Designation
Borghi più belli d'Italia
343 towns across 20 regions
Browse by region
Abruzzo22
Anversa degli Abruzzi
Province: L'Aquila · 604 m
At 604 meters above the Sagittario Gorges, a cliff village built around a Norman castle rebuilt by the Counts of Sangro.
Campli
Province: Teramo · 393 m
A 393-meter town under the Monti della Laga, held by the Farnese for two centuries, with a Scala Santa carrying papal indulgence.
Caramanico Terme
Province: Pescara · 650 m
A 650-meter Majella spa village at the confluence of the Orfento and Orta rivers.
Casoli
Province: Chieti · 378 m
A 378-meter hill town above the Aventino under the Maiella, with a pentagonal Norman tower that once hosted a court of artists.
Castel del Monte
Province: L'Aquila · 1,346 m
At 1,346 meters under Monte Bolza facing Rocca Calascio, the capital of shepherds, whose wool reached the Medici and whose witches return each August.
Città Sant'Angelo
Province: Pescara · 320 m
A hilltop borgo at 320 meters between the Vestina hills and the Adriatic, named for the Archangel and home to a Collegiata since 1353.
Civitella del Tronto
Province: Teramo · 589 m
A rocky crest at 589 meters above the Tronto valley, crowned by the last Bourbon fortress to surrender to united Italy in March 1861.
Crecchio
Province: Chieti · 209 m
A 209-meter hill town between the Adriatic and the Maiella, capital of Italy for one night in 1943 when the king slept in its castle.
Guardiagrele
Province: Chieti · 576 m
The 576-meter terrazza d'Abruzzo on the Majella's foothills, hometown of fifteenth-century goldsmith Nicola da Guardiagrele and seat of the Majella park.
Introdacqua
Province: L'Aquila · 670 m
At 670 meters in the Valle Peligna, the spring-fed village whose Latin name means inside the waters, now a magnet for foreign residents.
Navelli
Province: L'Aquila · 760 m
At 760 meters above the Navelli plain, the pyramid of stone houses growing the saffron a 13th-century Dominican brought from Spain.
Pacentro
Province: L'Aquila · 650 m
A medieval village at 650 meters under the Caldora castle towers, where every September a barefoot race honors a Madonna and a pop singer's grandparents.
Penne
Province: Pescara · 438 m
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.
Pescocostanzo
Province: L'Aquila · 1,395 m
A planned Renaissance town at 1,395 meters on the Quarto Grande plateau, with bobbin lace, wrought iron, and the wood ceilings of a five-nave church.
Pettorano sul Gizio
Province: L'Aquila · 656 m
At 656 meters above the Gizio river, a Cantelmo fortress town that guarded the gateway to the Peligna valley for four hundred years.
Pietracamela
Province: Teramo · 1,005 m
A village of 199 people clinging at 1,005 meters under the north wall of Corno Piccolo, birthplace of Italian Apennine climbing in 1925.
Pretoro
Province: Chieti · 530 m
A village of 865 stacked at 530 meters on the eastern Maiella, where wolves live behind fencing and woodturners still work on Via Roma.
Rocca San Giovanni
Province: Chieti · 155 m
A walled hill town at 155 meters, founded in the eleventh century by an abbot guarding the Abbey of San Giovanni in Venere.
Santo Stefano di Sessanio
Province: L'Aquila · 1,250 m
A Medici outpost at 1,250 meters, restored building by building since 1999 into Italy's first scattered hotel.
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.
Tagliacozzo
Province: L'Aquila · 740 m
A Marsica town at 740 meters, built around a ducal palace and a battle that once decided the fate of southern Italy.
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.
Aosta Valley3
Bard
Province: Aosta Valley · 400 m
A 102-person village under the great Savoy fortress that guards the mouth of the Aosta Valley.
Etroubles
Province: Aosta Valley · 1,280 m
A 476-person Alpine village at 1,280 meters, with an open-air contemporary art museum and the region's first dairy.
Fontainemore
Province: Aosta Valley · 760 m
A 447-person Walser-influenced village at 760 meters in the Lys Valley, marked by its stone bridge and a five-yearly pilgrimage to Oropa.
Basilicata9
Acerenza
Province: Potenza · 833 m
A walled ridge town at 833 meters in the north Lucanian hills, archbishopric since 1068 under a Romanesque cathedral begun in 1080.
Castelmezzano
Province: Potenza · 750 m
A medieval village wedged into sandstone teeth at 750 meters, linked to Pietrapertosa by a zipline of about 1.4 km 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.
Irsina
Province: Matera · 548 m
A 548-meter Bradano-valley hill town, called Montepeloso until 1895, whose cathedral holds a Renaissance rarity.
Maratea
Province: Potenza · 300 m
Basilicata's only commune on the Tyrrhenian, thirty-two kilometers of rocky coast overlooked by a stone-clad Christ finished in 1965 and turned toward the mountain.
Miglionico
Province: Matera · 461 m
A hilltop borgo at 461 meters above the Bradano, the seven-tower castle that gave the 1485 Conspiracy of the Barons its hall.
Pietrapertosa
Province: Potenza · 1,088 m
Basilicata's highest commune at 1,088 meters, built into the Lucanian Dolomites with a Saracen rock-cut fortress and a zipline of about 1.4 km to Castelmezzano.
