridge.
Pitigliano
Province: Grosseto · 313 m
The Little Jerusalem of southern Tuscany, carved into a tuff spur in the Maremma, where the houses, the synagogue and the streets are all cut from the same volcanic rock.
- ✷ We've been
Radicofani
Province: Siena · 814 m
The Val d'Orcia's basalt watchtower: a 1,060-resident UNESCO-inscribed borgo at 814m on a volcanic outcrop visible across half of southern Tuscany, crowned by an outlaw's fortress that Dante and Boccaccio both wrote into their pages.
San Casciano dei Bagni
Province: Siena · 582 m
A hilltop borgo at 582 meters above 42 hot springs that produced the largest Etruscan bronze hoard of the last fifty years.
- ✷ We've been
San Gimignano
Province: Siena · 334 m
A walled hill town at 334 meters with 14 surviving medieval towers, UNESCO listed since 1990 and the home of Vernaccia.
Santa Fiora
Province: Grosseto · 687 m
An Aldobrandeschi and Sforza mountain borgo on Monte Amiata at 687 meters, holding one of the world's largest collections of Della Robbia terracotta.
- ✷ We've been
Suvereto
Province: Livorno · 127 m
A stone borgo at 127 meters above the Val di Cornia, named for the cork oaks of its forests and ruled from the Rocca Aldobrandesca since 973.
Trequanda
Province: Siena · 453 m
A village of 1,166 in three hilltop borghi between Crete Senesi and Val di Chiana, with the terracotta workshops of Petroio holding to a five-hundred-year craft.
Vicopisano
Province: Pisa · 12 m
A medieval river port rebuilt by Brunelleschi in 1434 after Florence took the town from Pisa.
Vinci
Province: Firenze · 97 m
The hill town on Montalbano where Leonardo was born in 1452, with a ship-shaped castle that now holds his machines.
- ✷ We've been
Volterra
Province: Pisa · 531 m
The Etruscan acropolis of Velathri at 531 meters, the alabaster town that has been carving the same stone for three thousand years.
Umbria10
Bevagna
Province: Perugia · 225 m
Roman Mevania on the Umbrian plain at 225 meters, four medieval quarters that compete every June in a reconstructed market of the 13th century.
Città della Pieve
Province: Perugia · 508 m
A red-brick hill town at 508 meters above the Valdichiana, the birthplace of Perugino and the home of Italy's narrowest alley.
Montefalco
Province: Perugia · 472 m
The hilltop wine capital of Umbria at 472 meters, where Sagrantino is grown almost nowhere else.
Montone
Province: Perugia · 482 m
A walled medieval hill town at 482 meters above the upper Tiber, birthplace of the condottiero Braccio Fortebracci.
Nocera Umbra
Province: Perugia · 520 m
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 · 604 m
Birthplace of San Benedetto at 604 meters on a Sibillini plateau, leveled by the 2016 earthquake and rebuilt stone by stone.
Panicale
Province: Perugia · 431 m
A walled hill town at 431 meters on Monte Petrarvella, where a 1505 Perugino fresco covers the back wall of San Sebastiano.
Spello
Province: Perugia · 280 m
Augustan Hispellum sits at 280 meters on Monte Subasio, its Roman gates still standing over streets that Pinturicchio once painted a chapel for.
Trevi
Province: Perugia · 412 m
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 · 467 m
Castle village of 345 people at 467 meters in the upper Valnerina, granted by Spoleto in 1217 and barely changed since.
Veneto12
Arquà Petrarca
Province: Padova · 56 m
The Euganean Hills village where Francesco Petrarca spent his last four years and died in 1374, renamed in his honor in 1868.
Asolo
Province: Treviso · 205 m
A walled hill town at 205 meters that Caterina Cornaro ran as her court after trading Cyprus to Venice in 1489.
Borgo Valbelluna
Province: Belluno · 367 m
Veneto's youngest comune, a 13,410-resident fusion of three lower-Belluno towns formed in 2019, wrapped around an old borgo in the pre-Dolomite Piave valley.
Cison di Valmarino
Province: Treviso · 261 m
A Prosecco hills borgo at 261 meters under the dolomite rock of CastelBrando, the largest inhabited castle complex in Europe.
Follina
Province: Treviso · 191 m
A Prosecco-hills borgo at 191 meters around the Cistercian Abbey of Santa Maria, with a cloister finished in 1268.
Malcesine
Province: Verona · 89 m
The northernmost Veneto town on Lake Garda, where Goethe was nearly arrested for sketching the Castello Scaligero in September 1786.
Marostica
Province: Vicenza · 103 m
The walled chess town below Vicenza, where two castles linked by a hill rampart stage a costumed reenactment of a 1454 match every two years.
Montagnana
Province: Padova · 16 m
A walled town on the lower Padova plain, its two kilometers of ramparts studded with 24 hexagonal towers.
Portobuffolè
Province: Treviso · 10 m
The smallest commune in the Treviso province, a Livenza river port centered on the fourteenth-century home of the poet Gaia da Camino.
Rocca Pietore
Province: Belluno · 1,143 m
An Agordino borgo at 1,143 meters under the Marmolada, where the Pettorina cuts a two-kilometer gorge through 100-meter rock walls.
Soave
Province: Verona · 40 m
A walled wine town twenty kilometers east of Verona, where Garganega vineyards climb to a Scaligeri castle above the rooftops.
Valeggio sul Mincio
Province: Verona · 88 m
A moraine-hills town at 88 meters between Garda and Mantua, with a 1393 Visconti bridge-dam over the Mincio and a tortellino called the love knot.
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.