🍷Città del Vino

Città Sant'Angelo

Province: Pescara · 320 m

A hilltop borgo at 320 meters between the Vestina hills and the Adriatic, named for the Archangel and known since 1352 as a Collegiata seat.

Controguerra

Province: Teramo · 267 m

A 267-meter Val Vibrata wine village, seat of the Controguerra DOC since 1996, and a founding Cittaslow of the Teramo hills.

Crecchio

Province: Chieti · 209 m

A 209-meter hill town between the Adriatic and the Maiella, capital of Italy for one night in 1943 when the king slept in its castle.

Loreto Aprutino

Province: Pescara · 290 m

A hilltop town at 290 meters in the Aprutino olive country, with a fourteenth-century Judgment fresco and a Castelli majolica collection.

Miglianico

Province: Chieti · 125 m

A wine hill town at 125 meters between Pescara and the Adriatic, with the sanctuary of San Pantaleone above an unbroken horizon of vineyards.

Ofena

Province: L'Aquila · 531 m

A 531-meter Vestian basin called the Forno d'Abruzzo, sealed by the Gran Sasso wall, where Montepulciano ripens on what may be the oldest of its slopes.

Rocca San Giovanni

Province: Chieti · 155 m

A walled hill town at 155 meters on the Costa dei Trabocchi, founded around 1060 by an abbot guarding the Abbey of San Giovanni in Venere.

Tocco da Casauria

Province: Pescara · 356 m

A 356-meter hill town between the Pescara river and the Maiella, built around a Carolingian abbey and an herb liqueur called Centerba.

Aymavilles

Province: Aosta Valley · 646 m

Gateway to the Gran Paradiso at 646 metres, with a four-towered Challant castle and a 3 BC Roman aqueduct above the Grand'Eyvia.

Donnas

Province: Aosta Valley · 322 m

The first DOC of Valle d'Aosta, a Nebbiolo-on-terraces wine town at 322 metres where the Roman Via delle Gallie was carved into living rock.

Galatina

Province: Lecce · 78 m

The Salento town at 78 meters where the cult of San Paolo bred tarantism and gave the pizzica its origin myth.

Manduria

Province: Taranto · 79 m

The Messapian capital thirty-five kilometers east of Taranto, ringed by three concentric stone walls and the home of Primitivo.

Maruggio

Province: Taranto · 35 m

Salento's Knights of Malta borgo — a fortified Borgo più Bello on a low Ionian hill with 11 km of Bandiera Blu coast at Campomarino, Negroamaro and Primitivo vines pressing into the centro, and a unique commanderie history that made it the Order's southern Italian headquarters for 600 years.

San Severo

Province: Foggia · 86 m

The Daunia wine capital on the Tavoliere, home to Puglia's first DOC of 1968 and a Carnevale of fanoia explosions known across the south.

Acerenza

Province: Potenza · 833 m

A walled ridge town at 833 meters in the north Lucanian hills, archbishopric since 1068 under a Romanesque cathedral begun in 1080.

Melfi

Province: Potenza · 530 m

At 530 meters on the slopes of Monte Vulture, first Norman capital of the south and the seat of Frederick II's 1231 Constitutions of Melfi.

Venosa

Province: Potenza · 415 m

Founded as Roman Venusia in 291 BC, birthplace of Horace, with an unfinished abbey built from amphitheater stones and a 1470 Aragonese castle.

Montegiordano

Province: Cosenza · 619 m

A 619-meter Alto Jonio hill town with a Pignone del Carretto hunting castle and more than two hundred murals across its centro storico.

Mormanno

Province: Cosenza · 840 m

A Pollino mountain borgo at 840 meters between the Costa and Vernita ridges, known for lentils, white poverelli beans and the bocconotto pastry.

Roseto Capo Spulico

Province: Cosenza · 217 m

A Frederician castle on a rock above the Ionian, a former Sybaris satellite city founded in the seventh century BC, Templar legend included.

San Giovanni in Fiore

Province: Cosenza · 1,049 m

The capital of the Sila Grande at 1,049 meters, grown from the abbey Gioacchino da Fiore founded in 1188, Italy's most populated commune above a thousand.

