Designation
Parco Regionale
200 towns across 19 regions
Browse by region
Abruzzo4
Castelvecchio Subequo
Province: L'Aquila · 409 m
At 409 meters in the Subequana valley, the Roman Superaequum and Franciscan station where the saint himself was given land for a convent built between 1221 and 1261.
Goriano Sicoli
Province: L'Aquila · 720 m
At 720 meters in the Subequana valley, a medieval village drawn by M.C. Escher in 1929 keeps a May ritual folklorists trace to Demeter.
Ovindoli
Province: L'Aquila · 1,375 m
At 1,375 meters on the Altopiano delle Rocche, the closest serious ski station to Rome, working since 1959 on the slopes of Monte Magnola.
Pescina
Province: L'Aquila · 735 m
A Marsica town at 735 meters, on the rim of the drained Fucino basin, that lost five thousand of six thousand people in a single morning in 1915.
Apulia11
Castellaneta
Province: Taranto · 235 m
A cliff-edge Murge town at 235 meters above the Gravina Grande canyon, birthplace of Rudolph Valentino in 1895, with a Bandiera Blu Ionian marina.
Fasano
Province: Brindisi · 118 m
A Brindisi-province town running from the Adriatic up to the Itria escarpment, holding a Roman coastal city, a wooded highpoint, and Europe's second-largest safari park.
Gallipoli
Province: Lecce · 12 m
The Ionian beach city on a limestone island, Greek Kallipolis meaning beautiful city, tied to the mainland by a seventeenth-century bridge.
Lecce
Province: Lecce · 49 m
The Baroque capital of the Salento, ninety-four thousand people on the Lecce-stone plain, carving its façades in honey limestone since 1500.
Martina Franca
Province: Taranto · 431 m
Puglia's second Baroque city after Lecce, on the Itria ridge at 431 meters, with an opera festival in its ducal courtyard since 1975.
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.
Nardò
Province: Lecce · 45 m
The second city of Salento after Lecce, a Baroque inland capital twenty-five kilometers from Lecce with a Ionian coastline behind it.
Ostuni
Province: Brindisi · 218 m
The Città Bianca on three hills at 218 meters, eight kilometers inland, whitewashed against the Murge above an Adriatic plain of olive trees.
Otranto
Province: Lecce · 20 m
Italy's easternmost city, eighty kilometers from Albania, with a Norman mosaic floor and the bones of 813 martyrs in the cathedral.
Trinitapoli
Province: Barletta-Andria-Trani · 5 m
A Tavoliere town between the Saline di Margherita and the Ofanto, sitting on a Bronze Age sanctuary that still surprises archaeologists.
Ugento
Province: Lecce · 108 m
A Messapian-Roman town five kilometers from the Ionian, where a Baroque castle sits on the walls of the ancient city of Ozan.
Basilicata6
Accettura
Province: Matera · 770 m
A 770-meter village in the Gallipoli Cognato park where, each Pentecost, a Turkey oak is married to a holly tree.
Castelmezzano
Province: Potenza · 750 m
A medieval village wedged into sandstone teeth at 750 meters, linked to Pietrapertosa by a 1,452-meter zipline since 2007.
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.
Melfi
Province: Potenza · 530 m
At 530 meters on volcanic slopes, first Norman capital of the south and seat of a landmark 1231 legal code issued from its castle.
Pietrapertosa
Province: Potenza · 1,088 m
Basilicata's highest commune at 1,088 meters, built into the Lucanian Dolomites with a Saracen rock-cut fortress and a 1,400-meter zipline to Castelmezzano.
San Fele
Province: Potenza · 872 m
A stone village at 872 meters between two peaks, where a 969 fortress and ten waterfalls along the Bradano still define the place.
Calabria3
Badolato
Province: Catanzaro · 240 m
A medieval borgo of thirteen churches at 240 meters above the Ionian, which took in 350 Kurdish refugees in 1997 and started its own slow rebirth.
Pizzo
Province: Vibo Valentia · 44 m
A tuff-cliff town over the Gulf of Sant'Eufemia, where a king was shot in 1815 and the tartufo gelato was invented a century later.
Stilo
Province: Reggio di Calabria · 400 m
A Byzantine hilltown on the slope below a ruined Norman ridge, home to the tenth-century Cattolica and the legendary inspiration for Campanella's City of the Sun.
