Borghi più belli d'Italia
Borghi più belli d'Italia in Veneto
11 towns
Veneto carries 11 of the Borghi più belli d'Italia towns we cover. They cluster in the Treviso, Verona, and Belluno provinces.
The three most recognised in our catalogue are Arquà Petrarca, Asolo, and Malcesine. 8 more towns carry the mark alongside them.
Arquà Petrarca
Province: Padova · 56 m
The Euganean Hills village where Francesco Petrarca spent his last four years and died in 1374, renamed in his honor in 1868.
Asolo
Province: Treviso · 205 m
A walled hill town at 205 meters that Caterina Cornaro ran as her court after trading Cyprus to Venice in 1489.
Malcesine
Province: Verona · 89 m
The northernmost Veneto town on Lake Garda, where Goethe was nearly arrested for sketching the Castello Scaligero in September 1786.
Follina
Province: Treviso · 191 m
A Prosecco-hills borgo at 191 meters around the Cistercian Abbey of Santa Maria, with a cloister finished in 1268.
Cison di Valmarino
Province: Treviso · 261 m
A Prosecco hills borgo at 261 meters under the dolomite rock of CastelBrando, the largest inhabited castle complex in Europe.
Montagnana
Province: Padova · 16 m
A walled town on the lower Padova plain with two kilometers of medieval ramparts and 24 hexagonal towers, headquarters of Prosciutto Veneto DOP.
Rocca Pietore
Province: Belluno · 1,143 m
An Agordino borgo at 1,143 meters under the Marmolada, where the Pettorina cuts a two-kilometer gorge through 100-meter rock walls.
Valeggio sul Mincio
Province: Verona · 88 m
A moraine-hills town at 88 meters between Garda and Mantua, with a 1393 Visconti bridge-dam over the Mincio and a tortellino called the love knot.
Borgo Valbelluna
Province: Belluno · 367 m
Veneto's youngest comune anchored by an old Borgo — a 13,410-resident comune formed in 2019 by the fusion of Mel + Trichiana + Lentiai in the Belluno-province pre-Dolomite Piave valley, with the BPB-inscribed Mel centro storico (a perfectly preserved 16th-c Venetian terraferma piazza) and the 11th-c Castello di Zumelle on a forested ridge above.
Portobuffolè
Province: Treviso · 10 m
The smallest commune in the Treviso province, a Livenza river port centered on the fourteenth-century home of the poet Gaia da Camino.
Sant'Ambrogio di Valpolicella
Province: Verona · 174 m
The Valpolicella DOC gateway northwest of Verona, where the Gargagnago frazione anchors Amarone production and the San Giorgio frazione holds a Lombard-era pieve.
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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.