Designation
Città del Pane
21 towns across 13 regions
Browse by region
Calabria2
Emilia-Romagna2
Busseto
Province: Parma · 40 m
A 40-meter town where Giuseppe Verdi grew up, with a 300-seat opera house in the Rocca he refused to enter.
Ferrara
Province: Ferrara · 9 m
A Renaissance capital planned on a grid rather than grown by accident, small enough to cross by bicycle in twenty minutes, and ringed by walls that still stand whole.
Lombardy2
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.
Montesegale
Province: Pavia · 400 m
A 258-person hill village at 400 meters, built around a castle that today holds a contemporary art collection.
Marche2
Cantiano
Province: Pesaro e Urbino · 374 m
A border borgo at 374 meters under Monte Catria, known for the Good Friday Turba and the sour-cherry visciola harvest.
Senigallia
Province: Ancona · 5 m
Thirteen kilometers of fine sand on the Adriatic, hometown to a chef and a photographer whose names carry beyond the region.
Sicily3
Castelvetrano
Province: Trapani · 187 m
The Belice valley town that owns Selinunte, the largest archaeological park in Europe, and bakes black bread from grain found in its tombs.
Modica
Province: Ragusa · 296 m
A vertical Baroque city in the Hyblean Mountains, rebuilt from the 1693 earthquake and home to a chocolate recipe brought from Aztec Mexico.
Nicolosi
Province: Catania · 698 m
The southern gateway to Etna at 698 meters, twice destroyed by the 1669 eruption.
Tuscany2
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.
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.
Umbria2
Corciano
Province: Perugia · 408 m
A walled medieval castello at 408 meters eight kilometers west of Perugia, where Saint Francis stopped on his way back from a Lent spent fasting on the island in 1223.
Spoleto
Province: Perugia · 396 m
Lombard ducal capital at 396 meters under the Rocca Albornoziana, where a 230-meter aqueduct bridge crosses to Monteluco and Menotti founded the Festival in 1958.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover
Giano dell'Umbria
Province: Perugia
A hill commune between Foligno, Spoleto and Todi, anchored by a Romanesque abbey built over the tomb of a fourth-century martyr.
Assisi
Province: Perugia
A pink limestone town at 424 meters on the western flank of a mountain above the plain, the birthplace of Francis and a UNESCO site since 2000.
Servigliano
Province: Fermo
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.
Labro
Province: Rieti
A 355-person stone borgo at 628 meters, restored since the 1960s by a Belgian architect and his descendants.
San Nicola Arcella
Province: Cosenza
A cliff village above the Tyrrhenian Riviera dei Cedri, where a sea arch fronts a cove only reachable on foot or by boat.