Rivello
Province: Potenza · 479 m
A 479-meter ridge above the Noce valley where Lombards and Byzantines lived side by side, holding Latin and Greek rites until the seventeenth century.
Venosa
Province: Potenza · 415 m
Founded as Roman Venusia in 291 BC, birthplace of Horace, with an unfinished abbey built from amphitheater stones and a 1470 Aragonese castle.
Calabria16
Aiello Calabro
Province: Cosenza · 502 m
A hilltop borgo at 502 meters in the Tyrrhenian hinterland of Cosenza, ruled for two centuries by the Cybo-Malaspina from Massa Carrara.
Aieta
Province: Cosenza · 524 m
An eagle's-nest village in the western Pollino, with one of the few sixteenth-century Renaissance palazzi standing in Calabria.
Altomonte
Province: Cosenza · 455 m
A hill town in the Esaro valley built around the highest Gothic-Angevin church in Calabria.
Badolato
Province: Catanzaro · 240 m
A medieval borgo of thirteen churches at 240 meters above the Ionian, which took in 350 Kurdish refugees in 1997 and started its own slow rebirth.
Bova
Province: Reggio Calabria · 820 m
The capital of the Bovesìa, a 454-resident Aspromonte hilltop borgo at 820m and the cultural center of the Grecanic minority, where the Calabrian-Greek dialect descended from Byzantine-era Greek is still spoken by elders.
Caccuri
Province: Crotone · 646 m
A 646-meter Presila borgo dominated by a sixth-century Byzantine castle with a cylindrical tower built in 1882, birthplace of Renaissance statesman Cicco Simonetta.
Fiumefreddo Bruzio
Province: Cosenza · 220 m
A Tyrrhenian hill town under Monte Cocuzzo, with a thirteenth-century castle frescoed in the 1990s.
Gerace
Province: Reggio 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.
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.
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.
Santa Severina
Province: Crotone · 326 m
A tufa-rock stone ship between the Sila and the Ionian, holding the only Byzantine baptistery still standing in Calabria.
Stilo
Province: Reggio Calabria · 400 m
A Byzantine hilltown on the slope below a ruined Norman ridge, home to the tenth-century Cattolica and the legendary inspiration for Campanella's City of the Sun.
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.
Campania14
Atrani
Province: Salerno · 21 m
The smallest commune in Italy by area, twelve hectares of stacked houses where the Amalfi Coast pinches shut around a single piazza.
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.
Conca dei Marini
Province: Salerno · 138 m
A coastal hamlet of 644 people on the Amalfi Coast, home to a monastery pastry and a sea cave that glows green.
Cusano Mutri
Province: Benevento · 475 m
A Sannio hill borgo at 475 meters on the south face of the Matese, one of the few towns in the area spared by the 1688 earthquake.
Frigento
Province: Avellino · 911 m
An Irpinia hill village at 911 meters with a Republican-era Roman cistern complex on its summit and four valleys at its feet.
Furore
Province: Salerno · 300 m
The Amalfi Coast village with no piazza and no center, scattered on rock walls 300 meters above the only fjord in southern Italy.
Gesualdo
Province: Avellino · 676 m
An Irpinia village at 676 meters built around the castle of the prince of Venosa, madrigalist and murderer.
Montesarchio
Province: Benevento · 300 m
Ancient Caudium at 300 meters, a Roman defeat still attached to the name two thousand years later.
Monteverde
Province: Avellino · 740 m
A 740-meter borgo on the Apulian border of Irpinia, closer to Foggia than to its own provincial capital.
Nusco
Province: Avellino · 914 m
The Balcony of Irpinia at 914 meters, a ridge town between the Ofanto and Calore valleys, hometown of Prime Minister Ciriaco De Mita.
Savignano Irpino
Province: Avellino · 718 m
A 718-meter stone borgo above the Cervaro valley on the Campania-Apulia border, called Savignano di Puglia until 1963.
Summonte
Province: Avellino · 738 m
An Irpinia hill village at 738 meters on the slope of the Partenio massif, built around a 16-meter Angevin cylinder tower.
Vietri sul Mare
Province: Salerno · 80 m
The eastern end of the Amalfi Coast at 80 meters, the ceramics town since the fifteenth century, the gateway between Salerno and the cliff road.
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-Romagna18
Bagnara di Romagna
Province: Ravenna · 22 m
A 22-meter plain commune in the Bassa Romagna, the only fully preserved medieval castrum surviving in the Romagna lowlands.
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.
Bertinoro
Province: Forlì-Cesena · 254 m
A 254-meter Romagna-hill borgo above the Via Emilia, with a twelve-ring hospitality column from 1300 and the slopes that grow Albana DOCG.
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.
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.
Compiano
Province: Parma · 519 m
A 519-meter walled borgo over the Taro, ruled by the same family for 425 years.
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.
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.
Gualtieri
Province: Reggio nell'Emilia · 22 m
A right-bank Po commune in the Reggiana lowlands, built around a hundred-meter-square arcaded piazza and the Bentivoglio palace that holds the Ligabue collection.
Montechiarugolo
Province: Parma · 130 m
A Parmigiano-country borgo on the Enza river, built around a fourteenth-century castle that has stayed in the Marchi family since 1864.
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.
