Designation
Città della Ceramica
25 towns across 11 regions
Browse by region
Basilicata2
Calvello
Province: Potenza · 730 m
A 730-meter ceramic town at the foot of Monte Venturino, working clay since 1200 when Benedictines from Faenza brought the wheel south.
Matera
Province: Matera · 401 m
Cave dwellings carved into limestone since the Paleolithic, called the shame of Italy in the 1950s and made European Capital of Culture in 2019.
Campania4
Ariano Irpino
Province: Avellino · 788 m
The City of the Three Hills at 788 meters, where Roger II promulgated the Assizes of 1140 and majolica kilns still fire.
Calitri
Province: Avellino · 530 m
An Alta Irpinia ceramic town at 530 meters, half-emptied by the 1980 earthquake and rebuilt around Vinicio Capossela's Sponz Fest.
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.
Vietri sul Mare
Province: Salerno · 80 m
The eastern end of the Amalfi Coast at 80 meters, the ceramics town since the fifteenth century, the gateway between Salerno and the cliff road.
Lazio3
Acquapendente
Province: Viterbo · 420 m
The northernmost town in Lazio on the Via Francigena, at 420 meters above the Paglia, named in 964 for its waterfalls.
Tarquinia
Province: Viterbo · 133 m
An Etruscan capital on a Maremma ridge whose 6,000 rock-cut tombs at Monterozzi hold the largest body of pre-Roman painting in the Mediterranean.
Viterbo
Province: Viterbo · 326 m
The medieval capital of the Tuscia, papal seat for five popes between 1257 and 1281 and home to the longest conclave in Church history.
Liguria2
Celle Ligure
Province: Savona · 5 m
A Riviera di Ponente beach town with kilns firing since the 1600s and a Lucio Fontana ceramic on the parish church façade.
Savona
Province: Savona · 4 m
A working port city with two Della Rovere popes, a Sistine Chapel that came before the Roman one, and a fortress on the old town.
Marche3
Ascoli Piceno
Province: Ascoli Piceno · 154 m
The travertine city at 154 meters where the Tronto meets the Castellano, capital of the Piceni and host of the Quintana joust.
Pesaro
Province: Pesaro e Urbino · 11 m
The Adriatic port at the mouth of the Foglia, founded as Roman Pisaurum in 184 BC and given to the world by Rossini in 1792.
Urbania
Province: Pesaro e Urbino · 273 m
The Montefeltro ceramics town on the upper Metauro, known as Casteldurante until Pope Urban VIII gave it his name in 1636.
Sicily3
Caltagirone
Province: Catania · 611 m
Sicily's ceramic capital at 611 meters on the Erei ridge, 142 majolica-tiled steps to Santa Maria del Monte and a Val di Noto UNESCO baroque rebuild.
Monreale
Province: Palermo · 310 m
Above the Conca d'Oro at 310 meters, the cathedral William II built between 1174 and 1182 holds 6,340 square meters of Norman mosaics.
Sciacca
Province: Agrigento · 60 m
A terraced fishing harbor on Sicily's southwestern coast, Selinunte's thermal spa in the fifth century BC and a ceramics city since the fourteenth.
Umbria4
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.
Deruta
Province: Perugia · 218 m
A hill town at 218 meters on the left bank of the Tiber, the maiolica capital of central Italy since the late thirteenth century.
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.
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.
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From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover
Pieve di Soligo
Province: Treviso
The market town between the Soligo and Lierza rivers in the Prosecco UNESCO zone, birthplace of the twentieth-century poet Andrea Zanzotto.
Vallefoglia
Province: Pesaro e Urbino
A 2014 merger commune at 295 meters in the Foglia valley, born from Colbordolo, birthplace of Raffaello's father, and Sant'Angelo in Lizzola.
Abano Terme
Province: Padova
Europe's oldest thermal town on the Euganean Hills' eastern slope, where 80°C bromo-iodine springs have been drawing bathers since the eighth century BC.
Bosa
Province: Oristano
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.
Castagnole delle Lanze
Province: Asti
An Asti hill town at 298 meters between Langhe and Monferrato, with two Baroque churches and a nineteenth-century astronomical tower.