Borghi più belli d'Italia
Borghi più belli d'Italia in Liguria
28 towns
Liguria carries 28 of the Borghi più belli d'Italia towns we cover. They cluster in the Imperia, Savona, and La Spezia provinces.
The three most recognised in our catalogue are Apricale, Badalucco, and Borgio Verezzi. 25 more towns carry the mark alongside them.

Apricale
Province: Imperia · 273 m
A medieval hill village in the Nervia Valley, named for the Latin apricus, sunny, with a tenth-century castle shaped like a lizard on the rock.

Badalucco
Province: Imperia · 179 m
A medieval village wrapped in a bend of the Argentina torrent, with murals on its caruggi and a Slow Food bean on its terraces.

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.

Brugnato
Province: La Spezia · 115 m
The medieval ecclesiastical capital of the Val di Vara, seat of a diocese from 1133 to 1820, with a co-cathedral built over a Columban monastery.

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.

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.

Perinaldo
Province: Imperia · 572 m
A ridge village at 572 meters above the Val Nervia, birthplace of Giovanni Domenico Cassini and home to a working astronomical observatory in his name.

Triora
Province: Imperia · 776 m
The witches' village at 776 meters in the upper Valle Argentina, where the Inquisition put around 200 women on trial between 1587 and 1589.

Vernazza
Province: La Spezia · 3 m
The middle village of the Cinque Terre, the only one with a natural harbor, buried under four meters of mud in October 2011.

Castelvecchio di Rocca Barbena
Province: Savona · 420 m
A stone village of 130 residents at 420 meters in the Val Neva, built into the southern foot of Rocca Barbena at 1,142 meters.

Ceriana
Province: Imperia · 369 m
A medieval village at 369 meters above the Valle Armea, inland from Sanremo, built on the Roman castrum that gave it its name.

Cervo
Province: Imperia · 66 m
A hilltop village on the Riviera di Ponente built by coral fishermen, named for the Roman mansio on the Via Julia Augusta.

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.

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.

Millesimo
Province: Savona · 429 m
A fortified Del Carretto borgo at 429 meters in the upper Val Bormida, where Napoleon broke the Austro-Sardinian army in April 1796.

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.

Pieve di Teco
Province: Imperia · 240 m
A planned market town founded in 1233 in the middle Arroscia valley, with porticoed Corso Ponzoni and the second-smallest theater in Italy.

Seborga
Province: Imperia · 517 m
A hilltop village at 517 meters above Bordighera that calls itself a principality, 276 residents, its own coins and stamps since 1963.

Taggia
Province: Imperia · 40 m
The Argentina valley's medieval seat above the Riviera dei Fiori, the town that gave its name to the Taggiasca olive grown across western Liguria.

Varese Ligure
Province: La Spezia · 358 m
The Val di Vara's medieval seat at 358 meters, the first European municipality with ISO 14001 certification, anchor of Italy's largest organic district.

Ameglia
Province: La Spezia · 89 m
A hilltop borgo at 89 meters above the mouth of the Magra, the Lunigiana edge of Liguria where the river meets the Gulf of Poets.

Campo Ligure
Province: Genova · 342 m
A Spinola borgo at 342 meters in the Stura valley north of Genova, the last working centre for gold and silver filigree in Italy.

Cipressa
Province: Imperia · 232 m
A ridgeline village at 232 meters above the Riviera dei Fiori, the climb that decides Milan-San Remo and a sixteenth-century Saracen-defence tower as its summit.

Deiva Marina
Province: La Spezia · 12 m
A Riviera di Levante seaside commune between Sestri Levante and the Cinque Terre, reachable by sea only after the 1874 railway.

Zuccarello
Province: Savona · 130 m
A 280-person medieval borgo in the Neva valley above Albenga, founded by the Marquises of Clavesana in 1248, birthplace of Ilaria del Carretto.
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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.