Montegridolfo
Province: Rimini · 290 m
A walled borgo of fewer than a thousand residents on the Romagna-Marche border, held alternately by the Malatesta and the Montefeltro through the fifteenth century.
San Giovanni in Marignano
Province: Rimini · 29 m
A walled Conca-valley borgo, granary of the Malatesta state, where the Notte delle Streghe has marked the summer solstice since 1988.
San Leo
Province: Rimini · 583 m
A borgo of 2,844 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.
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 Giulia13
Cervignano del Friuli
Province: Udine · 5 m
The capital of Bassa Friulana on the Ausa river, an inland river port for Aquileia in 181 BC and a railway junction since 1894.
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.
Cordovado
Province: Pordenone · 15 m
A 15-meter Friulian village in the Pordenone plain, fortified by the bishops of Concordia as their summer seat and described in Ippolito Nievo's Confessions.
Fagagna
Province: Udine · 177 m
A 177-meter Friulian hill town northwest of Udine, fortified by Otto II in 983 and racing donkeys in the piazza since 1891.
Frisanco
Province: Pordenone · 415 m
A 588-resident commune in the Val Colvera whose frazione Poffabro, at 525 meters, became a model of Prealpine stone-and-wood vernacular architecture.
Gradisca d'Isonzo
Province: Gorizia · 32 m
A 1479 Venetian bastion on the right bank of the Isonzo, with seven towers, twenty-meter walls, and a Habsburg court inside.
Palmanova
Province: Udine · 26 m
A nine-pointed Venetian star fortress on the Friuli plain, its geometry closed three centuries after it began.
Polcenigo
Province: Pordenone · 40 m
A 40-meter village at the foot of the Carnic Prealps where the Livenza rises, neighbor to the UNESCO Palù pile-dwelling site occupied since 4900 BC.
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 1866.
Sesto al Reghena
Province: Pordenone · 13 m
A 730s Benedictine abbey on the Reghena, ravaged by Magyars in 899, refortified in the tenth century, and still the town hall today.
Spilimbergo
Province: Pordenone · 132 m
A 132-meter Friulian town on the Tagliamento, home since 1922 to the Scuola Mosaicisti.
Valvasone Arzene
Province: Pordenone · 57 m
A medieval borgo at 57 meters on the Tagliamento's right bank, organized around a castle and a Duomo.
Venzone
Province: Udine · 230 m
A 230-meter walled medieval town in the Tagliamento valley, leveled by the 1976 earthquakes and rebuilt as it had been, winner of Borgo dei Borghi 2017.
Lazio23
Acquapendente
Province: Viterbo · 420 m
One of the northernmost towns in Lazio, at 420 meters above the Paglia, named in 964 for its waterfalls.
Atina
Province: Frosinone · 500 m
A polygonal-walled town at the foot of the Mainarde, and the DOC that makes Cabernet in central Italy.
Bassano in Teverina
Province: Viterbo · 304 m
A tufa-spur borgo of 1,273 above the Tiber valley between Lazio and Umbria, with a clock tower that hides an eleventh-century animated bell tower.
Boville Ernica
Province: Frosinone · 450 m
A Ciociaria hilltop town with eighteen intact medieval towers, ringed by a walled circuit that has stood since the tenth century.
Capranica Prenestina
Province: Roma · 915 m
A 915-meter ridge village east of Rome, with a sanctuary above the Giovenzano valley at 1,018 meters.
Castel di Tora
Province: Rieti · 607 m
A village of 273 on Lago del Turano at 607 meters, with an eleventh-century polygonal tower and a ghost promontory called Antuni.
Castel Gandolfo
Province: Roma · 426 m
A papal town on the rim of Lake Albano's volcanic crater, summer residence of the popes since 1626.
Castel San Pietro Romano
Province: Roma · 763 m
A 763-meter hill village above Palestrina, built on the acropolis of ancient Praeneste and inside the Colonna fortress walls.
Castelnuovo di Porto
Province: Roma · 250 m
A tufa-ridge borgo twenty-five kilometers north of Rome inside the Parco di Veio, dominated by a Renaissance fortress above the Tiber valley.
Castro dei Volsci
Province: Frosinone · 385 m
A Ciociaria hilltop borgo at 385 meters in the Sacco valley, named for the pre-Roman Volsci.
Collalto Sabino
Province: Rieti · 980 m
A 980-meter Sabine borgo dominated by a Barberini baronial castle, with a 360-degree panorama from the keep.
Greccio
Province: Rieti · 705 m
A 705-meter borgo on a ridge above the Rieti valley, built around the cave of the first living nativity scene.
Magliano Sabina
Province: Rieti · 222 m
A 222-meter Sabine town on a Tiber terrace, cathedral seat of the Sabina diocese on the Lazio-Umbria border.
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.
Orvinio
Province: Rieti · 840 m
The highest borgo in the Monti Lucretili park at 840 meters, called Canemorto until 1863.
Percile
Province: Roma · 575 m
A 217-person medieval borgo at 575 meters, built on a rocky spur with two karst lakes hidden in the woods above it.
Pico
Province: Frosinone · 220 m
Tommaso Landolfi's home town, a 2,588-resident Ciociaria borgo at 220m between Rome and Naples, with a BPB-inscribed medieval centro and a castle turned literary museum.
