Borghi più belli d'Italia
Borghi più belli d'Italia in Trentino-South Tyrol
11 towns
Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol carries 11 of the Borghi più belli d'Italia towns we cover. They cluster in the Trento and Bolzano/Bozen provinces.
The three most recognised in our catalogue are Tenno, Sterzing, and Bondone. 8 more towns carry the mark alongside them.
Tenno
Province: Trento · 428 m
A hillside commune at 428 metres above Lake Garda, with a medieval stone hamlet, a turquoise lake, and the northernmost olive groves in Europe.
Sterzing
Province: Bolzano · 948 m
A bilingual mining town at 948 metres on the Brenner road, where a 46-metre tower built in 1472 still divides the old town from the new.
Bondone
Province: Trento · 720 m
A two-village commune above Lake Idro at the Lombard border, with a Lodron castle on the cliff and a Bandiera Blu shoreline below.
Glurns
Province: Bolzano · 907 m
The smallest city in South Tyrol at 937 inhabitants, ringed by intact sixteenth-century walls in the Val Venosta near the Swiss border.
Kastelruth
Province: Bolzano · 1,060 m
South Tyrolean gateway to the Alpe di Siusi at 1,060 metres, eighty-two-metre bell tower over the square, home of the Kastelruther Spatzen.
Luserna
Province: Trento · 1,333 m
A Cimbrian island at 1,333 metres on the Alpe Cimbra plateau, the last village in Italy where the medieval Bavarian dialect is still spoken at home.
Bleggio Superiore
Province: Trento · 628 m
A scattered Giudicarie commune whose hilltop hamlet of Rango holds the Christmas markets, with a Slow Food walnut grown on the terraces below.
Borgo Valsugana
Province: Trento · 380 m
The valley town built on both banks of the Brenta in lower Valsugana, with Castel Telvana above and Arte Sella in the side valley.
Caldes
Province: Trento · 698 m
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.
Ossana
Province: Trento · 1,003 m
A small Val di Sole borgo at the foot of a 25-metre stone keep, with Christmas nativity scenes filling its streets every December.
Pieve Tesino
Province: Trento · 843 m
The birthplace of Alcide De Gasperi, founding father of the European Union, on a Trentino plateau of itinerant print-sellers and arboretum gardens.
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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.