Campania26
Amalfi
Province: Salerno · 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.
Atrani
Province: Salerno · 21 m
The smallest commune in Italy by area, twelve hectares of stacked houses where the Amalfi Coast pinches shut around a single piazza.
Bacoli
Province: Napoli · 30 m
A town twenty kilometers west of Napoli, the Roman Bauli, where a cistern fed the imperial fleet at Miseno.
Cetara
Province: Salerno · 10 m
The Amalfi Coast's working tuna and anchovy port, where colatura di alici is still aged in chestnut barrels in the cellars behind the marina.
Conca dei Marini
Province: Salerno · 138 m
A coastal hamlet of 664 people on the Amalfi Coast, home to a monastery pastry and a sea cave that glows green.
Furore
Province: Salerno · 300 m
The Amalfi Coast village with no piazza and no center, scattered on rock walls 300 meters above the only fjord in southern Italy.
Maiori
Province: Salerno · 5 m
The Amalfi Coast town with the longest beach and a grid street plan, rebuilt after the 1954 flood took the medieval lanes.
Massa Lubrense
Province: Napoli · 121 m
The Sorrentine Peninsula's largest commune by area, stretching from Sorrento across Punta Campanella to the Gulf of Salerno, Capri three miles offshore.
Mercogliano
Province: Avellino · 550 m
A 550-meter Irpinia town on the slope of Partenio, gateway to the Montevergine Sanctuary 1,270 meters above.
Minori
Province: Salerno · 13 m
The smaller of the two Rheginnae, where a first-century Roman maritime villa sits four blocks from the Tyrrhenian beach.
Montesarchio
Province: Benevento · 300 m
Ancient Caudium at 300 meters, a Roman defeat still attached to the name two thousand years later.
Nusco
Province: Avellino · 914 m
The Balcony of Irpinia at 914 meters, a ridge town between the Ofanto and Calore valleys, hometown of Prime Minister Ciriaco De Mita.
Piano di Sorrento
Province: Napoli · 96 m
The quieter Sorrentine plain four kilometers from Sorrento, autonomous since 1808, with prehistoric Gaudo pottery and a black-sand marina at the foot of the cliff.
Pompei
Province: Napoli · 30 m
The Roman city buried by Vesuvius in 79 AD, dug back up since 1748, and a modern town around Bartolo Longo's 1876 sanctuary.
Positano
Province: Salerno · 30 m
The vertical village of the Amalfi Coast, terraced houses climbing four hundred meters to the Lattari ridge under a tiled Byzantine dome.
Pozzuoli
Province: Napoli · 28 m
A Roman port on a volcanic caldera, the Greek Dicearchia and the Roman Puteoli, where a market's columns first proved that the ground itself rises and falls.
Praiano
Province: Salerno · 120 m
The Amalfi commune between Positano and Amalfi where the doges of the maritime republic kept their summer residences and the Path of the Gods starts.
Ravello
Province: Salerno · 365 m
A ridge town above the Amalfi Coast where Wagner found Klingsor's garden in 1880.
Sant'Agata de' Goti
Province: Benevento · 156 m
A medieval town built on a tuff cliff between two gorges, the houses standing flush with the edge over the Isclero river below.
Sessa Aurunca
Province: Caserta · 203 m
Ancient Suessa Aurunca on the south slope of an extinct volcano, with a Romanesque cathedral of Cosmatesque mosaics built in 1103.
Sorrento
Province: Napoli · 50 m
The Roman Surrentum on a tuff cliff above the Bay of Napoli, sacked by the Turks in 1558.
Summonte
Province: Avellino · 738 m
An Irpinia hill village at 738 meters on the slope of the Partenio massif, built around a 16-meter Angevin cylinder tower.
Torre Annunziata
Province: Napoli · 15 m
Capital of Italian pasta in the interwar period and home of the Roman Villa di Poppea, on the bay at the foot of Vesuvius.
Tramonti
Province: Salerno · 321 m
The inland side of the Amalfi Coast, thirteen hamlets on the Lattari slopes producing wine and an exported pizza dough.
Vico Equense
Province: Napoli · 90 m
The northern gate of the Sorrento peninsula, a clifftop town of ninety meters above the Bay of Napoli.
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.
