🟦Bandiera Blu

Alba Adriatica

Province: Teramo · 5 m

The northernmost of the Teramo coast's seven sisters, a 1956 spin-off from Tortoreto with a fine-sand beach known as the Spiaggia d'Argento.

Giulianova

Province: Teramo · 68 m

Coastal town split between hilltop Paese at 68 meters and the lido, rebuilt in 1471 as a Renaissance ideal city by Giulio Antonio Acquaviva.

Pineto

Province: Teramo · 4 m

A planned twentieth-century beach town named for D'Annunzio's poem, with the sixteenth-century Cerrano tower anchoring Abruzzo's first marine protected area.

Roseto degli Abruzzi

Province: Teramo · 8 m

An Adriatic beach town of 25,500 with ten kilometers of low-rise sand, a hilltop frazione at 285 meters, and Blue Flags since 1995.

Scanno

Province: L'Aquila · 1,057 m

A 1,057-meter Sagittario valley village photographed by Cartier-Bresson and Giacomelli, where women in black still walk the same alleys as the 1957 series.

Silvi

Province: Teramo · 242 m

A split town on the Teramo coast, medieval Silvi Paese at 242 meters above a nine-kilometer beach that built itself on licorice in the 1930s.

Vasto

Province: Chieti · 144 m

At 144 meters on a hill above the Adriatic, southern anchor of the Costa dei Trabocchi, home of the brodetto vastese invented in 1800.

Villalago

Province: L'Aquila · 930 m

A 930-meter village above three lakes, named for the nine that once filled the valley, with a hermit's cave on the water's edge.

Bisceglie

Province: Barletta-Andria-Trani · 16 m

An Adriatic port town between Trani and Molfetta, named for Roman watchtowers, with five dolmens around it and a Norman cathedral begun in 1073.

Carovigno

Province: Brindisi · 161 m

An upper Salento town between Brindisi and Ostuni, built on the Messapian Carbina destroyed in 473 BC, with the Torre Guaceto marine reserve offshore.

Castellaneta

Province: Taranto · 235 m

A cliff-edge Murge town at 235 meters above the Gravina Grande canyon, birthplace of Rudolph Valentino in 1895, with a Bandiera Blu Ionian marina.

Fasano

Province: Brindisi · 118 m

A Brindisi-province town from the Adriatic up to the Itria escarpment, holding the Roman ruins of Egnazia, the Selva, and Europe's second-largest safari park.

Gallipoli

Province: Lecce · 12 m

The Ionian beach city on a limestone island, Greek Kallipolis meaning beautiful city, tied to the mainland by a seventeenth-century bridge.

Isole Tremiti

Province: Foggia · 116 m

An Adriatic archipelago of five islands twenty-two kilometers off the Gargano, the only Italian commune scattered across an open-sea group.

Lecce

Province: Lecce · 49 m

The Baroque capital of the Salento, ninety-four thousand people on the Lecce-stone plain, carving its façades in honey limestone since 1500.

Manduria

Province: Taranto · 79 m

The Messapian capital thirty-five kilometers east of Taranto, ringed by three concentric stone walls and the home of Primitivo.

Maruggio

Province: Taranto · 35 m

Salento's Knights of Malta borgo — a fortified Borgo più Bello on a low Ionian hill with 11 km of Bandiera Blu coast at Campomarino, Negroamaro and Primitivo vines pressing into the centro, and a unique commanderie history that made it the Order's southern Italian headquarters for 600 years.

Melendugno

Province: Lecce · 36 m

Salento's archaeological-beach capital — a 10,000-resident Lecce-province comune covering 17 km of Adriatic coast with three Bandiera Blu beaches (Torre dell'Orso, San Foca, Sant'Andrea), the Grotta della Poesia karst pool (one of the world's most beautiful natural pools per National Geographic), and the Bronze-Age-to-Messapian-to-medieval Roca Vecchia archaeological site.

