Italy has 5,532 comuni with fewer than 5,000 residents. Most tourists never visit a single one. They fly into Rome, train to Florence, vaporetto through Venice, and fly home believing they've "done Italy." They haven't. The real Italy — the one that Italians themselves go to on weekends, the one that makes Romans nostalgic and Milanese wistful — lives in the borghi. Stone villages clinging to cliffs, piazzas where the only sound at 2pm is a fountain, trattorias where the menu is whatever nonna made today. Here are 25 that earn the trip on their own.
Plan a trip here →Called "the dying city" because the tufa plateau it sits on is literally crumbling into the valley. You reach it via a 300-meter pedestrian bridge over a canyon. Population: 10 permanent residents. Entry: €5. The Romanesque church, the Renaissance palazzo, the single café — it's a ghost town that refuses to become a ghost. Visit at dawn before the day-trippers arrive from Rome (2 hours by car). It will not exist forever.
Wedged into the Lucanian Dolomites like a fist pushed into clay. The houses are built into the rock face, the streets are staircases, and the "Flight of the Angel" zipline to neighboring Pietrapertosa (€40, 1.5km, 120km/h) is the most exhilarating 90 seconds in southern Italy. Both towns have populations under 800. Accommodation: €40–60/night in a converted stone house. No chain anything. No English menus. Perfect.
Yes, everyone knows Positano. Yes, it's expensive. But walk above the tourist strip to the Via Pasitea residential area at 7am and it's still a village — women hanging laundry between bougainvillea, cats on terracotta steps, a fisherman mending nets on the beach below. The Instagram version and the real version coexist in the same square kilometer.
A Renaissance town that would be a major tourist destination if it weren't overshadowed by Siena and Florence. The Corso climbs steeply to Piazza Grande, lined with palazzi that any city would envy. Vino Nobile di Montepulciano is the reward — taste it at Contucci's cantina in the palazzo basement, free, cellar from the 1500s. Stay: €70–100/night.
A walled town at 751 meters above Trapani. Norman castle. Phoenician walls. Venus temple foundations. On clear days you can see Africa. In fog (frequent), it's a medieval ghost ship floating in cloud. Cable car from Trapani: €9 return. The pasticceria Maria Grammatico makes almond pastries from recipes she learned as an orphan in a cloistered convent. True story.
A tufa cliff with a town growing out of it — the buildings and the rock are the same colour, making it look like the town was carved rather than built. Called "Little Jerusalem" for its historic Jewish quarter (one of the oldest in Italy, synagogue and Jewish museum €5). The Vie Cave — Etruscan paths cut 20 meters deep into the tufa — are free to walk and genuinely mysterious. Nobody fully understands their purpose.
Every house is a different colour — supposedly so fishermen could see their homes through the fog. Burano is 40 minutes by vaporetto from Venice and feels like a different country. Lace shops (the real ones, not the Chinese imports), risotto di gò at Da Romano, and the most photographed street in the Venetian lagoon. Go early or late — the midday tour groups are brutal.
Candy-coloured houses along the Temo River, the only navigable river in Sardinia. A Malvasia wine tradition, a crumbling castle, and zero international tourism. The tanneries along the river are being converted to artist studios. Bosa Marina beach is 2km away. Population: 7,700. It feels like 700.
Procida was Italian Capital of Culture 2022 and still hasn't been ruined. Marina Corricella — the pastel fishing village — is one of the most photographed harbours in the Mediterranean. Ferry from Naples: 25 min, €15. A fraction of Capri's prices, double the character.
Not technically a "small town" anymore (60,000 people, European Capital of Culture 2019), but Matera's sassi were evacuated in the 1950s as a national disgrace and rebuilt into one of the most extraordinary urban landscapes on earth. Cave dwellings from 9,000 years ago. UNESCO since 1993. Stay in a sassi B&B: €70–100.
If Assisi is the famous sibling, Spello is the one who stayed home and got more interesting. Roman gate (Porta Venere, with two 12-sided towers), Pinturicchio frescoes in the Baglioni Chapel (free, Santa Maria Maggiore), and the Infiorate flower festival (Corpus Domini, usually June) where the entire town carpets its streets in flower petal art. Pop: 8,500.
Tropea sits on a cliff above a beach that would make Caribbean resorts jealous. Santa Maria dell'Isola — the church on the rock — is the postcard. The red onions from Tropea are famous across Italy: eat them raw in sandwiches, caramelized on pizza, as marmalade. Stay: €50–80/night in summer.
13. Orvieto, Umbria — volcanic cliff city, Signorelli frescoes, underground Etruscan caves. 14. San Gimignano, Tuscany — 14 medieval towers, world-champion gelato. 15. Ostuni, Puglia — the White City, olive groves to the Adriatic. 16. Ravello, Campania — Terrace of Infinity, Wagner's gardens. 17. Atrani, Campania — the smallest comune on the Amalfi Coast, 900 people, no hotels, just a piazza and the sea. 18. Vernazza, Liguria — the best of the Cinque Terre five. 19. Santo Stefano di Sessanio, Abruzzo — a Renaissance borgo restored as an albergo diffuso (rooms scattered across the village). 20. Alberobello, Puglia — 1,500 conical trulli, UNESCO. 21. Cividale del Friuli — Lombard temple, UNESCO, Natisone gorge. 22. Brisighella, Emilia-Romagna — Via degli Asini elevated walkway, olive oil DOP, three hilltop landmarks. 23. Scanno, Abruzzo — heart-shaped lake, traditional goldwork, Wolf Museum. 24. Gangi, Sicily — €1 houses program, Norman castle, Giudecca district. 25. Bobbio, Emilia-Romagna — Ponte Gobbo (Devil's Bridge), abbey founded 614 AD, wild Trebbia valley.
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