Region
Liguria
Liguria's 54 towns in our catalogue split across the Savona, Genova, and Imperia provinces; 28 carry the Borghi più belli d'Italia designation.
54 towns · highest: Santo Stefano d'Aveto 1,012m · smallest: Castelvecchio di Rocca Barbena 130 people
54 of 54 towns
54 of 54 towns
Ameglia
Province: La Spezia
A hilltop borgo at 89 meters above the mouth of the Magra, the Lunigiana edge of Liguria where the river meets the Gulf of Poets.
Andora
Province: Savona
A Riviera town with two faces, two kilometers of sandy beach on the Aurelia and a ruined twelfth-century castle hidden on a hill behind it.
Apricale
Province: Imperia
A medieval hill village in the Nervia Valley, named for the Latin apricus, sunny, with a tenth-century castle shaped like a lizard on the rock.
Arenzano
Province: Genova
A coastal town twenty kilometers west of Genova where two-thirds of the territory climbs into the Parco del Beigua and peaks above a thousand meters.
Badalucco
Province: Imperia
A medieval village wrapped in a bend of the Argentina torrent, with murals on its caruggi and a Slow Food bean on its terraces.
Bogliasco
Province: Genova
A fishing village on the Riviera di Levante just east of Genoa, built around a 13th-century stone bridge over the Bogliasco torrent and a tight grid of pastel-coloured houses opening onto a pebble cove.
Borgio Verezzi
Province: Savona
Two villages joined under one comune in 1933: Borgio on the Bandiera Blu beach and Verezzi at 200 meters on the pink-stone hill above.
Brugnato
Province: La Spezia
The medieval ecclesiastical capital of the Val di Vara, seat of a diocese from 1133 to 1820, with a co-cathedral built over a Columban monastery.
Camogli
Province: Genova
A fishing village on the Golfo Paradiso whose nineteenth-century fleet of a thousand white sails made it Italy's third maritime power in the Mediterranean.
Campo Ligure
Province: Genova
A Spinola borgo at 342 meters in the Stura valley north of Genova, the last working centre for gold and silver filigree in Italy.
Castelnuovo Magra
Province: La Spezia
A ridge village on the Liguria-Tuscany border where Dante Alighieri signed the 1306 Peace of Castelnuovo on behalf of the Malaspina marquises.
Castelvecchio di Rocca Barbena
Province: Savona
A stone village of 130 residents at 420 meters in the Val Neva, built into the southern foot of Rocca Barbena at 1,142 meters.
Celle Ligure
Province: Savona
A Riviera di Ponente beach town with kilns firing since the 1600s and a Lucio Fontana ceramic on the parish church façade.
Ceriana
Province: Imperia
A medieval village at 369 meters above the Valle Armea, inland from Sanremo, built on the Roman castrum that gave it its name.
Cervo
Province: Imperia
A hilltop village on the Riviera di Ponente built by coral fishermen, named for the Roman mansio on the Via Julia Augusta.
Chiavari
Province: Genova
The Tigullio capital between Portofino and the Cinque Terre, a 27,000-person Genoese trading town built around a thirteenth-century grid of porticoed streets.
Cipressa
Province: Imperia
A ridgeline village at 232 meters above the Riviera dei Fiori, the climb that decides Milan-San Remo and a sixteenth-century Saracen-defence tower as its summit.
Deiva Marina
Province: La Spezia
A Riviera di Levante seaside commune between Sestri Levante and the Cinque Terre, reachable by sea only after the 1874 railway.
Diano
Province: Imperia
A twin destination on the Riviera dei Fiori — the medieval hilltop borgo of Diano Castello above and the palm-fronted beach resort of Diano Marina below — sharing one Bay of Diano, one Taggiasca olive valley, and the longest Bandiera Blu beach in western Liguria.
Dolceacqua
Province: Imperia
A two-banked medieval village in the Val Nervia split by a single-arch bridge from 1400, the one Monet came to paint in 1884.
Finale Ligure
Province: Savona
Three boroughs on the Gulf of Genoa, with walled Finalborgo as the Del Carretto seat and a Bandiera Blu beachfront below.
Framura
Province: La Spezia
Five hamlets between sea level and 300 meters on the Riviera di Levante, with Byzantine watchtowers built against Saracen incursions.
Laigueglia
Province: Savona
A former coral-fishing village on the Riviera di Ponente, with a curved Baroque parish church and a fishermen's grid of caruggi behind the beach.
Lavagna
Province: Genova
The Tigullio town that gave its name to slate and to Pope Innocent IV, host each 14 August of the Torta dei Fieschi pageant.
Lerici
Province: La Spezia
The northern anchor of the Bay of Poets, a fishing harbour under a Pisan-Genoese castle where Byron and Shelley wrote and where the frazione of Tellaro hangs over the rocks at the bay's southern edge.
Levanto
Province: La Spezia
The sixth Cinque Terre, a beach town and Cittaslow at the gateway of the national park, with a surf break and a striped Gothic church.
Loano
Province: Savona
A Doria fief on the Savona coast with a Renaissance palace, a Roman imperial mosaic, and a top-ten world marina.
Millesimo
Province: Savona
A fortified Del Carretto borgo at 429 meters in the upper Val Bormida, where Napoleon broke the Austro-Sardinian army in April 1796.