Monopoli

Province: Bari · 9 m

An Adriatic walled town forty kilometers south of Bari, the Charles V castle on the headland, 156 square kilometers of coastline behind it.

Nardò

Province: Lecce · 45 m

The second city of Salento after Lecce, a Baroque inland capital twenty-five kilometers from Lecce with a Ionian coastline behind it.

Ostuni

Province: Brindisi · 218 m

The Città Bianca on three hills at 218 meters, eight kilometers inland, whitewashed against the Murge above an Adriatic plain of olive trees.

Peschici

Province: Foggia · 91 m

A Gargano cliff-top village above the Adriatic with a Norman castle of 1023, white houses spilling toward the sea and trabucchi on the headlands.

Polignano a Mare

Province: Bari · 24 m

The Adriatic cliff town thirty kilometers south of Bari, built on a twenty-metre limestone bluff, birthplace of Domenico Modugno.

Rodi Garganico

Province: Foggia · 42 m

A Gargano promontory town above the Adriatic, citrus capital of the peninsula, with DOP oranges and lemons grown since the Middle Ages.

Ugento

Province: Lecce · 108 m

A Messapian-Roman town five kilometers from the Ionian, where a Baroque castle sits on the walls of the ancient city of Ozan.

Vieste

Province: Foggia · 43 m

The Gargano headland of whitewashed alleys on a white limestone cliff, with the Pizzomunno sea stack standing 26 meters offshore.

Bernalda

Province: Matera · 127 m

A 127-meter hill town between the Bradano and Basento, Francis Ford Coppola's ancestral home, holding the Magna Graecia columns of the Tavole Palatine.

Maratea

Province: Potenza · 300 m

Basilicata's only commune on the Tyrrhenian, thirty-two kilometers of rocky coast under a twenty-one meter marble Christ raised over Monte San Biagio in 1965.

Nova Siri

Province: Matera · 350 m

A 350-meter Ionian hill town with a Blue Flag beach nine kilometers below, near the site of the ancient Greek colony of Siris.

Pisticci

Province: Matera · 364 m

A hill town at 364 meters above the Ionian, rebuilt in three hundred identical white houses after the 1688 landslide killed four hundred.

Policoro

Province: Matera · 25 m

A Ionian-coast town on the Gulf of Taranto built on the ruins of the Greek polis of Heraclea — birthplace of the Tavole di Eraclea bronze inscriptions and home to one of the region's most-visited Bandiera Blu beaches and the National Museum of the Siritide.

Cariati

Province: Cosenza · 76 m

A walled Ionian fishing town on the Saracen Coast, its kilometer of medieval ramparts and eight towers among the most intact in southern Italy.

Corigliano-Rossano

Province: Cosenza · 219 m

The Sibari plain city merged in 2018, home of the UNESCO-listed sixth-century Codex Purpureus and the 1731 Amarelli liquorice dynasty.

Isola di Capo Rizzuto

Province: Crotone · 90 m

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.

Parghelia

Province: Vibo Valentia · 70 m

A 1,300-person village on the Costa degli Dei at 70 meters, four kilometers from Tropea and quieter than its famous neighbour.

Praia a Mare

Province: Cosenza · 10 m

A Tyrrhenian beach town in the Gulf of Policastro, between the Pollino National Park and the 33-hectare Isola di Dino just offshore.

Rocca Imperiale

Province: Cosenza · 210 m

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 · 217 m

A Frederician castle on a rock above the Ionian, a former Sybaris satellite city founded in the seventh century BC, Templar legend included.

San Nicola Arcella

Province: Cosenza · 110 m

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.

Soverato

Province: Catanzaro · 10 m

On the Gulf of Squillace with the white-sand stretch called the Pearl of the Ionian, the wealthiest town per capita in Calabria.

Trebisacce

Province: Cosenza · 73 m

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 · 50 m

Cliff town on a tufa headland over the Tyrrhenian Coast of the Gods, with a Norman monastery on a sea rock.