Emilia-Romagna15
Brisighella
Province: Ravenna · 115 m
A Lamone-valley borgo at 115 meters under three selenite hills crowned by a fortress, a clock tower, and a sanctuary.
Castell'Arquato
Province: Piacenza · 224 m
A 224-meter hilltop borgo in the Val d'Arda, kept intact since the tenth century and crowned by Luchino Visconti's 1342 fortress.
Castelvetro di Modena
Province: Modena · 152 m
A 152-meter hill borgo south of Modena whose checkerboard piazza sits above the slopes that grow Lambrusco Grasparossa.
Cervia
Province: Ravenna · 2 m
The Adriatic salt town with 827 hectares of working saline, planned in 1697 around a grid of salt workers' houses.
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.
Comacchio
Province: Ferrara
A canal town on thirteen islets, with brackish lagoons that hold three hundred bird species.
Corniglio
Province: Parma · 690 m
A 690-meter Parma-Apennine commune inside the Tosco-Emiliano park, with a thirteenth-century Rossi castle and the Lagdei plateau above.
Fanano
Province: Modena · 640 m
A 640-meter stone-working town set among Monte Cimone, Libro Aperto and the upper Frignano peaks.
Fiumalbo
Province: Modena · 935 m
A 935-meter stone village in the Modenese Apennines on the Tuscan border, at the confluence of two rivers under Monte Cimone.
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.
Pennabilli
Province: Rimini · 629 m
A 629-meter Montefeltro borgo between the Roccione and the Rupe, remade as an open-air museum after 1989.
Ravenna
Province: Ravenna · 4 m
A 4-meter coastal capital of three successive empires, with eight UNESCO mosaic monuments from the fifth and sixth centuries.
Sestola
Province: Modena · 1,020 m
A 1,020-meter Apennine town in the Frignano, with a Lombard-era castle above and central Italy's largest ski domain on the slopes.
Vernasca
Province: Piacenza · 457 m
A Val d'Arda commune in the Piacenza Apennines, holding the walled village of Vigoleno and one of the most compact castled borghi in Emilia.
Vignola
Province: Modena · 125 m
The cherry-and-castle town on the Panaro at 125 meters, where a fortress and a self-supporting 1500s spiral staircase mark the skyline.
Friuli-Venezia Giulia3
Forni di Sotto
Province: Udine · 791 m
Carnia's Dolomite gateway: a 548-resident alpine borgo at 791m at the head of the Val Tagliamento, with Borgo Autentico mark, a centro almost entirely rebuilt after the 1944 German wartime burning, and direct access to the Forni Avoltri-Sappada ski and hiking circuit.
Frisanco
Province: Pordenone · 415 m
A 572-resident commune in the Val Colvera whose frazione Poffabro, at 525 meters, became a model of Prealpine stone-and-wood vernacular architecture.
Venzone
Province: Udine · 230 m
A 230-meter walled medieval town in the Tagliamento valley, leveled by the 1976 earthquake and rebuilt stone by stone, winner of Borgo dei Borghi 2017.
Lazio21
Anguillara Sabazia
Province: Roma · 195 m
A medieval cape town jutting into Lake Bracciano, twenty-five kilometers from Rome, built above a 5700 BC Neolithic lakeshore village.
Ariccia
Province: Roma · 412 m
The Castelli Romani town where a single Baroque architect's ensemble sits on a volcanic crater rim above Rome, and Saturday lunch means porchetta.
Bracciano
Province: Roma · 280 m
The Lazio lake town with the eighth-largest lake in Italy below it and one of the best-preserved Renaissance castles in the country above it.
Calcata
Province: Viterbo · 220 m
A tufa-cliff village forty kilometers north of Rome, condemned and abandoned in the 1930s, then occupied by artists and never left.
Castel Gandolfo
Province: Roma · 426 m
A papal town on the rim of Lake Albano's volcanic crater, summer residence of the popes since 1626.
Castelnuovo di Porto
Province: Roma · 250 m
A tufa-ridge borgo twenty-five kilometers north of Rome inside the Parco di Veio, dominated by a Renaissance fortress above the Tiber valley.
Castro dei Volsci
Province: Frosinone · 385 m
A Ciociaria hilltop borgo at 385 meters in the Sacco valley, named for the pre-Roman Volsci.
