Borghi più belli d'Italia
Borghi più belli d'Italia in Marche
31 towns
Marche carries 31 of the Borghi più belli d'Italia towns we cover. They cluster in the Macerata, Pesaro e Urbino, and Ancona provinces.
The three most recognised in our catalogue are Cingoli, Gradara, and Montelupone. 28 more towns carry the mark alongside them.
Cingoli
Province: Macerata · 631 m
The Balcone delle Marche at 631 meters, a hilltop borgo where on clear days the view runs from the Sibillini to the Croatian coast.
Gradara
Province: Pesaro e Urbino · 142 m
The walled hill borgo at 142 meters above the Adriatic where Dante set the deaths of Paolo and Francesca, with one of Italy's best-preserved castles.
Montelupone
Province: Macerata · 272 m
A walled hill borgo at 272 meters above the lower Potenza valley, with a fourteenth-century civic loggia and a 1889 horseshoe theatre.
Ripatransone
Province: Ascoli Piceno · 494 m
The Belvedere del Piceno at 494 meters, ridgetop borgo with views to the Adriatic and the narrowest alley in Italy at 43 centimeters.
Corinaldo
Province: Ancona · 203 m
A walled hill borgo at 203 meters with 912 meters of intact medieval walls, the birthplace of Saint Maria Goretti and the Pozzo della Polenta.
Grottammare
Province: Ascoli Piceno · 4 m
A double town on the Riviera delle Palme, with a palm-lined seafront and the medieval Paese Alto where Pope Sixtus V was born.
Mondolfo
Province: Pesaro e Urbino · 144 m
A walled hill borgo at 144 meters above the Adriatic, with the frazione of Marotta and its Bandiera Blu beach below.
Montecassiano
Province: Macerata · 188 m
A walled hill borgo at 188 meters north of Macerata, holding the seven-meter terracotta altarpiece Mattia della Robbia fired in a kiln built in town.
San Ginesio
Province: Macerata · 680 m
The Balcony of the Sibillini at 680 meters, with a 1295 pilgrim hospital and the only flowery gothic collegiate church in the Marche.
Visso
Province: Macerata · 607 m
The northern Sibillini gate at 607 meters where the Nera meets the Ussita, holding one of two surviving manuscripts of Leopardi's L'Infinito.
Esanatoglia
Province: Macerata · 358 m
A medieval village of seven bell towers at 358 meters on the Marche-Umbria border, sitting at the source of the Esino river.
Fermo
Province: Fermo · 319 m
The provincial capital on the Sabulo hill at 319 meters, with 2,200 square meters of Augustan Roman cisterns running under the centro storico.
Mercatello sul Metauro
Province: Pesaro e Urbino · 429 m
A walled borgo at 429 meters in the upper Metauro, autonomous since 1235, with a pieve exempt from any bishop.
Mondavio
Province: Pesaro e Urbino · 280 m
A hill borgo at 280 meters whose Rocca Roveresca, designed by Francesco di Giorgio Martini in the 1480s, never took a cannon shot.
Monte Grimano Terme
Province: Pesaro e Urbino · 536 m
A small Montefeltro borgo at 536 meters on the Marche-Romagna border, with alkaline sulphur springs Andrea Bacci documented in his 1571 De Thermis.
Morro d'Alba
Province: Ancona · 199 m
A walled Castello di Jesi at 199 meters above the Esino valley, ringed by La Scarpa, the 300-meter covered walkway unique in Italy.
Offagna
Province: Ancona · 309 m
A hilltop borgo at 309 meters between Ancona and Osimo, dominated by a Rocca built in just two years by the Anconitans in 1454-56.
Offida
Province: Ascoli Piceno · 293 m
A hill borgo at 293 meters in the Piceno wine country, with a Romanesque-Gothic cliff church and women still working bobbin lace.
Pergola
Province: Pesaro e Urbino · 265 m
A hill town at 265 meters in the upper Cesano valley, holding the only surviving group of Roman gilded bronze statues from antiquity.
Sarnano
Province: Macerata · 539 m
A 539-meter medieval borgo of baked brick at the foot of the Sibillini, with thermal springs that ran for 84 years until the 2016 earthquake.
Treia
Province: Macerata · 342 m
A Macerata hill town at 342 meters, the Roman municipium Trea, renamed by Pope Pius VI in 1790 after centuries as Montecchio.
Vallefoglia
Province: Pesaro e Urbino · 295 m
A 2014 merger commune at 295 meters in the Foglia valley, born from Colbordolo, birthplace of Raffaello's father, and Sant'Angelo in Lizzola.
Arcevia
Province: Ancona · 535 m
A hilltop borgo at 535 meters above the Misa and Nevola valleys, defended in the Middle Ages by a ring of nine satellite castles.
Macerata Feltria
Province: Pesaro e Urbino · 321 m
Roman Pitinum + Renaissance Montefeltro — a 1,889-resident BPB borgo at 321m in the Marche side of the Montefeltro, built over the Roman municipium of Pitinum Pisaurense (1st c BC), with the Pieve di San Cassiano, a small thermal spa using sulphurous spring water, and Federico da Montefeltro fortifications.
Montecosaro
Province: Macerata · 267 m
A walled hilltop borgo at 267 meters above the Chienti valley, with a Romanesque basilica rebuilt in 1125 on the river plain below.
Montefiore dell'Aso
Province: Ascoli Piceno · 412 m
A hilltop borgo at 412 meters between the Aso and Menocchia valleys, holding six surviving panels of Carlo Crivelli's 1472 polyptych.
Monteprandone
Province: Ascoli Piceno · 266 m
A hilltop borgo at 266 meters above the lower Tronto valley, birthplace of San Giacomo della Marca and home to his fifteenth-century convent library.
Moresco
Province: Fermo · 405 m
A 516-person hill borgo at 405 meters above the Aso valley, with a 25-meter seven-sided tower unique in Europe.
Petritoli
Province: Fermo · 358 m
A hilltop borgo at 358 meters above the Aso valley, formed around the year 1000 from the merger of three castles.
Sassoferrato
Province: Ancona · 386 m
A two-level Apennine town above Roman Sentinum, where the consuls Decius Mus and Fabius Maximus defeated four allied tribes in 295 BC.
Servigliano
Province: Fermo · 215 m
An eighteenth-century ideal city at 215 meters in the Tenna valley, rebuilt by papal commission on a 137-by-144-meter quadrangle after the old hill village collapsed.
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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.