Villapiana

Province: Cosenza · 206 m

An Ionian commune on the edge of the Sibari plain, dorato sand at the Lido and Pollino peaks rising twenty kilometers inland.

Agropoli

Province: Salerno · 24 m

The gateway commune of the Cilento, a Byzantine acropolis on a promontory taken by the Saracens in 882 as a base for raids on Salerno.

Anacapri

Province: Napoli · 275 m

The upper half of Capri, 150 meters above its famous twin, where Axel Munthe built Villa San Michele on a Tiberian ruin.

Ascea

Province: Salerno · 230 m

Two villages, a hilltown at 230 meters and a Cilento marina, with Parmenides and Zeno's Eleatic school in the ruins of Greek Velia below.

Camerota

Province: Salerno · 422 m

A Cilento hill of 422 meters above the Costa degli Infreschi, with prehistoric caves documenting Neanderthal occupation along the southern Tyrrhenian.

Castellabate

Province: Salerno · 280 m

A 1123 abbot's castle on a 280-meter Cilento ridge, with a Bandiera Blu beach below and the Benvenuti al Sud film.

Centola

Province: Salerno · 336 m

A Cilento hill village at 336 meters whose seaside frazione, Palinuro, carries the helmsman of Aeneas and a Bandiera Blu coastline.

Massa Lubrense

Province: Napoli · 121 m

The Sorrentine Peninsula's largest commune by area, stretching from Sorrento across Punta Campanella to the Gulf of Salerno, Capri three miles offshore.

Piano di Sorrento

Province: Napoli · 96 m

The quieter Sorrentine plain four kilometers from Sorrento, autonomous since 1808, with prehistoric Gaudo pottery and a black-sand marina at the foot of the cliff.

Pisciotta

Province: Salerno · 171 m

A Cilento hilltop town of olive terraces above the Tyrrhenian, where fishermen still pull anchovies with the medieval menaica net.

Positano

Province: Salerno · 30 m

The vertical village of the Amalfi Coast, terraced houses climbing four hundred meters from Spiaggia Grande to the Lattari ridge under a tiled Byzantine dome.

Sorrento

Province: Napoli · 50 m

• 🍋Limone di Sorrento IGP

The Roman Surrentum on a tuff cliff above the Bay of Napoli, birthplace of Torquato Tasso, sacked by the Turks in 1558.

Vico Equense

Province: Napoli · 90 m

The northern gate of the Sorrento peninsula at 90 meters, the Roman Aequana, where Luigi Dell'Amura invented pizza al metro in 1930.

Cervia

Province: Ravenna · 2 m

The Adriatic salt town with 827 hectares of working saline, planned in 1697 around a grid of salt workers' houses.

Cesenatico

Province: Forlì-Cesena · 3 m

An Adriatic fishing port whose canal was redrawn by Leonardo da Vinci in 1502, with ten historic sailboats moored as a floating museum.

Comacchio

Province: Ferrara

A canal town on thirteen islets at the edge of the Po Delta, with brackish lagoons that hold three hundred bird species.

Ravenna

Province: Ravenna · 4 m

A 4-meter coastal capital of three successive empires, with eight UNESCO mosaic monuments from the fifth and sixth centuries.

Grado

Province: Gorizia · 2 m

An Adriatic island town inside a 90-square-kilometer lagoon, refuge of the Aquileian patriarchs after 568 and a Habsburg bathing resort thirteen centuries later.

Fondi

Province: Latina · 9 m

The plain town between the Ausoni and Aurunci mountains where the Caetani built a castle in the middle of farmland instead of on a hill.

Gaeta

Province: Latina · 2 m

The promontory port where the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies fell in February 1861 and the south of Italy stopped existing as a state.

Minturno

Province: Latina · 140 m

A coastal comune at the mouth of the Garigliano, built on the Roman colony of Minturnae, five-time Bandiera Blu through Scauri and Marina.

Sabaudia

Province: Latina · 17 m

A rationalist city built in 253 days on drained Pontine marshland, founded 15 April 1934 between Lago di Paola and the Tyrrhenian dunes.