Fondi
Province: Latina · 9 m
The plain town between the Ausoni and Aurunci mountains where the Caetani built a castle in the middle of farmland instead of on a hill.
Gaeta
Province: Latina · 2 m
The promontory port where a Bourbon kingdom fell in February 1861 and the south of Italy stopped existing as a state.
Minturno
Province: Latina · 140 m
A coastal comune at the mouth of the Garigliano, built on the Roman colony of Minturnae.
Nemi
Province: Roma · 521 m
The smallest comune in the Castelli Romani, perched at 521 meters above a volcanic crater lake the Romans called the mirror of Diana.
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.
Orvinio
Province: Rieti · 840 m
The highest borgo in the Monti Lucretili park at 840 meters, called Canemorto until 1863.
Percile
Province: Roma · 575 m
A 219-person medieval borgo at 575 meters, built on a rocky spur with two karst lakes hidden in the woods above it.
Pico
Province: Frosinone · 220 m
Tommaso Landolfi's home town, a 2,634-resident Ciociaria borgo at 220m between Rome and Naples, with a BPB-inscribed medieval centro and a castle turned literary museum.
Sperlonga
Province: Latina · 55 m
A whitewashed cliff town halfway between Rome and Naples, built above the sea grotto where Tiberius staged the Odyssey in marble.
Subiaco
Province: Roma · 408 m
The Aniene valley town where Benedict spent three years in a cliff cave, and where Italy's first printed book appeared in 1465.
Sutri
Province: Viterbo · 291 m
An Etruscan and Roman town on a tuff spur, with a rock-cut amphitheater carved straight from the volcanic stone of the Cimini.
Terracina
Province: Latina · 24 m
The Volscian Anxur, where a temple to Jupiter sits above a port cut through stone.
Trevignano Romano
Province: Roma · 173 m
A volcanic-crater lake town on the northern shore of Bracciano, thirty-five kilometers from Rome, with a medieval rocca above the water.
Velletri
Province: Roma · 332 m
The Castelli Romani town where Augustus grew up, now the largest wine commune of its hills.
Liguria15
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Ameglia
Province: La Spezia · 89 m
A hilltop borgo at 89 meters above the mouth of the Magra, the Lunigiana edge of Liguria where the river meets the Gulf of Poets.
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.
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Brugnato
Province: La Spezia · 115 m
The medieval ecclesiastical capital of an inland Ligurian valley, seat of a diocese from 1133 to 1820, with a co-cathedral built over a Columban monastery.
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Camogli
Province: Genova · 32 m
A fishing village on the Golfo Paradiso whose nineteenth-century fleet of a thousand white sails made it Italy's third maritime power in the Mediterranean.
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.
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Lerici
Province: La Spezia · 10 m
A fishing harbour under a Pisan-Genoese castle, with the frazione of Tellaro hanging over the rocks at the commune's southern edge.
Millesimo
Province: Savona · 429 m
A fortified borgo at 429 meters, where Napoleon broke the Austro-Sardinian army in April 1796.
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Portofino
Province: Genova · 3 m
Three hundred and fifty-five residents, the smallest municipal territory in the metropolitan area, and the harbor every superyacht in the Mediterranean wants to anchor in.
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Portovenere
Province: La Spezia · 37 m
A Genoese fortress guards the western mouth of the Gulf of Poets, above the rock where a Roman temple to Venus once stood.
Santa Margherita Ligure
Province: Genova · 13 m
The Tigullio town that kept its fishing port while the world drove past on the way to Portofino two kilometers further.
Santo Stefano d'Aveto
Province: Genova · 1,012 m
Liguria's highest commune, set in the Ligurian-Emilian Apennines with a Malaspina-Doria castle and the region's only ski resort.
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Sarzana
Province: La Spezia · 21 m
The unofficial capital of the Lunigiana on the Magra plain, birthplace of Pope Niccolò V.
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.
Triora
Province: Imperia · 776 m
The witches' village at 776 meters in the upper Valle Argentina, where the Inquisition put around 200 women on trial between 1587 and 1589.
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.
Lombardy20
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.
Castione della Presolana
Province: Bergamo · 870 m
A high-valley commune at 870 meters under the limestone peak the Bergamasque call the Queen of the Orobie.
Cimbergo
Province: Brescia · 851 m
A village of 533 at 851 meters above the Oglio, with castle ruins on a spur and UNESCO petroglyphs on the slopes below.
