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
Biccari
Province: Foggia
A Subappennino Dauno borgo at 450 meters under Monte Cornacchia, the highest peak in Puglia at 1,151 meters, with a Byzantine tower at its core.
Sirolo
Province: Ancona
A clifftop borgo at 125 meters, above the Due Sorelle sea stacks of the Adriatic.
Penne
Province: Pescara
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.
Palazzolo Acreide
Province: Siracusa
An 8,000-resident hilltop town on the Iblei plateau at 670m, rebuilt entirely in late Baroque after the 1693 earthquake and founded over the Greek Akrai colony in 664 BC, with a Greek theatre and a cluster of rock carvings unlike anything else nearby.
Verucchio
Province: Rimini
A spur over the lower Marecchia valley, cradle of the Villanovan civilization and birthplace of the Malatesta lordship of Romagna.