Santa Severina

Province: Crotone · 326 m

A tufa-rock stone ship at 326 meters between the Sila and the Ionian, holding the only Byzantine baptistery still standing in Calabria.

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.

Alife

Province: Caserta · 110 m

A Roman walled town at the foot of the Matese, founded as a 326 BC oppidum, with Italy's fourth-largest amphitheatre still half-buried.

Benevento

Province: Benevento · 130 m

Sannio capital at the Calore-Sabato confluence, with a 114 AD Trajan arch and a Lombard rotunda on the UNESCO list.

Caiazzo

Province: Caserta · 200 m

A Cittaslow hill above the Volturno, turned by Franco Pepe's pizza into a destination for 800 covers a day in eighteenth-century rooms.

Centola

Province: Salerno · 336 m

A Cilento hill village at 336 meters whose seaside frazione, Palinuro, carries the helmsman of Aeneas and a Bandiera Blu coastline.

Cerreto Sannita

Province: Benevento · 290 m

A Sannio ceramics town at 290 meters, rebuilt from scratch by royal engineer Giovanni Battista Manni after the 1688 earthquake leveled the old hill.

Furore

Province: Salerno · 300 m

The Amalfi Coast village with no piazza and no center, scattered on rock walls 300 meters above the only fjord in southern Italy.

Lapio

Province: Avellino · 590 m

The heart of Fiano di Avellino DOCG country — a 1,428-resident Irpinia borgo at 590m in the hills east of Avellino, with the medieval Castello Filangieri anchoring an intact centro and a rare four-signal combination (Città del Vino + Olio + Miele + Nocciola) recognising the whole local agricultural ecosystem.

Maiori

Province: Salerno · 5 m

The Amalfi Coast town with the longest beach and a grid street plan, rebuilt after the 1954 flood took the medieval lanes.

Montesarchio

Province: Benevento · 300 m

Ancient Caudium at 300 meters in the Valle Caudina, the Roman defeat at the Forche Caudine still attached to the name two thousand years later.

Pozzuoli

Province: Napoli · 28 m

A Roman port on the Campi Flegrei caldera, the Greek Dicearchia and Roman Puteoli, where the Macellum columns first proved bradyseism.

Ravello

Province: Salerno · 365 m

A ridge town 365 meters above the sea, where Wagner found Klingsor's garden in 1880 and the Ravello Festival has played his music since 1953.

Sant'Agata de' Goti

Province: Benevento · 156 m

A medieval town built on a tuff cliff between two gorges, the houses standing flush with the edge over the Isclero river below.

Taurasi

Province: Avellino · 400 m

An Irpinia wine village at 400 meters above the Calore valley, the namesake of Taurasi DOCG, the southern Aglianico called Barolo of the South.

Tramonti

Province: Salerno · 321 m

The inland side of the Amalfi Coast, thirteen hamlets on the Lattari slopes producing the Costa d'Amalfi Tramonti DOC and an exported pizza dough.

Tufo

Province: Avellino · 250 m

A 250-meter Irpinia hill town that gives its name to Greco di Tufo DOCG, the white wine grown on sulfur-rich limestone slopes around it.

Bertinoro

Province: Forlì-Cesena · 254 m

A 254-meter Romagna-hill borgo above the Via Emilia, with a twelve-ring hospitality column from 1300 and the slopes that grow Albana DOCG.

Castell'Arquato

Province: Piacenza · 224 m

A 224-meter hilltop borgo in the Val d'Arda, kept intact since the tenth century and crowned by Luchino Visconti's 1342 fortress.

Castelvetro di Modena

Province: Modena · 152 m

A 152-meter hill borgo south of Modena whose checkerboard piazza sits above the slopes that grow Lambrusco Grasparossa.

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.

Aquileia

Province: Udine · 5 m

A village of 3,128 on a Roman capital of 100,000, where the largest paleochristian mosaic floor in the West runs under a Romanesque basilica.

Cervignano del Friuli

Province: Udine · 5 m

The capital of Bassa Friulana on the Ausa river, an inland river port for Aquileia in 181 BC and a railway junction since 1860.

Cividale del Friuli

Province: Udine · 138 m

The Lombard capital on the Natisone, founded as Forum Iulii by Julius Caesar, where an eighth-century chapel still holds six stucco saints.

