Recognitions
The 10 northernmost Borghi più belli d'Italia
Borghi più belli d'Italia comuni, ranked by latitude, north to south. 10 towns shown.
The Borghi più belli list thins as the latitude climbs, into valleys where the town names turn German and the recognition shares wall space with Tyrolean civic seals.
These are the northernmost members in our catalogue. Half sit above villages that were Austrian within living memory.
- 1.Sterzing46.91° NBolzano · Trentino-Alto Adige/SüdtirolA bilingual mining town at 948 metres on the Brenner road, where a 46-metre tower built in 1472 still divides the old town from the new.
- 2.Glurns46.66° NBolzano · Trentino-Alto Adige/SüdtirolA ringed sixteenth-century circuit of walls encloses a city of 937 inhabitants near the Swiss border.
- 3.Sappada46.56° NUdine · Friuli-Venezia GiuliaA German-speaking alpine village at 1,250 meters near the source of the Piave, settled from East Tyrol in the eleventh century and Italian since 1852.
- 4.Kastelruth46.55° NBolzano · Trentino-Alto Adige/SüdtirolSouth Tyrolean village on a shelf below the Sciliar, eighty-two-metre bell tower over the square, home of the Kastelruther Spatzen.
- 5.Rocca Pietore46.43° NBelluno · VenetoAn Agordino borgo at 1,143 meters under the Marmolada, where the Pettorina cuts a two-kilometer gorge through 100-meter rock walls.
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- 6.Caldes46.38° NTrento · Trentino-Alto Adige/SüdtirolA scattered commune on the Noce, six hamlets gathered around a thirteenth-century tower-house castle that once belonged to the Thun family.
- 7.Venzone46.35° NUdine · Friuli-Venezia GiuliaA 230-meter walled medieval town in the Tagliamento valley, leveled by the 1976 earthquake and rebuilt stone by stone, winner of Borgo dei Borghi 2017.
- 8.Ossana46.28° NTrento · Trentino-Alto Adige/SüdtirolA small borgo at the foot of a 25-metre stone keep, with Christmas nativity scenes filling its streets every December.
- 9.Frisanco46.23° NPordenone · Friuli-Venezia GiuliaA 572-resident commune in the Val Colvera whose frazione Poffabro, at 525 meters, became a model of Prealpine stone-and-wood vernacular architecture.
- 10.Pieve Tesino46.15° NTrento · Trentino-Alto Adige/SüdtirolA plateau village in eastern Trentino, birthplace of Alcide De Gasperi, shaped by centuries of families who left to trade prints across Europe.
We write about towns like these every Sunday, one town a week, with the photo, the food, the festa. Free, from Pietrasanta.
Keep browsing
Five more ways into the catalogue
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover
Pozzuoli
Province: Napoli
A Roman port on a volcanic caldera, the Greek Dicearchia and the Roman Puteoli, where a market's columns first proved that the ground itself rises and falls.
Moena
Province: Trento
The largest village in the valley, Ladin-speaking, dressed in Ottoman costume for three days every August.
Polcenigo
Province: Pordenone
A 40-meter village at the foot of the Carnic Prealps where the Livenza rises, neighbour to the UNESCO Palù pile-dwelling site occupied since 4900 BC.
Pietra Ligure
Province: Savona
A Riviera di Ponente town named after the rock castle above its center, known today for one of the largest triennial flower carpets in Europe.
Ponte di Legno
Province: Brescia
The uppermost commune in the province, 1,257 meters up, where two streams meet under the Adamello range to form a river.