🐌Cittaslow

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.

Guardiagrele

Province: Chieti · 576 m

The 576-meter terrazza d'Abruzzo on the Majella's foothills, hometown of fifteenth-century goldsmith Nicola da Guardiagrele and seat of the Majella park.

Penne

Province: Pescara · 438 m

The brick city at 438 meters between the Tavo and Fino, ancient capital of the Vestini, rebuilt after Allied bombing and awarded the Silver Medal of Civic Merit.

Pianella

Province: Pescara · 236 m

A Cittaslow hill town at 236 meters between the Tavo and Pescara rivers, anchor of the Aprutino oil triangle and home of the dritta olive.

Pineto

Province: Teramo · 4 m

A planned twentieth-century beach town named for D'Annunzio's poem, with the sixteenth-century Cerrano tower anchoring Abruzzo's first marine protected area.

Cisternino

Province: Brindisi · 394 m

An Itria valley borgo on the southern Murgia at 394 meters, whitewashed, Cittaslow since 2003 and Cittaslow City of the Year in 2014.

Gravina in Puglia

Province: Bari · 350 m

Puglia's deepest gravina — a 42,700-resident Bari-province town built on the lip of a 100m-deep limestone canyon, with the 18th-c Ponte Acquedotto walkway across the gorge that James Bond crossed in No Time to Die, a network of rupestrian cave churches in the cliff face, and the four-signal BPB + Cittaslow + Via Francigena + Parco Nazionale combination.

Trani

Province: Barletta-Andria-Trani · 7 m

The Adriatic port whose pink-white Romanesque cathedral stands on the water, built for a Greek pilgrim who died here in 1094.

Altomonte

Province: Cosenza · 455 m

The highest Gothic-Angevin church in Calabria, a Simone Martini panel commissioned in 1326, and a hill of 455 meters in the Esaro valley.

Fiumefreddo Bruzio

Province: Cosenza · 220 m

A Tyrrhenian hill town under Monte Cocuzzo, with a thirteenth-century castle frescoed in the 1990s by the Sicilian painter Salvatore Fiume.

Amalfi

Province: Salerno · 6 m

• 🍋Limone Costa d'Amalfi IGP

The first Italian maritime republic and the coast it named, six meters above the sea between cliffs that close around the duomo's steps.

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.

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.

Perito

Province: Salerno · 480 m

A Cilento ridge town at 480 meters above the Alento valley, once a center of black-powder production for hunting, defense and brigands.

Positano

Province: Salerno · 30 m

The vertical village of the Amalfi Coast, terraced houses climbing four hundred meters from Spiaggia Grande to the Lattari ridge under a tiled Byzantine dome.

Borgo Val di Taro

Province: Parma · 411 m

The Cittaslow capital of the upper Taro valley at 411 meters, where the Fungo di Borgotaro IGP porcini has been protected since 1996.

Brisighella

Province: Ravenna · 115 m

A Lamone-valley borgo at 115 meters under three selenite hills crowned by a fortress, a clock tower, and a sanctuary.

Castel San Pietro Terme

Province: Bologna · 75 m

A 75-meter thermal town on the Via Emilia east of Bologna, with sulphurous waters in use since 1137 and a 1200-built Cassero.

Fontanellato

Province: Parma · 45 m

A Parma-plain town built around the Rocca Sanvitale, the moated fortress with Parmigianino's 1524 fresco of Diana and Actaeon.

Santarcangelo di Romagna

Province: Rimini · 42 m

A Via Emilia hill town on the Marecchia plain, with over 150 tufa caves under the centro and a Malatesta fortress on its summit.

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.

Sperlonga

Province: Latina · 55 m

A whitewashed cliff town on Monte San Magno halfway between Rome and Naples, built above the sea grotto where Tiberius staged the Odyssey in marble.

Levanto

Province: La Spezia · 5 m

The sixth Cinque Terre, a beach town and Cittaslow at the gateway of the national park, with a surf break and a striped Gothic church.

Bellano

Province: Lecco · 202 m

An eastern Lake Como town where the Pioverna cut a gorge through fifteen million years of rock before reaching the lake.

Chiavenna

Province: Sondrio · 333 m

An Alpine town at 333 meters on the Mera river, the historical Splügen Pass crossroads named for its key position and its rock-cellar crotti.

Morimondo

Province: Milano · 109 m

A Cistercian abbey village on the edge of the Ticino park, twenty-five kilometers southwest of Milano, founded by French monks in 1134.

Teglio

Province: Sondrio · 856 m

A Valtellina hilltown at 856 metres that gave its name to the whole valley (Vallis Tellina = Val di Teglio), home of the Renaissance Palazzo Besta with its frescoed Italian-Renaissance cycles, and the official birthplace of pizzoccheri pasta — recognised by the Accademia del Pizzocchero.

Tirano

Province: Sondrio · 441 m

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

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.

Bra

Province: Cuneo · 290 m

• 🧀Bra DOP

A Roero town at 290 meters where Carlo Petrini founded Slow Food in 1986 and the world's first gastronomic university now teaches food systems.

Nicolosi

Province: Catania · 698 m

The southern gateway to Etna at 698 meters, twice destroyed by the 1669 eruption, base camp for the volcano cable car at Rifugio Sapienza.

Abetone Cutigliano

Province: Pistoia · 1,388 m

The Apennine ski pass at 1,388 meters where the Granduca's two stone pyramids of 1778 mark the old Tuscan-Modenese border.

Anghiari

Province: Arezzo · 430 m

A walled medieval town at 430 meters over the upper Tiber valley, where Florence beat Milan in 1440 and Leonardo started the fresco he never finished.

Barga

Province: Lucca · 410 m

A medieval hilltop town at 410 meters in the Serchio valley between the Apuan Alps and the Apennines, where Giovanni Pascoli wrote his last poems and the August festival serves fish and chips.

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.

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.

Cortona

Province: Arezzo · 494 m

An Etruscan lucumonia at 494 meters with two kilometers of walls older than Rome, looking down on the Val di Chiana and Lake Trasimeno.

Greve in Chianti

Province: Firenze · 236 m

• 🍷Chianti Classico DOCG

The market town of the Chianti Classico zone on the Greve river, with a triangular piazza arcaded since the sixteenth century.

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.

Mulazzo

Province: Massa-Carrara · 351 m

A Malaspina fief in the Lunigiana hills where Dante stayed in 1306, with a frazione of booksellers who walked their wares across Italy.

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.

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.

Amelia

Province: Terni · 406 m

A pre-Roman hilltown at 406 meters ringed by polygonal walls of the fourth century BC, with ten barrel-vaulted Roman cisterns under the main square.

Città della Pieve

Province: Perugia · 508 m

A red-brick hill town at 508 meters above the Valdichiana, the birthplace of Perugino and the home of Italy's narrowest alley.

Monte Castello di Vibio

Province: Perugia · 422 m

A fifteenth-century walled village at 422 meters above the Tiber, home to the world's smallest all'italiana theatre with 99 seats.

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.

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.

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.

Preci

Province: Perugia · 596 m

A walled Valnerina village at 596 meters that ran Europe's leading school of surgery for three centuries until the 2016 quake brought the borgo down.

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.

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.

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.

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.