Cormons

Province: Gorizia · 51 m

The capital of the Collio wine zone at the foot of the Friulian-Slovenian hills, with a statue of Emperor Maximilian I on its main square.

Gorizia

Province: Gorizia · 84 m

Border city below the Julian Alps, divided from Nova Gorica by a 1947 wall and rejoined as European Capital of Culture 2025.

Gradisca d'Isonzo

Province: Gorizia · 32 m

A 1479 Venetian bastion on the right bank of the Isonzo, with seven towers, twenty-meter walls, and a Habsburg court inside.

Muggia

Province: Trieste · 13 m

The only town on the Istrian peninsula still inside Italy, a small Venetian port on the Gulf of Trieste five kilometers from the Slovenian border.

San Dorligo della Valle-Dolina

Province: Trieste · 84 m

A Slovene-speaking Karst commune ten kilometers from Trieste, with its own valley, its own wine, and a canyon Roman aqueducts once crossed.

San Vito al Tagliamento

Province: Pordenone · 30 m

A medieval Tagliamento-plain town inside three rings of moats and three towers, where the Renaissance painter Pomponio Amalteo worked from 1536 until 1588.

Sesto al Reghena

Province: Pordenone · 13 m

A 730s Benedictine abbey on the Reghena, ravaged by Magyars in 899, refortified in the tenth century, and still the town hall today.

Anagni

Province: Frosinone · 424 m

The hill town in Ciociaria where Sciarra Colonna struck Pope Boniface VIII in September 1303, ending the medieval claim to papal supremacy.

Ariccia

Province: Roma · 412 m

The Castelli Romani town where you go for porchetta — a Bernini-designed Baroque ensemble (palazzo + Santa Maria dell'Assunzione + Piazza di Corte) on a volcanic crater rim 25 km south of Rome, with the most concentrated cluster of fraschette porchetta restaurants in Italy and Lago di Albano below.

Atina

Province: Frosinone · 500 m

A polygonal-walled town in the Val di Comino at the foot of the Mainarde, and the DOC that makes Cabernet in central Italy.

Nemi

Province: Roma · 521 m

The smallest comune in the Castelli Romani, perched at 521 meters above a volcanic crater lake the Romans called the mirror of Diana.

Sabaudia

Province: Latina · 17 m

A rationalist city built in 253 days on drained Pontine marshland, founded 15 April 1934 between Lago di Paola and the Tyrrhenian dunes.

Velletri

Province: Roma · 332 m

The Castelli Romani town where Augustus grew up, now the largest wine commune in the Alban Hills.

Sestri Levante

Province: Genova · 10 m

The Tigullio town of two bays, where Hans Christian Andersen stayed in 1833 and Guglielmo Marconi ran his shortwave radio experiments.

Lonato del Garda

Province: Brescia · 188 m

A hilltop commune on the southwestern Garda morainic ridge, with a Visconti Rocca and the 52,000-volume Casa del Podestà library.

Monzambano

Province: Mantova · 88 m

A Mincio commune at 88 meters in the moraine hills west of Mantova, whose frazione Castellaro Lagusello sits on a heart-shaped lake inside fortified walls.

Sirmione

Province: Brescia · 91 m

A 4-kilometer peninsula reaching into the southern Garda, with the Scaliger fortified port and the Roman villa called the Grotte di Catullo at its tip.

Sondrio

Province: Sondrio · 307 m

The capital of Valtellina at 307 meters, where Castel Masegra watches over terraced vineyards that produce Sassella and Grumello Nebbiolo.

Tirano

Province: Sondrio · 441 m

A Valtellina town at 441 meters where the Bernina railway from St Moritz reaches Italy, beneath terraced Nebbiolo vineyards.

Volta Mantovana

Province: Mantova · 91 m

A morainic hill town between Mantua and Lake Garda where Ludovico Gonzaga built a country palace inside the old medieval castle.

Matelica

Province: Macerata · 354 m

A Verdicchio town at 354 meters in the upper Esino valley, with a Roman marble globe in its archaeological museum.

Morro d'Alba

Province: Ancona · 199 m

A walled Castello di Jesi at 199 meters above the Esino valley, ringed by La Scarpa, the 300-meter covered walkway unique in Italy.

