Designation
Bandiera Lilla
38 towns across 14 regions
Browse by region
Abruzzo2
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.
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.
Basilicata2
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.
Emilia-Romagna1
Liguria9
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Sarzana
Province: La Spezia · 21 m
The unofficial capital of the Lunigiana on the Magra plain, birthplace of Pope Niccolò V.
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.
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.
Limone sul Garda
Province: Brescia · 65 m
The northernmost lemon-growing town in the world, at 46 degrees north on the western shore of Lake Garda, reached by road only in 1932.
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.
Marche6
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sassoferrato
Province: Ancona · 386 m
A two-level Apennine town above Roman Sentinum, where the consuls Decius Mus and Fabius Maximus defeated four allied tribes in 295 BC.
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.
Sardinia2
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.
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.
Sicily4
Geraci Siculo
Province: Palermo · 1,077 m
A Madonie ridge village at 1,077 meters, capital of the Ventimiglia marquisate from 1258 and the first marquisate granted in Sicily.
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.
San Vito Lo Capo
Province: Trapani · 5 m
A three-kilometer white-sand beach at Sicily's northwest tip, the town that turned cous cous into a September festival.
Savoca
Province: Messina · 300 m
A hilltop borgo at 300 meters above the Ionian, its ridge lined with stepped lanes and balconied stone houses.
Tuscany3
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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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Monte Argentario
Province: Grosseto · 5 m
A 635-meter peninsula tied to the mainland by three sand spits, ringed by Spanish forts and marked by Caravaggio's death in 1610.
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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.
Veneto2
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.
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
Biccari
Province: Foggia
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.
Sirolo
Province: Ancona
A clifftop borgo at 125 meters, above the Due Sorelle sea stacks of the Adriatic.
Penne
Province: Pescara
The brick city at 438 meters between the Tavo and Fino, ancient capital of the Vestini, rebuilt after Allied bombing and awarded the Silver Medal of Civic Merit.
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.
Verucchio
Province: Rimini
A spur over the lower Marecchia valley, cradle of the Villanovan civilization and birthplace of the Malatesta lordship of Romagna.