Region
Lombardy
Lombardy's 65 towns in our catalogue split across the Brescia, Bergamo, and Mantova provinces; 25 carry the Borghi più belli d'Italia designation.
65 towns · highest: Livigno 1,816m · smallest: Monteviasco 12 people
65 of 65 towns
65 of 65 towns
Angera
Province: Varese
A lake-Maggiore town on the southern shore, anchored by the Rocca Borromea — a 13th-century fortified castle the Borromeo family has held since 1449 — with a frescoed Justice Hall and a continuous prehistoric-to-medieval museum trail above the waterfront.
Bagolino
Province: Brescia
A mountain village at 778 meters in the Valle del Caffaro, with a three-day February carnival of masked dancers and violins.
Bellagio
Province: Como
On the promontory where Lake Como splits into three arms, with Villa Serbelloni on the high ground and Villa Melzi on the western shore.
Bellano
Province: Lecco
An eastern Lake Como town where the Pioverna cut a gorge through fifteen million years of rock before reaching the lake.
Bergamo
Province: Bergamo
A two-city Lombard capital where a Venetian walled hilltown sits 85 meters above its modern twin on the plain, 45 kilometers northeast of Milan.
Bienno
Province: Brescia
A medieval ironworking village in the Val Camonica, where water hammers driven by the Grigna stream have shaped wrought iron since the 1200s.
Bormio
Province: Sondrio
An Alpine spa town at 1,225 meters where three high passes meet and Roman thermal water has fed the baths for two thousand years.
Capriate San Gervasio
Province: Bergamo
The Bergamasco town that holds Crespi d'Adda, the late-nineteenth-century company village inscribed by UNESCO in 1995 as a model workers' settlement.
Cassinetta di Lugagnano
Province: Milano
A Naviglio Grande commune west of Milan with fifteen ville di delizia and Italy's first zero-growth urban plan, adopted in 2007.
Castellaro Lagusello
Province: Mantova
A walled medieval borgo south of Lake Garda, ringed by 13th-century stone walls and overlooking a small heart-shaped natural lake that gives the village its second name and most-photographed silhouette.
Castione della Presolana
Province: Bergamo
A high-valley commune at 870 meters under the Pizzo della Presolana, the limestone peak the Bergamasque call the Queen of the Orobie.
Cernobbio
Province: Como
On the southwest shore of Lake Como at the foot of Monte Bisbino, the town where Villa d'Este has been a luxury hotel since 1873.
Chiavenna
Province: Sondrio
An Alpine town at 333 meters on the Mera river, the historical Splügen Pass crossroads named for its key position and its rock-cellar crotti.
Cimbergo
Province: Brescia
A village of 533 at 851 meters above the Oglio, with castle ruins on a spur and UNESCO petroglyphs on the slopes below.
Clusone
Province: Bergamo
At 648 meters in upper Val Seriana, capital of the macabre fresco and the 1583 planetary clock above its civic tower.
Cornello dei Tasso
Province: Bergamo
A car-free medieval frazione of Camerata Cornello in the Val Brembana, accessible only on foot, anchored by the Museo dei Tasso e della Storia Postale — birthplace of the family that ran the European postal network from the 16th century onward.
Curtatone
Province: Mantova
A commune of eight frazioni west of Mantova, anchored by the Grazie sanctuary and the 1848 battle that delayed Radetzky's advance.
Darfo Boario Terme
Province: Brescia
At the mouth of the Valle Camonica, an Art Nouveau spa town next to one of the first UNESCO rock-engraving sites in Italy.
Dervio
Province: Lecco
A peninsula on upper Lake Como's eastern shore at the Varrone delta, with a Romanesque bell tower and one of the lake's best sailing winds.
Fortunago
Province: Pavia
A 365-resident village on a 482-meter Oltrepò Pavese ridge, with stone façades, porphyry streets and the production zone of Salame di Varzi at its doorstep.
Gardone Riviera
Province: Brescia
A western Garda lakeshore town whose hillside holds the Vittoriale, the estate Gabriele D'Annunzio turned into a monument to himself.
