Designation
Bandiera Blu
136 towns across 18 regions
Browse by region
Abruzzo8
Alba Adriatica
Province: Teramo · 5 m
The northernmost of the Teramo coast's seven sisters, a 1956 spin-off from Tortoreto with a fine-sand beach known as the Spiaggia d'Argento.
Giulianova
Province: Teramo · 68 m
Coastal town split between hilltop Paese at 68 meters and the Lido below, one rebuilt as a Renaissance ideal city, the other grown around a working fishing fleet.
Pineto
Province: Teramo · 4 m
A planned twentieth-century beach town named for D'Annunzio's poem, with the sixteenth-century Cerrano tower anchoring Abruzzo's first marine protected area.
Roseto degli Abruzzi
Province: Teramo · 8 m
An Adriatic beach town of 25,500 with ten kilometers of low-rise sand, a hilltop frazione at 285 meters, and Blue Flags since 1995.
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.
Silvi
Province: Teramo · 242 m
A split town on the Teramo coast, medieval Silvi Paese at 242 meters above a nine-kilometer beach that built itself on licorice in the 1930s.
Vasto
Province: Chieti · 144 m
At 144 meters on a hill above the Adriatic, Vasto is home of the brodetto vastese, invented in 1800.
Villalago
Province: L'Aquila · 930 m
A 930-meter village above three lakes, named for the nine that once filled the valley, with a hermit's cave on the water's edge.
Apulia18
Bisceglie
Province: Barletta-Andria-Trani · 16 m
An Adriatic port town between Trani and Molfetta, named for Roman watchtowers, with five dolmens around it and a Norman cathedral begun in 1073.
Carovigno
Province: Brindisi · 161 m
An upper Salento hill town between Brindisi and Ostuni, with a marine reserve on its coast.
Castellaneta
Province: Taranto · 235 m
A cliff-edge Murge town at 235 meters above the Gravina Grande canyon, birthplace of Rudolph Valentino in 1895, with a Bandiera Blu Ionian marina.
Fasano
Province: Brindisi · 118 m
A Brindisi-province town running from the Adriatic up to the Itria escarpment, holding a Roman coastal city, a wooded highpoint, and Europe's second-largest safari park.
Gallipoli
Province: Lecce · 12 m
The Ionian beach city on a limestone island, Greek Kallipolis meaning beautiful city, tied to the mainland by a seventeenth-century bridge.
Isole Tremiti
Province: Foggia · 116 m
An Adriatic archipelago of five islands twenty-two kilometers off the Gargano, the only Italian commune scattered across an open-sea group.
Lecce
Province: Lecce · 49 m
The Baroque capital of the Salento, ninety-four thousand people on the Lecce-stone plain, carving its façades in honey limestone since 1500.
Manduria
Province: Taranto · 79 m
The Messapian capital thirty-five kilometers east of Taranto, ringed by three concentric stone walls and the home of Primitivo.
Maruggio
Province: Taranto · 35 m
A fortified Borghi più Belli borgo on a low Ionian hill in Taranto province, built around a Knights of Malta commanderie that ran the Order's southern Italian affairs for six centuries.
Melendugno
Province: Lecce · 36 m
Salento's archaeological-beach comune: 17 km of Adriatic coast in Lecce province combining karst pools, Bronze-Age-to-Messapian ruins, and a run of blue-flagged sand.
Monopoli
Province: Bari · 9 m
An Adriatic walled town forty kilometers south of Bari, the Charles V castle on the headland, 156 square kilometers of coastline behind it.
Nardò
Province: Lecce · 45 m
The second city of Salento after Lecce, a Baroque inland capital twenty-five kilometers from Lecce with a Ionian coastline behind it.
Ostuni
Province: Brindisi · 218 m
The Città Bianca on three hills at 218 meters, eight kilometers inland, whitewashed against the Murge above an Adriatic plain of olive trees.
Peschici
Province: Foggia · 91 m
A Gargano cliff-top village above the Adriatic, white houses spilling toward the sea and trabucchi on the headlands.
Polignano a Mare
Province: Bari · 24 m
The Adriatic cliff town thirty kilometers south of Bari, built on a twenty-metre limestone bluff, birthplace of Domenico Modugno.
Rodi Garganico
Province: Foggia · 42 m
A Gargano promontory town above the Adriatic, citrus capital of the peninsula, with DOP oranges and lemons grown on the terraces below it.
Ugento
Province: Lecce · 108 m
A Messapian-Roman town five kilometers from the Ionian, where a Baroque castle sits on the walls of the ancient city of Ozan.
