Designation
Via Francigena
53 towns across 9 regions
Browse by region
Aosta Valley2
Donnas
Province: Aosta Valley 路 322 m
The first DOC of Valle d'Aosta, a Nebbiolo-on-terraces wine town at 322 meters where the Roman Via delle Gallie was carved into living rock.
Etroubles
Province: Aosta Valley 路 1,280 m
A 476-person Alpine village at 1,280 meters, with an open-air contemporary art museum and the region's first dairy.
Campania3
Alife
Province: Caserta 路 110 m
A Roman walled town at the foot of the Matese, its first-century BC rectangle of walls intact, with a half-buried amphitheatre just outside the gates.
Benevento
Province: Benevento 路 130 m
Sannio capital at the Calore-Sabato confluence, with a 114 AD Trajan arch and a Lombard rotunda on the UNESCO list.
Sessa Aurunca
Province: Caserta 路 203 m
Ancient Suessa Aurunca on the south slope of an extinct volcano, with a Romanesque cathedral of Cosmatesque mosaics built in 1103.
Lazio12
Acquapendente
Province: Viterbo 路 420 m
One of the northernmost towns in Lazio, at 420 meters above the Paglia, named in 964 for its waterfalls.
Bolsena
Province: Viterbo 路 350 m
A medieval town at 350 meters on the eastern shore of Europe's largest volcanic lake, where a Bohemian priest reported a Eucharistic miracle in 1263.
- Written about. No. 64.
Capranica
Province: Viterbo 路 370 m
A medieval hill town on the old Via Cassia, taken by the Anguillara family in 1305 and remembered as the place Petrarch stayed in 1337.
Castel Gandolfo
Province: Roma 路 426 m
A papal town on the rim of Lake Albano's volcanic crater, summer residence of the popes since 1626.
Fondi
Province: Latina 路 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.
Minturno
Province: Latina 路 140 m
A coastal comune at the mouth of the Garigliano, built on the Roman colony of Minturnae.
Montefiascone
Province: Viterbo 路 590 m
A 590-meter hill town on the highest hill of the Volsini, source of Est! Est!! Est!!!.
Nemi
Province: Roma 路 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.
Sermoneta
Province: Latina 路 257 m
A walled medieval town on a Lepini spur above the Pontine Plain, seat of the Caetani since a 1297 purchase and still ruled from a 42-meter tower.
Sutri
Province: Viterbo 路 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 路 24 m
The Volscian Anxur, where a temple to Jupiter sits above a port cut through stone.
- Written about. No. 66.
Viterbo
Province: Viterbo 路 326 m
The medieval capital of the Tuscia, papal seat from 1257 to 1281, when five popes were elected here, and home to the longest conclave in Church history.
Liguria2
- Written about. No. 19.
Castelnuovo Magra
Province: La Spezia 路 188 m
A ridge village on the Liguria-Tuscany border where a marquisate treaty ended decades of conflict with the bishops of Luni.
- Written about. No. 20.
Sarzana
Province: La Spezia 路 21 m
The unofficial capital of the Lunigiana on the Magra plain, birthplace of Pope Niccol貌 V.
Piemonte3
Avigliana
Province: Torino 路 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.
Ivrea
Province: Torino 路 267 m
Roman Eporedia, Olivetti's twentieth-century industrial city, UNESCO since 2018, where every February three hundred tons of oranges are thrown.
Susa
Province: Torino 路 503 m
The Roman gateway at 503 meters, seat of the Cozii under Augustus and Cottius.
Puglia10
Fasano
Province: Brindisi 路 118 m
A Brindisi-province town running from the Adriatic up to the Itria escarpment, holding a Roman coastal city, a wooded highpoint, and one of Europe's largest safari parks.
Gravina in Puglia
Province: Bari 路 350 m
A Bari-province town of 42,700 built on the lip of a 100m-deep limestone canyon, its cliffs threaded with rupestrian cave churches.
Lecce
Province: Lecce 路 49 m
The Baroque capital of the Salento, ninety-four thousand people on the Lecce-stone plain, carving its fa莽ades in honey limestone since 1500.
Monopoli
Province: Bari 路 9 m
An Adriatic walled town forty kilometers south of Bari, the Charles V castle on the headland, 156 square kilometers of coastline behind it.
Monte Sant'Angelo
Province: Foggia 路 843 m
The Gargano peak at 843 meters, the oldest western shrine to an archangel, UNESCO since 2011.
Otranto
Province: Lecce 路 20 m
Italy's easternmost city, eighty kilometers from Albania, with a Norman mosaic floor and the bones of 813 martyrs in the cathedral.
San Giovanni Rotondo
Province: Foggia 路 565 m
The Gargano town that became one of Italy's most visited pilgrimage sites, its skyline defined by a stone sanctuary large enough to seat 6,500.