Gorgonzola
Province: Milano
The town that gave its name to the cheese — a 21,000-resident commune on the Naviglio della Martesana 24 km east of Milan, the documented birthplace of Gorgonzola DOP since AD 879 and now the eastern terminus of Milan's M2 metro line, with a Greenways cycling-route signal along the canal.
Gromo
Province: Bergamo
A medieval iron-forging town at 676 meters on a rock spur above the Serio, once called the little Toledo for its sword smiths.
Iseo
Province: Brescia
The main town on the southeast shore of Lake Iseo, gateway to Monte Isola and the Franciacorta sparkling wine country.
Laveno-Mombello
Province: Varese
The eastern Lake Maggiore port town that produced Lombardia's industrial ceramics for a century, under the 1,062-meter cliff of Sasso del Ferro.
Limone sul Garda
Province: Brescia
The northernmost lemon-growing town in the world, at 46 degrees north on the western shore of Lake Garda, reached by road only in 1932.
Livigno
Province: Sondrio
At 1,816 meters in the Italian Alps near the Swiss border, a duty-free ski valley that drains north into the Black Sea, not the Mediterranean.
Lonato del Garda
Province: Brescia
A hilltop commune on the southwestern Garda morainic ridge, with a Visconti Rocca and the 52,000-volume Casa del Podestà library.
Lovere
Province: Bergamo
An amphitheater town at the north end of Lake Iseo, in Borghi più belli since 2003, with Canova plasters inside the Accademia Tadini.
Madesimo
Province: Sondrio
A ski village at 1,550 meters at the head of Valle Spluga, with lifts to 2,880 meters and the Canalone off-piste descent.
Manerba del Garda
Province: Brescia
A Valtenesi commune on Lake Garda's southwestern shore, anchored by a limestone cliff that held a Roman temple to Minerva and a medieval fortress.
Mantova
Province: Mantova
A Gonzaga capital at 19 meters, encircled on three sides by lakes the Mincio formed in the twelfth century, UNESCO-listed together with Sabbioneta since 2008.
Menaggio
Province: Como
On the western shore of Lake Como at the mouth of the Senagra, the lake's old Roman crossing point between Como, Bellagio and the Valtellina.
Monte Isola
Province: Brescia
The largest lake island in southern and central Europe, 4.5 square kilometers in Lake Iseo, with no cars and eleven fishing villages on its shore.
Montesegale
Province: Pavia
A 258-person hill village at 400 meters in the Oltrepò Pavese, built around the Gambarana castle that today holds a contemporary art collection.
Monteviasco
Province: Varese
A near-abandoned mountain frazione of Curiglia con Monteviasco at 928 metres above the Veddasca valley — historically reached only by an aerial cable-car since 1989 (since suspended) or a 1,400-step stone staircase, with permanent population in the single digits.
Monzambano
Province: Mantova
A Mincio commune at 88 meters in the moraine hills west of Mantova, whose frazione Castellaro Lagusello sits on a heart-shaped lake inside fortified walls.
Morimondo
Province: Milano
A Cistercian abbey village on the edge of the Ticino park, twenty-five kilometers southwest of Milano, founded by French monks in 1134.
Pizzighettone
Province: Cremona
A walled town on the Adda below Cremona, where Francis I of France was held for fifty days in the Torre del Guado after Pavia.
Polpenazze del Garda
Province: Brescia
A Valtenesi hilltop commune above the drained Lake Lucone, where Italy's oldest continuous wine fair has poured Groppello since 1947.
Pomponesco
Province: Mantova
A Mantova river village at 21 meters on the Po's left bank, with a late-Cinquecento Gonzaga grid and arcaded central piazza.
Ponte di Legno
Province: Brescia
The uppermost commune of Valle Camonica at 1,257 meters, where the two source streams of the Oglio meet under the Adamello range.
Porto Ceresio
Province: Varese
The Italian port at the southern end of Lake Lugano, where the Swiss border runs through the water below Monte San Giorgio.
