Designation
Città del Castagno
12 towns across 9 regions
Abruzzo2
Morino
Province: L'Aquila · 440 m
A village at 440 meters in the Val Roveto on the Lazio border, beneath the central Apennines' second-highest waterfall at over 80 meters.
Sante Marie
Province: L'Aquila · 950 m
A 950-meter Marsica village and the trailhead of the Cammino dei Briganti, the seven-day brigand trail through the Cartore band's territory.
Piedmont2
Chiusa di Pesio
Province: Cuneo · 575 m
The valley mouth town at 575 meters where the Pesio leaves the Ligurian Alps, founded around a Carthusian monastery donated in 1173.
Ormea
Province: Cuneo · 736 m
A heart-shaped Ligurian-Alps borgo at 736 meters in the upper Tanaro valley, the southernmost town in Piemonte before the Imperia ridge.
Sicily2
Mezzojuso
Province: Palermo · 534 m
An Arbëreshë village on the slope of Rocca Busambra, two mother churches (one Latin, one Byzantine), and an Arabic name meaning the houses of Joseph.
Sant'Alfio
Province: Catania · 537 m
An Etna village at 537 meters where the world's largest and oldest chestnut tree has been measured at over 57 meters in girth.
Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol1
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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.