- Written about. No. 58.
Ronciglione
Province: Viterbo · 441 m
A tufa-brick borgo above Lake Vico, fortified by the Prefects of Vico and crowned Borgo dei Borghi in 2023.
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.
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.
Vitorchiano
Province: Viterbo · 285 m
A peperino borgo built on a single volcanic boulder near Viterbo.
Liguria28
- Written about. No. 18.
Ameglia
Province: La Spezia · 89 m
A hilltop borgo at 89 meters above the mouth of the Magra, the Lunigiana edge of Liguria where the river meets the Gulf of Poets.
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.
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.
- Written about. No. 57.
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.
Campo Ligure
Province: Genova · 342 m
A Spinola borgo at 342 meters in the Stura valley north of Genova, the last working center for gold and silver filigree in Italy.
Castelvecchio di Rocca Barbena
Province: Savona · 420 m
A stone village of 126 residents at 420 meters, built into the southern foot of a 1,142-meter limestone outcrop.
Celle Ligure
Province: Savona · 5 m
A Riviera di Ponente beach town with kilns firing since the 1600s.
Ceriana
Province: Imperia · 369 m
A medieval village at 369 meters above the Valle Armea, inland from Sanremo, built on the Roman castrum that gave it its name.
Cervo
Province: Imperia · 66 m
A hilltop village on the Riviera di Ponente built by coral fishermen, named for the Roman mansio on the Via Julia Augusta.
Cipressa
Province: Imperia · 232 m
A ridgeline village at 232 meters above the Riviera dei Fiori, the climb that decides the final selection of a famous cycling race and a sixteenth-century Saracen-defence tower as its summit.
Deiva Marina
Province: La Spezia · 12 m
A Riviera di Levante seaside commune reachable by sea only after the 1874 railway.
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.
- Written about. No. 17.
Lerici
Province: La Spezia · 10 m
A fishing harbor under a Pisan-Genoese castle, with the frazione of Tellaro hanging over the rocks at the commune's southern edge.
Millesimo
Province: Savona · 429 m
A fortified borgo at 429 meters, where Napoleon broke the Austro-Sardinian army in April 1796.
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.
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.
Pieve di Teco
Province: Imperia · 240 m
A planned market town founded in 1233 in the middle Arroscia valley, with porticoed Corso Ponzoni and one of the smallest theaters in Italy.
Seborga
Province: Imperia · 517 m
A hilltop village at 517 meters above Bordighera that calls itself a principality, 284 residents, its own coins and stamps since 1963.
Taggia
Province: Imperia · 40 m
The Argentina valley's medieval seat above the Riviera dei Fiori, the town that gave its name to the Taggiasca olive grown across western Liguria.
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.
- Written about. No. 56.
Vernazza
Province: La Spezia · 3 m
The middle village of the coast, the only one with a natural harbor, buried under four meters of mud in October 2011.
Zuccarello
Province: Savona · 130 m
A 279-person medieval borgo in the Neva valley above Albenga, founded by the Marquises of Clavesana in 1248, birthplace of Ilaria del Carretto.
Lombardia25
Bagolino
Province: Brescia · 778 m
A mountain village at 778 meters in the Valle del Caffaro, with a three-day February carnival of masked dancers and violins.
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.
Cassinetta di Lugagnano
Province: Milano · 120 m
A commune west of Milan with fifteen surviving ville di delizia and Italy's first zero-growth urban plan, adopted in 2007.
Castellaro Lagusello
Province: Mantova · 138 m
A walled medieval borgo south of Lake Garda, ringed by 13th-century stone walls and overlooking a small heart-shaped natural lake that gives the village its second name and most-photographed silhouette.
Clusone
Province: Bergamo · 648 m
At 648 meters, capital of the macabre fresco and the 1583 planetary clock above its civic tower.
Cornello dei Tasso
Province: Bergamo · 691 m
A car-free medieval frazione of Camerata Cornello in the Val Brembana, reachable only on foot, built around the family that ran Europe's first integrated postal network.
Curtatone
Province: Mantova · 25 m
A commune of eight frazioni west of Mantova, anchored by the Grazie sanctuary and the 1848 battle that delayed Radetzky's advance.
Dervio
Province: Lecco · 220 m
A peninsula on upper Lake Como's eastern shore at the Varrone delta, with a Romanesque bell tower and one of the lake's best sailing winds.
Fortunago
Province: Pavia · 482 m
A 368-resident village on a 482-meter ridge, with stone façades, porphyry streets and the production zone of Salame di Varzi at its doorstep.
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.
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.
Lovere
Province: Bergamo · 200 m
An amphitheater town at the north end of a Lombard lake, in Borghi più belli since 2003, holding Canova plasters inside the Accademia Tadini.
Monte Isola
Province: Brescia · 262 m
The largest lake island in southern and central Europe, 4.5 square kilometers in Lake Iseo, with no cars and eleven fishing villages on its shore.
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.
Morimondo
Province: Milano · 109 m
A Cistercian abbey village on the edge of the Ticino park, twenty-five kilometers southwest of Milano, founded by French monks in 1134.
Pomponesco
Province: Mantova · 21 m
A Mantova river village at 21 meters on the Po's left bank, with a late-Cinquecento Gonzaga grid and arcaded central piazza.
