Anywhere Italy

Silence

The quietest town in each region

The silence index scores every catalogued comune from the numbers alone: residents, people per square kilometre, drive time to the nearest airport hub, distance from the nearest big town, and whether a train reaches it. Higher means more silent. One town per region, the highest score in each. 20 regions shown.

Every region keeps at least one town the noise never reached, and it is almost never the one the guidebooks send you to. We scored the whole catalogue on population, density, airport distance, hub distance and rail reach, then took the single highest score in each region.

Twenty regions, twenty winners. Some you will know. Most you will not, which is rather the point.

  1. 1.Alessandria del Carretto96 / 100 silenceCosenza · CalabriaThe highest village in the Pollino at 1,043 meters, the only Italian commune carrying its founder's full name, with a fir-tree ritual every 3 May.
  2. 2.Civitacampomarano95 / 100 silenceCampobasso · MoliseThe Molisan ghost-borgo that became Italy's most ambitious street-art village — 302 residents and 30+ large-format murals by international artists (Bifido, Hitnes, Alice Pasquini, Borondo, Vesod) painted across the abandoned house-walls of the centro storico during the annual CVTà Street Fest since 2016, anchored by the 11th-c Castello Angioino on a tufa spur.
  3. 3.Madesimo95 / 100 silenceSondrio · LombardyA ski village at 1,550 meters at the head of Valle Spluga, with lifts to 2,880 meters and the Canalone off-piste descent.
  4. 4.Santo Stefano di Sessanio95 / 100 silenceL'Aquila · AbruzzoA Medici outpost at 1,250 meters on the southern edge of Campo Imperatore, restored building by building since 1999 into Italy's first scattered hotel.
  5. 5.Capraia Isola94 / 100 silenceLivorno · TuscanyA volcanic island of 370 residents and one village, the third largest of the Tuscan Archipelago, a penal colony from 1873 to 1986 and a national park since.

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  1. 6.Macugnaga94 / 100 silenceVerbano-Cusio-Ossola · PiedmontA Walser village at 1,327 meters at the foot of the east wall of Monte Rosa, founded in the 13th century by colonists from Valais.
  2. 7.La Thuile94 / 100 silenceAosta Valley · Aosta ValleyItaly's gateway to the Petit Saint-Bernard pass — a 1,441m alpine village under Mont Blanc with the Espace San Bernardo ski domain straddling the French border (152 km of pistes shared with La Rosière), the Rutor glacier and its tiered waterfalls behind it, and a Roman-Salassi history that goes back two millennia.
  3. 8.Triora94 / 100 silenceImperia · LiguriaThe witches' village at 776 meters in the upper Valle Argentina, where the Inquisition put around 200 women on trial between 1587 and 1589.
  4. 9.Guardia Perticara93 / 100 silencePotenza · BasilicataThe stone village at 678 meters above the Sauro valley, rebuilt block by block in Gorgoglione sandstone after the 1980 earthquake.
  5. 10.Morigerati87 / 100 silenceSalerno · CampaniaA 608-person Cilento village above the Bussento gorge, the river surfacing from underground caves directly beneath the cliffs.
  6. 11.Aritzo87 / 100 silenceNuoro · SardiniaA Mandrolisai mountain village at 800 meters in chestnut and hazelnut forest, where snow once travelled out in straw and came back as lemon sorbet.
  7. 12.Sauris86 / 100 silenceUdine · Friuli-Venezia GiuliaA 1,212-meter German-speaking island in the Carnic Alps, second-highest commune in Friuli, where Tyrolean settlers founded the village around the thirteenth century.
  8. 13.Monteleone di Spoleto85 / 100 silencePerugia · UmbriaWhere the 6th-century-BC Etruscan parade chariot now in the Met was found — a 555-resident Borghi più belli d'Italia borgo at 978m in the upper Nera valley, with a replica of the Monteleone Chariot (the original is in New York), the medieval Rocca dei Brancaleoni, and a stop on the Cammino di San Benedetto pilgrim route.
  9. 14.Arquata del Tronto85 / 100 silenceAscoli Piceno · MarcheAt 777 meters between two national parks, the Marche commune levelled by the 2016 earthquakes and still rebuilding nine years on.
  10. 15.Sperlinga84 / 100 silenceEnna · SicilyA sandstone borgo at 750 meters in the Nebrodi foothills where a Norman castle and dwellings are carved into the rock as one continuous mass.
  11. 16.Fortezza84 / 100 silenceBolzano · Trentino-Alto Adige/SüdtirolA South-Tyrolean village in the Isarco valley anchored by Forte di Fortezza — the 19th-century Habsburg star fortress that gave the village its German name (Franzensfeste, for Emperor Francis I), one of the largest unconquered fortresses in the Alps.
  12. 17.Picinisco83 / 100 silenceFrosinone · LazioA medieval village at 725 meters above the Val di Comino, the source of much of Italo-Scottish emigration and of Pecorino di Picinisco DOP.
  13. 18.Celle di San Vito80 / 100 silenceFoggia · ApuliaThe smallest commune in Puglia, 148 residents at 726 meters in the Monti Dauni, one of two Franco-Provençal-speaking villages in the south.
  14. 19.Rocca Pietore80 / 100 silenceBelluno · VenetoAn Agordino borgo at 1,143 meters under the Marmolada, where the Pettorina cuts a two-kilometer gorge through 100-meter rock walls.
  15. 20.Compiano78 / 100 silenceParma · Emilia-RomagnaA 519-meter walled borgo over the Taro, ruled by the Landi for 425 years and used by Maria Luigia as a state prison.

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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