Vieste
Province: Foggia · 43 m
The Gargano headland of whitewashed alleys on a white limestone cliff, with the Pizzomunno sea stack standing 26 meters offshore.
Basilicata5
Bernalda
Province: Matera · 127 m
A 127-meter hill town between the Bradano and Basento, Francis Ford Coppola's ancestral home, holding the Magna Graecia columns of the Tavole Palatine.
Maratea
Province: Potenza · 300 m
Basilicata's only commune on the Tyrrhenian, thirty-two kilometers of rocky coast overlooked by a marble Christ raised inland in 1965.
Nova Siri
Province: Matera · 350 m
A 350-meter Ionian hill town with a Blue Flag beach nine kilometers below, near the site of the ancient Greek colony of Siris.
Pisticci
Province: Matera · 364 m
A hill town on eroded clay above the Ionian, rebuilt in three hundred identical white houses after survivors refused to leave the ground the landslide had passed over.
Policoro
Province: Matera · 25 m
An Ionian-coast town built on the ruins of the Greek polis of Heraclea, with a national museum devoted to the city's finds and a nature reserve running the country's documented sea turtle nesting program.
Calabria12
Cariati
Province: Cosenza · 76 m
A walled Ionian fishing town on the Saracen Coast, its ramparts among the most intact in southern Italy.
Corigliano-Rossano
Province: Cosenza · 219 m
The Sibari plain city merged in 2018 from two older towns, one built around a Norman castle and the other around a Byzantine manuscript tradition.
Isola di Capo Rizzuto
Province: Crotone · 90 m
A promontory on the Ionian coast wrapped by Italy's largest marine reserve, with an Aragonese castle standing on a rock offshore.
Parghelia
Province: Vibo Valentia · 70 m
A 1,300-person village on the Costa degli Dei at 70 meters, four kilometers from Tropea and quieter than its famous neighbour.
Praia a Mare
Province: Cosenza · 10 m
A Tyrrhenian beach town in the Gulf of Policastro, backed by mountains and facing an offshore island.
Rocca Imperiale
Province: Cosenza · 210 m
Frederick II's Hohenstaufen fortress at the Calabria–Basilicata border, a Borgo più Bello d'Italia perched on a hill above the Ionian coast, with the castello at the summit and the locally-grown limone di Rocca Imperiale IGP scenting the orchards.
Roseto Capo Spulico
Province: Cosenza · 217 m
A castle on a rock above the Ionian, in a village that began as a satellite of Sybaris in the seventh century BC.
San Nicola Arcella
Province: Cosenza · 110 m
A cliff village above the Tyrrhenian Riviera dei Cedri, where a sea arch fronts a cove only reachable on foot or by boat.
Soverato
Province: Catanzaro · 10 m
The wealthiest town per capita in Calabria, built around a white-sand stretch on the Ionian shore.
Trebisacce
Province: Cosenza · 73 m
A Bronze Age plateau above the Ionian Sea whose name comes from the Greek for small table, with a Byzantine mother church below.
Tropea
Province: Vibo Valentia · 50 m
Cliff town on a tufa headland over the Tyrrhenian Coast of the Gods, with a Norman monastery on a sea rock.
Villapiana
Province: Cosenza · 206 m
An Ionian commune where the Sibari plain meets the first slopes rising toward Pollino.
Campania12
Agropoli
Province: Salerno · 24 m
The gateway commune of the Cilento, a Byzantine acropolis on a promontory taken by the Saracens in 882 as a base for raids on Salerno.
Anacapri
Province: Napoli · 275 m
The upper half of Capri, 150 meters above its famous twin.
Ascea
Province: Salerno · 230 m
Two villages, a hilltown at 230 meters and a Cilento marina, with Parmenides and Zeno's Eleatic school in the ruins of Greek Velia below.
Camerota
Province: Salerno · 422 m
A Cilento hill town of 422 meters above the Costa degli Infreschi, its caves holding one of the longest prehistoric stratigraphies on the southern Tyrrhenian.
Castellabate
Province: Salerno · 280 m
A hilltown on a 280-meter Cilento ridge, with a Bandiera Blu beach below and the Benvenuti al Sud film.
Centola
Province: Salerno · 336 m
A Cilento hill village at 336 meters whose seaside frazione carries the name of Aeneas' helmsman.
Massa Lubrense
Province: Napoli · 121 m
The Sorrentine Peninsula's largest commune by area, stretching from Sorrento across Punta Campanella to the Gulf of Salerno, Capri three miles offshore.
