Borghi Autentici

Borghi Autentici in Abruzzo

28 towns

Abruzzo holds 28 Borghi Autentici sites inside our catalogue. They cluster in the L'Aquila, Chieti, and Teramo provinces.

The three most recognised in our catalogue are Fara San Martino, Pineto, and Sante Marie. 25 more towns carry the mark alongside them.

Fara San Martino
Province: Chieti · 440 m
The pasta capital of Italy at 440 meters, where De Cecco was founded in 1886 and the Verde river runs out of a two-meter slot in the Majella wall.
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.
Sante Marie
Province: L'Aquila · 950 m
A 950-meter Marsica village and the trailhead of the Cammino dei Briganti, the seven-day brigand trail through the Cartore band's territory.
Archi
Province: Chieti · 492 m
A 492-meter rocky spur called the Terrazza sul Sangro, fief of del Balzo, Cantelmo, Colonna and Carafa, now Città del Tartufo and Città dell'Olio.
Barrea
Province: L'Aquila · 1,066 m
A 1,066-meter spur above an artificial lake at the heart of the Abruzzo National Park, with a Samnite necropolis and an 11th-century di Sangro castle.
Calascio
Province: L'Aquila · 1,200 m
At 1,200 meters under the highest castle in the Apennines, a village of 125 people that played the monk's refuge in Ladyhawke.
Campo di Giove
Province: L'Aquila · 1,064 m
At 1,064 meters under the southwestern Maiella, the highest village in the park, named for a Roman temple to Jupiter.
Cappadocia
Province: L'Aquila · 1,102 m
Italy's Cappadocia — a 575-resident Marsican borgo at 1,102m in Abruzzo's western mountains, with the spectacular Grotte di Pietrasecca karst cave system (the longest in the central Apennines), Borgo Autentico + Città delle Grotte signals, and a name that does cause genuine reservations for travellers expecting Turkey's hot-air balloon landscape.
Carsoli
Province: L'Aquila · 616 m
A 616-meter mountain town in the Marsica, built next to the ruins of Roman Carsioli, the 4th-century BC fortress on the road to Alba Fucens.
Castelvecchio Calvisio
Province: L'Aquila · 1,067 m
118 people at 1,067 meters on a ridge above the Tirino, inside a fortified ellipse of stone walls with alleys orthogonal to its perimeter.
Corfinio
Province: L'Aquila · 346 m
A village of under a thousand on the Peligna valley floor at 346 meters, sitting on the Italic League's would-be capital Italia.
Morino
Province: L'Aquila · 440 m
A village at 440 meters in the Val Roveto on the Lazio border, beneath the central Apennines' second-highest waterfall at over 80 meters.
Pescina
Province: L'Aquila · 735 m
A Marsica town at 735 meters that lost five thousand of six thousand people in the 1915 earthquake, birthplace of Cardinal Mazarin and Ignazio Silone.
Roccacasale
Province: L'Aquila · 450 m
A village of 597 on the slopes of Monte Morrone, under the ruins of a Cantelmo-De Sanctis castle blown up by Napoleon's army in 1803.
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.
Scontrone
Province: L'Aquila · 1,038 m
A 1,038-meter borgo above the Sangro gorge in the Alto Sangro, with two dozen emigration-themed murals and a paleontological site of European importance.
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.
Villetta Barrea
Province: L'Aquila · 975 m
At 975 meters on the shore of Lake Barrea, a village inside the Abruzzo National Park where red deer walk the streets alongside residents.
Balsorano
Province: L'Aquila · 359 m
At 359 meters in the Valle Roveto, a Piccolomini castle that became the backdrop for half of 1970s Italian horror cinema.
Capistrello
Province: L'Aquila · 734 m
At 734 meters where the upper Liri valley meets the Marsica, the village where Emperor Claudius's 52 AD tunnel emptied a lake into a river.
Castelvecchio Subequo
Province: L'Aquila · 409 m
At 409 meters under Monte Sirente, the Roman Superaequum and Franciscan station where the saint himself built a convent between 1221 and 1261.
Civita d'Antino
Province: L'Aquila · 904 m
At 904 meters above the Roveto valley, the ancient Marsi town that became a Danish painters' colony from 1883 until the 1915 earthquake.
Goriano Sicoli
Province: L'Aquila · 720 m
At 720 meters in the Subequana valley, the medieval village M.C. Escher drew in 1929 and a May ritual the folklorists trace to Demeter.
Monteferrante
Province: Chieti · 800 m
At 800 meters on a terrace above the Sangro valley, a 12th-century Caracciolo feud of 106 people facing Lake Bomba and the Maiella.
Montelapiano
Province: Chieti · 740 m
At 740 meters on a limestone marl ridge, the smallest non-Alpine comune in Italy with 67 residents and a view straight onto Lake Bomba.
Ovindoli
Province: L'Aquila · 1,375 m
At 1,375 meters on the Altopiano delle Rocche, the closest serious ski station to Rome, working since 1959 on the slopes of Monte Magnola.
Rocca di Botte
Province: L'Aquila · 750 m
At 750 meters on the Carseolani slopes between Abruzzo and Lazio, the birthplace of an eleventh-century hermit and a fief of the Colonna.
Scurcola Marsicana
Province: L'Aquila · 700 m
At 700 meters below Monte San Nicola on the Piani Palentini, the field where Charles of Anjou broke the Hohenstaufen in 1268.

← All Borghi Autentici in Italy ← All towns in Abruzzo

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.

By subscribing you agree to Substack’s Terms of Use, our Privacy Policy and our Information collection notice.

Substack sends a confirmation link to your inbox. The signup finishes when it’s clicked.

From elsewhere in Italy

Five more towns to discover