Designation
UNESCO
95 towns across 15 regions
Browse by region
Apulia3
Alberobello
Province: Bari · 402 m
The Itria valley town built entirely of trulli, 1,500 corbelled limestone cones in two quarters, UNESCO since 1996.
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.
Monte Sant'Angelo
Province: Foggia · 843 m
The Gargano peak at 843 meters, the oldest western shrine to an archangel, UNESCO since 2011.
Campania20
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.
Ascea
Province: Salerno · 230 m
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.
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.
Benevento
Province: Benevento · 130 m
Sannio capital at the Calore-Sabato confluence, with a 114 AD Trajan arch and a Lombard rotunda on the UNESCO list.
Capaccio Paestum
Province: Salerno · 419 m
Three Doric temples of 550 to 450 BC on the Sele plain, with mozzarella di bufala DOP on the buffalo flats below.
Caserta
Province: Caserta · 68 m
Italy's answer to Versailles, built by the Bourbons on the Campanian plain with 1,200 rooms and a three-kilometer water axis.
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.
Ercolano
Province: Napoli · 44 m
Ercolano is the modern town built directly over Herculaneum, the Roman seaside resort buried under 25m of pyroclastic mud in AD 79 rather than the ash that fell on Pompeii, which is why its wood, papyrus, and upper floors survive when no other Roman site's do.
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.
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.
Padula
Province: Salerno · 699 m
A hill town at 699 meters, holding the Certosa di San Lorenzo and the world's largest cloister.
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.
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.
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.
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-Romagna2
Ferrara
Province: Ferrara · 9 m
A Renaissance capital planned on a grid rather than grown by accident, small enough to cross by bicycle in twenty minutes, and ringed by walls that still stand whole.
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.
Friuli-Venezia Giulia3
Aquileia
Province: Udine · 5 m
A village of 3,128 on a Roman capital of 100,000, where the largest paleochristian mosaic floor in the West runs under a Romanesque basilica.
Cividale del Friuli
Province: Udine · 138 m
The Lombard capital on the Natisone, founded as Forum Iulii by Julius Caesar, where an eighth-century chapel still holds six stucco saints.
Palmanova
Province: Udine · 26 m
A nine-pointed Venetian star fortress on the Friuli plain, its geometry closed three centuries after it began.
Lazio3
Cerveteri
Province: Roma · 81 m
An Etruscan capital seven kilometers inland from the Tyrrhenian coast, with the Banditaccia necropolis holding 1,000 tombs in the largest ancient cemetery in the Mediterranean.
Tarquinia
Province: Viterbo · 133 m
An Etruscan capital on a Maremma ridge whose 6,000 rock-cut tombs at Monterozzi hold the largest body of pre-Roman painting in the Mediterranean.
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.
Liguria4
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Monterosso al Mare
Province: La Spezia · 12 m
The westernmost and largest of the five villages, where Eugenio Montale spent the childhood summers that became Ossi di seppia in 1925.
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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.
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Riomaggiore
Province: La Spezia · 35 m
The easternmost of the five villages, 1,326 people stacked above a fishing inlet, terraced vineyards climbing 250 meters straight off the sea.
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Vernazza
Province: La Spezia · 3 m
The middle village of the coast, the only one with a natural harbor, buried under four meters of mud in October 2011.
Lombardy8
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.
Capriate San Gervasio
Province: Bergamo · 190 m
The Bergamasco town that holds Crespi d'Adda, the late-nineteenth-century company village inscribed by UNESCO in 1995 as a model workers' settlement.
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.
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.
Porto Ceresio
Province: Varese · 271 m
The Italian port on the southern shore where the Swiss border runs through the water below Monte San Giorgio.
Sabbioneta
Province: Mantova · 25 m
A Renaissance ideal city on the Po, built in thirty years by Vespasiano I Gonzaga and laid out as a six-pointed star.
Tirano
Province: Sondrio · 441 m
A Valtellina town at 441 meters where a railway from across the border reaches Italy, beneath terraced Nebbiolo vineyards.
Tremezzina
Province: Como · 209 m
The 2014 merger of four Lake Como villages that holds Villa Carlotta, Isola Comacina and the UNESCO Sacro Monte di Ossuccio.
Piedmont12
Agliè
Province: Torino · 330 m
A Canavese borgo at 330 meters whose Castello Ducale, a UNESCO Savoy residence since 1997, has been held by the d'Agliè since 1259.
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.
Bra
Province: Cuneo · 290 m
A Roero town at 290 meters where the world's first gastronomic university now teaches food systems.
Domodossola
Province: Verbano-Cusio-Ossola · 272 m
The Ossola capital at 272 meters at the foot of the Simplon Pass.
Ghiffa
Province: Verbano-Cusio-Ossola · 201 m
A Lake Maggiore lakeside village facing the Lombard shore, with a UNESCO sanctuary on the slope above it and a century of hat-making behind it.
Govone
Province: Cuneo · 301 m
A Roero hill village above the Tanaro, between Alba and Asti, built around a Savoy summer residence turned town hall.
Ivrea
Province: Torino · 267 m
Roman Eporedia, Olivetti's twentieth-century industrial city, UNESCO since 2018, where every February three hundred tons of oranges are thrown.
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.
Racconigi
Province: Cuneo · 262 m
A Po-plain town south of Torino built around the UNESCO Castello Reale, the Carignano Savoy residence whose park holds Italy's largest white-stork colony.
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.
Varallo
Province: Vercelli · 450 m
The capital of Valsesia at 450 meters, crowned by a forty-five-chapel devotional complex on the rock above town.
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.
Sicily11
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.
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.
Cefalù
Province: Palermo · 16 m
A Norman cathedral at the foot of a 270-meter rock on the Tyrrhenian coast, founded in 1131.
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.