Piano di Sorrento
Province: Napoli · 96 m
The quieter Sorrentine plain four kilometers from Sorrento, autonomous since 1808, with prehistoric Gaudo pottery and a black-sand marina at the foot of the cliff.
Pisciotta
Province: Salerno · 171 m
A Cilento hilltop town of olive terraces above the Tyrrhenian, where fishermen still pull anchovies with a medieval net.
Positano
Province: Salerno · 30 m
The vertical village of the Amalfi Coast, terraced houses climbing four hundred meters to the Lattari ridge under a tiled Byzantine dome.
Sorrento
Province: Napoli · 50 m
The Roman Surrentum on a tuff cliff above the Bay of Napoli, sacked by the Turks in 1558.
Vico Equense
Province: Napoli · 90 m
The northern gate of the Sorrento peninsula, a clifftop town of ninety meters above the Bay of Napoli.
Emilia-Romagna4
Cervia
Province: Ravenna · 2 m
The Adriatic salt town with 827 hectares of working saline, planned in 1697 around a grid of salt workers' houses.
Cesenatico
Province: Forlì-Cesena · 3 m
An Adriatic fishing port whose canal was redrawn on commission from a Borgia patron, with ten historic sailboats moored as a floating museum.
Comacchio
Province: Ferrara
A canal town on thirteen islets, with brackish lagoons that hold three hundred bird species.
Ravenna
Province: Ravenna · 4 m
A 4-meter coastal capital of three successive empires, with eight UNESCO mosaic monuments from the fifth and sixth centuries.
Friuli-Venezia Giulia1
Lazio8
Fondi
Province: Latina · 9 m
The plain town between the Ausoni and Aurunci mountains where the Caetani built a castle in the middle of farmland instead of on a hill.
Gaeta
Province: Latina · 2 m
The promontory port where a Bourbon kingdom fell in February 1861 and the south of Italy stopped existing as a state.
Minturno
Province: Latina · 140 m
A coastal comune at the mouth of the Garigliano, built on the Roman colony of Minturnae.
Sabaudia
Province: Latina · 17 m
A rationalist city built in 253 days on drained Pontine marshland, founded 15 April 1934 between Lago di Paola and the Tyrrhenian dunes.
San Felice Circeo
Province: Latina · 100 m
A medieval borgo on the flank of a promontory that Homer made the home of Circe in the Odyssey.
Sperlonga
Province: Latina · 55 m
A whitewashed cliff town halfway between Rome and Naples, built above the sea grotto where Tiberius staged the Odyssey in marble.
Terracina
Province: Latina · 24 m
The Volscian Anxur, where a temple to Jupiter sits above a port cut through stone.
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.
Liguria21
Borgio Verezzi
Province: Savona · 30 m
Two villages joined under one comune in 1933: Borgio on the coast below, Verezzi on the pink-stone hill above.
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Camogli
Province: Genova · 32 m
A fishing village on the Golfo Paradiso whose nineteenth-century fleet of a thousand white sails made it Italy's third maritime power in the Mediterranean.
Celle Ligure
Province: Savona · 5 m
A Riviera di Ponente beach town with kilns firing since the 1600s and a ceramic on its parish church façade.
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Chiavari
Province: Genova · 3 m
The Tigullio capital between Portofino and the Cinque Terre, a 27,000-person Genoese trading town built around a thirteenth-century grid of porticoed streets.
Diano
Province: Imperia · 70 m
A twin destination on the Riviera dei Fiori: a medieval hilltop borgo above and a beach resort below, sharing one bay and one olive valley.
Finale Ligure
Province: Savona · 12 m
Three boroughs on the Gulf of Genoa, a walled inland seat set back from two coastal quarters below a karst limestone circuit.
Framura
Province: La Spezia · 76 m
Five hamlets between sea level and 300 meters on the Riviera di Levante, with Byzantine watchtowers built against Saracen incursions.
Laigueglia
Province: Savona · 6 m
A former coral-fishing village on the Riviera di Ponente, with a curved Baroque parish church and a fishermen's grid of caruggi behind the beach.
Lavagna
Province: Genova · 6 m
The Tigullio town that gave its name to slate, and its counts to a line of popes.
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Lerici
Province: La Spezia · 10 m
A fishing harbour under a Pisan-Genoese castle, with the frazione of Tellaro hanging over the rocks at the commune's southern edge.
Levanto
Province: La Spezia · 5 m
The sixth Cinque Terre, a beach town and Cittaslow at the gateway of the national park, with a surf break and a striped Gothic church.