Curtatone
Province: Mantova · 25 m
A commune of eight frazioni west of Mantova, anchored by the Grazie sanctuary and the 1848 battle that delayed Radetzky's advance.
Gardone Riviera
Province: Brescia · 71 m
A western Garda lakeshore town whose hillside holds an estate turned into a monument to one man's self-image.
Gorgonzola
Province: Milano · 132 m
The town that gave its name to the cheese, a 21,000-resident commune 24 km east of Milan and the documented birthplace of Gorgonzola DOP since AD 879, now the eastern terminus of Milan's M2 metro line.
Gromo
Province: Bergamo · 676 m
A medieval iron-forging town at 676 meters on a rock spur above the Serio, once called the little Toledo for its sword smiths.
Limone sul Garda
Province: Brescia · 65 m
The northernmost lemon-growing town in the world, at 46 degrees north on the western shore of Lake Garda, reached by road only in 1932.
Livigno
Province: Sondrio · 1,816 m
At 1,816 meters in the Italian Alps near the Swiss border, a duty-free ski valley that drains north into the Black Sea, not the Mediterranean.
Mantova
Province: Mantova · 19 m
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.
Monzambano
Province: Mantova · 88 m
A Mincio commune at 88 meters in the moraine hills west of Mantova, whose frazione Castellaro Lagusello sits on a heart-shaped lake inside fortified walls.
Ponte di Legno
Province: Brescia · 1,257 m
The uppermost commune in the province, 1,257 meters up, where two streams meet under the Adamello range to form a river.
Salò
Province: Brescia · 65 m
On the deepest gulf of the lake, with the longest waterfront promenade and the cathedral of the Riviera di Salò.
Sarnico
Province: Bergamo · 197 m
A medieval lake town at the southern tip of Lago d'Iseo, where the Oglio leaves the lake and Liberty villas line the shore.
Soncino
Province: Cremona · 88 m
A walled borgo on the Oglio, held by a brick Sforza fortress and a printing house that once worked in Hebrew.
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.
Toscolano-Maderno
Province: Brescia · 72 m
Twin lakeside villages on the western shore of Garda, paper mill suppliers to the Republic of Venice from the 14th century onward.
Tremosine sul Garda
Province: Brescia · 414 m
A cliff-top commune of 18 frazioni, spread across a limestone plateau above the western shore of its lake.
Varenna
Province: Lecco · 220 m
A fishing village founded in 769 on the Lecco arm of Lake Como, with a steep grid of streets falling into the water.
Volta Mantovana
Province: Mantova · 91 m
A morainic hill town between Mantua and the countryside where a Renaissance palace was built inside a medieval castle.
Marche9
Arcevia
Province: Ancona · 535 m
A hilltop borgo at 535 meters above the Misa and Nevola valleys, defended in the Middle Ages by a ring of nine satellite castles.
Carpegna
Province: Pesaro e Urbino · 748 m
A Montefeltro mountain town under Monte Carpegna, home of the DOP prosciutto and the seventeenth-century Carpegna family seat.
Fabriano
Province: Ancona · 325 m
The Italian paper town at 325 meters, making fine watermarked sheets since 1264.
Gabicce Mare
Province: Pesaro e Urbino · 8 m
The northernmost Marche seaside on the Adriatic, where the coast meets the cliffs of the Parco del San Bartolo at the Romagna border.
Genga
Province: Ancona · 322 m
A small Sentino-valley commune at 322 meters whose territory holds the Frasassi caves, the largest karst show cave in Italy.
Numana
Province: Ancona · 56 m
A Conero coastal town at 56 meters above its port, the Picene harbour that traded with Greek ships from the sixth century BC.
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.
Serra San Quirico
Province: Ancona · 409 m
A stone borgo on Monte Murano at the entrance to the Gola della Rossa, ringed by 1300 walls with covered passageways called copertelle.
Sirolo
Province: Ancona · 125 m
A clifftop borgo at 125 meters, above the Due Sorelle sea stacks of the Adriatic.
Piedmont10
Alagna Valsesia
Province: Vercelli · 1,191 m
A Walser village at 1,191 meters, at the head of the Valsesia, known to off-piste skiers worldwide.
