Designation
Città del Vino
159 towns across 20 regions
Browse by region
Abruzzo8
Città Sant'Angelo
Province: Pescara · 320 m
A hilltop borgo at 320 meters between the Vestina hills and the Adriatic, named for the Archangel and known since 1352 as a Collegiata seat.
Controguerra
Province: Teramo · 267 m
A 267-meter hill village whose name is legal shorthand for a small Montepulciano and Trebbiano-Passerina DOC.
Crecchio
Province: Chieti · 209 m
A 209-meter hill town between the Adriatic and the Maiella, capital of Italy for one night in 1943 when the king slept in its castle.
Loreto Aprutino
Province: Pescara · 290 m
A hilltop town at 290 meters in the Aprutino olive country, with a fourteenth-century Judgment fresco and a Castelli majolica collection.
Miglianico
Province: Chieti · 125 m
A wine hill town at 125 meters between Pescara and the Adriatic, with the sanctuary of San Pantaleone above an unbroken horizon of vineyards.
Ofena
Province: L'Aquila · 531 m
A 531-meter Vestian basin called the Forno d'Abruzzo, where Montepulciano ripens on what may be the oldest of its slopes.
Rocca San Giovanni
Province: Chieti · 155 m
A walled hill town at 155 meters, founded around 1060 by an abbot guarding the Abbey of San Giovanni in Venere.
Tocco da Casauria
Province: Pescara · 356 m
A 356-meter hill town between the Pescara river and the Maiella, built around a Carolingian abbey and an herb liqueur called Centerba.
Aosta Valley2
Aymavilles
Province: Aosta Valley · 646 m
A village at 646 metres above a river gorge, where the road up the valley begins and a Roman aqueduct still crosses the Grand'Eyvia on a single arch.
Donnas
Province: Aosta Valley · 322 m
The first DOC of Valle d'Aosta, a Nebbiolo-on-terraces wine town at 322 metres where the Roman Via delle Gallie was carved into living rock.
Apulia4
Galatina
Province: Lecce · 78 m
The Salento town at 78 meters where the cult of San Paolo bred tarantism and gave the pizzica its origin myth.
Manduria
Province: Taranto · 79 m
The Messapian capital thirty-five kilometers east of Taranto, ringed by three concentric stone walls and the home of Primitivo.
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.
San Severo
Province: Foggia · 86 m
The Daunia wine capital on the Tavoliere, home to Puglia's first DOC of 1968 and a Carnevale of fanoia explosions known across the south.
Basilicata3
Acerenza
Province: Potenza · 833 m
A walled ridge town at 833 meters in the north Lucanian hills, archbishopric since 1068 under a Romanesque cathedral begun in 1080.
Melfi
Province: Potenza · 530 m
At 530 meters on volcanic slopes, first Norman capital of the south and seat of a landmark 1231 legal code issued from its castle.
Venosa
Province: Potenza · 415 m
Founded as Roman Venusia in 291 BC, birthplace of Horace, with an unfinished abbey built from amphitheater stones and a 1470 Aragonese castle.
Calabria6
Montegiordano
Province: Cosenza · 619 m
A 619-meter hill town with a hunting castle and a centro storico turned into a gallery of murals.
Mormanno
Province: Cosenza · 840 m
A Pollino mountain borgo at 840 meters between the Costa and Vernita ridges, known for lentils, white poverelli beans and the bocconotto pastry.
Roseto Capo Spulico
Province: Cosenza · 217 m
A castle on a rock above the Ionian, in a village that began as a satellite of Sybaris in the seventh century BC.
San Giovanni in Fiore
Province: Cosenza · 1,049 m
The capital of the Sila Grande at 1,049 meters, Italy's most populated commune above a thousand.
Santa Severina
Province: Crotone · 326 m
A tufa-rock stone ship between the Sila and the Ionian, holding the only Byzantine baptistery still standing in Calabria.
Saracena
Province: Cosenza · 606 m
A 606-meter Pollino borgo named for its Saracen souk and protected by Slow Food for a passito Moscato traced to the sixteenth century.
Campania15
Alife
Province: Caserta · 110 m
A Roman walled town at the foot of the Matese, founded as a 326 BC oppidum, with Italy's fourth-largest amphitheatre still half-buried.
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.
Caiazzo
Province: Caserta · 200 m
A Cittaslow hill above the Volturno, turned by Franco Pepe's pizza into a destination for 800 covers a day in eighteenth-century rooms.
