Designation
Cittaslow
55 towns across 14 regions
Browse by region
Abruzzo6
Citt脿 Sant'Angelo
Province: Pescara 路 320 m
A hilltop borgo at 320 meters between the Vestina hills and the Adriatic, named for the Archangel and home to a Collegiata since 1353.
Controguerra
Province: Teramo 路 267 m
A 267-meter hill village whose name is legal shorthand for a small Montepulciano and Trebbiano-Passerina DOC.
Guardiagrele
Province: Chieti 路 576 m
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.
Penne
Province: Pescara 路 438 m
The brick city at 438 meters between the Tavo and Fino, ancient capital of the Vestini, rebuilt after Allied bombing and awarded the Silver Medal of Civic Merit.
Pianella
Province: Pescara 路 236 m
A Cittaslow hill town at 236 meters between the Tavo and Pescara rivers, anchor of the Aprutino oil triangle and home of the dritta olive.
Pineto
Province: Teramo 路 4 m
A planned twentieth-century beach town named for D'Annunzio's poem, with the sixteenth-century Cerrano tower anchoring Abruzzo's first marine protected area.
Calabria2
Campania5
Amalfi
Province: Salerno 路 6 m
The first Italian maritime republic and the coast it named, six meters above the sea between cliffs that close around the duomo's steps.
Caiazzo
Province: Caserta 路 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.
Cerreto Sannita
Province: Benevento 路 290 m
A Sannio ceramics town at 290 meters, replanned on an orthogonal grid after the 1688 earthquake leveled the old hill.
Perito
Province: Salerno 路 480 m
A Cilento ridge town at 480 meters above the Alento valley, once a center of black-powder production for hunting, defense and brigands.
Positano
Province: Salerno 路 30 m
The vertical village of the Amalfi Coast, terraced houses climbing four hundred meters to the Lattari ridge under an eighteenth-century majolica dome.
Emilia-Romagna5
Borgo Val di Taro
Province: Parma 路 411 m
The Cittaslow capital of the upper Taro valley at 411 meters, where the Fungo di Borgotaro IGP porcini has been protected since 1996.
Brisighella
Province: Ravenna 路 115 m
A Lamone-valley borgo at 115 meters under three selenite hills crowned by a fortress, a clock tower, and a sanctuary.
Castel San Pietro Terme
Province: Bologna 路 75 m
A 75-meter thermal town east of Bologna, its sulphurous waters in use since 1137.
Fontanellato
Province: Parma 路 45 m
A Parma-plain town built around the Rocca Sanvitale, the moated fortress at its center.
Santarcangelo di Romagna
Province: Rimini 路 42 m
A Via Emilia hill town on the Marecchia plain, with over 150 tufa caves under the centro and a Malatesta fortress on its summit.
Lazio2
Acquapendente
Province: Viterbo 路 420 m
One of the northernmost towns in Lazio, at 420 meters above the Paglia, named in 964 for its waterfalls.
Sperlonga
Province: Latina 路 55 m
A whitewashed cliff town halfway between Rome and Naples, built above the sea grotto where Tiberius staged the Odyssey in marble.
Lombardia5
Bellano
Province: Lecco 路 202 m
An eastern shore town where the Pioverna cut a gorge through fifteen million years of rock before reaching the water.
Chiavenna
Province: Sondrio 路 333 m
An Alpine town at 333 meters on the Mera river, the historical Spl眉gen Pass crossroads named for its key position and its rock-cellar crotti.
Morimondo
Province: Milano 路 109 m
A Cistercian abbey village on the edge of the Ticino park, twenty-five kilometers southwest of Milano, founded by French monks in 1134.
Teglio
Province: Sondrio 路 856 m
A Valtellina hilltown at 856 meters whose Latin name gave the entire valley its own.
Tirano
Province: Sondrio 路 441 m
A Valtellina town at 441 meters where a railway from across the border reaches Italy, beneath terraced Nebbiolo vineyards.
Puglia3
Cisternino
Province: Brindisi 路 394 m
An Itria valley borgo on the southern Murgia at 394 meters, whitewashed and looking down over drystone walls and trulli.
Gravina in Puglia
Province: Bari 路 350 m
A Bari-province town of 42,700 built on the lip of a 100m-deep limestone canyon, its cliffs threaded with rupestrian cave churches.
Trani
Province: Barletta-Andria-Trani 路 7 m
The Adriatic port whose pink-white Romanesque cathedral stands on the water, built for a Greek pilgrim who died here in 1094.