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.
San Benedetto Po
Province: Mantova · 19 m
A former river island whose entire existence traces back to the Benedictine abbey founded on it in 1007.
Soncino
Province: Cremona · 88 m
A walled borgo on the Oglio, held by a brick Sforza fortress and a printing house that once worked in Hebrew.
Tremezzina
Province: Como · 209 m
The 2014 merger of four Lake Como villages that holds Villa Carlotta, Isola Comacina and the UNESCO Sacro Monte di Ossuccio.
Tremosine sul Garda
Province: Brescia · 414 m
A cliff-top commune of 18 frazioni, spread across a limestone plateau above the western shore of its lake.
Varzi
Province: Pavia · 416 m
A medieval Malaspina town at 416 meters in the Staffora valley of the Oltrepò Pavese, the seat of one of Italy's first DOP cured meats.
Zavattarello
Province: Pavia · 525 m
A Val Tidone borgo at 525 meters clinging to a ridge below a tenth-century Apennine fortress with walls four meters thick.
Marche31
Arcevia
Province: Ancona · 535 m
A hilltop borgo at 535 meters above the Misa and Nevola valleys, defended in the Middle Ages by a ring of nine satellite castles.
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.
Esanatoglia
Province: Macerata · 467 m
A medieval village of seven bell towers at 467 meters on the Marche-Umbria border, sitting at the source of the Esino river.
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.
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.
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.
Macerata Feltria
Province: Pesaro e Urbino · 321 m
A 1,890-resident Borghi più belli borgo at 321m in the Marche side of the Montefeltro, built over the Roman municipium of Pitinum Pisaurense, with a small thermal spa still drawing on the same sulphurous spring water the Romans used.
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.
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.
Monte Grimano Terme
Province: Pesaro e Urbino · 536 m
A small Montefeltro borgo at 536 meters on the Marche-Romagna border, built around alkaline sulphur springs.
Montecassiano
Province: Macerata · 188 m
A walled hill borgo north of Macerata, whose Collegiata holds a seven-meter glazed terracotta altarpiece by fra' Mattia della Robbia.
Montecosaro
Province: Macerata · 267 m
A walled hilltop borgo at 267 meters above the Chienti valley, with a Romanesque basilica rebuilt in 1125 on the river plain below.
Montefiore dell'Aso
Province: Ascoli Piceno · 412 m
A hilltop borgo at 412 meters between the Aso and Menocchia valleys, holding six surviving panels of Carlo Crivelli's 1472 polyptych.
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 theater.
Monteprandone
Province: Ascoli Piceno · 266 m
A hilltop borgo at 266 meters above the lower Tronto valley, its walled center climbing toward a summit church with a view to the Adriatic.
Moresco
Province: Fermo · 405 m
A 525-person hill borgo at 405 meters above the Aso valley, with a 25-meter seven-sided tower unique in Europe.
Morro d'Alba
Province: Ancona · 199 m
A walled Castello di Jesi at 199 meters above the Esino valley, ringed by a covered walkway found nowhere else in Italy.
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.
Offida
Province: Ascoli Piceno · 293 m
A hill borgo at 293 meters in the Piceno wine country, with a Romanesque-Gothic cliff church and women still working bobbin lace.
Pergola
Province: Pesaro e Urbino · 265 m
A hill town at 265 meters in the upper Cesano valley, holding the only surviving group of Roman gilded bronze statues from antiquity.
Petritoli
Province: Fermo · 358 m
A hilltop borgo at 358 meters above the Aso valley, formed around the year 1000 from the merger of three castles.
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.
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.
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.
Servigliano
Province: Fermo · 215 m
An eighteenth-century ideal city at 215 meters in the Tenna valley, rebuilt by papal commission on a 137-by-144-meter quadrangle after the old hill village collapsed.
Treia
Province: Macerata · 342 m
A Macerata hill town at 342 meters, the Roman municipium Trea, renamed by Pope Pius VI in 1790 after centuries as Montecchio.
Vallefoglia
Province: Pesaro e Urbino · 295 m
A 2014 merger commune at 295 meters in the Foglia valley, born from Colbordolo, birthplace of Raffaello's father, and Sant'Angelo in Lizzola.
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
Fornelli
Province: Isernia · 530 m
A walled medieval borgo at 530 meters with seven towers and the birthplace of Nancy Pelosi's mother, eight kilometers west of Isernia.
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.
Oratino
Province: Campobasso · 780 m
A stonemason borgo at 780 meters above the Biferno, with a square tower on a limestone spur that an earthquake in 1456 left standing alone.
Sepino
Province: Campobasso · 698 m
A hilltop borgo at 698 meters at the foot of the Matese, two kilometers above the Roman Saepinum, the open-air city the sheep tracks built.
Termoli
Province: Campobasso · 15 m
Molise's only port, a walled promontory of fishermen's houses on the Adriatic, with the ferry pier for the Tremiti islands.
Piemonte17
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.
Biella
Province: Biella · 417 m
A wool city at 417 meters in the Alpine foothills, where the medieval Piazzo sits above the modern Piano, connected by a funicular since 1885.
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.
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.
Cella Monte
Province: Alessandria · 268 m
A 454-person Monferrato Casalese borgo at 268 meters, built entirely from a sandstone found only here, riddled underneath with cellars carved into the same stone.