Loano
Province: Savona · 13 m
A Doria fief on the Savona coast where a Renaissance palace stands over a Roman mosaic, in the shadow of the mountain that shelters it.
Moneglia
Province: Genova · 4 m
A bay on the Riviera di Levante, closed by two wooded headlands.
Noli
Province: Savona · 4 m
The fifth Italian maritime republic from 1192 to 1797, a walled coastal town with the Romanesque basilica of San Paragorio outside its gates.
Pietra Ligure
Province: Savona · 4 m
A Riviera di Ponente town named after the rock castle above its center, known today for one of the largest triennial flower carpets in Europe.
Recco
Province: Genova · 5 m
A coastal town rebuilt from 90 percent destruction in 1943, known for IGP cheese focaccia and Pro Recco water polo.
Sanremo
Province: Imperia · 10 m
The capital of the Italian Riviera dei Fiori: Belle Époque casino and palm-lined Lungomare on the seafront, a medieval labyrinth climbing the hill behind, and a year-round mild climate that built the original Northern European winter trade.
Santa Margherita Ligure
Province: Genova · 13 m
The Tigullio town that kept its fishing port while the world drove past on the way to Portofino two kilometers further.
Savona
Province: Savona · 4 m
A working port city with two Della Rovere popes, a Sistine Chapel that came before the Roman one, and a fortress on the old town.
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Sestri Levante
Province: Genova · 10 m
The Tigullio town of two bays, split by a peninsula where a river once silted an island to the shore.
Varazze
Province: Savona · 10 m
A Ligurian shipbuilding town whose thirteenth-century friar compiled the saint lives that became the most copied book in Europe after the Bible.
Lombardy3
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.
Sirmione
Province: Brescia · 91 m
A 4-kilometer peninsula reaching into the southern Garda, its tip closed by a fortified port and a Roman villa.
Toscolano-Maderno
Province: Brescia · 72 m
Twin lakeside villages on the western shore of Garda, paper mill suppliers to the Republic of Venice from the 14th century onward.
Marche9
Fermo
Province: Fermo · 319 m
The provincial capital on the Sabulo hill at 319 meters, with 2,200 square meters of Augustan Roman cisterns running under the centro storico.
Gabicce Mare
Province: Pesaro e Urbino · 8 m
The northernmost Marche seaside on the Adriatic, where the coast meets the cliffs of the Parco del San Bartolo at the Romagna border.
Grottammare
Province: Ascoli Piceno · 4 m
A double town on the Riviera delle Palme, with a palm-lined seafront and a medieval upper borgo where Pope Sixtus V was born.
Mondolfo
Province: Pesaro e Urbino · 144 m
A walled hill borgo at 144 meters above the Adriatic, with the frazione of Marotta and its beach below.
Numana
Province: Ancona · 56 m
A Conero coastal town at 56 meters above its port, the Picene harbour that traded with Greek ships from the sixth century BC.
Pesaro
Province: Pesaro e Urbino · 11 m
The Adriatic port at the mouth of the Foglia, founded as Roman Pisaurum in 184 BC and given to the world by Rossini in 1792.
Porto San Giorgio
Province: Fermo · 5 m
A 15,000-resident beach town on the Adriatic between Ancona and Pescara, with one of the largest tourist marinas in the central Adriatic, the medieval Rocca Tiepolo above the harbour, and a long fine-sand seafront under date palms.
Senigallia
Province: Ancona · 5 m
Thirteen kilometers of fine sand on the Adriatic, hometown to a chef and a photographer whose names carry beyond the region.
Sirolo
Province: Ancona · 125 m
A clifftop borgo at 125 meters, above the Due Sorelle sea stacks of the Adriatic.
Piedmont3
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.
Gozzano
Province: Novara · 367 m
The town at the southern tip of Lake Orta, marked by a basilica and a twelfth-century signaling tower above the water.
Sardinia7
Badesi
Province: Sassari · 102 m
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.
Castelsardo
Province: Sassari · 114 m
A Doria sea fortress at 114 meters above the Gulf of Asinara, Genoese from 1100, Aragonese from 1448, Savoyard from the 1700s.
La Maddalena
Province: Sassari · 19 m
The only inhabited town of a sixty-island granite archipelago between Sardinia and Corsica, and the place Giuseppe Garibaldi chose to die.
Oristano
Province: Oristano · 5 m
The old capital of the Giudicato di Arborea, city of Eleonora and the Carta de Logu, host of Sa Sartiglia equestrian joust at Carnival.
Palau
Province: Sassari · 5 m
The Gallura port with a weather-shaped granite bear on the headland that gave the town its emblem.
