Designation
Riserva Naturale
128 towns across 16 regions
Browse by region
Abruzzo22
Anversa degli Abruzzi
Province: L'Aquila · 604 m
At 604 meters above the Sagittario Gorges, a cliff village built around a Norman castle rebuilt by the Counts of Sangro.
Atri
Province: Teramo · 442 m
At 442 meters on three hills ten kilometers from the Adriatic, ancient Hadria, source of the emperor Hadrian's family name and the Adriatic's.
Barrea
Province: L'Aquila · 1,066 m
A 1,066-meter spur above an artificial lake at the heart of the Abruzzo National Park, with a Samnite necropolis and an 11th-century di Sangro castle.
Caramanico Terme
Province: Pescara · 650 m
A 650-meter Majella spa village at the confluence of the Orfento and Orta rivers.
Carsoli
Province: L'Aquila · 616 m
A 616-meter mountain town in the Marsica, built next to the ruins of a 4th-century BC Roman fortress town.
Casoli
Province: Chieti · 378 m
A 378-meter hill town above the Aventino under the Maiella, with a pentagonal Norman tower that once hosted a court of artists.
Civitella del Tronto
Province: Teramo · 589 m
A rocky crest at 589 meters above the Tronto valley, crowned by the last Bourbon fortress to surrender to united Italy in March 1861.
Corfinio
Province: L'Aquila · 346 m
A village of under a thousand on the Peligna valley floor at 346 meters, sitting on the Italic League's would-be capital Italia.
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.
L'Aquila
Province: L'Aquila · 721 m
The regional capital at 721 meters, founded by Frederick II around 1240 and still reconstructing after the 2009 earthquake.
Lama dei Peligni
Province: Chieti · 669 m
A 669-meter Majella village known for chamois, the Cavallone cave, and a prehistoric burial dug from Fonterossi dated 7000 to 5000 BC.
Morino
Province: L'Aquila · 440 m
A village at 440 meters on the Lazio border, beneath the central Apennines' second-highest waterfall at over 80 meters.
Ofena
Province: L'Aquila · 531 m
A 531-meter Vestian basin called the Forno d'Abruzzo, where Montepulciano ripens on what may be the oldest of its slopes.
Penne
Province: Pescara · 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.
Pescocostanzo
Province: L'Aquila · 1,395 m
A planned Renaissance town at 1,395 meters on the Quarto Grande plateau, with bobbin lace, wrought iron, and the wood ceilings of a five-nave church.
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.
Pretoro
Province: Chieti · 530 m
A village of 856 stacked at 530 meters on the eastern Maiella, where wolves live behind fencing and woodturners still work on Via Roma.
Roccamorice
Province: Pescara · 520 m
A village at 520 meters in the Majella foothills, gateway to the rock-cut hermitages carved into the surrounding limestone.
Sante Marie
Province: L'Aquila · 950 m
A 950-meter Marsica village and the trailhead of the Cammino dei Briganti, the seven-day brigand trail through the Cartore band's territory.
Scanno
Province: L'Aquila · 1,057 m
A 1,057-meter Sagittario valley village where women in black still walk the alleys photographed by Cartier-Bresson and Giacomelli.
Tocco da Casauria
Province: Pescara · 356 m
A 356-meter hill town between the Pescara river and the Maiella, built around a Carolingian abbey and an herb liqueur called Centerba.
Vasto
Province: Chieti · 144 m
At 144 meters on a hill above the Adriatic, Vasto is home of the brodetto vastese, invented in 1800.
Apulia9
Carovigno
Province: Brindisi · 161 m
An upper Salento hill town between Brindisi and Ostuni, with a marine reserve on its coast.
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.
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.
Manduria
Province: Taranto · 79 m
The Messapian capital thirty-five kilometers east of Taranto, ringed by three concentric stone walls and the home of Primitivo.
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.
Peschici
Province: Foggia · 91 m
A Gargano cliff-top village above the Adriatic, white houses spilling toward the sea and trabucchi on the headlands.
Vernole
Province: Lecce · 38 m
A Salento commune ten kilometers from Lecce whose frazione of Acaya is the only Renaissance fortified town in southern Italy.
Vico del Gargano
Province: Foggia · 445 m
A Gargano hill town at 445 meters where a Norman castle, a kiss alley, and DOP citrus terraces step down toward the Adriatic.
Vieste
Province: Foggia · 43 m
The Gargano headland of whitewashed alleys on a white limestone cliff, with the Pizzomunno sea stack standing 26 meters offshore.
Basilicata8
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.
Bernalda
Province: Matera · 127 m
A 127-meter hill town between the Bradano and Basento, Francis Ford Coppola's ancestral home, holding the Magna Graecia columns of the Tavole Palatine.
