Designation
Geoparco UNESCO
17 towns across 4 regions
Browse by region
Apulia5
Andria
Province: Barletta-Andria-Trani · 151 m
Frederick II's favourite Apulian city, the birthplace of burrata, ruling the Murge plateau eighteen kilometers north of its most famous castle.
Cassano delle Murge
Province: Bari · 341 m
A Murge foothills town at 341 meters at the gate of the Alta Murgia park, with the 1,300-hectare Foresta Mercadante mostly inside its territory.
Gravina in Puglia
Province: Bari · 350 m
Puglia's deepest gravina: a Bari-province town of 42,700 built on the lip of a 100m-deep limestone canyon, its cliffs threaded with rupestrian cave churches.
Minervino Murge
Province: Barletta-Andria-Trani · 445 m
A ridge town at 445 meters where the Murgia plateau breaks off into open view, inside the national park that carries its name.
Poggiorsini
Province: Bari · 461 m
The smallest commune in metropolitan Bari, an Orsini estate of 1609 that became an independent town only in 1957.
Liguria4
Arenzano
Province: Genova · 12 m
A coastal town twenty kilometers west of Genova where two-thirds of the territory climbs into the Parco del Beigua and peaks above a thousand meters.
Campo Ligure
Province: Genova · 342 m
A Spinola borgo at 342 meters in the Stura valley north of Genova, the last working centre for gold and silver filigree in Italy.
Sassello
Province: Savona · 381 m
A baroque borgo at 381 meters in the Parco del Beigua, split by a stream and known for a soft almond biscuit invented in its own kitchens.
Varazze
Province: Savona · 10 m
A Ligurian shipbuilding town whose thirteenth-century friar compiled the saint lives that became the most copied book in Europe after the Bible.
Sicily7
Calascibetta
Province: Enna · 691 m
A promontory town at 691 meters facing Enna across a ravine, founded in the ninth century as a Muslim camp to besiege Byzantine Henna.
Castelbuono
Province: Palermo · 423 m
A Madonie town at 423 meters around the Ventimiglia castle, where manna is still tapped from ash trees and Fiasconaro bakes the panettone.
Cefalù
Province: Palermo · 16 m
A Norman cathedral at the foot of a 270-meter rock on the Tyrrhenian coast, founded in 1131.
Geraci Siculo
Province: Palermo · 1,077 m
A Madonie ridge village at 1,077 meters, capital of the Ventimiglia marquisate from 1258 and the first marquisate granted in Sicily.
Petralia Soprana
Province: Palermo · 1,147 m
The highest village in the Madonie at 1,147 meters, RAI Borgo dei Borghi 2018 winner, sitting above 80 kilometers of salt tunnels.
Petralia Sottana
Province: Palermo · 1,000 m
A Madonie village at 1,000 meters, the only Bandiera Arancione in Sicily, and the headquarters of the Parco delle Madonie.
Polizzi Generosa
Province: Palermo · 917 m
A Madonie town at 917 meters, hazelnut country and the birthplace of Domenico Dolce.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover
Campi Salentina
Province: Lecce
A Salento plain town fifteen kilometers north of Lecce, rebuilt after the Saracen raids of 926 and later raised to a marquisate.
Loreto Aprutino
Province: Pescara
A hilltop town at 290 meters in the Aprutino olive country, with a fourteenth-century Judgment fresco and a Castelli majolica collection.
Ascea
Province: Salerno
Two villages, a hilltown at 230 meters and a Cilento marina, with Parmenides and Zeno's Eleatic school in the ruins of Greek Velia below.
Vico del Gargano
Province: Foggia
A Gargano hill town at 445 meters where a Norman castle, a kiss alley, and DOP citrus terraces step down toward the Adriatic.
Mantova
Province: Mantova
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.