Morrovalle

Province: Macerata · 247 m

A hilltop borgo at 247 meters above the Chienti valley, holding a 1560 Eucharistic Miracle from the burning of its Franciscan convent.

Offida

Province: Ascoli Piceno · 293 m

A hill borgo at 293 meters in the Piceno wine country, with a Romanesque-Gothic cliff church and women still working bobbin lace.

Ripatransone

Province: Ascoli Piceno · 494 m

The Belvedere del Piceno at 494 meters, ridgetop borgo with views to the Adriatic and the narrowest alley in Italy at 43 centimeters.

Staffolo

Province: Ancona · 442 m

The Verdicchio balcony at 442 meters above three valleys, with a near-circular medieval wall ring and a wine museum carved into the ramparts.

Montenero di Bisaccia

Province: Campobasso · 273 m

A tufa hill town at 273 meters above the northernmost stretch of Molise coast, home base of former magistrate Antonio Di Pietro and his vineyards.

Ripalimosani

Province: Campobasso · 640 m

A sandstone-ridge village at 640 meters above the Biferno valley, the historic land of the funai rope makers and a Tintilia wine commune.

Acqui Terme

Province: Alessandria · 156 m

A Roman spa town at 156 meters on the Bormida, where a sulphurous spring still surfaces at 74.5 degrees under an 1870 pavilion.

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.

Barolo

Province: Cuneo · 301 m

• 🍷Barolo DOCG

A Langhe borgo at 301 meters whose Castello Falletti gave its name to the wine the Marchesi turned dry in the 1830s with Cavour's help.

Canelli

Province: Asti · 157 m

The Asti Spumante town at 157 meters in the Belbo valley, where 20 kilometers of underground tuff cellars hold millions of bottles at constant temperature.

Casale Monferrato

Province: Alessandria · 116 m

The historic capital of the Marchesato del Monferrato at 116 meters on the Po, where the Paleologi castle and the Baroque synagogue still stand.

Castagnole delle Lanze

Province: Asti · 298 m

An Asti hill town at 298 meters between Langhe and Monferrato, with two Baroque churches and a nineteenth-century astronomical tower.

Cocconato

Province: Asti · 491 m

A Monferrato ridge town at 491 meters with a microclimate mild enough to grow palms and olives this far north.

Dogliani

Province: Cuneo · 295 m

A two-tier Langhe town at 295 meters, the Borgo by the Rea stream and the Castello on the hill, capital of Dolcetto di Dogliani DOCG.

Gattinara

Province: Vercelli · 265 m

The Alto Piemonte Nebbiolo town on volcanic soil between the Sesia and Monte Rosa, DOCG since 1990, with a tenth-century watchtower above the vines.

Gavi

Province: Alessandria · 233 m

The Cortese di Gavi town below a Genoese star fortress, where Piemonte white wine was first recorded as Ligurian court tribute in 972.

Guarene

Province: Cuneo · 360 m

A Roero hilltop village at 360 meters above the Tanaro, whose Roero family baroque castle is now a luxury hotel and contemporary art destination.

La Morra

Province: Cuneo · 513 m

• 🍷Barolo DOCG

The hilltop above the Barolo zone at 513 meters, more Nebbiolo acreage than any other commune and 62 wineries inside its perimeter.

Moncalvo

Province: Asti · 305 m

Italy's smallest city by title, 2,730 residents on a Monferrato ridge, with a five-hundred-year truffle tradition and Guglielmo Caccia's home churches.

Nizza Monferrato

Province: Asti · 267 m

The capital of Barbera at 267 meters in the upper Monferrato, founded 1225 and now standalone home of the Nizza DOCG.

Ovada

Province: Alessandria · 186 m

The Monferrato town at 186 meters where the Orba meets the Stura, the first Dolcetto DOC zone in Piemonte and now DOCG.

Santo Stefano Belbo

Province: Cuneo · 175 m

A Belbo valley village at 175 meters between the Langhe and Asti hills, birthplace of Cesare Pavese and the largest producer of Moscato d'Asti.

