Anywhere Italy

Recognitions

10 Bandiera Arancione towns nobody has heard of

The smallest comuni holding the Touring Club's Bandiera Arancione. Population stands in for fame here: the smaller the town, the shorter its reach. 10 towns shown.

The Touring Club's Bandiera Arancione goes to small inland towns that meet a long checklist of quality standards. It is Italy's most rigorous obscure honor: hard to earn, unknown outside the country.

We took the smallest holders in our catalogue, on the theory that population is a fair proxy for fame. The flag flies anyway.

  1. 1.Castelvecchio di Rocca Barbena130 residentsSavona · LiguriaA stone village of 130 residents at 420 meters in the Val Neva, built into the southern foot of Rocca Barbena at 1,142 meters.
  2. 2.Usseaux175 residentsTorino · PiedmontA Val Chisone village at 1,416 meters with four scattered borgate and more than forty murals painted across the stone facades.
  3. 3.Seborga276 residentsImperia · LiguriaA hilltop village at 517 meters above Bordighera that calls itself a principality, 276 residents, its own coins and stamps since 1963.
  4. 4.Civitella Alfedena285 residentsL'Aquila · AbruzzoAt 1,123 meters above Lake Barrea, 285 residents, the trailhead for the Camosciara reserve and home of the Apennine Wolf Museum.
  5. 5.Vallo di Nera345 residentsPerugia · UmbriaCastle village of 345 people at 467 meters in the upper Valnerina, granted by Spoleto in 1217 and barely changed since.

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  1. 6.Labro355 residentsRieti · LazioA 355-person stone borgo at 628 meters above Lake Piediluco, restored since the 1960s by a Belgian architect and his descendants.
  2. 7.Triora373 residentsImperia · LiguriaThe witches' village at 776 meters in the upper Valle Argentina, where the Inquisition put around 200 women on trial between 1587 and 1589.
  3. 8.Bova416 residentsReggio di Calabria · CalabriaThe capital of the Bovesìa — a 416-resident Aspromonte hilltop borgo at 820m that is the cultural centre of the Grecanic minority, where the Calabrian-Greek dialect (a direct descendant of Byzantine-era Greek) is still spoken by elders, with the triple Borghi più belli + Bandiera Arancione + Parco Nazionale dell'Aspromonte signal.
  4. 9.Fenestrelle476 residentsTorino · PiedmontA Val Chisone village at 1,154 meters below the largest alpine fortress in Europe, three kilometers of stone climbing 650 vertical meters up the ridge.
  5. 10.Etroubles478 residentsAosta Valley · Aosta ValleyA 478-person village at 1,280 metres on the Via Francigena, with an open-air contemporary art museum and the region's first dairy.

We write about towns like these every Sunday, one town a week, with the photo, the food, the festa. Free, from Pietrasanta.

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One letter on Sundays. The week’s town, with the photo, the food, the festa. Free, by Peter & Sophia from Pietrasanta.

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