Santa Teresa Gallura
Province: Sassari · 44 m
The northernmost town in Sardinia, founded in 1808 on a Turin-style grid above the Strait of Bonifacio and 11 kilometers from Corsica.
Tortolì
Province: Nuoro · 15 m
Co-capital of Ogliastra on the central-east coast, paired with the port of Arbatax and its red porphyry cliffs.
Sicily4
Menfi
Province: Agrigento · 119 m
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.
Modica
Province: Ragusa · 296 m
A vertical Baroque city in the Hyblean Mountains, rebuilt from the 1693 earthquake and home to a chocolate recipe brought from Aztec Mexico.
Ragusa
Province: Ragusa · 502 m
Two cities split by a ravine on a Hyblean plateau at 502 meters, both rebuilt after 1693 and both UNESCO Baroque.
Taormina
Province: Messina · 204 m
A terrace on Monte Tauro above the Ionian, with Etna on the southern horizon.
Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol5
Baselga di Pinè
Province: Trento · 964 m
The main town of the Piné plateau at 964 metres, with a Blue Flag lake, Italy's outdoor speed skating oval and a baroque Marian sanctuary.
Bondone
Province: Trento · 720 m
A two-village commune above Lake Idro at the Lombard border, with a Lodron castle on the cliff between them.
Lavarone
Province: Trento · 1,172 m
A Cimbrian plateau at 1,172 metres above the Val d'Astico, with a karst lake and a wooded fort line.
Levico Terme
Province: Trento · 520 m
A Habsburg spa town in the Valsugana at 520 metres, built on arsenic-iron thermal waters.
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.
Tuscany13
Bibbona
Province: Livorno · 85 m
An Etruscan-origin hill village above the Costa degli Etruschi, with a Romanesque parish church and a Lorraine-built coastal fort eight kilometers down the road at Marina di Bibbona.
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Camaiore
Province: Lucca · 34 m
The Versilia commune that runs from the mountains to the sea, a Roman Campus Maior on the Via Francigena with a beach at its western end.
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Carrara
Province: Massa-Carrara · 80 m
The marble town at the foot of the Apuan Alps, with over 650 quarry sites in the valleys above and the stone that built the Pantheon, the Pietà and Michelangelo's David.
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Castagneto Carducci
Province: Livorno · 194 m
A hilltop borgo at 194 meters above the Costa degli Etruschi, renamed for the poet Carducci in 1907 and the home of Bolgheri and Sassicaia.
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Castiglione della Pescaia
Province: Grosseto · 4 m
A Maremma seaside town under an Aragonese castle, with the Vetulonia necropolis behind it and Italo Calvino buried on the hill.
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Forte dei Marmi
Province: Lucca · 2 m
The Versilia luxury beach built around an eighteenth-century marble-loading fort, with 99 bagni concessions and a Wednesday market that draws Milan.
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Grosseto
Province: Grosseto · 10 m
The Maremma capital on the Ombrone river, ringed by hexagonal Medici walls of 1564 that now serve as the city's public park.
Livorno
Province: Livorno · 3 m
Tuscany's working port and Medici-planned 'New City' — a 16th-century planned town built on reclaimed coast, with a Venice-like canal quarter, the Quattro Mori monument, and a 1.5-km seafront promenade that locals call the world's most beautiful balcony.
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Orbetello
Province: Grosseto · 3 m
A town on a narrow isthmus at the center of its own lagoon, fortified by Spain in 1557.
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Pietrasanta
Province: Lucca · 14 m
The marble-processing town under the Apuan Alps, worked by Michelangelo, Henry Moore, Joan Miró and Fernando Botero.
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Piombino
Province: Livorno · 21 m
A promontory port facing Elba across the channel, founded by refugees from Etruscan Populonia and now the Tuscan archipelago's ferry capital.
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Pisa
Province: Pisa · 4 m
Maritime republic on the Arno, twelve kilometers from the Ligurian Sea, with the leaning bell tower at the center of a single UNESCO-listed walled compound.
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Viareggio
Province: Lucca · 2 m
The Versilia capital, a Carnival city on the Tuscan coast that turned into a Belle Époque resort when the railway arrived.
Veneto2
Chioggia
Province: Venezia · 2 m
Italy's second fishing port, on an island at the south end of the Venetian Lagoon, called Little Venice for its canal.
Rosolina
Province: Rovigo · 3 m
A reclaimed commune where a nine-kilometer beach and a maritime pine forest sit between the Adige mouth and the Adriatic.
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.