🍄Città del Tartufo

Archi

Province: Chieti · 492 m

A 492-meter rocky spur called the Terrazza sul Sangro, fief of del Balzo, Cantelmo, Colonna and Carafa, now Città del Tartufo and Città dell'Olio.

Lama dei Peligni

Province: Chieti · 669 m

A 669-meter Majella village known for chamois, the Cavallone cave, and a prehistoric burial dug from Fonterossi dated 7000 to 5000 BC.

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.

Giurdignano

Province: Lecce · 78 m

A two-thousand-resident Salento borgo at 78 meters known as the megalithic garden of Italy, with nineteen menhirs and a cluster of dolmens.

Roseto Valfortore

Province: Foggia · 658 m

A Daunian Mountain stone village at 658 meters near the Fortore springs, named for the wild roses and known for black and white truffles.

Pisticci

Province: Matera · 364 m

A hill town at 364 meters above the Ionian, rebuilt in three hundred identical white houses after the 1688 landslide killed four hundred.

Saracena

Province: Cosenza · 606 m

A 606-meter Pollino borgo named for its Saracen souk and protected by Slow Food for a passito Moscato traced to the sixteenth century.

Sessa Aurunca

Province: Caserta · 203 m

Ancient Suessa Aurunca on the south slope of an extinct volcano, with a Romanesque cathedral of Cosmatesque mosaics built in 1103.

Sant'Agata Feltria

Province: Rimini · 607 m

A 607-meter Montefeltro borgo crowned by the Rocca Fregoso on the Sasso del Lupo, host of the national white truffle fair since 1985.

Sasso Marconi

Province: Bologna · 128 m

A 128-meter pre-Apennine town renamed in 1938 for Marconi, with Villa Griffone holding his tomb and the attic where he first sent radio in 1895.

Millesimo

Province: Savona · 429 m

A fortified Del Carretto borgo at 429 meters in the upper Val Bormida, where Napoleon broke the Austro-Sardinian army in April 1796.

Acqualagna

Province: Pesaro e Urbino · 204 m

The Italian truffle capital at 204 meters in the Metauro valley, supplying two-thirds of the country's white truffle harvest from the surrounding limestone woods.

Amandola

Province: Fermo · 550 m

A Sibillini gateway at 550 meters on three hills above the Tenna valley, founded 1248 and damaged but not levelled in 2016.

Pergola

Province: Pesaro e Urbino · 265 m

A hill town at 265 meters in the upper Cesano valley, holding the only surviving group of Roman gilded bronze statues from antiquity.

Sant'Angelo in Vado

Province: Pesaro e Urbino · 359 m

A 359-meter terrace town on the upper Metauro, built over Roman Tifernum Mataurense and host of Italy's oldest white truffle fair after Alba.

Isernia

Province: Isernia · 423 m

A provincial capital on a 423-meter rock spine, with a Paleolithic site dated 700,000 years and a thirteenth-century public fountain.

Macchiagodena

Province: Isernia · 868 m

Molise's white truffle capital — a 1,648-resident hilltop borgo at 868m in the Apennine middle Molise, with the Castello dei Pignatelli on the summit, intact medieval streets, and 30+ active truffle hunters working the surrounding oak forests with the local Molise white truffle harvest October-December.

Alba

Province: Cuneo · 172 m

• 🍄Tartufo Bianco d'Alba

The Langhe capital at 172 meters on the Tanaro, world reference for white truffle and Nebbiolo, headquarters of Ferrero.

Castelbuono

Province: Palermo · 423 m

A Madonie town at 423 meters around the Ventimiglia castle, where manna is still tapped from ash trees and Fiasconaro bakes the panettone.

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.

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.

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.

Montaione

Province: Firenze · 341 m

A medieval glassmaking and truffle borgo at 341 meters above the Valdelsa, with a Franciscan replica of Jerusalem in the woods at San Vivaldo.

Montalcino

Province: Siena · 564 m

• 🍷Brunello di Montalcino DOCG

A walled hill town at 564 meters above the Val d'Orcia, the last fortress to hold out for the Sienese Republic and the birthplace of Brunello.

San Miniato

Province: Pisa · 150 m

The hilltop town between Pisa and Florence that produces a quarter of Tuscany's white truffles and once held the imperial seat of Otto I.

Volterra

Province: Pisa · 531 m

The Etruscan acropolis of Velathri at 531 meters, the alabaster town that has been carving the same stone for three thousand years.

Campello sul Clitunno

Province: Perugia · 290 m

Springs of the Clitunno and the Lombard Tempietto on the valley floor at 290 meters, the temple inscribed by UNESCO in 2011.

Cascia

Province: Perugia · 653 m

Santa Rita's town at 653 meters in the upper Valnerina, in the seismic corner of Umbria that the 2016 earthquake reopened.

Città di Castello

Province: Perugia · 288 m

The upper Tiber valley's Renaissance + 20th-c art capital — 38,000-resident walled town in the Alta Valtiberina where Raphael painted his first independent commissions, where Alberto Burri (1915-95) founded the Fondazione that now occupies the 14th-c Ex Seccatoi del Tabacco + the Palazzo Albizzini, and where the white truffle season + the Mostra del Tartufo in November are the year's headline food event.

Gubbio

Province: Perugia · 522 m

Pre-Roman Ikuvium of the Umbri at the foot of Monte Ingino, where seven bronze tablets carry the longest text of the Umbrian language.

Norcia

Province: Perugia · 604 m

• 🍖Prosciutto di Norcia IGP

Birthplace of San Benedetto at 604 meters on a Sibillini plateau, leveled by the 2016 earthquake and rebuilt stone by stone.

Pietralunga

Province: Perugia · 566 m

A pre-Apennine hill town at 566 meters on the northeast Tiber ridge, ringed by truffle woods and white-potato fields.

Scheggino

Province: Perugia · 280 m

Triangular castle village on the banks of the Nera at 280 meters, where the first commercial Italian truffle company was founded in 1928.

Spoleto

Province: Perugia · 396 m

Lombard ducal capital at 396 meters under the Rocca Albornoziana, where a 230-meter aqueduct bridge crosses to Monteluco and Menotti founded the Festival in 1958.

Vallo di Nera

Province: Perugia · 467 m

Castle village of 345 people at 467 meters in the upper Valnerina, granted by Spoleto in 1217 and barely changed since.