Tuscany11
- Written about. No. 11.
Abetone Cutigliano
Province: Pistoia 路 1,388 m
The Apennine ski pass at 1,388 meters where the Granduca's two stone pyramids of 1778 mark the old Tuscan-Modenese border.
Anghiari
Province: Arezzo 路 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.
- Written about. No. 1.
Barga
Province: Lucca 路 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. 47.
Capalbio
Province: Grosseto 路 217 m
A walled hilltop borgo at 217 meters in the southern Maremma, donated to the Abbey of Tre Fontane by Charlemagne.
- Written about. No. 31.
Castelnuovo Berardenga
Province: Siena 路 351 m
A commune of 351 meters, the last castle Siena built against Florence, in 1366.
Cortona
Province: Arezzo 路 494 m
An Etruscan lucumonia at 494 meters, with two kilometers of walls older than Rome.
- Written about. No. 32.
Greve in Chianti
Province: Firenze 路 236 m
The market town on the Greve river, with a triangular piazza arcaded since the sixteenth century.
Massa Marittima
Province: Grosseto 路 380 m
A medieval mining town at 380 meters, free commune from 1225 to 1337, whose cathedral holds the relics of San Cerbone.
Mulazzo
Province: Massa-Carrara 路 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.
- Written about. No. 23.
San Miniato
Province: Pisa 路 150 m
The hilltop town between Pisa and Florence that produces a quarter of Tuscany's white truffles and once held the imperial seat of Otto I.
- Written about. No. 40.
Suvereto
Province: Livorno 路 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.
Umbria9
- Written about. No. 75.
Amelia
Province: Terni 路 406 m
A pre-Roman hilltown ringed by polygonal walls, with ten barrel-vaulted Roman cisterns beneath its main square.
- Written about. No. 78.
Citt脿 della Pieve
Province: Perugia 路 508 m
A red-brick hill town at 508 meters above the Valdichiana, the birthplace of Perugino and the home of one of Italy's narrowest alleys.
Monte Castello di Vibio
Province: Perugia 路 422 m
A fifteenth-century walled village at 422 meters above the Tiber, home to the world's smallest all'italiana theater with 99 seats.
- Written about. No. 81.
Montefalco
Province: Perugia 路 472 m
The hilltop wine capital of Umbria at 472 meters, where Sagrantino is grown almost nowhere else.
Norcia
Province: Perugia 路 604 m
Birthplace of San Benedetto at 604 meters on a Sibillini plateau, leveled by the 2016 earthquake and rebuilt stone by stone.
- Written about. No. 83.
Orvieto
Province: Terni 路 325 m
Etruscan Velzna on a 325-meter tufa butte, later a medieval refuge of popes.
Preci
Province: Perugia 路 596 m
A walled Valnerina village at 596 meters that ran Europe's leading school of surgery for three centuries until the 2016 quake brought the borgo down.
- Written about. No. 72.
Todi
Province: Perugia 路 398 m
A walled hill town at 398 meters on the Tiber, with Etruscan, Roman, and medieval rings stacked one above the other.
- Written about. No. 90.
Trevi
Province: Perugia 路 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.
Veneto3
Asolo
Province: Treviso 路 205 m
A walled hill town at 205 meters that Caterina Cornaro ran as her court after trading Cyprus to Venice in 1489.
Farra di Soligo
Province: Treviso 路 161 m
An 8,510-resident comune in the Conegliano-Valdobbiadene DOCG zone, with the three medieval Torri di Credazzo crowning a hilltop above its vineyards and Cittaslow plus Citt脿 del Vino status alongside it.
Follina
Province: Treviso 路 191 m
A Prosecco-hills borgo at 191 meters around the Cistercian Abbey of Santa Maria, with a cloister finished in 1268.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns
Camaiore
Province: Lucca
The Versilia commune that runs from the mountains to the sea, a Roman Campus Maior on the Via Francigena with a beach at its western end.
Aieta
Province: Cosenza
An eagle's-nest village in the western Pollino, with one of the few sixteenth-century Renaissance palazzi standing in Calabria.
Deiva Marina
Province: La Spezia
A Riviera di Levante seaside commune reachable by sea only after the 1874 railway.
Fanano
Province: Modena
A 640-meter stone-working town set among Monte Cimone, Libro Aperto and the upper Frignano peaks.
Conversano
Province: Bari
A pre-Murge hill town at 219 meters, three centuries seat of the Acquaviva counts, with the abbey-monastery once called the Wonder of Puglia.