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.
Garbagna
Province: Alessandria · 270 m
A borgo at 270 meters with tall Ligurian-style houses, held together by narrow stone streets and carved portals.
Garessio
Province: Cuneo · 621 m
A four-borgo medieval town at 621 meters on the Liguria-Piemonte border, built on the salt road and the source of the Acqua San Bernardo.
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.
Mombaldone
Province: Asti · 260 m
A walled village of 192 residents, the only borgo in its area that still holds its full medieval perimeter.
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.
Ostana
Province: Cuneo · 1,280 m
An 87-resident Occitan-speaking alpine borgo at 1,280m in the upper Po valley, rebuilt from near-abandonment into an architecturally celebrated mountain village with a direct frontal view of Monviso.
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.
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.
Volpedo
Province: Alessandria · 182 m
A Colli Tortonesi village at 182 meters where the Divisionist painter Giuseppe Pellizza lived and died at thirty-eight in 1907.
Puglia12
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.
Gravina in Puglia
Province: Bari · 350 m
A Bari-province town of 42,700 built on the lip of a 100m-deep limestone canyon, its cliffs threaded with rupestrian cave churches.
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.
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.
Monte Sant'Angelo
Province: Foggia · 843 m
The Gargano peak at 843 meters, the oldest western shrine to an archangel, UNESCO since 2011.
Otranto
Province: Lecce · 20 m
Italy's easternmost city, eighty kilometers from Albania, with a Norman mosaic floor and the bones of 813 martyrs in the cathedral.
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.
Roseto Valfortore
Province: Foggia · 658 m
A Daunian Mountain stone village at 658 meters near the Fortore springs, named for the wild roses and known for black truffles and acacia honey.
Sammichele di Bari
Province: Bari · 280 m
A Murge town at 280 meters founded in 1609, anchored by the Caracciolo castle and famous for the zampina pork sausage.
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.
Vico del Gargano
Province: Foggia · 445 m
A Gargano hill town at 445 meters where a Norman castle, a kiss alley, and DOP citrus terraces step down toward the Adriatic.
Sardinia8
Atzara
Province: Nuoro · 553 m
A Mandrolisai wine village on the western Gennargentu, painted in the early twentieth century by Spanish costumbristas and the Sardinian Scuola di Atzara.
Bosa
Province: Oristano · 10 m
A colour-washed riverside town on Sardinia's only navigable river, with a Malaspina castle on the hill and the tanneries of Sas Conzas along the Temo.
Carloforte
Province: Sulcis Iglesiente · 10 m
A Ligurian-speaking fishing town on the Isola di San Pietro, founded in 1738 by coral fishers returning from Tunisian Tabarka.
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: Gallura Nord-Est Sardegna · 19 m
The only inhabited town of a sixty-island granite archipelago between Sardinia and Corsica, and the place Giuseppe Garibaldi chose to die.
Posada
Province: Nuoro · 37 m
The capital of the Baronia, a 3,000-person village on a 71-meter rock with a 13th-century tower over the valley.
Sadali
Province: Cagliari · 750 m
A Barbagia di Seulo borgo at 750 meters with the only waterfall in Sardegna that drops through the inhabited center.
Tempio Pausania
Province: Gallura Nord-Est Sardegna · 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.
Sicily23
Agira
Province: Enna · 650 m
Birthplace of the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus and burial site of 490 Canadian soldiers of the 1943 campaign.
Buccheri
Province: Siracusa · 820 m
The highest village in the province of Syracuse, world capital of Tonda Iblea olive oil at the 2015 Sol d'Oro.
Calascibetta
Province: Enna · 691 m
A promontory town at 691 meters facing Enna across a ravine, founded in the ninth century as a Muslim camp to besiege Byzantine Henna.
Castelmola
Province: Messina · 529 m
A rock village at 529 meters directly above Taormina, the upper acropolis of ancient Tauromenium with a Norman castle and a 1947 almond-wine bar.
Castiglione di Sicilia
Province: Catania · 621 m
A hill town on the north flank of Etna at 621 meters, base camp for the Alcantara valley and the volcano's most serious red wines.
Castroreale
Province: Messina · 394 m
A ridge town at 394 meters above the Milazzo plain, holding the royal name given to it in the fourteenth century and a second-place finish in the 2018 Borgo dei Borghi.
Cefalù
Province: Palermo · 16 m
A Norman cathedral at the foot of a 270-meter rock on the Tyrrhenian coast, founded in 1131.
Erice
Province: Trapani · 751 m
An Elymian mountaintop city at 751 meters above Trapani, with a Norman castle on the site of the temple of Venus Erycina and a Cold War physics center.
Ferla
Province: Siracusa · 500 m
A baroque village at 500 meters on the Monte Lauro slopes, the western gateway to the UNESCO necropolis of Pantalica eleven kilometers downhill.
Forza d'Agrò
Province: Messina · 420 m
A ridge village of 930 people at 420 meters above the Ionian, its Norman fortress silhouette gave the place its name centuries before a film crew arrived.
Gangi
Province: Palermo · 1,011 m
A Madonie hill town stacked in concentric rings at 1,011 meters, RAI's Borgo dei Borghi 2014 and one of the first Sicilian towns to offer one-euro houses.
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.
