Designation
Comuni Virtuosi
44 towns across 16 regions
Browse by region
Abruzzo5
Alfedena
Province: L'Aquila · 914 m
At 914 meters at the head of the upper Sangro valley, the Samnite Aufidena, with a 15,000-tomb necropolis and a Roman conquest in 298 BC.
Fara San Martino
Province: Chieti · 440 m
A pasta-making town at 440 meters, where the Verde river runs out of a two-meter slot in the Majella wall.
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.
Pettorano sul Gizio
Province: L'Aquila · 656 m
At 656 meters above the Gizio river, a Cantelmo fortress town that guarded the gateway to the Peligna valley for four hundred years.
Scontrone
Province: L'Aquila · 1,038 m
A 1,038-meter borgo above the Sangro gorge, with two dozen emigration-themed murals and a paleontological site of European importance.
Calabria4
Alessandria del Carretto
Province: Cosenza · 1,043 m
The highest village in the Pollino at 1,043 meters, the only Italian commune carrying its founder's full name, with a fir-tree ritual every 3 May.
Montegiordano
Province: Cosenza · 619 m
A 619-meter hill town with a hunting castle and a centro storico turned into a gallery of murals.
Riace
Province: Reggio di Calabria · 300 m
A 300-meter borgo on the Locride hills, famous for the 1972 bronzes pulled from its sea and the refugee resettlement project that doubled its population.
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.
Emilia-Romagna5
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.
Collecchio
Province: Parma · 112 m
A Parma-cintura town on the Via Francigena, known today for a dairy multinational's headquarters and a football club's training ground.
Montechiarugolo
Province: Parma · 130 m
A Parmigiano-country borgo on the Enza river, built around a fourteenth-century castle that has stayed in the Marchi family since 1864.
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.
Spilamberto
Province: Modena · 69 m
A 69-meter Po-plain town on the Via Romea, headquarters of the Consorteria that has certified a DOP product since 1967.
Lazio2
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Capranica
Province: Viterbo · 370 m
A medieval hill town on the old Via Cassia, taken by the Anguillara family in 1305 and remembered as the place Petrarch stayed in 1337.
Oriolo Romano
Province: Viterbo · 420 m
A planned sixteenth-century village in the Sabatini hills, laid out in 1560 by a Santacroce nobleman on land cleared from an ancient beech wood.
Lombardy4
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.
Cassinetta di Lugagnano
Province: Milano · 120 m
A commune west of Milan with fifteen surviving ville di delizia and Italy's first zero-growth urban plan, adopted in 2007.
Darfo Boario Terme
Province: Brescia · 218 m
A spa town where the Oglio leaves the mountains for the plain, next to one of Italy's oldest rock-engraving sites.
Tignale
Province: Brescia · 560 m
A six-hamlet commune on a high terrace above Lake Garda's western shore, anchored by a clifftop sanctuary and the last working limonaie north of Salò.
Marche4
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.
Corinaldo
Province: Ancona · 203 m
A walled hill borgo at 203 meters, ringed by 912 meters of intact medieval walls, and the birthplace of Saint Maria Goretti.
Monte Grimano Terme
Province: Pesaro e Urbino · 536 m
A small Montefeltro borgo at 536 meters on the Marche-Romagna border, built around alkaline sulphur springs.
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.
Piedmont2
Avigliana
Province: Torino · 383 m
A medieval Savoy town at 383 meters at the mouth of the Susa Valley, between two glacial lakes and the abbey on the mountain above.
Ronco Canavese
Province: Torino · 956 m
A 271-inhabitant Francoprovenzale village at 956 meters on the Piemonte side of the Gran Paradiso National Park.
Sicily3
Ferla
Province: Siracusa · 500 m
A baroque village at 500 meters on the Monte Lauro slopes, the western gateway to the UNESCO necropolis of Pantalica eleven kilometers downhill.
Lampedusa e Linosa
Province: Agrigento · 25 m
Italy's southernmost comune, three islands on the African continental shelf, closer to Tunisia than to Sicily.
Troina
Province: Enna · 1,121 m
At 1,121 meters on the Nebrodi ridge, the first capital and first bishopric the Normans set up in Sicily after taking it from the Arabs.
Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol1
Tuscany5
Carmignano
Province: Prato · 189 m
A Medici village at 189 meters on the Montalbano slopes, where Etruscan tumuli sit below the Renaissance villas.
Fiesole
Province: Firenze · 295 m
An Etruscan hilltop above Florence, still looking down on what later replaced it.
Seravezza
Province: Lucca · 100 m
The Versilia town where Michelangelo opened the Pope's marble quarries and Cosimo I built his summer palace.
Stazzema
Province: Lucca · 440 m
A mountain commune of seventeen hamlets in the Apuan Alps, site of the August 1944 Sant'Anna massacre and Italy's National Park of Peace.
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Viareggio
Province: Lucca · 2 m
The Versilia capital, a Carnival city on the Tuscan coast that turned into a Belle Époque resort when the railway arrived.
Umbria4
Montecchio
Province: Terni · 377 m
A small hill commune at 377 meters above the Tiber, sitting on top of one of Umbria's largest Etruscan-tied necropolises.
Paciano
Province: Perugia · 391 m
Walled hill town of 957 people at 391 meters above the lake, three parallel streets, eight towers and three medieval gates intact.
Pietralunga
Province: Perugia · 566 m
A pre-Apennine hill town at 566 meters on the northeast Tiber ridge, ringed by truffle woods and white-potato fields.
Vallo di Nera
Province: Perugia · 467 m
Castle village of 345 people at 467 meters in the upper Valnerina, granted by Spoleto in 1217 and barely changed since.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover
Castiglion Fiorentino
Province: Arezzo
A walled hill town at 342 meters between Arezzo and Cortona, where Etruscan walls support the medieval Cassero.
Savoca
Province: Messina
A hilltop borgo at 300 meters above the Ionian, its ridge lined with stepped lanes and balconied stone houses.
Magione
Province: Perugia
A hill town east of Trasimeno built around a medieval Order's fortified base.
Sant'Agata de' Goti
Province: Benevento
A medieval town built on a tuff cliff between two gorges, the houses standing flush with the edge over the Isclero river below.
Castelvecchio di Rocca Barbena
Province: Savona
A stone village of 130 residents at 420 meters, built into the southern foot of a 1,142-meter limestone outcrop.