Grottole
Province: Matera · 481 m
A hilltop borgo at 481 meters between the Bradano and Basento, where six hundred empty houses outnumber residents in the centro storico.
Lagonegro
Province: Potenza · 666 m
A 666-meter town founded by Byzantine monks on a defensive promontory, split between a medieval castle village and a modern square below.
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.
Miglionico
Province: Matera · 461 m
A hilltop borgo at 461 meters above the Bradano, the seven-tower castle that gave the 1485 Conspiracy of the Barons its hall.
Policoro
Province: Matera · 25 m
An Ionian-coast town built on the ruins of the Greek polis of Heraclea, with a national museum devoted to the city's finds and a nature reserve running the country's documented sea turtle nesting program.
Rotondella
Province: Matera · 576 m
A 2,400-resident Lucanian borgo on a 576m hilltop, its medieval streets ringed concentrically around the summit above the Metapontino plain.
Calabria3
Corigliano-Rossano
Province: Cosenza · 219 m
The Sibari plain city merged in 2018 from two older towns, one built around a Norman castle and the other around a Byzantine manuscript tradition.
Spezzano della Sila
Province: Cosenza · 800 m
A Sila plateau borgo at 800 meters, the gateway to the national park and its high forests.
Taverna
Province: Catanzaro · 530 m
A hilltown at the foot of a mountain plateau, its stone core arranged around a fifteenth-century Dominican church.
Emilia-Romagna9
Bagno di Romagna
Province: Forlì-Cesena · 491 m
A 491-meter thermal town at the head of the Savio valley, drawing on springs that have run at 47 degrees since Roman times.
Borgo Val di Taro
Province: Parma · 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.
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.
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.
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.
Imola
Province: Bologna · 47 m
Bologna's Romagna twin, a medieval brick centro anchored by the Caterina Sforza-fortified Rocca, with the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari (the Imola F1 circuit) wrapping the Santerno river at the southern edge of town.
Sasso Marconi
Province: Bologna · 128 m
A 128-meter pre-Apennine town at the confluence of the Setta and Reno, renamed in 1938 for the radio pioneer whose family estate stands in its Pontecchio frazione.
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.
Friuli-Venezia Giulia2
Grado
Province: Gorizia · 2 m
An Adriatic island town inside a 90-square-kilometer lagoon, refuge of the Aquileian patriarchs after 568 and a Habsburg bathing resort thirteen centuries later.
Marano Lagunare
Province: Udine · 2 m
A fishing town on its own pastel-coloured harbour, with a working fleet, an Aquileian Venetian past, and a still-strict dialect of its own.
Lazio10
Acquapendente
Province: Viterbo · 420 m
The northernmost town in Lazio, at 420 meters above the Paglia, named in 964 for its waterfalls.
Bomarzo
Province: Viterbo · 263 m
The Tuscia village below a garden built by a grieving condottiero for his dead wife, all stone monsters and no apology for it.
Canale Monterano
Province: Roma · 376 m
A hilltop village next to the burned ghost town of Monterano, where a roofless Baroque church and fountain still stand.
- ✷ We've been
Caprarola
Province: Viterbo · 510 m
A Cimini hill town above Lago di Vico, dominated by the pentagonal Villa Farnese that Vignola built for the Farnese cardinals between 1559 and 1573.
Castel di Tora
Province: Rieti · 607 m
A village of 266 on Lago del Turano at 607 meters, with an eleventh-century polygonal tower and a ghost promontory called Antuni.
Collalto Sabino
Province: Rieti · 980 m
A 980-meter Sabine borgo dominated by a Barberini baronial castle, with a 360-degree panorama from the keep.
Fiuggi
Province: Frosinone · 747 m
The Ernici-mountain thermal town where Boniface VIII and Michelangelo both came to dissolve kidney stones with the oligomineral spring water.
- ✷ We've been
Ronciglione
Province: Viterbo · 441 m
A tufa-brick borgo above Lake Vico, fortified by the Prefects of Vico and crowned Borgo dei Borghi in 2023.
Tivoli
Province: Roma · 235 m
A travertine town on the Aniene falls twenty-five kilometers east of Rome, holding two separate UNESCO sites: Hadrian's villa below and the Villa d'Este above.
Ventotene
Province: Latina · 18 m
The smaller of the inhabited Pontine Islands, a flat three-kilometer tuff platform southeast of Ponza.
Lombardy5
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.
Iseo
Province: Brescia · 198 m
The main town on the southeast shore of Lake Iseo, gateway to the Franciacorta sparkling wine country.
Pomponesco
Province: Mantova · 21 m
A Mantova river village at 21 meters on the Po's left bank, with a late-Cinquecento Gonzaga grid and arcaded central piazza.
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.
Varzi
Province: Pavia · 416 m
A medieval Malaspina town at 416 meters in the Staffora valley of the Oltrepò Pavese, the seat of one of Italy's first DOP cured meats.