Centola
Province: Salerno · 336 m
A Cilento hill village at 336 meters whose seaside frazione carries the name of Aeneas' helmsman.
Cerreto Sannita
Province: Benevento · 290 m
A Sannio ceramics town at 290 meters, replanned on an orthogonal grid after the 1688 earthquake leveled the old hill.
Furore
Province: Salerno · 300 m
The Amalfi Coast village with no piazza and no center, scattered on rock walls 300 meters above the only fjord in southern Italy.
Lapio
Province: Avellino · 590 m
An 1,428-resident Irpinia hilltop borgo at 590m in the hills east of Avellino, recognised by a rare four-signal combination (Città del Vino + Olio + Miele + Nocciola) for the whole local agricultural ecosystem.
Maiori
Province: Salerno · 5 m
The Amalfi Coast town with the longest beach and a grid street plan, rebuilt after the 1954 flood took the medieval lanes.
Montesarchio
Province: Benevento · 300 m
Ancient Caudium at 300 meters, a Roman defeat still attached to the name two thousand years later.
Pozzuoli
Province: Napoli · 28 m
A Roman port on a volcanic caldera, the Greek Dicearchia and the Roman Puteoli, where a market's columns first proved that the ground itself rises and falls.
Ravello
Province: Salerno · 365 m
A ridge town above the Amalfi Coast where Wagner found Klingsor's garden in 1880.
Sant'Agata de' Goti
Province: Benevento · 156 m
A medieval town built on a tuff cliff between two gorges, the houses standing flush with the edge over the Isclero river below.
Taurasi
Province: Avellino · 400 m
An Irpinia wine village at 400 meters above the Calore valley, the southern home of Aglianico called Barolo of the South.
Tramonti
Province: Salerno · 321 m
The inland side of the Amalfi Coast, thirteen hamlets on the Lattari slopes producing wine and an exported pizza dough.
Tufo
Province: Avellino · 250 m
A 250-meter Irpinia hill town on sulfur-rich limestone slopes, twenty kilometers north of Avellino.
Emilia-Romagna4
Bertinoro
Province: Forlì-Cesena · 254 m
A 254-meter Romagna-hill borgo above the Via Emilia, with a twelve-ring hospitality column from 1300 and the slopes that grow Albana DOCG.
Castell'Arquato
Province: Piacenza · 224 m
A 224-meter hilltop borgo in the Val d'Arda, kept intact since the tenth century and crowned by Luchino Visconti's 1342 fortress.
Castelvetro di Modena
Province: Modena · 152 m
A 152-meter hill borgo south of Modena whose checkerboard piazza sits above the slopes that grow Lambrusco Grasparossa.
Sasso Marconi
Province: Bologna · 128 m
A 128-meter pre-Apennine town at the confluence of the Setta and Reno, renamed in 1938 for the radio pioneer whose family estate stands in its Pontecchio frazione.
Friuli-Venezia Giulia10
Aquileia
Province: Udine · 5 m
A village of 3,128 on a Roman capital of 100,000, where the largest paleochristian mosaic floor in the West runs under a Romanesque basilica.
Cervignano del Friuli
Province: Udine · 5 m
The capital of Bassa Friulana on the Ausa river, an inland river port for Aquileia in 181 BC and a railway junction since 1860.
Cividale del Friuli
Province: Udine · 138 m
The Lombard capital on the Natisone, founded as Forum Iulii by Julius Caesar, where an eighth-century chapel still holds six stucco saints.
Cormons
Province: Gorizia · 51 m
The capital of the Collio wine zone at the foot of the Friulian-Slovenian hills.
Gorizia
Province: Gorizia · 84 m
Border city below the Julian Alps, split from its neighbor by a 1947 wall and rejoined only after decades of division.
Gradisca d'Isonzo
Province: Gorizia · 32 m
A 1479 Venetian bastion on the right bank of the Isonzo, with seven towers, twenty-meter walls, and a Habsburg court inside.
Muggia
Province: Trieste · 13 m
The only town on the Istrian peninsula still inside Italy, a small Venetian port on the Gulf of Trieste five kilometers from the Slovenian border.
San Dorligo della Valle-Dolina
Province: Trieste · 84 m
A Slovene-speaking Karst commune ten kilometers from Trieste, with its own valley, its own wine, and a canyon Roman aqueducts once crossed.
