Region
Calabria
Calabria's 45 towns in our catalogue split across the Cosenza, Catanzaro, and Reggio di Calabria provinces; 16 carry the Borghi più belli d'Italia designation.
45 towns · highest: San Giovanni in Fiore 1,049m · smallest: Alessandria del Carretto 357 people
45 of 45 towns
45 of 45 towns
Aiello Calabro
Province: Cosenza
A hilltop borgo at 502 meters in the Tyrrhenian hinterland of Cosenza, ruled for two centuries by the Cybo-Malaspina from Massa Carrara.
Aieta
Province: Cosenza
An eagle's-nest village in the western Pollino, with one of the few sixteenth-century Renaissance palazzi standing in Calabria.
Albidona
Province: Cosenza
A hill village at 810 meters between the Pollino and the Ionian, identified by ancient writers as Leutarnia, the city founded by Calchas after Troy.
Alessandria del Carretto
Province: Cosenza
The 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.
Altomonte
Province: Cosenza
The highest Gothic-Angevin church in Calabria, a Simone Martini panel commissioned in 1326, and a hill of 455 meters in the Esaro valley.
Badolato
Province: Catanzaro
A medieval borgo of thirteen churches at 240 meters above the Ionian, which took in 350 Kurdish refugees in 1997 and started its own slow rebirth.
Bagnara Calabra
Province: Reggio di Calabria
A swordfish town on the Costa Viola where boats with lookout masts still hunt the Strait, and the IGP torrone has been made by hand since the eighteenth century.
Belvedere Marittimo
Province: Cosenza
A Riviera dei Cedri town on the Tyrrhenian, its Aragonese castle on the highest coastal hill and the relics of San Valentino in the Capuchin convent for three centuries.
Bova
Province: Reggio di Calabria
The 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.
Caccuri
Province: Crotone
A 646-meter Presila borgo dominated by a sixth-century Byzantine castle with a cylindrical tower built in 1882, birthplace of Renaissance statesman Cicco Simonetta.
Cariati
Province: Cosenza
A walled Ionian fishing town on the Saracen Coast, its kilometer of medieval ramparts and eight towers among the most intact in southern Italy.
Cerchiara di Calabria
Province: Cosenza
A Città del Pane at 650 meters under Mount Sellaro, with a rock sanctuary at 1,015 meters and a sulphurous Cave of the Nymphs feeding the thermal springs.
Cicala
Province: Catanzaro
A village of 887 people at 829 meters on the western foothills of the Sila Piccola, founded in 1616 by farmers asking the Count Cigala for land.
Cirò
Province: Crotone
A hill village at 351 meters above the Ionian, the historic heart of Cirò DOC, Calabria's first denominazione and a candidate for the region's first DOCG.
Corigliano-Rossano
Province: Cosenza
The Sibari plain city merged in 2018, home of the UNESCO-listed sixth-century Codex Purpureus and the 1731 Amarelli liquorice dynasty.
Fiumefreddo Bruzio
Province: Cosenza
A Tyrrhenian hill town under Monte Cocuzzo, with a thirteenth-century castle frescoed in the 1990s by the Sicilian painter Salvatore Fiume.
Gerace
Province: Reggio di Calabria
A 470-meter conglomerate rock above Locri, founded by Locri Epizefiri refugees, with Calabria's largest cathedral on Roman columns from Magna Graecia temples.
Gizzeria
Province: Catanzaro
An Arbëreshë hill village at 600 meters above the Gulf of Sant'Eufemia, with kitesurf beaches and brackish lagoons on the Tyrrhenian below.
Isola di Capo Rizzuto
Province: Crotone
A promontory on the Ionian coast wrapped by Italy's largest marine reserve, with the Aragonese castle of Le Castella standing on a rock offshore.
Laino Borgo
Province: Cosenza
Southern Italy's only Sacro Monte, sixteen pilgrimage chapels begun in 1557, on the Lao river canyon that made it Calabria's rafting capital.
Mendicino
Province: Cosenza
A silk-mill village at the foot of Monte Cocuzzo, ten kilometers from Cosenza, where water still drives the old spinning wheels.
Montegiordano
Province: Cosenza
A 619-meter Alto Jonio hill town with a Pignone del Carretto hunting castle and more than two hundred murals across its centro storico.
Morano Calabro
Province: Cosenza
A conical hill of stone houses stacked under a Norman-Swabian castle at the southern gate of the Pollino, called Italy's nativity village.
