Designation
Città d'Arte
14 towns across 9 regions
Campania2
Benevento
Province: Benevento · 130 m
Sannio capital at the Calore-Sabato confluence, with a 114 AD Trajan arch and a Lombard rotunda on the UNESCO list.
Caserta
Province: Caserta · 68 m
Italy's answer to Versailles, built by the Bourbons on the Campanian plain with 1,200 rooms and a three-kilometer water axis.
Emilia-Romagna2
Parma
Province: Parma · 57 m
A 57-meter Po-plain capital on the Via Emilia, where Correggio painted the Duomo dome and Parmigiano ages in vaults across the province.
Ravenna
Province: Ravenna · 4 m
A 4-meter coastal capital of three successive empires, with eight UNESCO mosaic monuments from the fifth and sixth centuries.
Lombardy2
Bergamo
Province: Bergamo · 249 m
A two-city Lombard capital where a Venetian walled hilltown sits 85 meters above its modern twin on the plain, 45 kilometers northeast of Milan.
Mantova
Province: Mantova · 19 m
A Gonzaga capital at 19 meters, encircled on three sides by lakes the Mincio formed in the twelfth century, UNESCO-listed together with Sabbioneta since 2008.
Sicily2
Noto
Province: Siracusa · 152 m
The capital of Sicilian Baroque, rebuilt entirely in golden limestone after 1693.
Siracusa
Province: Siracusa · 17 m
Ortigia island, wrapped in honey-coloured Baroque stone, sits at the heart of the city Cicero called the most beautiful in the world, on the eastern Sicilian coast south of Catania.
Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol1
Tuscany2
- ✷ We've been
Pisa
Province: Pisa · 4 m
Maritime republic on the Arno, twelve kilometers from the Ligurian Sea, with the leaning bell tower at the center of a single UNESCO-listed walled compound.
- ✷ We've been
Siena
Province: Siena · 322 m
The medieval rival of Florence at 322 meters on three hills, with a shell-shaped piazza where seventeen contrade race bareback horses twice a year.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover
Cicala
Province: Catanzaro
A village of 887 people at 829 meters, founded in 1616 by farmers asking for land.
Fossombrone
Province: Pesaro e Urbino
An inland Marchigiano town on the Metauro river, layered over a Roman colony with a Renaissance ducal court rising above it.
Bagnoli del Trigno
Province: Isernia
The 'Pearl of Molise', a 637-resident borgo built into and around a massive limestone outcrop above the Trigno valley, with a medieval castle rebuilt on its summit.
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.
Rocca di Botte
Province: L'Aquila
At 750 meters on the Carseolani slopes between Abruzzo and Lazio, the birthplace of an eleventh-century hermit and a fief of the Colonna.