Designation
Città della Ceramica
25 towns across 11 regions
Browse by region
Basilicata2
Calvello
Province: Potenza · 730 m
A 730-meter ceramic town working clay since 1200, when Benedictines from Faenza brought the wheel south.
Matera
Province: Matera · 401 m
Cave dwellings carved into limestone since the Paleolithic, called the shame of Italy in the 1950s and made European Capital of Culture in 2019.
Campania4
Ariano Irpino
Province: Avellino · 788 m
The City of the Three Hills at 788 meters, where Roger II promulgated the Assizes of 1140 and majolica kilns still fire.
Calitri
Province: Avellino · 530 m
A ceramic town at 530 meters, half-emptied by the 1980 earthquake and rebuilt around an August festival of music, words and ritual.
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.
Vietri sul Mare
Province: Salerno · 80 m
The eastern end of the Amalfi Coast at 80 meters, the ceramics town since the fifteenth century, the gateway between Salerno and the cliff road.
Lazio3
Acquapendente
Province: Viterbo · 420 m
The northernmost town in Lazio, at 420 meters above the Paglia, named in 964 for its waterfalls.
Tarquinia
Province: Viterbo · 133 m
An Etruscan capital on a Maremma ridge whose 6,000 rock-cut tombs at Monterozzi hold the largest body of pre-Roman painting in the Mediterranean.
Viterbo
Province: Viterbo · 326 m
The medieval capital of the Tuscia, papal seat for five popes between 1257 and 1281 and home to the longest conclave in Church history.
Liguria2
Marche3
Ascoli Piceno
Province: Ascoli Piceno · 154 m
The travertine city at 154 meters where the Tronto meets the Castellano, capital of the Piceni and host of the Quintana joust.
Pesaro
Province: Pesaro e Urbino · 11 m
The Adriatic port at the mouth of the Foglia, founded as Roman Pisaurum in 184 BC and given to the world by Rossini in 1792.
Urbania
Province: Pesaro e Urbino · 273 m
The Montefeltro ceramics town on the upper Metauro, known as Casteldurante until Pope Urban VIII gave it his name in 1636.
Sicily3
Caltagirone
Province: Catania · 611 m
Sicily's ceramic capital at 611 meters on the Erei ridge, 142 majolica-tiled steps to Santa Maria del Monte and a Val di Noto UNESCO baroque rebuild.
Monreale
Province: Palermo · 310 m
Above the Conca d'Oro at 310 meters, the cathedral William II built between 1174 and 1182 holds 6,340 square meters of Norman mosaics.
Sciacca
Province: Agrigento · 60 m
A terraced fishing harbor on Sicily's southwestern coast, built on a spa town of the fifth century BC and a ceramics center since the fourteenth.
Umbria4
Città di Castello
Province: Perugia · 288 m
A walled town of 38,000 in the upper Tiber valley where Raphael painted his first independent commissions and the white truffle season is the year's headline food event.
Deruta
Province: Perugia · 218 m
A hill town at 218 meters on the left bank of the Tiber, the maiolica capital of central Italy since the late thirteenth century.
Gubbio
Province: Perugia · 522 m
Pre-Roman Ikuvium of the Umbri, where seven bronze tablets carry the longest text of the Umbrian language.
Orvieto
Province: Terni · 325 m
Etruscan Velzna on a 325-meter tufa butte, later a medieval refuge of popes.
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.