UNESCO
UNESCO in Veneto
11 towns
Veneto carries 11 of the UNESCO towns we cover. They cluster in the Treviso, Padova, and Verona provinces.
The three most recognised in our catalogue are Follina, Cison di Valmarino, and Vittorio Veneto. 8 more towns carry the mark alongside them.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Conegliano
Province: Treviso · 65 m
The Prosecco capital at 65 meters, birthplace of the painter Cima and home of Italy's first oenology school, opened in 1876.
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.
Valdobbiadene
Province: Treviso · 253 m
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.
Padova
Province: Padova · 12 m
The university town that gave Giotto a chapel and the world a science of plants — TWO UNESCO inscriptions inside one city (Padua's 14th-century fresco cycles + the 1545 Orto Botanico, the world's first), plus Prato della Valle, Italy's largest piazza, and Galileo's old lecture hall.
Peschiera del Garda
Province: Verona · 68 m
The Venetian fortress town on a Mincio island at the southern outlet of Lake Garda, UNESCO-listed in 2017 for its Sanmicheli bastions.
Vicenza
Province: Vicenza · 39 m
Andrea Palladio's home city — a UNESCO-inscribed open-air museum of the architect who reshaped Western architecture, with 23 Palladian buildings inside the centro and the Villa Rotonda + Teatro Olimpico just outside it.
Subscribe — free
Get the best guides on hidden Italian towns.
One letter on Sundays. The week’s town, with the photo, the food, the festa. Free, by Peter & Sophia from Pietrasanta.
Substack sends a confirmation link to your inbox. The signup finishes when it’s clicked.
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.