Montalbano Elicona
Province: Messina · 907 m
A Nebrodi castle town at 907 meters, Frederick III of Aragon's summer residence and gateway to the Argimusco megalithic plateau.
Novara di Sicilia
Province: Messina · 650 m
A stone village at 650 meters where the Peloritani meet the Nebrodi, with a cheese race tumbling down the main street at Carnival.
Palazzolo Acreide
Province: Siracusa · 670 m
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 theater and a cluster of rock carvings unlike anything else nearby.
Petralia Soprana
Province: Palermo · 1,147 m
The highest village in the Madonie at 1,147 meters, RAI Borgo dei Borghi 2018 winner, sitting above 80 kilometers of salt tunnels.
Salemi
Province: Trapani · 446 m
The Trapani hill town where Garibaldi raised the tricolor on 14 May 1860 and proclaimed Salemi the capital of Italy for a day.
Sambuca di Sicilia
Province: Agrigento · 350 m
An Arab-founded hill town in the Belice valley, still called Zabut in living memory before 1923.
San Marco d'Alunzio
Province: Messina · 540 m
A hilltop borgo at 540 meters in pink Aluntina marble, founded by the Greeks and later Robert Guiscard's first Sicilian base.
Savoca
Province: Messina · 300 m
A hilltop borgo at 300 meters above the Ionian, its ridge lined with stepped lanes and balconied stone houses.
Sperlinga
Province: Enna · 750 m
A sandstone borgo at 750 meters in the Nebrodi foothills where a Norman castle and dwellings are carved into the rock as one continuous mass.
Sutera
Province: Caltanissetta · 600 m
A medieval village clinging to the base of a 800-meter monolith in the Nisseno interior, with an Arab quarter and a sanctuary on the summit.
Troina
Province: Enna · 1,121 m
At 1,121 meters on the Nebrodi ridge, the first capital and first bishopric the Normans set up in Sicily after taking it from the Arabs.
Trentino-Alto Adige11
Bleggio Superiore
Province: Trento · 628 m
A scattered Giudicarie commune whose hilltop hamlet of Rango holds the Christmas markets, with a Slow Food walnut grown on the terraces below.
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.
Borgo Valsugana
Province: Trento · 380 m
The valley town built on both banks of the Brenta in lower Valsugana, with a hilltop castle above and a contemporary art project in the side valley.
Caldes
Province: Trento · 698 m
A scattered commune on the Noce, six hamlets gathered around a thirteenth-century tower-house castle that once belonged to the Thun family.
Glurns
Province: Bolzano · 907 m
A ringed sixteenth-century circuit of walls encloses a city of 933 inhabitants near the Swiss border.
Kastelruth
Province: Bolzano · 1,060 m
South Tyrolean village on a shelf below the Sciliar, eighty-two-metre bell tower over the square, home of the Kastelruther Spatzen.
Luserna
Province: Trento · 1,333 m
A Cimbrian island at 1,333 meters on the Alpe Cimbra plateau, the last village in Italy where the medieval Bavarian dialect is still spoken at home.
Ossana
Province: Trento · 1,003 m
A small borgo at the foot of a 25-meter stone keep, with Christmas nativity scenes filling its streets every December.
Pieve Tesino
Province: Trento · 843 m
A plateau village in eastern Trentino, birthplace of Alcide De Gasperi, shaped by centuries of families who left to trade prints across Europe.
Sterzing
Province: Bolzano · 948 m
A bilingual mining town at 948 meters on the Brenner road, where a 46-meter 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.
Tuscany23
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.
- Written about. No. 1.
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.
Buonconvento
Province: Siena · 147 m
The walled brick borgo in the Crete Senesi where Emperor Henry VII died in 1313, on the Via Cassia at the confluence of the Arbia and Ombrone.
- Written about. No. 38.
Campiglia Marittima
Province: Livorno · 231 m
A walled hilltop borgo above the Val di Cornia, where the Rocca tower watches a mining landscape worked from the Etruscans to 1976.
- Written about. No. 47.
Capalbio
Province: Grosseto · 217 m
A walled hilltop borgo at 217 meters in the southern Maremma, donated to the Abbey of Tre Fontane by Charlemagne.
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.
- Written about. No. 10.
Castiglione di Garfagnana
Province: Lucca · 540 m
A walled medieval town at 540 meters in the Garfagnana, the Lucca outpost that refused to submit to the Este and held the pass to San Pellegrino.
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.
- Written about. No. 32.
Greve in Chianti
Province: Firenze · 236 m
The market town on the Greve river, with a triangular piazza arcaded since the sixteenth century.
Isola del Giglio
Province: Grosseto · 405 m
A granite island in the Tyrrhenian Archipelago, walled village on the ridge, port below, where the Costa Concordia ran aground in January 2012.
Loro Ciuffenna
Province: Arezzo · 330 m
A Valdarno village at 330 meters straddling the Ciuffenna torrent, with the oldest working water mill in Tuscany and a Lombard pulpit two kilometers up the road.
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.
- Written about. No. 50.
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.
Montaione
Province: Firenze · 341 m
A medieval glassmaking and truffle borgo at 341 meters above the Valdelsa, with a Franciscan replica of Jerusalem in the woods nearby.
- Written about. No. 51.
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.