Serralunga d'Alba

Province: Cuneo · 414 m

• 🍷Barolo DOCG

A 527-inhabitant Barolo cru village at 414 meters on a Langhe ridge, crowned by a 14th-century French-style donjon castle of the Falletti.

Verduno

Province: Cuneo · 381 m

• 🍷Barolo DOCG

A Langhe hilltop at 381 meters on the northwestern edge of the Barolo DOCG, the home village of the Pelaverga grape.

Alghero

Province: Sassari · 7 m

The Catalan city of northwest Sardinia, repopulated by Peter IV of Aragon in 1354 and still speaking Algherese Catalan today.

Atzara

Province: Nuoro · 553 m

A Mandrolisai wine village on the western Gennargentu, painted in the early twentieth century by Spanish costumbristas and the Sardinian Scuola di Atzara.

Badesi

Province: Sassari · 102 m

A Gallura commune founded by shepherding families in the 1700s, with eight kilometers of dunes between Isola Rossa and the Coghinas river.

Bosa

Province: Oristano · 10 m

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.

Dorgali

Province: Nuoro · 387 m

A Supramonte town at 387 meters with the coastal frazione Cala Gonone, the Tiscali Nuragic village, and the 400-meter walls of Su Gorropu.

Galtellì

Province: Nuoro · 49 m

Grazia Deledda's 'Canne al vento' set — a 2,354-resident Baronia borgo under the Monte Tuttavista in Sardinia's northeast, with the triple Borghi Autentici + Bandiera Arancione + Città del Vino signal, the 11th-c Cattedrale di San Pietro (Sardinia's first), and the entire centro recognised as the Parco Letterario Grazia Deledda for being the literal setting of her 1913 Nobel-trajectory novel.

Jerzu

Province: Nuoro · 450 m

The Cannonau capital of Ogliastra, perched at 450 meters under Monte Corongiu, where vineyards have been documented since 1130.

Mamoiada

Province: Nuoro · 644 m

The Barbagia village where the Mamuthones come out on January 17, twelve men in black sheepskins carrying thirty kilos of cowbells.

Oliena

Province: Nuoro · 380 m

A Supramonte village at the foot of Monte Corrasi, source of Cannonau Nepente, base camp for Tiscali and the Lanaitto valley.

Samugheo

Province: Oristano · 380 m

Sardinia's textile-weaving capital — a 2,757-resident Mandrolisai borgo with the MURATS regional textile museum, the annual Tessingiu woven-art biennale, an active community of weavers still on traditional looms, and the Mandrolisai DOC red from the granite-soil vineyards around it.

Tempio Pausania

Province: Sassari · 566 m

The granite capital of Gallura at the foot of Monte Limbara, known for cork, Vermentino DOCG and the largest Carnival in northern Sardinia.

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.

Marsala

Province: Trapani · 3 m

Sicily's westernmost city, born from the Phoenician refugees of Mozia, where Garibaldi landed in 1860 and English merchants invented Marsala wine.

Menfi

Province: Agrigento · 119 m

Sicily's triple-signal western coast town — 11,800 residents on a low ridge above 9 km of Bandiera Blu sand at Porto Palo, with the Federico II tower, the Cantine Settesoli cooperative (Italy's largest by volume, 2,000 grower-members), and the rare Bandiera Blu + Città del Vino + Città dell'Olio combination.

Pantelleria

Province: Trapani · 8 m

A volcanic island closer to Tunisia than Sicily, where dry-stone dammusi sit among bush-trained Zibibbo vines listed by UNESCO.

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.

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.

Brentonico

Province: Trento · 692 m

The Monte Baldo plateau town between Lake Garda and the Vallagarina, with chestnut groves, war trenches and a botanical garden of the Garden of Italy.

Riva del Garda

Province: Trento · 73 m

The north tip of Lake Garda at 73 metres, where the Trentino mountains close in on the water and a Habsburg port town stayed bilingual into the twentieth century.

Rovereto

Province: Trento · 204 m

The Vallagarina city at 204 metres where a Venetian-Austrian castle holds the Italian war museum and a Mario Botta dome holds Italy's largest contemporary art collection.

Trento

Province: Trento · 194 m

The Alpine capital on the Adige at 194 metres, where the Council that reshaped the Catholic Church met in a castle still standing above the city.