Arona
Province: Novara · 212 m
A town at the southern tip of a lake, watched over by a colossus finished in 1698.
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.
Chiusa di Pesio
Province: Cuneo · 575 m
The valley mouth town at 575 meters where the Pesio leaves the mountains, founded around a Carthusian monastery donated in 1173.
Fenestrelle
Province: Torino · 1,154 m
A village below the largest alpine fortress in Europe, three kilometers of stone climbing the ridge above it.
Ormea
Province: Cuneo · 736 m
A heart-shaped Ligurian-Alps borgo at 736 meters in the upper Tanaro valley, the southernmost town in Piemonte before the Imperia ridge.
Serralunga di Crea
Province: Alessandria · 302 m
A commune of 503 holding the Sacro Monte di Crea, a UNESCO Sacri Monti site of 23 chapels around a Marian sanctuary.
Susa
Province: Torino · 503 m
The Roman gateway at 503 meters, seat of the Cozii under Augustus and Cottius.
Usseaux
Province: Torino · 1,416 m
A Val Chisone village at 1,416 meters with four scattered borgate and more than forty murals painted across the stone facades.
Venaria Reale
Province: Torino · 269 m
A Savoy town on the edge of Torino, built around the Reggia di Venaria, a UNESCO baroque palace with sixty hectares of gardens.
Sicily16
Cammarata
Province: Agrigento · 700 m
A Sicani town at 700 meters on the northeast slope of the peak that gives the comune its name and shape.
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.
Castiglione di Sicilia
Province: Catania · 621 m
A hill town on the north flank of Etna at 621 meters, base camp for the Alcantara valley and the volcano's most serious red wines.
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.
Giarre
Province: Catania · 81 m
An Etna town that split from Mascali in 1815 and built a neoclassical duomo, with two bell towers framing the volcano behind it.
Nicolosi
Province: Catania · 698 m
The southern gateway to Etna at 698 meters, twice destroyed by the 1669 eruption.
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.
Randazzo
Province: Catania · 750 m
A medieval town in black lava stone at 750 meters on Etna's north foot, with three quarter churches for Latins, Greeks and Lombards.
Sambuca di Sicilia
Province: Agrigento · 350 m
An Arab-founded hill town in the Belice valley, still called Zabut in living memory before 1923.
San Marco d'Alunzio
Province: Messina · 540 m
A hilltop borgo at 540 meters in pink Aluntina marble, founded by the Greeks and later Robert Guiscard's first Sicilian base.
Sant'Alfio
Province: Catania · 537 m
An Etna village at 537 meters where the world's largest and oldest chestnut tree has been measured at over 57 meters in girth.
Taormina
Province: Messina · 204 m
A terrace on Monte Tauro above the Ionian, with Etna on the southern horizon.
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/Südtirol2
Tuscany11
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Campiglia Marittima
Province: Livorno · 231 m
A walled hilltop borgo above the Val di Cornia, where the Rocca tower watches a mining landscape worked from the Etruscans to 1976.
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Castelnuovo di Garfagnana
Province: Lucca · 277 m
The Garfagnana capital where the fortified medieval borgo sits at the confluence of the Serchio and the Turrite, where the Tuscan Apennines meet the Alpi Apuane.
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Livorno
Province: Livorno · 3 m
Tuscany's working port and Medici-planned 'New City', a 16th-century planned town built on reclaimed coast, with a Venice-like canal quarter, the Quattro Mori monument, and a 1.5-km seafront promenade that locals call the world's most beautiful balcony.
Massa Marittima
Province: Grosseto · 380 m
A medieval mining town at 380 meters, free commune from 1255 to 1337, whose cathedral holds the relics of San Cerbone.
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Piombino
Province: Livorno · 21 m
A promontory port facing Elba across the channel, founded by refugees from Etruscan Populonia and now the Tuscan archipelago's ferry capital.
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Pisa
Province: Pisa · 4 m
Maritime republic on the Arno, twelve kilometers from the Ligurian Sea, with the leaning bell tower at the center of a single UNESCO-listed walled compound.
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San Giuliano Terme
Province: Pisa · 10 m
A thermal spa ten kilometers from Pisa, where the springs were bathed since the Romans called them Aquae Pisanae.
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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Suvereto
Province: Livorno · 127 m
A stone borgo at 127 meters above the Val di Cornia, named for the cork oaks of its forests and ruled from the Rocca Aldobrandesca since 973.