San Felice Circeo

Province: Latina · 100 m

A medieval borgo on the flank of Monte Circeo, the 540-meter promontory Homer made the home of Circe in the Odyssey.

Sperlonga

Province: Latina · 55 m

A whitewashed cliff town on Monte San Magno halfway between Rome and Naples, built above the sea grotto where Tiberius staged the Odyssey in marble.

Terracina

Province: Latina · 24 m

The Volscian Anxur on the Via Appia, where Jupiter's temple sits 227 meters above a port Trajan cleared through stone.

Trevignano Romano

Province: Roma · 173 m

A volcanic-crater lake town on the northern shore of Bracciano, thirty-five kilometers from Rome, with a medieval rocca above the water.

Borgio Verezzi

Province: Savona · 30 m

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.

Camogli

Province: Genova · 32 m

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.

Celle Ligure

Province: Savona · 5 m

A Riviera di Ponente beach town with kilns firing since the 1600s and a Lucio Fontana ceramic on the parish church façade.

Chiavari

Province: Genova · 3 m

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.

Diano

Province: Imperia · 70 m

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.

Finale Ligure

Province: Savona · 12 m

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 · 76 m

Five hamlets between sea level and 300 meters on the Riviera di Levante, with Byzantine watchtowers built against Saracen incursions.

Laigueglia

Province: Savona · 6 m

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 · 6 m

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 · 10 m

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 · 5 m

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 · 13 m

A Doria fief on the Savona coast with a Renaissance palace, a Roman imperial mosaic, and a top-ten world marina.

Moneglia

Province: Genova · 4 m

A bay on the Riviera di Levante between Punta Moneglia and Punta Rospo, birthplace of the Genoese painter Luca Cambiaso in 1527.

Noli

Province: Savona · 4 m

The fifth Italian maritime republic from 1192 to 1797, a walled coastal town with the Romanesque basilica of San Paragorio outside its gates.

Pietra Ligure

Province: Savona · 4 m

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.

Recco

Province: Genova · 5 m

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.

Sanremo

Province: Imperia · 10 m

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 · 13 m

The Tigullio town that kept its fishing port while the world drove past on the way to Portofino two kilometers further.

Savona

Province: Savona · 4 m

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.

Sestri Levante

Province: Genova · 10 m

The Tigullio town of two bays, where Hans Christian Andersen stayed in 1833 and Guglielmo Marconi ran his shortwave radio experiments.

Varazze

Province: Savona · 10 m

A Ligurian shipbuilding town whose thirteenth-century friar compiled the saint lives that became the most copied book in Europe after the Bible.

Gardone Riviera

Province: Brescia · 71 m

A western Garda lakeshore town whose hillside holds the Vittoriale, the estate Gabriele D'Annunzio turned into a monument to himself.

Sirmione

Province: Brescia · 91 m

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.

Toscolano-Maderno

Province: Brescia · 72 m

Twin lakeside villages on the western shore of Garda, paper mill suppliers to the Republic of Venice from the 14th century onward.

Fermo

Province: Fermo · 319 m

The provincial capital on the Sabulo hill at 319 meters, with 2,200 square meters of Augustan Roman cisterns running under the centro storico.

Gabicce Mare

Province: Pesaro e Urbino · 8 m

The northernmost Marche seaside on the Adriatic, where the Riviera Romagnola meets the cliffs of the Parco del San Bartolo at the Romagna border.

Grottammare

Province: Ascoli Piceno · 4 m

A double town on the Riviera delle Palme, with a palm-lined seafront and the medieval Paese Alto where Pope Sixtus V was born.

Mondolfo

Province: Pesaro e Urbino · 144 m

A walled hill borgo at 144 meters above the Adriatic, with the frazione of Marotta and its Bandiera Blu beach below.

Numana

Province: Ancona · 56 m

A Conero coastal town at 56 meters above its port, the Picene harbour that traded with Greek ships from the sixth century BC.