Predore
Province: Bergamo
A small lakeside village on the Bergamo shore of Lake Iseo, sitting on a 15,000-square-meter Roman villa with intact thermal baths underneath.
Sabbioneta
Province: Mantova
A Renaissance ideal city on the Po, built in thirty years by Vespasiano I Gonzaga and laid out as a six-pointed star.
Salò
Province: Brescia
On the deepest gulf of Lake Garda, with the lake's longest waterfront promenade and the cathedral of the Riviera di Salò.
San Benedetto Po
Province: Mantova
The town that grew up around Polirone, the abbey founded in 1007 by the Canossa family, where Matilda of Canossa was buried for five centuries.
San Pellegrino Terme
Province: Bergamo
A Liberty-era spa town in the Val Brembana — home of the San Pellegrino mineral water and a complete Art Nouveau ensemble of Grand Hotel, Casinò and thermal baths built between 1899 and 1907 around the original sulfur springs.
Sarnico
Province: Bergamo
A medieval lake town at the southern tip of Lago d'Iseo, where the Oglio leaves the lake and Liberty villas line the shore.
Sesto Calende
Province: Varese
The town at the southern tip of Lake Maggiore where the Ticino starts toward the Po, the type site of the pre-Roman Golasecca culture.
Sirmione
Province: Brescia
A 4-kilometer peninsula reaching into the southern Garda, with the Scaliger fortified port and the Roman villa called the Grotte di Catullo at its tip.
Solferino
Province: Mantova
The morainic hill where 300,000 soldiers met on 24 June 1859, the battle whose wounded gave Henry Dunant the idea of the Red Cross.
Soncino
Province: Cremona
A walled borgo on the Oglio with the Sforza fortress of 1473 and the press that printed the first complete Hebrew Bible in 1488.
Sondrio
Province: Sondrio
The capital of Valtellina at 307 meters, where Castel Masegra watches over terraced vineyards that produce Sassella and Grumello Nebbiolo.
Teglio
Province: Sondrio
A Valtellina hilltown at 856 metres that gave its name to the whole valley (Vallis Tellina = Val di Teglio), home of the Renaissance Palazzo Besta with its frescoed Italian-Renaissance cycles, and the official birthplace of pizzoccheri pasta — recognised by the Accademia del Pizzocchero.
Tignale
Province: Brescia
A six-hamlet commune on a high terrace above Lake Garda's western shore, anchored by a clifftop sanctuary and the last working limonaie north of Salò.
Tirano
Province: Sondrio
A Valtellina town at 441 meters where the Bernina railway from St Moritz reaches Italy, beneath terraced Nebbiolo vineyards.
Torno
Province: Como
A medieval village on the eastern shore of Lake Como, home to Villa Pliniana and its rhythmic spring described by Pliny the Younger.
Toscolano-Maderno
Province: Brescia
Twin lakeside villages on the western shore of Garda, paper mill suppliers to the Republic of Venice from the 14th century onward.
Tremezzina
Province: Como
The 2014 merger of four Lake Como villages that holds Villa Carlotta, Isola Comacina and the UNESCO Sacro Monte di Ossuccio.
Tremosine sul Garda
Province: Brescia
A cliff-top commune of 18 frazioni 350 meters above Lake Garda, reached by the Strada della Forra carved through the Brasa gorge.
Varenna
Province: Lecco
A fishing village founded in 769 on the Lecco arm of Lake Como, with a steep grid of streets falling into the water.
Varzi
Province: Pavia
A medieval Malaspina town at 416 meters in the Staffora valley of the Oltrepò Pavese, the seat of one of Italy's first DOP cured meats.
Volta Mantovana
Province: Mantova
A morainic hill town between Mantua and Lake Garda where Ludovico Gonzaga built a country palace inside the old medieval castle.
Zavattarello
Province: Pavia
A Val Tidone borgo at 525 meters clinging to a ridge below the Castello Dal Verme, the tenth-century Apennine fortress with walls four meters thick.
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