Moneglia
Province: Genova
A bay on the Riviera di Levante between Punta Moneglia and Punta Rospo, birthplace of the Genoese painter Luca Cambiaso in 1527.
Monterosso al Mare
Province: La Spezia
The westernmost and largest of the Cinque Terre, where Eugenio Montale spent the childhood summers that became Ossi di seppia in 1925.
Noli
Province: Savona
The fifth Italian maritime republic from 1192 to 1797, a walled coastal town with the Romanesque basilica of San Paragorio outside its gates.
Perinaldo
Province: Imperia
A ridge village at 572 meters above the Val Nervia, birthplace of Giovanni Domenico Cassini and home to a working astronomical observatory in his name.
Pietra Ligure
Province: Savona
A Riviera di Ponente town named after the seventh-century castle on its rock, with one of the largest flower carpets in Europe every three years.
Pieve di Teco
Province: Imperia
A planned market town founded in 1233 in the middle Arroscia valley, with porticoed Corso Ponzoni and the second-smallest theater in Italy.
Portofino
Province: Genova
Three hundred and fifty-five residents, the smallest municipal territory in the metropolitan area, and the harbor every superyacht in the Mediterranean wants to anchor in.
Portovenere
Province: La Spezia
A Genoese fortress at the western mouth of the Gulf of Poets, the black-and-white church of San Pietro on the Venus-temple rock.
Rapallo
Province: Genova
The largest town on the Tigullio gulf, twice the location of treaties that redrew borders in postwar Europe.
Recco
Province: Genova
A coastal town on the Golfo Paradiso, rebuilt from 90 percent destruction in 1943 and known for IGP cheese focaccia and Pro Recco water polo.
Riomaggiore
Province: La Spezia
The easternmost of the Cinque Terre, 1,326 people stacked above a fishing inlet, terraced vineyards climbing 250 meters straight off the sea.
Sanremo
Province: Imperia
The capital of the Italian Riviera dei Fiori — Belle Époque casino and palm-lined Lungomare on the seafront, the medieval labyrinth of La Pigna climbing the hill behind, and a year-round mild climate that built the original Northern European winter trade.
Santa Margherita Ligure
Province: Genova
The Tigullio town that kept its fishing port while the world drove past on the way to Portofino two kilometers further.
Santo Stefano d'Aveto
Province: Genova
Liguria's highest commune at 1,012 meters in the Ligurian-Emilian Apennines, with a Malaspina-Doria castle and the only ski resort in the region.
Sarzana
Province: La Spezia
The unofficial capital of the Lunigiana on the Magra plain, birthplace of Pope Niccolò V and home to Italy's oldest dated painted crucifix.
Sassello
Province: Savona
A baroque borgo at 381 meters in the Parco del Beigua, where Geltrude Rossi invented the soft amaretto in 1860.
Savona
Province: Savona
A working port city with two Della Rovere popes, a Sistine Chapel that came before the Roman one, and a fortress on the old town.
Seborga
Province: Imperia
A hilltop village at 517 meters above Bordighera that calls itself a principality, 276 residents, its own coins and stamps since 1963.
Sestri Levante
Province: Genova
The Tigullio town of two bays, where Hans Christian Andersen stayed in 1833 and Guglielmo Marconi ran his shortwave radio experiments.
Taggia
Province: Imperia
The Argentina valley's medieval seat above the Riviera dei Fiori, the town that gave its name to the Taggiasca olive grown across western Liguria.
Toirano
Province: Savona
A medieval village at the mouth of the Val Varatella, four kilometers inland from Loano, with karst caves holding 14,000-year-old human footprints.
Triora
Province: Imperia
The witches' village at 776 meters in the upper Valle Argentina, where the Inquisition put around 200 women on trial between 1587 and 1589.
Varazze
Province: Savona
A Ligurian shipbuilding town whose thirteenth-century friar compiled the saint lives that became the most copied book in Europe after the Bible.
Varese Ligure
Province: La Spezia
The Val di Vara's medieval seat at 358 meters, the first European municipality with ISO 14001 certification, anchor of Italy's largest organic district.
Vernazza
Province: La Spezia
The middle village of the Cinque Terre, the only one with a natural harbor, buried under four meters of mud in October 2011.
Zuccarello
Province: Savona
A 280-person medieval borgo in the Neva valley above Albenga, founded by the Marquises of Clavesana in 1248, birthplace of Ilaria del Carretto.
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Pieve di Soligo
Province: Treviso
The market town between the Soligo and Lierza rivers in the Prosecco UNESCO zone, birthplace of the twentieth-century poet Andrea Zanzotto.
Vallefoglia
Province: Pesaro e Urbino
A 2014 merger commune at 295 meters in the Foglia valley, born from Colbordolo, birthplace of Raffaello's father, and Sant'Angelo in Lizzola.
Abano Terme
Province: Padova
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.
Bosa
Province: Oristano
A colour-washed riverside town on Sardinia's only navigable river, with a Malaspina castle on the hill and the tanneries of Sas Conzas along the Temo.
Castagnole delle Lanze
Province: Asti
An Asti hill town at 298 meters between Langhe and Monferrato, with two Baroque churches and a nineteenth-century astronomical tower.