San Vito al Tagliamento
Province: Pordenone · 30 m
A medieval Tagliamento-plain town inside three rings of moats and three towers.
Sesto al Reghena
Province: Pordenone · 13 m
A 730s Benedictine abbey on the Reghena, ravaged by Magyars in 899, refortified in the tenth century, and still the town hall today.
Lazio6
Anagni
Province: Frosinone · 424 m
The hill town in Ciociaria where a September 1303 assault on a reigning pope inside his own palace ended the medieval claim to papal supremacy.
Ariccia
Province: Roma · 412 m
The Castelli Romani town where a single Baroque architect's ensemble sits on a volcanic crater rim above Rome, and Saturday lunch means porchetta.
Atina
Province: Frosinone · 500 m
A polygonal-walled town at the foot of the Mainarde, and the DOC that makes Cabernet in central Italy.
Nemi
Province: Roma · 521 m
The smallest comune in the Castelli Romani, perched at 521 meters above a volcanic crater lake the Romans called the mirror of Diana.
Sabaudia
Province: Latina · 17 m
A rationalist city built in 253 days on drained Pontine marshland, founded 15 April 1934 between Lago di Paola and the Tyrrhenian dunes.
Velletri
Province: Roma · 332 m
The Castelli Romani town where Augustus grew up, now the largest wine commune of its hills.
Lombardy6
Lonato del Garda
Province: Brescia · 188 m
A hilltop commune on the southwestern Garda morainic ridge, with a Visconti castle and a private library of 52,000 volumes.
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.
Sirmione
Province: Brescia · 91 m
A 4-kilometer peninsula reaching into the southern Garda, its tip closed by a fortified port and a Roman villa.
Sondrio
Province: Sondrio · 307 m
The capital of Valtellina at 307 meters, where Castel Masegra watches over terraced vineyards that produce Sassella and Grumello Nebbiolo.
Tirano
Province: Sondrio · 441 m
A Valtellina town at 441 meters where a railway from across the border reaches Italy, beneath terraced Nebbiolo vineyards.
Volta Mantovana
Province: Mantova · 91 m
A morainic hill town between Mantua and the countryside where a Renaissance palace was built inside a medieval castle.
Marche6
Matelica
Province: Macerata · 354 m
A Verdicchio town at 354 meters in the upper Esino valley, with a Roman marble globe in its archaeological museum.
Morro d'Alba
Province: Ancona · 199 m
A walled Castello di Jesi at 199 meters above the Esino valley, ringed by a covered walkway found nowhere else in Italy.
Morrovalle
Province: Macerata · 247 m
A hilltop borgo at 247 meters above the Chienti valley, its walled centro storico grown from a medieval castle called Mor-ro.
Offida
Province: Ascoli Piceno · 293 m
A hill borgo at 293 meters in the Piceno wine country, with a Romanesque-Gothic cliff church and women still working bobbin lace.
Ripatransone
Province: Ascoli Piceno · 494 m
The Belvedere del Piceno at 494 meters, ridgetop borgo with views to the Adriatic and the narrowest alley in Italy at 43 centimeters.
Staffolo
Province: Ancona · 442 m
The Verdicchio balcony at 442 meters above three valleys, with a near-circular medieval wall ring and a wine museum carved into the ramparts.
Molise2
Montenero di Bisaccia
Province: Campobasso · 273 m
A tufa hill town at 273 meters above the northernmost stretch of Molise coast, home base of former magistrate Antonio Di Pietro and his vineyards.
Ripalimosani
Province: Campobasso · 640 m
A sandstone-ridge village at 640 meters above the Biferno valley, the historic land of the funai rope makers and a Tintilia wine commune.
Piedmont18
Acqui Terme
Province: Alessandria · 156 m
A Roman spa town at 156 meters on the Bormida, where a sulphurous spring still surfaces at 74.5 degrees under an 1870 pavilion.
Alba
Province: Cuneo · 172 m
The Langhe capital at 172 meters on the Tanaro, world reference for white truffle and Nebbiolo, headquarters of Ferrero.
Barolo
Province: Cuneo · 301 m
A Langhe borgo at 301 meters whose Castello Falletti gave its name to the wine the Marchesi turned dry in the 1830s with Cavour's help.
Canelli
Province: Asti · 157 m
The Asti Spumante town at 157 meters in the Belbo valley, where 20 kilometers of underground tuff cellars hold millions of bottles at constant temperature.
