Borghi più belli d'Italia
Borghi più belli d'Italia in Tuscany
23 towns
Tuscany carries 23 of the Borghi più belli d'Italia towns we cover. They are spread over 8 provinces; the most are in Grosseto (6), Arezzo (4), and Livorno (3).
The three most recognized in our catalogue are San Casciano dei Bagni, Manciano, and Suvereto. 20 more towns carry the mark alongside them.
The towns
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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.
Poppi
Province: Arezzo · 437 m
The Casentino borgo at 437 meters above the field where Dante fought at Campaldino in June 1289.
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.
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.
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.
- 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.
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.
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.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns
Furore
Province: Salerno
The Amalfi Coast village with no piazza and no center, scattered on rock walls 300 meters above the only fjord in southern Italy.
Salemi
Province: Trapani
The Trapani hill town where Garibaldi raised the tricolor on 14 May 1860 and proclaimed Salemi the capital of Italy for a day.
Fenestrelle
Province: Torino
A village below the largest alpine fortress in Europe, three kilometers of stone climbing the ridge above it.
Guardiagrele
Province: Chieti
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.
Dogliani
Province: Cuneo
A two-tier Langhe town at 295 meters, the Borgo by the Rea stream and the Castello on the hill, capital of Dolcetto di Dogliani DOCG.