👣Via Francigena

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.

Etroubles

Province: Aosta Valley · 1,280 m

A 478-person village at 1,280 metres on the Via Francigena, with an open-air contemporary art museum and the region's first dairy.

Fasano

Province: Brindisi · 118 m

A Brindisi-province town from the Adriatic up to the Itria escarpment, holding the Roman ruins of Egnazia, the Selva, and Europe's second-largest safari park.

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.

Lecce

Province: Lecce · 49 m

The Baroque capital of the Salento, ninety-four thousand people on the Lecce-stone plain, carving its façades in honey limestone since 1500.

Monopoli

Province: Bari · 9 m

An Adriatic walled town forty kilometers south of Bari, the Charles V castle on the headland, 156 square kilometers of coastline behind it.

Monte Sant'Angelo

Province: Foggia · 843 m

The Gargano peak at 843 meters where the Archangel Michael appeared in 490, the oldest western shrine to him, UNESCO since 2011.

Otranto

Province: Lecce · 20 m

Italy's easternmost city, eighty kilometers from Albania, with a Norman mosaic floor and the bones of 813 martyrs in the cathedral.

San Giovanni Rotondo

Province: Foggia · 565 m

The Gargano town where Padre Pio lived for fifty-two years, second-largest pilgrimage site in Italy, with a Renzo Piano sanctuary that seats 6,500.

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.

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.

Vernole

Province: Lecce · 38 m

A Salento commune ten kilometers from Lecce whose frazione of Acaya is the only Renaissance fortified town in southern Italy.

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.

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.

Collecchio

Province: Parma · 112 m

The Parma-cintura town on the Via Francigena, home to the Pieve di San Prospero, Parmalat, and Parma F.C.'s training ground.

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.

Bolsena

Province: Viterbo · 350 m

A medieval town at 350 meters on the eastern shore of Europe's largest volcanic lake, where a Bohemian priest reported a Eucharistic miracle in 1263.

Capranica

Province: Viterbo · 370 m

A medieval hill town on the old Via Cassia, taken by the Anguillara family in 1305 and remembered as the place Petrarch stayed in 1337.

Castel Gandolfo

Province: Roma · 426 m

A papal town on the rim of Lake Albano's volcanic crater, summer residence of the popes since 1626 in the Castelli Romani.

Fondi

Province: Latina · 9 m

The plain town between the Ausoni and Aurunci mountains where the Caetani built a castle in the middle of farmland instead of on a hill.

Minturno

Province: Latina · 140 m

A coastal comune at the mouth of the Garigliano, built on the Roman colony of Minturnae, five-time Bandiera Blu through Scauri and Marina.

Montefiascone

Province: Viterbo · 590 m

A 590-meter hill town on the southeastern rim of Lake Bolsena, the source of Est! Est!! Est!!! and a Via Francigena stop.

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.

Sermoneta

Province: Latina · 257 m

A walled medieval town on a Lepini spur above the Pontine Plain, the Caetani stronghold whose 42-meter Maschio has stood since 1297.

Sutri

Province: Viterbo · 291 m

An Etruscan and Roman town on a tuff spur, with a rock-cut amphitheater carved straight from the volcanic stone of the Cimini.

Terracina

Province: Latina · 24 m

The Volscian Anxur on the Via Appia, where Jupiter's temple sits 227 meters above a port Trajan cleared through stone.

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.

Castelnuovo Magra

Province: La Spezia · 188 m

A ridge village on the Liguria-Tuscany border where Dante Alighieri signed the 1306 Peace of Castelnuovo on behalf of the Malaspina marquises.

Sarzana

Province: La Spezia · 21 m

The unofficial capital of the Lunigiana on the Magra plain, birthplace of Pope Niccolò V and home to Italy's oldest dated painted crucifix.

Avigliana

Province: Torino · 383 m

A medieval Savoy town at 383 meters at the mouth of the Susa Valley, between two glacial lakes and the Sacra di San Michele.

Ivrea

Province: Torino · 267 m

Roman Eporedia on the Dora Baltea, Olivetti's twentieth-century industrial city, UNESCO since 2018, where every February three hundred tons of oranges are thrown.

Susa

Province: Torino · 503 m

The Roman gateway to the Cottian Alps at 503 meters, capital of the Alpes Cottiae and seat of the Cozii under Augustus and Cottius.

Buonconvento

Province: Siena · 147 m

The walled brick borgo in the Crete Senesi where Emperor Henry VII died in 1313, on the Via Cassia at the confluence of the Arbia and Ombrone.

Camaiore

Province: Lucca · 34 m

The Versilia commune that runs from the Apuan Alps to the sea, a Roman Campus Maior on the Via Francigena with a beach at its western end.

Carrara

Province: Massa-Carrara · 80 m

The marble town at the foot of the Apuan Alps, with over 650 quarry sites in the valleys above and the stone that built the Pantheon, the Pietà and Michelangelo's David.

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.

Cerreto Guidi

Province: Firenze · 123 m

The Medici hunting villa above the Padule di Fucecchio, where Cosimo I sent his court for the marshland game and Buontalenti built four ramps of stairs.

Certaldo

Province: Firenze · 67 m

The brick-built upper town in the Valdelsa where Boccaccio spent his last years, twenty-five kilometers from Florence on the medieval road to Siena.

Lucca

Province: Lucca · 19 m

The provincial capital ringed by four kilometers of intact sixteenth-century walls, birthplace of Puccini and the only fully walled Italian city of its scale.

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.

Monteriggioni

Province: Siena · 274 m

A circular Sienese fortress built between 1213 and 1219 on a natural hill, fourteen towers on a 570-meter wall, intact and unbroken.

Montignoso

Province: Massa-Carrara · 132 m

A Riviera Apuana commune split between the Cinquale coastal frazione, the Castello Aghinolfi on the hill, and the Lago di Porta wetland on the Versilia plain.

Piancastagnaio

Province: Siena · 772 m

A chestnut-belt borgo at 772 meters on the southern slope of Monte Amiata, where four contrade still race for the Palio delle Contrade each August.

Pietrasanta

Province: Lucca · 14 m

The marble-processing town under the Apuan Alps, founded in 1255 and worked since by Michelangelo, Henry Moore, Joan Miró and Fernando Botero.

Pontremoli

Province: Massa-Carrara · 236 m

The capital of Lunigiana at the confluence of the Magra and Verde, holding the prehistoric stele statues and the oldest book prize in Italy.

Radicofani

Province: Siena · 814 m

The Val d'Orcia's basalt watchtower — a 1,060-resident UNESCO-inscribed borgo at 814m on a volcanic basalt outcrop visible across half of southern Tuscany, with the spectacular Rocca di Radicofani (Ghino di Tacco's outlaw fortress, mentioned by Dante in Purgatorio + Boccaccio in the Decameron), the 16th-c Posta Medicea on the Via Francigena, and Bandiera Arancione + UNESCO + Via Francigena triple signal.

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.

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.

San Quirico d'Orcia

Province: Siena · 409 m

A walled stop on the Via Francigena at 409 meters in the UNESCO Val d'Orcia, where a twelfth-century Collegiata, a Renaissance garden and the Bagno Vignoni thermal pool sit within fifteen kilometers of each other.

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.

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.