Borghi Autentici
Borghi Autentici in Abruzzo
27 towns
Abruzzo holds 27 Borghi Autentici sites inside our catalogue. They are in the L'Aquila, Chieti, and Teramo provinces.
The three most recognized in our catalogue are Fara San Martino, Sante Marie, and Barrea. 24 more towns carry the mark alongside them.
The towns
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.
Sante Marie
Province: L'Aquila · 950 m
A 950-meter Marsica village and the trailhead of the Cammino dei Briganti, the seven-day brigand trail through the Cartore band's territory.
Barrea
Province: L'Aquila · 1,066 m
A 1,066-meter spur above an artificial lake at the heart of the Abruzzo National Park, with a Samnite necropolis and an 11th-century di Sangro castle.
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.
Archi
Province: Chieti · 492 m
A 492-meter rocky spur called the Terrazza sul Sangro, fief of del Balzo, Cantelmo, Colonna and Carafa, now Città del Tartufo and Città dell'Olio.
Campo di Giove
Province: L'Aquila · 1,064 m
At 1,064 meters under the southwestern Maiella, one of the highest villages in the park, named for a Roman temple to Jupiter.
Cappadocia
Province: L'Aquila · 1,102 m
A 576-resident Marsican borgo at 1,102m in Abruzzo's western mountains, where the river Liri rises, with a name many mistake for the wrong country.
Carsoli
Province: L'Aquila · 616 m
A 616-meter mountain town in the Marsica, built next to the ruins of a 4th-century BC Roman fortress town.
Corfinio
Province: L'Aquila · 346 m
A village of under a thousand on the Peligna valley floor at 346 meters, sitting on the Italic League's would-be capital Italia.
Morino
Province: L'Aquila · 440 m
A village at 440 meters on the Lazio border, beneath the central Apennines' second-highest waterfall at over 80 meters.
Ovindoli
Province: L'Aquila · 1,375 m
At 1,375 meters on the Altopiano delle Rocche, the closest serious ski station to Rome, working since 1959 on the slopes of Monte Magnola.
Pescina
Province: L'Aquila · 735 m
A Marsica town at 735 meters, on the rim of the drained Fucino basin, that lost five thousand of six thousand people in a single morning in 1915.
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 every year since 1999.
Calascio
Province: L'Aquila · 1,200 m
A village of 122 people under the highest castle in the Apennines, cast as the monk's refuge in Ladyhawke.
Castelvecchio Calvisio
Province: L'Aquila · 1,067 m
124 people at 1,067 meters on a ridge above the Tirino, inside a fortified ellipse of stone walls with alleys orthogonal to its perimeter.
Castelvecchio Subequo
Province: L'Aquila · 409 m
At 409 meters in the Subequana valley, the Roman Superaequum and Franciscan station where the saint himself was given land for a convent built between 1221 and 1261.
Goriano Sicoli
Province: L'Aquila · 720 m
At 720 meters in the Subequana valley, a medieval village drawn by M.C. Escher in 1929 keeps a May ritual folklorists trace to Demeter.
Roccacasale
Province: L'Aquila · 450 m
A village of 576 under the ruins of a castle blown up by Napoleon's army in 1803.
Scontrone
Province: L'Aquila · 1,038 m
A 1,038-meter borgo above the Sangro gorge, with two dozen emigration-themed murals and a paleontological site of European importance.
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.
Balsorano
Province: L'Aquila · 359 m
A pentagonal fortress above the Liri river that became a backdrop for 1970s Italian horror cinema.
Capistrello
Province: L'Aquila · 734 m
At 734 meters where the upper Liri valley meets the Marsica, the village where an emperor's tunnel emptied a lake into a river.
Civita d'Antino
Province: L'Aquila · 904 m
At 904 meters above the Roveto valley, the ancient Marsi town that became a Danish painters' colony from 1883 until the 1915 earthquake.
Monteferrante
Province: Chieti · 800 m
At 800 meters on a terrace above the Sangro valley, a 12th-century Caracciolo feud of 103 people facing the Maiella.
Montelapiano
Province: Chieti · 740 m
At 740 meters on a limestone marl ridge in the middle Sangro valley, one of the smallest comuni in Italy, population 67.
Rocca di Botte
Province: L'Aquila · 750 m
At 750 meters on the Carseolani slopes between Abruzzo and Lazio, the birthplace of an eleventh-century hermit and a fief of the Colonna.
Scurcola Marsicana
Province: L'Aquila · 700 m
At 700 meters below Monte San Nicola, the field where a medieval battle ended Swabian power in southern Italy.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns
Vicenza
Province: Vicenza
Andrea Palladio's home city, a UNESCO-inscribed open-air museum of the architect who reshaped Western architecture, with 23 Palladian buildings inside the centro and the Villa Rotonda just outside it.
Ascoli Piceno
Province: Ascoli Piceno
The travertine city at 154 meters where the Tronto meets the Castellano, capital of the Piceni and host of the Quintana joust.
Vitorchiano
Province: Viterbo
A peperino borgo built on a single volcanic boulder near Viterbo.
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.
Montesegale
Province: Pavia
A 244-person hill village at 400 meters, built around a castle that today holds a contemporary art collection.