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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.
Umbria19
Arrone
Province: Terni · 243 m
Medieval castle village on the left bank of the Nera at 243 meters, upstream from the largest man-made waterfall in the world.
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Assisi
Province: Perugia · 424 m
A pink limestone town at 424 meters on the western flank of a mountain above the plain, the birthplace of Francis and a UNESCO site since 2000.
Bettona
Province: Perugia · 353 m
A hill town at 353 meters between the Topino and Chiascio rivers, the only Etruscan settlement ever built east of the Tiber.
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Castiglione del Lago
Province: Perugia · 304 m
Trasimeno's western promontory, once the lake's fourth island, fortified in 1247 and later frescoed for a marquis of Corgna.
Città della Pieve
Province: Perugia · 508 m
A red-brick hill town at 508 meters above the Valdichiana, the birthplace of Perugino and the home of Italy's narrowest alley.
Corciano
Province: Perugia · 408 m
A walled medieval castello at 408 meters eight kilometers west of Perugia, where Saint Francis stopped on his way back from a Lent spent fasting on the island in 1223.
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.
Foligno
Province: Perugia · 235 m
A valley town at 235 meters on the Topino, where Dante's Divine Comedy was first printed in 1472.
Fossato di Vico
Province: Perugia · 581 m
A medieval village on Mount Mutali at 581 meters, where the Via Flaminia's Roman waystation Hellvillum became a tenth-century castle still threaded by covered alleyways.
Gubbio
Province: Perugia · 522 m
Pre-Roman Ikuvium of the Umbri, where seven bronze tablets carry the longest text of the Umbrian language.
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Magione
Province: Perugia · 299 m
A hill town east of Trasimeno built around a medieval Order's fortified base.
Nocera Umbra
Province: Perugia · 520 m
A hill town at 520 meters on the Apennine slope, leveled by the 1997 earthquake and rebuilt, with mineral springs flowing since the sixteenth century.
Orvieto
Province: Terni · 325 m
Etruscan Velzna on a 325-meter tufa butte, later a medieval refuge of popes.
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.
Panicale
Province: Perugia · 431 m
A walled hill town at 431 meters on Monte Petrarvella, where a 1505 Perugino fresco covers the back wall of San Sebastiano.
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Passignano sul Trasimeno
Province: Perugia · 289 m
A near-peninsula on the northern shore of Lake Trasimeno, on the road Hannibal closed when he ambushed the Romans in 217 BC.
Spello
Province: Perugia · 280 m
Augustan Hispellum sits at 280 meters on Monte Subasio, its Roman gates still standing over streets that Pinturicchio once painted a chapel for.
Terni
Province: Terni · 130 m
Umbria's second city, rebuilt around its steelworks, home of Saint Valentine and seven kilometers from the Cascata delle Marmore.
Todi
Province: Perugia · 398 m
A walled hill town at 398 meters on the Tiber, with Etruscan, Roman, and medieval rings stacked one above the other.
Veneto7
Abano Terme
Province: Padova · 14 m
Europe's oldest thermal town on the Euganean Hills' eastern slope, where 80°C bromo-iodine springs have been drawing bathers since the eighth century BC.
Arquà Petrarca
Province: Padova · 56 m
The Euganean Hills village where Francesco Petrarca spent his last four years and died in 1374, renamed in his honor in 1868.
Bassano del Grappa
Province: Vicenza · 129 m
The Brenta River town at 129 meters where Palladio drew the covered bridge in 1569 and Nardini has been distilling grappa since 1779.
Battaglia Terme
Province: Padova · 9 m
A barge village at the foot of the Euganean Hills, built around the 1201 canal and Italy's only river navigation museum.
Cortina d'Ampezzo
Province: Belluno · 1,224 m
The Queen of the Dolomites at 1,224 meters, host of the 1956 Winter Olympics and co-host of Milano-Cortina 2026.
Rosolina
Province: Rovigo · 3 m
A reclaimed commune where a nine-kilometer beach and a maritime pine forest sit between the Adige mouth and the Adriatic.
Treviso
Province: Treviso · 15 m
The walled provincial capital at 15 meters between the Sile and Botteniga rivers, Venice's first mainland conquest in 1339 and the birthplace of tiramisu.
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.