Casale Monferrato
Province: Alessandria · 116 m
The historic capital of the Marchesato del Monferrato at 116 meters on the Po, where the Paleologi castle and the Baroque synagogue still stand.
Castagnole delle Lanze
Province: Asti · 298 m
An Asti hill town at 298 meters between Langhe and Monferrato, with two Baroque churches and a nineteenth-century astronomical tower.
Cocconato
Province: Asti · 491 m
A Monferrato ridge town at 491 meters with a microclimate mild enough to grow palms and olives this far north.
Dogliani
Province: Cuneo · 295 m
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.
Gattinara
Province: Vercelli · 265 m
The Alto Piemonte Nebbiolo town on volcanic soil between the Sesia and Monte Rosa, DOCG since 1990, with a tenth-century watchtower above the vines.
Gavi
Province: Alessandria · 233 m
The Cortese di Gavi town below a Genoese star fortress, where Piemonte white wine was first recorded as Ligurian court tribute in 972.
Guarene
Province: Cuneo · 360 m
A Roero hilltop village at 360 meters above the Tanaro, whose Roero family baroque castle is now a luxury hotel and contemporary art destination.
La Morra
Province: Cuneo · 513 m
The hilltop above the Barolo zone, more Nebbiolo acreage than any other commune.
Moncalvo
Province: Asti · 305 m
Italy's smallest city by title, 2,730 residents on a Monferrato ridge, with a five-hundred-year truffle tradition and Guglielmo Caccia's home churches.
Nizza Monferrato
Province: Asti · 267 m
The capital of Barbera at 267 meters in the upper Monferrato, founded 1225.
Ovada
Province: Alessandria · 186 m
The Monferrato town at 186 meters where the Orba meets the Stura, the first Dolcetto DOC zone in Piemonte and now DOCG.
Santo Stefano Belbo
Province: Cuneo · 175 m
A Belbo valley village at 175 meters between the Langhe and Asti hills, birthplace of Cesare Pavese and the largest producer of Moscato d'Asti.
Serralunga d'Alba
Province: Cuneo · 414 m
A 527-inhabitant Barolo cru village at 414 meters on a Langhe ridge, crowned by a 14th-century French-style donjon castle of the Falletti.
Verduno
Province: Cuneo · 381 m
A Langhe hilltop at 381 meters, the home village of the Pelaverga grape.
Sardinia11
Alghero
Province: Sassari · 7 m
The Catalan city of northwest Sardinia, repopulated by Peter IV of Aragon in 1354.
Atzara
Province: Nuoro · 553 m
A Mandrolisai wine village on the western Gennargentu, painted in the early twentieth century by Spanish costumbristas and the Sardinian Scuola di Atzara.
Badesi
Province: Sassari · 102 m
A Gallura commune founded by shepherding families in the 1700s, its territory running from a hilltop village down to eight kilometers of dunes at the Coghinas river mouth.
Bosa
Province: Oristano · 10 m
A colour-washed riverside town on Sardinia's only navigable river, with a Malaspina castle on the hill and the tanneries of Sas Conzas along the Temo.
Dorgali
Province: Nuoro · 387 m
A Supramonte town at 387 meters, with a coastal frazione, a Nuragic village hidden in a sinkhole, and a limestone gorge cut through the massif to the south.
Galtellì
Province: Nuoro · 49 m
Grazia Deledda's 'Canne al vento' set: a 2,354-resident Baronia borgo in Sardinia's northeast, with the entire centro recognised as the Parco Letterario Grazia Deledda for being the literal setting of her 1913 Nobel-trajectory novel.
Jerzu
Province: Nuoro · 450 m
The Cannonau capital of Ogliastra, perched at 450 meters in the eastern Ogliastra interior.
Mamoiada
Province: Nuoro · 644 m
The Barbagia village where the Mamuthones come out on January 17, twelve men in black sheepskins carrying thirty kilos of cowbells.
Oliena
Province: Nuoro · 380 m
A Supramonte village at the foot of the massif's highest peak, source of Cannonau Nepente, base camp for Tiscali and the Lanaitto valley.
Samugheo
Province: Oristano · 380 m
Sardinia's textile-weaving capital: a 2,757-resident Mandrolisai borgo where the MURATS regional textile museum, the Tessingiu woven-art biennale, and an active community of weavers on traditional looms keep a knot-stitch tradition alive.