San Severo
Province: Foggia 路 86 m
The Daunia wine capital on the Tavoliere, home to Puglia's first DOC of 1968 and a May festa of firework batterie known across the south.
Trani
Province: Barletta-Andria-Trani 路 7 m
The Adriatic port whose pink-white Romanesque cathedral stands on the water, built for a Greek pilgrim who died here in 1094.
Vernole
Province: Lecce 路 38 m
A Salento commune ten kilometers from Lecce whose frazione of Acaya is the only Renaissance fortified town in southern Italy.
Tuscany19
Buonconvento
Province: Siena 路 147 m
The walled brick borgo in the Crete Senesi where Emperor Henry VII died in 1313, on the Via Cassia at the confluence of the Arbia and Ombrone.
- Written about. No. 2.
Camaiore
Province: Lucca 路 34 m
The Versilia commune that runs from the mountains to the sea, a Roman Campus Maior on the Via Francigena with a beach at its western end.
- Written about. No. 6.
Carrara
Province: Massa-Carrara 路 80 m
The marble town at the foot of the Apuan Alps, with over 650 quarry sites in the valleys above and the stone that built the Pantheon and the Piet脿.
- Written about. No. 41.
Castiglione d'Orcia
Province: Siena 路 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 路 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.
Certaldo
Province: Firenze 路 67 m
The brick-built upper town in the Valdelsa where Boccaccio spent his last years, twenty-five kilometers from Florence on the medieval road to Siena.
- Written about. No. 12.
Lucca
Province: Lucca 路 19 m
The provincial capital ringed by four kilometers of intact sixteenth-century walls, birthplace of Puccini and the only fully walled Italian city of its scale.
- Written about. No. 42.
Montalcino
Province: Siena 路 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.
- Written about. No. 33.
Monteriggioni
Province: Siena 路 274 m
A circular Sienese fortress built between 1213 and 1219 on a natural hill, fourteen towers on a 570-meter wall, intact and unbroken.
Montignoso
Province: Massa-Carrara 路 132 m
A Riviera Apuana commune split between the Cinquale coastal frazione, the Castello Aghinolfi on the hill, and the Lago di Porta wetland on the Versilia plain.
Piancastagnaio
Province: Siena 路 772 m
A chestnut-belt borgo at 772 meters on the southern slope, where four contrade still race horses for the Palio every 18 August.
- Written about. No. 3.
Pietrasanta
Province: Lucca 路 14 m
The marble-processing town under the Apuan Alps, worked by Michelangelo, Henry Moore, Joan Mir贸 and Fernando Botero.
Pontremoli
Province: Massa-Carrara 路 236 m
The capital of Lunigiana at the confluence of the Magra and Verde, holding the prehistoric stele statues and the oldest book prize in Italy.
- Written about. No. 45.
Radicofani
Province: Siena 路 814 m
The Val d'Orcia's basalt watchtower: a 1,044-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.
San Casciano dei Bagni
Province: Siena 路 582 m
A hilltop borgo at 582 meters above 42 hot springs that produced the largest Etruscan bronze hoard of the last fifty years.
- Written about. No. 29.
San Gimignano
Province: Siena 路 334 m
A walled hill town at 334 meters with 14 surviving medieval towers, UNESCO listed since 1990 and the home of Vernaccia.
- Written about. No. 23.
San Miniato
Province: Pisa 路 150 m
The hilltop town between Pisa and Florence that produces a quarter of Tuscany's white truffles and once held the imperial seat of Otto I.
- Written about. No. 46.
San Quirico d'Orcia
Province: Siena 路 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.
- Written about. No. 35.
Siena
Province: Siena 路 322 m
The medieval rival of Florence at 322 meters on three hills, with a shell-shaped piazza where seventeen contrade race bareback horses twice a year.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns
San Ginesio
Province: Macerata
The Balcony of the Sibillini at 680 meters, where a 1295 pilgrim hospital and the only flowery gothic collegiate church in the Marche stand within the same walls.
Senigallia
Province: Ancona
Thirteen kilometers of fine sand on the Adriatic, hometown to a chef and a photographer whose names carry beyond the region.
Sammichele di Bari
Province: Bari
A Murge town at 280 meters founded in 1609, anchored by the Caracciolo castle and famous for the zampina pork sausage.
Mercogliano
Province: Avellino
A 550-meter Irpinia town on the slope of Partenio, gateway to the Montevergine Sanctuary 1,270 meters above.
San Marco d'Alunzio
Province: Messina
A hilltop borgo at 540 meters in pink Aluntina marble, founded by the Greeks and later Robert Guiscard's first Sicilian base.