Borghi più belli d'Italia
Borghi più belli d'Italia in Sicily
23 towns
Sicily carries 23 of the Borghi più belli d'Italia towns we cover. They cluster in the Messina, Enna, and Palermo provinces.
The three most recognised in our catalogue are Sambuca di Sicilia, Castiglione di Sicilia, and Gangi. 20 more towns carry the mark alongside them.
Sambuca di Sicilia
Province: Agrigento · 350 m
An Arab-founded hill town in the Belice valley, named Borgo dei Borghi in 2016, still called Zabut in living memory before 1923.
Castiglione di Sicilia
Province: Catania · 621 m
A hill town on the north flank of Etna at 621 meters, base camp for the Alcantara valley and the volcano's most serious red wines.
Gangi
Province: Palermo · 1,011 m
A Madonie hill town stacked down Monte Marone at 1,011 meters, RAI's Borgo dei Borghi 2014 and the launching pad for the one-euro-house programme.
Montalbano Elicona
Province: Messina · 907 m
A Nebrodi castle town at 907 meters, Frederick III of Aragon's summer residence and gateway to the Argimusco megalithic plateau.
Palazzolo Acreide
Province: Siracusa · 670 m
The Iblei plateau's UNESCO Baroque + Greek twin — 8,000-resident hilltop town at 670m, founded over the Greek Akrai colony (664 BC), rebuilt entirely in late Baroque after the 1693 earthquake (inscribed on the Val di Noto UNESCO listing 2002), with the original Greek theatre + the unique Santoni rock carvings of Cybele just outside the modern centro.
Troina
Province: Enna · 1,121 m
At 1,121 meters on the Nebrodi ridge, the first capital and first bishopric the Normans set up in Sicily after taking it from the Arabs.
Buccheri
Province: Siracusa · 820 m
The highest village in the province of Syracuse at 820 meters on Monte Lauro, world capital of Tonda Iblea olive oil at the 2015 Sol d'Oro.
Cefalù
Province: Palermo · 16 m
A Norman cathedral at the foot of a 270-meter rock on the Tyrrhenian coast, founded by Roger II in 1131 and on the UNESCO Arab-Norman list since 2015.
Ferla
Province: Siracusa · 500 m
A baroque village at 500 meters on the Monte Lauro slopes, the western gateway to the UNESCO necropolis of Pantalica eleven kilometers downhill.
Petralia Soprana
Province: Palermo · 1,147 m
The highest village in the Madonie at 1,147 meters, RAI Borgo dei Borghi 2018 winner, sitting above 80 kilometers of salt tunnels.
Agira
Province: Enna · 650 m
On the slopes of Monte Teja at 650 meters, birthplace of the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus and burial site of 490 Canadian soldiers of the 1943 campaign.
Calascibetta
Province: Enna · 691 m
A promontory town at 691 meters facing Enna across a ravine, founded in the ninth century as a Muslim camp to besiege Byzantine Henna.
Castelmola
Province: Messina · 529 m
A rock village at 529 meters directly above Taormina, the upper acropolis of ancient Tauromenium with a Norman castle and a 1947 almond-wine bar.
Castroreale
Province: Messina · 394 m
A ridge town at 394 meters above the Milazzo plain, rebuilt by Frederick II of Aragon in 1324 as a royal demesne and second in the 2018 Borgo dei Borghi.
Erice
Province: Trapani · 751 m
An Elymian mountaintop city at 751 meters above Trapani, with a Norman castle on the site of the temple of Venus Erycina and a Cold War physics centre.
Forza d'Agrò
Province: Messina · 420 m
A ridge village of 835 people at 420 meters above the Ionian, the Norman fortress town Coppola used in 1972 to stand in for Mafia-era Corleone.
Geraci Siculo
Province: Palermo · 1,077 m
A Madonie ridge village at 1,077 meters, capital of the Ventimiglia marquisate from 1258 and the first marquisate granted in Sicily.
Novara di Sicilia
Province: Messina · 650 m
A stone village at 650 meters where the Peloritani meet the Nebrodi, with a UNESCO-listed cheese race tumbling down the main street at Carnival.
Salemi
Province: Trapani · 446 m
The Belice Valley town where Garibaldi raised the tricolor on 14 May 1860 and proclaimed Salemi the capital of Italy for a day.
San Marco d'Alunzio
Province: Messina · 540 m
A hilltop borgo at 540 meters built in pink Aluntina marble, Robert Guiscard's first Sicilian base for the eleventh-century Norman conquest.
Savoca
Province: Messina · 300 m
A hilltop borgo at 300 meters above the Ionian where Francis Ford Coppola filmed the Sicilian scenes of The Godfather in 1971.
Sperlinga
Province: Enna · 750 m
A sandstone borgo at 750 meters in the Nebrodi foothills where a Norman castle and dwellings are carved into the rock as one continuous mass.
Sutera
Province: Caltanissetta · 600 m
A medieval village clinging to the base of a 800-meter monolith in the Nisseno interior, with an Arab quarter and a sanctuary on the summit.
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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.