Tempio Pausania
Province: Sassari · 566 m
The granite capital of Gallura at the foot of Monte Limbara, known for cork, Vermentino DOCG and the largest Carnival in northern Sardinia.
Sicily6
Castiglione di Sicilia
Province: Catania · 621 m
A hill town on the north flank of Etna at 621 meters, base camp for the Alcantara valley and the volcano's most serious red wines.
Marsala
Province: Trapani · 3 m
Sicily's westernmost city, born from the Phoenician refugees of Mozia, where Garibaldi landed in 1860 and English merchants invented Marsala wine.
Menfi
Province: Agrigento · 119 m
Sicily's triple-signal western coast town: 11,800 residents on a low ridge above 9 km of protected sand at Porto Palo, backed by cellars and olive groves that between them carry Italy's three major small-town quality marks.
Pantelleria
Province: Trapani · 8 m
A volcanic island closer to Tunisia than Sicily, where dry-stone dammusi sit among bush-trained Zibibbo vines listed by UNESCO.
Sambuca di Sicilia
Province: Agrigento · 350 m
An Arab-founded hill town in the Belice valley, still called Zabut in living memory before 1923.
Sant'Alfio
Province: Catania · 537 m
An Etna village at 537 meters where the world's largest and oldest chestnut tree has been measured at over 57 meters in girth.
Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol4
Brentonico
Province: Trento · 692 m
The Monte Baldo plateau town between Lake Garda and the Vallagarina, with chestnut groves, war trenches and a botanical garden.
Riva del Garda
Province: Trento · 73 m
The north tip of the lake at 73 metres, where the Trentino mountains close in on the water and a Habsburg port town stayed bilingual into the twentieth century.
Rovereto
Province: Trento · 204 m
The Vallagarina city at 204 metres where a Venetian-Austrian castle holds the Italian war museum and a domed contemporary art museum holds Italy's largest collection of its kind in the Alps.
Trento
Province: Trento · 194 m
The Alpine capital on the Adige at 194 metres, where the Council that reshaped the Catholic Church met in a castle still standing above the city.
Tuscany26
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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.
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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.
Carmignano
Province: Prato · 189 m
A Medici village at 189 meters on the Montalbano slopes, where Etruscan tumuli sit below the Renaissance villas.
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Castagneto Carducci
Province: Livorno · 194 m
A hilltop borgo at 194 meters above the Costa degli Etruschi, renamed for the poet Carducci in 1907 and the home of Bolgheri and Sassicaia.
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Castellina in Chianti
Province: Siena · 578 m
A Chianti hill town at 578 meters on the watershed between the Arno and the Ombrone, with an Etruscan tumulus, a Brunelleschi-reinforced wall and a covered medieval walkway around its edge.
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Castelnuovo Berardenga
Province: Siena · 351 m
A commune of 351 meters, the last castle Siena built against Florence, in 1366.
Castiglion Fiorentino
Province: Arezzo · 342 m
A walled hill town at 342 meters between Arezzo and Cortona, where Etruscan walls support the medieval Cassero.
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Castiglione d'Orcia
Province: Siena · 540 m
A stone borgo at 540 meters in the UNESCO Val d'Orcia, with two fortresses guarding the road from Amiata to the Via Francigena.
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.
Chiusi
Province: Siena · 398 m
The Etruscan city of King Porsenna at 398 meters above the Val di Chiana, with one of Italy's major Etruscan museums and tunnels carved beneath the streets.
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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.
Massa Marittima
Province: Grosseto · 380 m
A medieval mining town at 380 meters, free commune from 1255 to 1337, whose cathedral holds the relics of San Cerbone.
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Montalcino
Province: Siena · 564 m
A walled hill town at 564 meters above the Val d'Orcia, the last fortress to hold out for the Sienese Republic and the birthplace of Brunello.
Montecarlo
Province: Lucca · 163 m
A walled hill village at 163 meters above the Lucca plain, founded by Emperor Charles IV in 1333 and named for him, surrounded by twenty wineries.
Montepulciano
Province: Siena · 605 m
A Renaissance hill town at 605 meters on a limestone ridge, aging its Sangiovese-based red in vaulted cellars beneath the palazzi.
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.
Murlo
Province: Siena · 314 m
A medieval bishops' fief twenty kilometers south of Siena, with an Etruscan princely palace on Poggio Civitate and the Cappellone statue as its symbol.
