UNESCO
UNESCO in Piedmont
12 towns
Piedmont carries 12 of the UNESCO towns we cover. They cluster in the Cuneo, Torino, and Verbano-Cusio-Ossola provinces.
The three most recognised in our catalogue are Orta San Giulio, Biella, and Bra. 9 more towns carry the mark alongside them.
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.
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.
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.
Domodossola
Province: Verbano-Cusio-Ossola · 272 m
The Ossola capital at 272 meters at the foot of the Simplon Pass.
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.
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.
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.
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.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover
Visso
Province: Macerata
The northern Sibillini gate at 607 meters where the Nera meets the Ussita, holding one of two surviving manuscripts of Leopardi's L'Infinito.
Goriano Sicoli
Province: L'Aquila
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.
Ugento
Province: Lecce
A Messapian-Roman town five kilometers from the Ionian, where a Baroque castle sits on the walls of the ancient city of Ozan.
Fontanellato
Province: Parma
A Parma-plain town built around the Rocca Sanvitale, the moated fortress at its center.
Pescina
Province: L'Aquila
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.