Bandiera Lilla
Bandiera Lilla in Sicily
4 towns
Sicily holds 4 Bandiera Lilla sites inside our catalogue. They cluster in the Messina, Palermo, and Ragusa provinces.
The three most recognised in our catalogue are Modica, Geraci Siculo, and San Vito Lo Capo. 1 more town carries the mark alongside them.

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.

Geraci Siculo
Province: Palermo · 1,077 m
A Madonie ridge village at 1,077 meters, capital of the Ventimiglia marquisate from 1258 and the first marquisate granted in Sicily.

San Vito Lo Capo
Province: Trapani · 5 m
A three-kilometer white-sand beach under Monte Monaco at Sicily's northwest tip, the town that turned cous cous into a September festival.

Savoca
Province: Messina · 300 m
A hilltop borgo at 300 meters above the Ionian where Francis Ford Coppola filmed the Sicilian scenes of The Godfather in 1971.
Subscribe — free
Get the best guides on hidden Italian towns.
One letter on Sundays. The week’s town, with the photo, the food, the festa. Free, by Peter & Sophia from Pietrasanta.
Substack sends a confirmation link to your inbox. The signup finishes when it’s clicked.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover

Putignano
Province: Bari
Europe's longest-running carnival — Putignano Carnevale has run continuously since 1394, with 631 years of cartapesta papier-mâché floats, a 26,000-resident Murgia town on the Bari–Lecce plateau, and the Grotta del Trullo karst cave inside the centro.

Pistoia
Province: Pistoia
Italy's nursery capital and the medieval Tuscan rival that gave its name to the pistol — a quietly extraordinary centro storico of zebra-striped Romanesque churches, Andrea della Robbia's polychrome frieze on the Ospedale del Ceppo, and Italy's Capital of Culture 2017, all 30 minutes from Florence by train.

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.

Caldes
Province: Trento
A scattered Val di Sole commune on the Noce, six hamlets gathered around a thirteenth-century tower-house castle that once belonged to the Thun family.

Cantiano
Province: Pesaro e Urbino
A border borgo at 374 meters under Monte Catria on the old Via Flaminia, known for the Good Friday Turba and the sour-cherry visciola harvest.
