Borghi più belli d'Italia
Borghi più belli d'Italia in Apulia
12 towns
Apulia carries 12 of the Borghi più belli d'Italia towns we cover. They cluster in the Foggia, Bari, and Lecce provinces.
The three most recognised in our catalogue are Gravina in Puglia, Maruggio, and Monte Sant'Angelo. 9 more towns carry the mark alongside them.
Gravina in Puglia
Province: Bari · 350 m
Puglia's deepest gravina: a Bari-province town of 42,700 built on the lip of a 100m-deep limestone canyon, its cliffs threaded with rupestrian cave churches.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 and white truffles.
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.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover
Visso
Province: Macerata
The northern Sibillini gate at 607 meters where the Nera meets the Ussita, holding one of two surviving manuscripts of Leopardi's L'Infinito.
Goriano Sicoli
Province: L'Aquila
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.
Ugento
Province: Lecce
A Messapian-Roman town five kilometers from the Ionian, where a Baroque castle sits on the walls of the ancient city of Ozan.
Fontanellato
Province: Parma
A Parma-plain town built around the Rocca Sanvitale, the moated fortress at its center.
Pescina
Province: L'Aquila
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.