Pesaro

Province: Pesaro e Urbino · 11 m

The Adriatic port at the mouth of the Foglia, founded as Roman Pisaurum in 184 BC and given to the world by Rossini in 1792.

Porto San Giorgio

Province: Fermo · 5 m

A 15,000-resident Bandiera Blu beach town on the Adriatic between Ancona and Pescara, with one of the largest tourist marinas in the central Adriatic, the medieval Rocca Tiepolo above the harbour, and a long fine-sand seafront under date palms.

Senigallia

Province: Ancona · 5 m

Thirteen kilometers of fine sand on the Adriatic that earned the Spiaggia di Velluto name, hometown of photographer Mario Giacomelli and chef Mauro Uliassi.

Sirolo

Province: Ancona · 125 m

A clifftop borgo at 125 meters on the southern flank of Monte Conero, above the Due Sorelle sea stacks of the Adriatic.

Termoli

Province: Campobasso · 15 m

Molise's only port, a walled promontory of fishermen's houses on the Adriatic with a Frederick II castle and the ferry pier for the Tremiti islands.

Cannero Riviera

Province: Verbano-Cusio-Ossola · 225 m

A Lago Maggiore commune of 900 on the western shore, fronted by three rocky islets, the Castelli di Cannero, Borromeo ruins from 1521.

Cannobio

Province: Verbano-Cusio-Ossola · 214 m

A medieval lake town at 214 meters on Maggiore's western shore, host to one of the largest Sunday markets on the lake.

Gozzano

Province: Novara · 367 m

The town at the southern tip of Lake Orta, with a ninth-century basilica for Saint Julian and a twelfth-century signaling tower above the water.

Badesi

Province: Sassari · 102 m

A Gallura commune founded by shepherding families in the 1700s, with eight kilometers of dunes between Isola Rossa and the Coghinas river.

Castelsardo

Province: Sassari · 114 m

A Doria sea fortress at 114 meters above the Gulf of Asinara, Genoese from 1100, Aragonese from 1448, Savoyard from the 1700s.

La Maddalena

Province: Sassari · 19 m

The only inhabited town of a sixty-island granite archipelago between Sardinia and Corsica, and the place Giuseppe Garibaldi chose to die.

Oristano

Province: Oristano · 5 m

The old capital of the Giudicato di Arborea, city of Eleonora and the Carta de Logu, host of Sa Sartiglia equestrian joust at Carnival.

Palau

Province: Sassari · 5 m

The Gallura port that ferries to La Maddalena, with a weather-shaped granite bear on the headland that gave the town its emblem.

Santa Teresa Gallura

Province: Sassari · 44 m

The northernmost town in Sardinia, founded in 1808 on a Turin-style grid above the Strait of Bonifacio and 11 kilometers from Corsica.

Tortolì

Province: Nuoro · 15 m

Co-capital of Ogliastra on the central-east coast, paired with the port of Arbatax and its red porphyry cliffs.

Menfi

Province: Agrigento · 119 m

Sicily's triple-signal western coast town — 11,800 residents on a low ridge above 9 km of Bandiera Blu sand at Porto Palo, with the Federico II tower, the Cantine Settesoli cooperative (Italy's largest by volume, 2,000 grower-members), and the rare Bandiera Blu + Città del Vino + Città dell'Olio combination.

Modica

Province: Ragusa · 296 m

A vertical Baroque city in the Hyblean Mountains, rebuilt from the 1693 earthquake and home to a chocolate recipe brought from Aztec Mexico.

Ragusa

Province: Ragusa · 502 m

• 🧀Ragusano DOP

Two cities in one on a Hyblean plateau at 502 meters, Ragusa Ibla and Ragusa Superiore split by a ravine after 1693, both UNESCO Baroque.

Taormina

Province: Messina · 204 m

A 204-meter terrace above the Ionian with Etna on the southern horizon, a Greek-Roman theatre carved into the rock since the third century BC.