Campiglia Marittima

Province: Livorno · 231 m

A walled hilltop borgo above the Val di Cornia, where the Rocca tower watches a mining landscape worked from the Etruscans to 1976.

Capalbio

Province: Grosseto · 217 m

A walled hilltop borgo at 217 meters in the southern Maremma, donated to the Abbey of Tre Fontane by Charlemagne and home of Niki de Saint Phalle's Tarot Garden.

Carmignano

Province: Prato · 189 m

A Medici village at 189 meters on the Montalbano slopes, where Pontormo's Visitation hangs in the parish church and Etruscan tumuli sit below the Renaissance villas.

Castagneto Carducci

Province: Livorno · 194 m

A hilltop borgo at 194 meters above the Costa degli Etruschi, renamed for the poet Carducci in 1907 and the home of Bolgheri and Sassicaia.

Castellina in Chianti

Province: Siena · 578 m

• 🍷Chianti Classico DOCG

A Chianti hill town at 578 meters on the watershed between the Arno and the Ombrone, with an Etruscan tumulus, a Brunelleschi-reinforced wall and a covered medieval walkway around its edge.

Castelnuovo Berardenga

Province: Siena · 351 m

• 🍷Chianti Classico DOCG

A Chianti Classico commune at 351 meters between the Ombrone and the Crete Senesi, the last castle Siena built against Florence, in 1366.

Castiglion Fiorentino

Province: Arezzo · 342 m

A walled hill town at 342 meters between Arezzo and Cortona, where Etruscan walls support the medieval Cassero and Vasari's loggia frames the Val di Chiana below.

Castiglione d'Orcia

Province: Siena · 540 m

A stone borgo at 540 meters in the UNESCO Val d'Orcia, first recorded in 714, with two fortresses guarding the road from Amiata to the Via Francigena.

Cetona

Province: Siena · 384 m

A medieval borgo at 384 meters below Monte Cetona, sold by Cosimo I to the Vitelli in 1556 and the centro storico still shaped by their fortress reconstruction.

Chiusi

Province: Siena · 398 m

The Etruscan city of King Porsenna at 398 meters above the Val di Chiana, with one of Italy's major Etruscan museums and tunnels carved beneath the streets.

Manciano

Province: Grosseto · 444 m

A market town at 444 meters in the southern Maremma, with a Sienese fortress of 1424 and the thermal frazione of Saturnia in its territory.

Massa Marittima

Province: Grosseto · 380 m

A medieval mining town at 380 meters in the Colline Metallifere, free commune from 1255 to 1337, whose cathedral holds the relics of San Cerbone.

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.

Montecarlo

Province: Lucca · 163 m

A walled hill village at 163 meters above the Lucca plain, founded by Emperor Charles IV in 1333 and named for him, surrounded by twenty wineries.

Montepulciano

Province: Siena · 605 m

• 🍷Vino Nobile di Montepulciano DOCG

A Renaissance hill town at 605 meters on a limestone ridge, where Vino Nobile is aged in vaulted cellars beneath the palazzi of Piazza Grande.

Montescudaio

Province: Pisa · 242 m

A fortified hill borgo at 242 meters above the Val di Cecina, named for a mountain of shields, with DOC wine since 1977 and bread, oil and grape all stamped in its identity.

Murlo

Province: Siena · 314 m

A medieval bishops' fief twenty kilometers south of Siena, with an Etruscan princely palace on Poggio Civitate and the Cappellone statue as its symbol.

Peccioli

Province: Pisa · 144 m

Borgo dei Borghi 2024 in the Valdera hills, a medieval village that funded a public contemporary-art program with revenue from its landfill plant.

Piombino

Province: Livorno · 21 m

A promontory port facing Elba across the channel, founded by refugees from Etruscan Populonia and now the Tuscan archipelago's ferry capital.

Pitigliano

Province: Grosseto · 313 m

The Little Jerusalem of southern Tuscany, carved into a tuff spur in the Maremma, where the houses, the synagogue and the streets are all cut from the same volcanic rock.

Rapolano Terme

Province: Siena · 334 m

A Sienese thermal town in the Crete Senesi, 38-degree calcium-sulphur waters and travertine quarries that supplied the Pienza Duomo and Montepulciano's San Biagio.