Modica
Province: Ragusa · 296 m
A vertical Baroque city in the Hyblean Mountains, rebuilt from the 1693 earthquake and home to a chocolate recipe brought from Aztec Mexico.
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.
Noto
Province: Siracusa · 152 m
The capital of Sicilian Baroque, rebuilt entirely in golden limestone after 1693.
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.
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.
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.
Tuscany12
Barberino di Mugello
Province: Firenze · 272 m
The Mugello gateway at 272 meters where the Medici family kept its first country villas, with Michelozzo's Cafaggiolo and the artificial Lago di Bilancino below.
Carmignano
Province: Prato · 189 m
A Medici village at 189 meters on the Montalbano slopes, where Etruscan tumuli sit below the Renaissance villas.
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Castiglione d'Orcia
Province: Siena · 540 m
A stone borgo at 540 meters in the UNESCO Val d'Orcia, with two fortresses guarding the road from Amiata to the Via Francigena.
Cerreto Guidi
Province: Firenze · 123 m
The Medici hunting villa above the Padule di Fucecchio, where Cosimo I sent his court for the marshland game and Buontalenti built four ramps of stairs.
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Montalcino
Province: Siena · 564 m
A walled hill town at 564 meters above the Val d'Orcia, the last fortress to hold out for the Sienese Republic and the birthplace of Brunello.
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Montecatini-Terme
Province: Pistoia · 27 m
Eleven thermal springs in a Liberty-style park at the foot of the Apennines.
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Pienza
Province: Siena · 491 m
The first Renaissance ideal city, built from 1459 on the Val d'Orcia ridge.
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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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Radicofani
Province: Siena · 814 m
The Val d'Orcia's basalt watchtower: a 1,060-resident UNESCO-inscribed borgo at 814m on a volcanic outcrop visible across half of southern Tuscany, crowned by an outlaw's fortress that Dante and Boccaccio both wrote into their pages.
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San Gimignano
Province: Siena · 334 m
A walled hill town at 334 meters with 14 surviving medieval towers, UNESCO listed since 1990 and the home of Vernaccia.
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San Quirico d'Orcia
Province: Siena · 409 m
A walled stop on the Via Francigena at 409 meters in the UNESCO Val d'Orcia, where a twelfth-century Collegiata, a Renaissance garden and the Bagno Vignoni thermal pool sit within fifteen kilometers of each other.
Seravezza
Province: Lucca · 100 m
The Versilia town where Michelangelo opened the Pope's marble quarries and Cosimo I built his summer palace.
Umbria3
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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.
Campello sul Clitunno
Province: Perugia · 290 m
Springs of the Clitunno and the Lombard Tempietto on the valley floor at 290 meters, the temple inscribed by UNESCO in 2011.
Spoleto
Province: Perugia · 396 m
Lombard ducal capital at 396 meters under the Rocca Albornoziana, where a 230-meter aqueduct bridge crosses to Monteluco and Menotti founded the Festival in 1958.
Veneto11
Cison di Valmarino
Province: Treviso · 261 m
A Prosecco hills borgo at 261 meters under the dolomite rock of CastelBrando, the largest inhabited castle complex in Europe.
Conegliano
Province: Treviso · 65 m
The Prosecco capital at 65 meters, birthplace of the painter Cima and home of Italy's first oenology school, opened in 1876.
Farra di Soligo
Province: Treviso · 161 m
An 8,477-resident comune in the Conegliano-Valdobbiadene DOCG zone, with the three medieval Torri di Credazzo crowning a hilltop above its vineyards and Cittaslow plus Città del Vino status alongside it.
Follina
Province: Treviso · 191 m
A Prosecco-hills borgo at 191 meters around the Cistercian Abbey of Santa Maria, with a cloister finished in 1268.
Padova
Province: Padova · 12 m
The university town that gave Giotto a chapel and the world a science of plants, with two UNESCO inscriptions inside one set of walls.
Peschiera del Garda
Province: Verona · 68 m
The Venetian fortress town on a Mincio island at the southern outlet of Lake Garda.
Pieve di Soligo
Province: Treviso · 132 m
The market town between the Soligo and Lierza rivers in the Prosecco UNESCO zone, birthplace of the twentieth-century poet Andrea Zanzotto.
Susegana
Province: Treviso · 76 m
The Collalto castle town at 76 meters on the left bank of the Piave, holding one of the largest medieval fortresses in northern Italy.
Valdobbiadene
Province: Treviso · 253 m
The Prosecco Superiore capital at 253 meters in the Treviso Prealps, where Glera grown on Cartizze's 108 hectares produces the most expensive Italian sparkling wine.
Vicenza
Province: Vicenza · 39 m
Andrea Palladio's home city, a UNESCO-inscribed open-air museum of the architect who reshaped Western architecture, with 23 Palladian buildings inside the centro and the Villa Rotonda + Teatro Olimpico just outside it.
Vittorio Veneto
Province: Treviso · 138 m
Two old towns fused at 138 meters under the Cansiglio, where the October 1918 battle ended the First World War on the Italian front.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover
Giano dell'Umbria
Province: Perugia
A hill commune between Foligno, Spoleto and Todi, anchored by a Romanesque abbey built over the tomb of a fourth-century martyr.
Assisi
Province: Perugia
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.
Servigliano
Province: Fermo
An eighteenth-century ideal city at 215 meters in the Tenna valley, rebuilt by papal commission on a 137-by-144-meter quadrangle after the old hill village collapsed.
Labro
Province: Rieti
A 355-person stone borgo at 628 meters, restored since the 1960s by a Belgian architect and his descendants.
San Nicola Arcella
Province: Cosenza
A cliff village above the Tyrrhenian Riviera dei Cedri, where a sea arch fronts a cove only reachable on foot or by boat.