Mormanno
Province: Cosenza
A Pollino mountain borgo at 840 meters between the Costa and Vernita ridges, known for lentils, white poverelli beans and the bocconotto pastry.
Oriolo
Province: Cosenza
A medieval borgo on a sandstone outcrop at 450 meters, on the eastern slopes of Pollino, twenty kilometers from the Ionian coast.
Parghelia
Province: Vibo Valentia
A 1,300-person village on the Costa degli Dei at 70 meters, four kilometers from Tropea and quieter than its famous neighbour.
Pizzo
Province: Vibo Valentia
A tuff-cliff town over the Gulf of Sant'Eufemia, where Joachim Murat was shot in 1815 and the tartufo gelato was invented a century later.
Praia a Mare
Province: Cosenza
A Tyrrhenian beach town in the Gulf of Policastro, between the Pollino National Park and the 33-hectare Isola di Dino just offshore.
Riace
Province: Reggio di Calabria
A 300-meter borgo on the Locride hills, famous for the 1972 bronzes pulled from its sea and the refugee resettlement project that doubled its population.
Rocca Imperiale
Province: Cosenza
Frederick II's Hohenstaufen fortress at the Calabria–Basilicata border — a Borgo più Bello d'Italia perched on a hill above the Ionian coast, with the 1225 castello at the summit, a Bandiera Blu beach at Rocca Imperiale Marina below, and the locally-grown limone di Rocca Imperiale IGP scenting the orchards.
Roseto Capo Spulico
Province: Cosenza
A Frederician castle on a rock above the Ionian, a former Sybaris satellite city founded in the seventh century BC, Templar legend included.
San Benedetto Ullano
Province: Cosenza
An Arbëreshë village at 460 meters in the hills west of Cosenza, where the Byzantine rite is still sung and the 1723 Italo-Albanian college trained generations of priests.
San Giovanni in Fiore
Province: Cosenza
The capital of the Sila Grande at 1,049 meters, grown from the abbey Gioacchino da Fiore founded in 1188, Italy's most populated commune above a thousand.
San Nicola Arcella
Province: Cosenza
A cliff village above the Tyrrhenian Riviera dei Cedri, where the Arco Magno sea arch fronts a cove only reachable on foot or by boat.
Santa Severina
Province: Crotone
A tufa-rock stone ship at 326 meters between the Sila and the Ionian, holding the only Byzantine baptistery still standing in Calabria.
Saracena
Province: Cosenza
A 606-meter Pollino borgo named for its Saracen souk and protected by Slow Food for a passito Moscato traced to the sixteenth century.
Scilla
Province: Reggio di Calabria
Homer's sea-monster headland on the Costa Viola, the Castello Ruffo on the cliff above Chianalea and the swordfish boats working the Strait below.
Serrastretta
Province: Catanzaro
The chair town of the Reventino massif, founded in 1383 in a narrow gorge between two mountain ranges, still weaving straw seats by hand.
Soverato
Province: Catanzaro
On the Gulf of Squillace with the white-sand stretch called the Pearl of the Ionian, the wealthiest town per capita in Calabria.
Spezzano della Sila
Province: Cosenza
A Sila plateau borgo at 800 meters, the gateway to the national park and the Giants of the Sila above Lake Cecita.
Stilo
Province: Reggio di Calabria
A Byzantine hilltown below Monte Consolino, home to the tenth-century Cattolica and the legendary inspiration for Campanella's City of the Sun.
Taverna
Province: Catanzaro
The birthplace of Mattia Preti at the foot of the Sila Piccola, where the church of San Domenico holds eleven of the Cavaliere Calabrese's paintings.
Trebisacce
Province: Cosenza
A Bronze Age plateau above the Ionian Gulf of Taranto whose name comes from the Greek for small table, with a Byzantine mother church below.
Tropea
Province: Vibo Valentia
Cliff town on a tufa headland over the Tyrrhenian Coast of the Gods, with a Norman monastery on a sea rock.
Villapiana
Province: Cosenza
An Ionian commune on the edge of the Sibari plain, dorato sand at the Lido and Pollino peaks rising twenty kilometers inland.
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A 2014 merger commune at 295 meters in the Foglia valley, born from Colbordolo, birthplace of Raffaello's father, and Sant'Angelo in Lizzola.
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Europe's oldest thermal town on the Euganean Hills' eastern slope, where 80°C bromo-iodine springs have been drawing bathers since the eighth century BC.
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Castagnole delle Lanze
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An Asti hill town at 298 meters between Langhe and Monferrato, with two Baroque churches and a nineteenth-century astronomical tower.