Montescudaio
Province: Pisa · 242 m
A fortified hill borgo at 242 meters, named for a mountain of shields, with DOC wine since 1977 and bread, oil and grape all stamped in its identity.
Mulazzo
Province: Massa-Carrara · 351 m
A Malaspina fief in the Lunigiana hills where Dante stayed in 1306, with a frazione of booksellers who walked their wares across Italy.
- Written about. No. 39.
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.
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.
Poppi
Province: Arezzo · 437 m
The Casentino borgo at 437 meters above the field where Dante fought at Campaldino in June 1289.
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.
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.
- Written about. No. 40.
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 first recorded in 973, under a twelfth-century Aldobrandeschi fortress.
Umbria31
- Written about. No. 73.
Acquasparta
Province: Terni · 350 m
A hill town at 350 meters above the Naia valley, where a Renaissance duchy briefly became the seat of Europe's first scientific academy.
- Written about. No. 74.
Allerona
Province: Terni · 472 m
A stone borgo at 472 meters between the Paglia valley and the Valdichiana, an Orvieto outpost whose Monaldeschi castle fell to Charles V.
Arrone
Province: Terni · 243 m
Medieval castle village on the left bank of the Nera at 243 meters, upstream from the largest man-made waterfall in the world.
- Written about. No. 76.
Bettona
Province: Perugia · 353 m
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 · 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.
- Written about. No. 59.
Castiglione del Lago
Province: Perugia · 304 m
Trasimeno's western promontory, once the lake's fourth island, fortified in 1247 and later frescoed for a marquis of Corgna.
Citerna
Province: Perugia · 480 m
A medieval borgo at 480 meters above the upper Tiber valley, holding the only sculpture by Donatello in Umbria.
Corciano
Province: Perugia · 408 m
A walled medieval castello at 408 meters eight kilometers west of Perugia, where, by tradition, Saint Francis stopped on his way back from a Lent spent fasting on Isola Maggiore.
Deruta
Province: Perugia · 218 m
A hill town at 218 meters on the left bank of the Tiber, the maiolica capital of central Italy since the late thirteenth century.
Giano dell'Umbria
Province: Perugia · 547 m
A hill commune between Foligno, Spoleto and Todi, anchored by a Romanesque abbey built over the tomb of a fourth-century martyr.
Lugnano in Teverina
Province: Terni · 441 m
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.
Massa Martana
Province: Perugia · 351 m
One of the Borghi più belli d'Italia on the Via Flaminia, a 3,577-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 · 422 m
A fifteenth-century walled village at 422 meters above the Tiber, home to the world's smallest all'italiana theater with 99 seats.
- Written about. No. 80.
Montecchio
Province: Terni · 377 m
A small hill commune at 377 meters above the Tiber, sitting on top of one of Umbria's largest Etruscan-tied necropolises.
- Written about. No. 81.
Montefalco
Province: Perugia · 472 m
The hilltop wine capital of Umbria at 472 meters, where Sagrantino is grown almost nowhere else.
Monteleone di Spoleto
Province: Perugia · 978 m
A 539-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 · 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.
- Written about. No. 84.
Paciano
Province: Perugia · 391 m
Walled hill town of 937 people at 391 meters above the lake, three parallel streets, eight towers and three medieval gates intact.
- Written about. No. 85.
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.
- Written about. No. 61.
Passignano sul Trasimeno
Province: Perugia · 289 m
A near-peninsula on the northern shore of Lake Trasimeno, on the road Hannibal closed when he ambushed the Romans in 217 BC.
Preci
Province: Perugia · 596 m
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 · 337 m
A medieval borgo at 337 meters above ancient Roman paving, four kilometers below the ruins of Carsulae.
- Written about. No. 86.
Scheggino
Province: Perugia · 280 m
Triangular castle village on the banks of the Nera at 280 meters, where the first commercial Italian truffle company was founded in 1852.
Sellano
Province: Perugia · 641 m
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 · 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.
Stroncone
Province: Terni · 451 m
A walled medieval borgo at 451 meters eight kilometers south of Terni, with a Franciscan convent traditionally founded by Francis himself in 1213.
- Written about. No. 89.
Torgiano
Province: Perugia · 219 m
A walled river town at 219 meters at the confluence of the Tiber and the Chiascio, the first DOC and DOCG zone in Umbria.
- Written about. No. 90.
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 334 people at 467 meters in the upper Valnerina, granted by Spoleto in 1217 and barely changed since.
Veneto11
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 13,580-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.
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.
Sant'Ambrogio di Valpolicella
Province: Verona · 174 m
The Valpolicella DOC gateway northwest of Verona, where the Gargagnago frazione anchors Amarone production and a hilltop frazione holds a Lombard-era pieve.
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
Parma
Province: Parma
A 57-meter Po-plain capital on the Via Emilia, where Correggio painted the Duomo dome and Parmigiano ages in vaults across the province.
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.
Pescocostanzo
Province: L'Aquila
A planned Renaissance town at 1,395 meters on the Quarto Grande plateau, with bobbin lace, wrought iron, and the wood ceilings of a five-nave church.
Arquà Petrarca
Province: Padova
The Euganean Hills village where Francesco Petrarca spent his last four years and died in 1374, renamed in his honor in 1868.
Grinzane Cavour
Province: Cuneo
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.