Borghi più belli d'Italia
Borghi più belli d'Italia in Emilia-Romagna
18 towns
Emilia-Romagna carries 18 of the Borghi più belli d'Italia towns we cover. They cluster in the Rimini, Piacenza, and Forlì-Cesena provinces.
The three most recognised in our catalogue are Bobbio, Brisighella, and Castell'Arquato. 15 more towns carry the mark alongside them.
Bobbio
Province: Piacenza · 272 m
A 272-meter Trebbia-valley town built around the abbey Saint Columbanus founded in 614, named Borgo dei Borghi by RAI in 2019.
Brisighella
Province: Ravenna · 115 m
A Lamone-valley borgo at 115 meters under three selenite hills crowned by a fortress, a clock tower, and a sanctuary.
Castell'Arquato
Province: Piacenza · 224 m
A 224-meter hilltop borgo in the Val d'Arda, kept intact since the tenth century and crowned by Luchino Visconti's 1342 fortress.
Bagno di Romagna
Province: Forlì-Cesena · 491 m
A 491-meter thermal town at the head of the Savio valley, drawing on springs that have run at 47 degrees since Roman times.
Castelvetro di Modena
Province: Modena · 152 m
A 152-meter hill borgo south of Modena whose checkerboard piazza sits above the slopes that grow Lambrusco Grasparossa.
Fiumalbo
Province: Modena · 935 m
A 935-meter stone village in the Modenese Apennines on the Tuscan border, at the confluence of two rivers under Monte Cimone.
Vernasca
Province: Piacenza · 457 m
A Val d'Arda commune in the Piacenza Apennines, holding the walled village of Vigoleno and one of the most compact castled borghi in Emilia.
Montechiarugolo
Province: Parma · 130 m
A Parmigiano-country borgo on the Enza river, built around a fourteenth-century castle that has stayed in the Marchi family since 1864.
Bertinoro
Province: Forlì-Cesena · 254 m
A 254-meter Romagna-hill borgo above the Via Emilia, with a twelve-ring hospitality column from 1300 and the slopes that grow Albana DOCG.
Dozza
Province: Bologna · 190 m
A 190-meter painted borgo above the Sellustra valley, where contemporary artists have repainted the house walls every two years since 1960.
Montefiore Conca
Province: Rimini · 385 m
A 385-meter Malatesta hilltop above the Conca valley, dominated by a fourteenth-century fortress that was once a summer residence of the lords of Rimini.
Montegridolfo
Province: Rimini · 290 m
A walled borgo of fewer than a thousand residents on the Romagna-Marche border, held alternately by the Malatesta and the Montefeltro through the fifteenth century.
San Leo
Province: Rimini · 583 m
Italy's most dramatic hilltop fortress town — a 2,820-resident borgo on a vertical 583m limestone outcrop in the Montefeltro, 35 km from Rimini, with the Renaissance Forte di San Leo (where Cagliostro was imprisoned and died in 1795), the 9th-c Pieve, the 12th-c Duomo, and the Romagna/Marche frontier panorama from every wall.
Verucchio
Province: Rimini · 330 m
A spur over the lower Marecchia valley, cradle of the Villanovan civilization and birthplace of the Malatesta lordship of Romagna.
Bagnara di Romagna
Province: Ravenna · 22 m
A 22-meter plain commune in the Bassa Romagna, the only fully preserved medieval castrum surviving in the Romagna lowlands.
Compiano
Province: Parma · 519 m
A 519-meter walled borgo over the Taro, ruled by the Landi for 425 years and used by Maria Luigia as a state prison.
Gualtieri
Province: Reggio nell'Emilia · 22 m
A right-bank Po commune in the Reggiana lowlands, built around a hundred-meter-square arcaded piazza and the Bentivoglio palace that holds the Ligabue collection.
San Giovanni in Marignano
Province: Rimini · 29 m
A walled Conca-valley borgo, granary of the Malatesta state, where the Notte delle Streghe has marked the summer solstice since 1988.
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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.