Peccioli
Province: Pisa · 144 m
Borgo dei Borghi 2024 in the Valdera hills, a medieval village that funded a public contemporary-art program with revenue from its landfill plant.
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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.
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.
Rapolano Terme
Province: Siena · 334 m
A Sienese thermal town of 38-degree calcium-sulphur waters and travertine quarries feeding facades beyond its borders.
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.
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San Gimignano
Province: Siena · 334 m
A walled hill town at 334 meters with 14 surviving medieval towers, UNESCO listed since 1990 and the home of Vernaccia.
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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.
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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 ruled from the Rocca Aldobrandesca since 973.
Vinci
Province: Firenze · 97 m
The hill town on Montalbano where Leonardo was born in 1452, with a ship-shaped castle that now holds his machines.
Umbria8
Bevagna
Province: Perugia · 225 m
Roman Mevania on the Umbrian plain at 225 meters, four medieval quarters that compete every June in a reconstructed market of the 13th century.
Giano dell'Umbria
Province: Perugia · 547 m
A hill commune between Foligno, Spoleto and Todi, anchored by a Romanesque abbey built over the tomb of a fourth-century martyr.
Montefalco
Province: Perugia · 472 m
The hilltop wine capital of Umbria at 472 meters, where Sagrantino is grown almost nowhere else.
Orvieto
Province: Terni · 325 m
Etruscan Velzna on a 325-meter tufa butte, later a medieval refuge of popes.
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.
Todi
Province: Perugia · 398 m
A walled hill town at 398 meters on the Tiber, with Etruscan, Roman, and medieval rings stacked one above the other.
Torgiano
Province: Perugia · 219 m
A walled river town at 219 meters at the confluence of the Tiber and the Chiascio, the first DOC and DOCG zone in Umbria.
Trevi
Province: Perugia · 412 m
A walled town at 412 meters above the Spoleto valley, ringed by 200,000 olive trees that make it the Umbrian capital of olive oil.
Veneto13
Arquà Petrarca
Province: Padova · 56 m
The Euganean Hills village where Francesco Petrarca spent his last four years and died in 1374, renamed in his honor in 1868.
Asolo
Province: Treviso · 205 m
A walled hill town at 205 meters that Caterina Cornaro ran as her court after trading Cyprus to Venice in 1489.
Bardolino
Province: Verona · 65 m
Lake Garda's east-shore wine town at 65 meters, where Corvina and Rondinella grapes have made Bardolino and Chiaretto since the Roman period.
Cison di Valmarino
Province: Treviso · 261 m
A Prosecco hills borgo at 261 meters under the dolomite rock of CastelBrando, the largest inhabited castle complex in Europe.
Conegliano
Province: Treviso · 65 m
The Prosecco capital at 65 meters, birthplace of the painter Cima and home of Italy's first oenology school, opened in 1876.
Farra di Soligo
Province: Treviso · 161 m
An 8,477-resident comune in the Conegliano-Valdobbiadene DOCG zone, with the three medieval Torri di Credazzo crowning a hilltop above its vineyards and Cittaslow plus Città del Vino status alongside it.
Follina
Province: Treviso · 191 m
A Prosecco-hills borgo at 191 meters around the Cistercian Abbey of Santa Maria, with a cloister finished in 1268.
Lazise
Province: Verona · 76 m
The walled port granted the right to fortify in 983, considered the first comune in Italy.
Pieve di Soligo
Province: Treviso · 132 m
The market town between the Soligo and Lierza rivers in the Prosecco UNESCO zone, birthplace of the twentieth-century poet Andrea Zanzotto.
Soave
Province: Verona · 40 m
A walled wine town twenty kilometers east of Verona, where Garganega vineyards climb to a Scaligeri castle above the rooftops.
Susegana
Province: Treviso · 76 m
The Collalto castle town at 76 meters on the left bank of the Piave, holding one of the largest medieval fortresses in northern Italy.
Valdobbiadene
Province: Treviso · 253 m
The Prosecco Superiore capital at 253 meters in the Treviso Prealps, where Glera grown on Cartizze's 108 hectares produces the most expensive Italian sparkling wine.
Vittorio Veneto
Province: Treviso · 138 m
Two old towns fused at 138 meters under the Cansiglio, where the October 1918 battle ended the First World War on the Italian front.
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.