Baselga di Pinè

Province: Trento · 964 m

The main town of the Piné plateau at 964 metres, with a Blue Flag lake, Italy's outdoor speed skating oval and a baroque Marian sanctuary.

Bondone

Province: Trento · 720 m

A two-village commune above Lake Idro at the Lombard border, with a Lodron castle on the cliff and a Bandiera Blu shoreline below.

Lavarone

Province: Trento · 1,172 m

A Cimbrian plateau at 1,172 metres above the Val d'Astico, with a karst lake, an Austro-Hungarian fort, and the woods where Freud walked.

Levico Terme

Province: Trento · 520 m

A Habsburg spa town in the Valsugana at 520 metres, with arsenic-iron thermal waters, an English park and a Blue Flag lake at the edge of the centre.

Tenno

Province: Trento · 428 m

A hillside commune at 428 metres above Lake Garda, with a medieval stone hamlet, a turquoise lake, and the northernmost olive groves in Europe.

Bibbona

Province: Livorno · 85 m

An Etruscan-origin hill village above the Costa degli Etruschi, with a Romanesque parish church and a Lorraine-built coastal fort eight kilometers down the road at Marina di Bibbona.

Camaiore

Province: Lucca · 34 m

The Versilia commune that runs from the Apuan Alps to the sea, a Roman Campus Maior on the Via Francigena with a beach at its western end.

Carrara

Province: Massa-Carrara · 80 m

The marble town at the foot of the Apuan Alps, with over 650 quarry sites in the valleys above and the stone that built the Pantheon, the Pietà and Michelangelo's David.

Castagneto Carducci

Province: Livorno · 194 m

A hilltop borgo at 194 meters above the Costa degli Etruschi, renamed for the poet Carducci in 1907 and the home of Bolgheri and Sassicaia.

Castiglione della Pescaia

Province: Grosseto · 4 m

A Maremma seaside town under an Aragonese castle, with the Vetulonia necropolis behind it, the Diaccia Botrona wetland beside it, and Italo Calvino buried on the hill.

Forte dei Marmi

Province: Lucca · 2 m

The Versilia luxury beach built around an eighteenth-century marble-loading fort, with 99 bagni concessions and a Wednesday market that draws Milan.

Grosseto

Province: Grosseto · 10 m

The Maremma capital on the Ombrone river, ringed by hexagonal Medici walls of 1564 that now serve as the city's public park.

Livorno

Province: Livorno · 3 m

Tuscany's working port and Medici-planned 'New City' — a 16th-century planned town built on reclaimed coast, with a Venice-like canal quarter, the Quattro Mori monument, and a 1.5-km seafront promenade that locals call the world's most beautiful balcony.

Orbetello

Province: Grosseto · 3 m

A town on a narrow isthmus at the center of its own lagoon, fortified by Spain in 1557 and tied to Monte Argentario by two tombolos.

Pietrasanta

Province: Lucca · 14 m

The marble-processing town under the Apuan Alps, founded in 1255 and worked since by Michelangelo, Henry Moore, Joan Miró and Fernando Botero.

Piombino

Province: Livorno · 21 m

A promontory port facing Elba across the channel, founded by refugees from Etruscan Populonia and now the Tuscan archipelago's ferry capital.

Pisa

Province: Pisa · 4 m

Maritime republic on the Arno, twelve kilometers from the Ligurian Sea, with the leaning bell tower at the center of a single UNESCO-listed walled compound.

Viareggio

Province: Lucca · 2 m

The Versilia capital, a Liberty-architecture seafront built around the 1873 Carnival and the 254-kilogram papier-mâché floats that still parade every February.

Chioggia

Province: Venezia · 2 m

Italy's second fishing port, on an island at the south end of the Venetian Lagoon, called Little Venice for the Canale Vena.

Rosolina

Province: Rovigo · 3 m

A reclaimed Po Delta commune where a nine-kilometer beach and a maritime pine forest sit between the Adige mouth and the Adriatic.