Borghi più belli d'Italia
Borghi più belli d'Italia in Sardinia
8 towns
Sardinia carries 8 of the Borghi più belli d'Italia towns we cover. They cluster in the Sassari, Nuoro, and Sud Sardegna provinces.
The three most recognised in our catalogue are La Maddalena, Atzara, and Bosa. 5 more towns carry the mark alongside them.
La Maddalena
Province: Sassari · 19 m
The only inhabited town of a sixty-island granite archipelago between Sardinia and Corsica, and the place Giuseppe Garibaldi chose to die.
Atzara
Province: Nuoro · 553 m
A Mandrolisai wine village on the western Gennargentu, painted in the early twentieth century by Spanish costumbristas and the Sardinian Scuola di Atzara.
Bosa
Province: Oristano · 10 m
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.
Tempio Pausania
Province: Sassari · 566 m
The granite capital of Gallura at the foot of Monte Limbara, known for cork, Vermentino DOCG and the largest Carnival in northern Sardinia.
Castelsardo
Province: Sassari · 114 m
A Doria sea fortress at 114 meters above the Gulf of Asinara, Genoese from 1100, Aragonese from 1448, Savoyard from the 1700s.
Sadali
Province: Sud Sardegna · 750 m
A Barbagia di Seulo borgo at 750 meters with the only waterfall in Sardegna that drops through the inhabited centre.
Carloforte
Province: Sud Sardegna · 10 m
A Ligurian-speaking fishing town on the Isola di San Pietro, founded in 1738 by coral fishers returning from Tunisian Tabarka.
Posada
Province: Nuoro · 37 m
The capital of the Baronia, a 3,000-person village on a 71-meter rock above the Rio Posada, with a 13th-century tower over the valley.
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From elsewhere in Italy
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.