Borghi Autentici
Borghi Autentici in Calabria
11 towns
Calabria holds 11 Borghi Autentici sites inside our catalogue. They cluster in the Cosenza, Catanzaro, and Crotone provinces.
The three most recognised in our catalogue are Roseto Capo Spulico, Saracena, and Montegiordano. 8 more towns carry the mark alongside them.
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.
Saracena
Province: Cosenza · 606 m
A 606-meter Pollino borgo named for its Saracen souk and protected by Slow Food for a passito Moscato traced to the sixteenth century.
Montegiordano
Province: Cosenza · 619 m
A 619-meter Alto Jonio hill town with a Pignone del Carretto hunting castle and more than two hundred murals across its centro storico.
Alessandria del Carretto
Province: Cosenza · 1,043 m
The highest village in the Pollino at 1,043 meters, the only Italian commune carrying its founder's full name, with a fir-tree ritual every 3 May.
Laino Borgo
Province: Cosenza · 582 m
Southern Italy's only Sacro Monte, sixteen pilgrimage chapels begun in 1557, on the Lao river canyon that made it Calabria's rafting capital.
Albidona
Province: Cosenza · 810 m
A hill village at 810 meters between the Pollino and the Ionian, identified by ancient writers as Leutarnia, the city founded by Calchas after Troy.
Cicala
Province: Catanzaro · 829 m
A village of 887 people at 829 meters on the western foothills of the Sila Piccola, founded in 1616 by farmers asking the Count Cigala for land.
Cirò
Province: Crotone · 351 m
A hill village at 351 meters above the Ionian, the historic heart of Cirò DOC, Calabria's first denominazione and a candidate for the region's first DOCG.
Gizzeria
Province: Catanzaro · 600 m
An Arbëreshë hill village at 600 meters above the Gulf of Sant'Eufemia, with kitesurf beaches and brackish lagoons on the Tyrrhenian below.
Mendicino
Province: Cosenza · 475 m
A silk-mill village at the foot of Monte Cocuzzo, ten kilometers from Cosenza, where water still drives the old spinning wheels.
Serrastretta
Province: Catanzaro · 840 m
The chair town of the Reventino massif, founded in 1383 in a narrow gorge between two mountain ranges, still weaving straw seats by hand.
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From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover
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.