Molise2
Agnone
Province: Isernia · 840 m
At 840 meters, town of the pontifical bell foundry and the fire procession that lights its streets every Christmas Eve.
Roccamandolfi
Province: Isernia · 850 m
At 850 meters at the foot of Monte Miletto, a Matese village of brigand legends, Lombard ruins, and a Tibetan bridge over the Callora canyon.
Piedmont7
Biella
Province: Biella · 417 m
A wool city at 417 meters in the Alpine foothills, where the medieval Piazzo sits above the modern Piano, connected by a funicular since 1885.
Candelo
Province: Biella · 350 m
A Biellese commune at 350 meters whose Ricetto, a 13th-century fortified shelter of two hundred stone cellule, is the best-preserved in Piedmont.
Gattinara
Province: Vercelli · 265 m
The Alto Piemonte Nebbiolo town on volcanic soil between the Sesia and Monte Rosa, DOCG since 1990, with a tenth-century watchtower above the vines.
Gozzano
Province: Novara · 367 m
The town at the southern tip of Lake Orta, marked by a basilica and a twelfth-century signaling tower above the water.
Orta San Giulio
Province: Novara · 294 m
A promontory facing an islet basilica, with a UNESCO complex of Francis-of-Assisi chapels on the hill above.
Susa
Province: Torino · 503 m
The Roman gateway at 503 meters, seat of the Cozii under Augustus and Cottius.
Villar San Costanzo
Province: Cuneo · 605 m
A Val Maira village at 605 meters, with a reserve of 479 mushroom-shaped erosion columns.
Sicily27
Aci Castello
Province: Catania · 15 m
A coastal town just north of Catania on the Riviera dei Ciclopi, where the basalt headland holds the 1076 Norman Castello d'Aci and the seven volcanic Faraglioni dei Ciclopi rise from the sea, the rocks the Cyclops threw at Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey.
Caltagirone
Province: Catania · 611 m
Sicily's ceramic capital at 611 meters on the Erei ridge, 142 majolica-tiled steps to Santa Maria del Monte and a Val di Noto UNESCO baroque rebuild.
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.
Castelvetrano
Province: Trapani · 187 m
The Belice valley town that owns Selinunte, the largest archaeological park in Europe, and bakes black bread from grain found in its tombs.
Catania
Province: Catania · 7 m
Sicily's second city and the cultural anchor of the Ionian coast, a UNESCO late-Baroque centro storico rebuilt in lava-black stone after the 1693 earthquake, sitting at the foot of Etna with a 17th-century elephant fountain (U Liotru) as its civic symbol.
Corleone
Province: Palermo · 542 m
A town of 10,364 in the Palermo hinterland that gave its name to Mario Puzo's Don Vito and now runs Italy's national antimafia documentation centre.
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.
Ispica
Province: Ragusa · 170 m
A Val di Noto Baroque hilltown on the southern Iblei plateau anchored by the 13-km Cava d'Ispica canyon with its 3,000+ rock-cut tombs and prehistoric dwellings, one of the largest cave-necropolis sites in the Mediterranean.
Lampedusa e Linosa
Province: Agrigento · 25 m
Italy's southernmost comune, three islands on the African continental shelf, closer to Tunisia than to Sicily.
Lipari
Province: Messina · 44 m
The largest Aeolian island and the only municipality that administers six of the seven, with a clifftop castle citadel rising above two harbors.
Menfi
Province: Agrigento · 119 m
Sicily's triple-signal western coast town: 11,800 residents on a low ridge above 9 km of protected sand at Porto Palo, backed by cellars and olive groves that between them carry Italy's three major small-town quality marks.
Mezzojuso
Province: Palermo · 534 m
An Arbëreshë village of two mother churches, one Latin, one Byzantine, whose Arabic name means the houses of Joseph.
Monreale
Province: Palermo · 310 m
Above the Conca d'Oro at 310 meters, the cathedral William II built between 1174 and 1182 holds 6,340 square meters of Norman mosaics.
Montalbano Elicona
Province: Messina · 907 m
A Nebrodi castle town at 907 meters, Frederick III of Aragon's summer residence and gateway to the Argimusco megalithic plateau.
Nicosia
Province: Enna · 720 m
A Byzantine-Norman royal city at 720 meters on four hills, one of Sicily's principal Gallo-Italic centres where the Lombard dialect nkoukkà still survives.
Noto
Province: Siracusa · 152 m
The capital of Sicilian Baroque, rebuilt entirely in golden limestone after 1693.
Pachino
Province: Siracusa · 65 m
Sicily's southernmost town, on the Capo Passero promontory, and the name behind the Pomodoro di Pachino PGI cherry tomato.
