Borghi più belli d'Italia
Borghi più belli d'Italia in Lombardia
25 towns
Lombardia carries 25 of the Borghi più belli d'Italia towns we cover. They are spread over 8 provinces; the most are in Brescia (6), Mantova (6), and Bergamo (4).
The three most recognized in our catalogue are Monzambano, Gardone Riviera, and Gromo. 22 more towns carry the mark alongside them.
The towns
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.
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.
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.
Clusone
Province: Bergamo · 648 m
At 648 meters, capital of the macabre fresco and the 1583 planetary clock above its civic tower.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns
Roscigno
Province: Salerno
A Cilento ghost town at 570 meters, emptied by a 1902 landslide and known as the Pompeii of the twentieth century.
Lucca
Province: Lucca
The provincial capital ringed by four kilometers of intact sixteenth-century walls, birthplace of Puccini and the only fully walled Italian city of its scale.
Corciano
Province: Perugia
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.
Melfi
Province: Potenza
At 530 meters on volcanic slopes, first Norman capital of the south and seat of a landmark 1231 legal code issued from its castle.
Sassoferrato
Province: Ancona
A two-level Apennine town above Roman Sentinum, where the consuls Decius Mus and Fabius Maximus defeated four allied tribes in 295 BC.