San Casciano dei Bagni

Province: Siena · 582 m

A hilltop borgo at 582 meters above 42 hot springs that produced the largest Etruscan bronze hoard of the last fifty years.

San Gimignano

Province: Siena · 334 m

A walled hill town at 334 meters with 14 surviving medieval towers, UNESCO listed since 1990 and the home of Vernaccia.

Siena

Province: Siena · 322 m

The medieval rival of Florence at 322 meters on three hills, with a shell-shaped piazza where seventeen contrade race bareback horses twice a year.

Suvereto

Province: Livorno · 127 m

A stone borgo at 127 meters above the Val di Cornia, named for the cork oaks of its forests and ruled from the Rocca Aldobrandesca since 973.

Vinci

Province: Firenze · 97 m

The hill town on Montalbano where Leonardo was born in 1452, with a ship-shaped castle that now holds his machines.

Bevagna

Province: Perugia · 225 m

Roman Mevania on the Umbrian plain at 225 meters, four medieval quarters that compete every June in a reconstructed market of the 13th century.

Giano dell'Umbria

Province: Perugia · 547 m

A hill commune at 547 meters between Foligno, Spoleto and Todi, anchored by a Romanesque abbey founded over the tomb of a fourth-century martyr.

Montefalco

Province: Perugia · 472 m

The hilltop wine capital of Umbria at 472 meters, where Sagrantino is grown almost nowhere else and Benozzo Gozzoli painted Francis in 1452.

Orvieto

Province: Terni · 325 m

Etruscan Velzna on a 325-meter tufa butte, the medieval refuge of popes and the home of Italy's most decorated Gothic cathedral.

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.

Todi

Province: Perugia · 398 m

A walled hill town at 398 meters on the Tiber, with Etruscan, Roman, and medieval rings stacked up Colle Nidoli.

Torgiano

Province: Perugia · 219 m

A walled river town at 219 meters at the confluence of the Tiber and the Chiascio, the first DOC and DOCG zone in Umbria.

Trevi

Province: Perugia · 412 m

A walled town at 412 meters above the Spoleto valley, ringed by 200,000 olive trees that make it the Umbrian capital of olive oil.

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.

Bardolino

Province: Verona · 65 m

Lake Garda's east-shore wine town at 65 meters, where Corvina and Rondinella grapes have made Bardolino and Chiaretto since the Roman period.

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.

Conegliano

Province: Treviso · 65 m

• 🥂Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore DOCG

The Prosecco capital at 65 meters, birthplace of the painter Cima and home of Italy's first oenology school, opened in 1876.

Farra di Soligo

Province: Treviso · 161 m

The heart of the Prosecco Hills UNESCO landscape — an 8,477-resident comune in the Conegliano-Valdobbiadene DOCG zone (UNESCO World Heritage since 2019), with the three medieval Torri di Credazzo crowning a hilltop above its vineyards, Cittaslow + Città del Vino signals, and direct walking access to the most photographed stretch of the hogback ridge.

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.

Lazise

Province: Verona · 76 m

The walled port on the southeastern shore of Lake Garda granted the right to fortify in 983, considered the first comune in Italy.

Pieve di Soligo

Province: Treviso · 132 m

The market town between the Soligo and Lierza rivers in the Prosecco UNESCO zone, birthplace of the twentieth-century poet Andrea Zanzotto.

Soave

Province: Verona · 40 m

• 🍷Soave Classico DOCG

A walled wine town twenty kilometers east of Verona, 2022 Borgo dei Borghi winner, where Garganega vineyards climb to the Scaligeri castle on Colle Tenda.

Susegana

Province: Treviso · 76 m

The Collalto castle town at 76 meters on the left bank of the Piave, with one of the largest medieval fortresses in northern Italy.

Valdobbiadene

Province: Treviso · 253 m

• 🥂Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore DOCG

The Prosecco Superiore capital at 253 meters in the Treviso Prealps, where Glera grown on Cartizze's 108 hectares produces the most expensive Italian sparkling wine.

Vittorio Veneto

Province: Treviso · 138 m

Two old towns fused at 138 meters under the Cansiglio, where the October 1918 battle ended the First World War on the Italian front.