Palazzolo Acreide
Province: Siracusa · 670 m
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.
Pantelleria
Province: Trapani · 8 m
A volcanic island closer to Tunisia than Sicily, where dry-stone dammusi sit among bush-trained Zibibbo vines listed by UNESCO.
Piana degli Albanesi
Province: Palermo · 720 m
The principal Arbëresh town of Sicily at 720 meters, founded in the fifteenth century by Albanians fleeing the Ottomans and still speaking arbëresh.
Ragusa
Province: Ragusa · 502 m
Two cities split by a ravine on a Hyblean plateau at 502 meters, both rebuilt after 1693 and both UNESCO Baroque.
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 Vito Lo Capo
Province: Trapani · 5 m
A three-kilometer white-sand beach at Sicily's northwest tip, the town that turned cous cous into a September festival.
Siracusa
Province: Siracusa · 17 m
Ortigia island, wrapped in honey-coloured Baroque stone, sits at the heart of the city Cicero called the most beautiful in the world, on the eastern Sicilian coast south of Catania.
Sortino
Province: Siracusa · 438 m
The eastern gateway to UNESCO Pantalica at 438 meters in the Iblei, Sicily's city of honey and home of the stuffed Sortino pizzolo.
Taormina
Province: Messina · 204 m
A terrace on Monte Tauro above the Ionian, with Etna on the southern horizon.
Ustica
Province: Palermo · 49 m
A volcanic island fifty-two kilometers north of Palermo with Italy's first marine protected area, lentil fields on lava, and a long memory as a prison.
Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol1
Tuscany17
- ✷ We've been
Abetone Cutigliano
Province: Pistoia · 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 · 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.
- ✷ We've been
Arezzo
Province: Arezzo · 296 m
Tuscany's other set-piece: a 96,000-resident Etruscan-Roman-medieval hilltop city 80 km southeast of Florence.
- ✷ We've been
Capalbio
Province: Grosseto · 217 m
A walled hilltop borgo at 217 meters in the southern Maremma, donated to the Abbey of Tre Fontane by Charlemagne.
- ✷ We've been
Castellina in Chianti
Province: Siena · 578 m
A Chianti hill town at 578 meters on the watershed between the Arno and the Ombrone, with an Etruscan tumulus, a Brunelleschi-reinforced wall and a covered medieval walkway around its edge.
- ✷ We've been
Castiglione della Pescaia
Province: Grosseto · 4 m
A Maremma seaside town under an Aragonese castle, with the Vetulonia necropolis behind it and Italo Calvino buried on the hill.
Chiusdino
Province: Siena · 564 m
A medieval village at 564 meters in the Val di Merse, above a roofless Cistercian abbey.
- ✷ We've been
Grosseto
Province: Grosseto · 10 m
The Maremma capital on the Ombrone river, ringed by hexagonal Medici walls of 1564 that now serve as the city's public park.
- ✷ We've been
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.
- ✷ We've been
Manciano
Province: Grosseto · 444 m
A market town at 444 meters in the southern Maremma, with a Sienese fortress of 1424 and the thermal frazione of Saturnia in its territory.
Murlo
Province: Siena · 314 m
A medieval bishops' fief twenty kilometers south of Siena, with an Etruscan princely palace on Poggio Civitate and the Cappellone statue as its symbol.
- ✷ We've been
Orbetello
Province: Grosseto · 3 m
A town on a narrow isthmus at the center of its own lagoon, fortified by Spain in 1557.
Piancastagnaio
Province: Siena · 772 m
A chestnut-belt borgo at 772 meters on the southern slope, where four contrade still race for the Palio delle Contrade each August.
- ✷ We've been
Pienza
Province: Siena · 491 m
The first Renaissance ideal city, built from 1459 on the Val d'Orcia ridge.
- ✷ We've been
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.
Poppi
Province: Arezzo · 437 m
The Casentino borgo at 437 meters above the field where Dante fought at Campaldino in June 1289.
San Casciano dei Bagni
Province: Siena · 582 m
A hilltop borgo at 582 meters above 42 hot springs that produced the largest Etruscan bronze hoard of the last fifty years.
Veneto4
Auronzo di Cadore
Province: Belluno · 864 m
A five-kilometer ribbon town along an artificial lake at 864 meters, the gateway to the Tre Cime di Lavaredo and Lake Misurina.
Chioggia
Province: Venezia · 2 m
Italy's second fishing port, on an island at the south end of the Venetian Lagoon, called Little Venice for its canal.
Feltre
Province: Belluno · 325 m
A Renaissance city at 325 meters in the Belluno Prealps, rebuilt after 1510 as the vertical village it remains.
Malcesine
Province: Verona · 89 m
The northernmost Veneto town on Lake Garda, where Goethe was nearly arrested for sketching the Castello Scaligero in September 1786.
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.