Best small towns in Italy
Experience Italian life in the raw
The great cities of Italy are tourist magnets – Florence, Venice, Rome, Naples. All have their devotees – and their detractors.
But while the small towns may not have the cultural attractions of the cities, they’re where you’ll find Italian life in the raw. And they have a particular flavour that you’ll not find in the major centres. Here are ten of the best.
1. Pienza was once called Corsignano. But Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini renamed it when he became Pope – Pienza, after himself, Pius II.
He rebuilt the centre of the town in Renaissance style, with the assistance of architect Bernardo Rossellino. On the main square is a fine cathedral and matching palaces – one for the town and one for the Pope. It’s a masterpiece of Renaissance town planning – the creation of a mathematically planned model for ideal living.
And on the outskirts of the town you can still see the Romanesque church where the little Aeneas Silvius was christened.
2. Pitigliano nestles in a forgotten area of Tuscany, where the Etruscan spirit is still strong. The town tops the crest of a ridge, above a rushing stream; at sunset, the walls glow in the fading light. You can walk up ancient roads carved deeply into the cliffs, which have their own microclimate, up to the plateau above where chariot ruts from nearly three thousand years ago are still visible in the limestone. Nearby are mysterious Etruscan tombs cut out of the rock.
Pitigliano has been called the ‘Tuscan Jerusalem’ from its Jewish connections; you can still visit the synagogue. And you can try the local specialities – a fresh white wine, and wild boat dumplings.
3. Ravello perches high above the coast; Amalfi, one of the great medieval ports of Italy, hugs the bottom of the slope. You can't really visit one without the other; in fact you can walk all the way from Ravello, down through lemon groves and lonely tracks, to the busy coast road.
In both towns, the Italian Middle Ages meets the Saracenic East. Amalfi cathedral with its striped stonework and intersecting arches is as much Byzantine as Italian, while the Villa Rufolo in Ravello has a wonderful Moorish style cloister. Narrow pathways and flights of steps lead between the white painted houses, and wherever you are, there’s a view of the sea.
4. Gubbio was an important town even before the Romans, but what you see now is mainly medieval. It’s an austere place – the local stone is grey, and the narrow streets can be gloomy – but it’s worth getting to know, for its fantastic array of Gothic buildings. The Palazzo dei Consoli is one of the best medieval town palaces in the whole of Italy, a severely symmetrical, fortress-like building; and the cathedral has a fine rose window.
But it’s the meandering streets and ancient houses that will captivate you. Unless of course you want to see the fine Roman theatre – one of the largest in Italy.
5. Cefalu seems to cower under the rocky spur above the town. Crowded in between the mountain and the sea, it has a maze of medieval streets – and one of the greatest cathedrals in the south of Europe. Though the church looks Late Romanesque outside, the interior feels thoroughly Byzantine, with the great mosaic of Christ pantocrator dominating the entire church from the apse.
Cefalu is also at the centre of the artichoke producing region of Sicily – so if you like artichokes, you’ll love the food here. One of the restaurants has an entire artichoke menu.
6. Lucca is a neat little town, still surrounded by its walls. Pisa gets all the tourists, but Lucca’s wealth of Romanesque churches make it just as interesting – and it has a gentle charm all its own. The Middle Ages are recalled by the massive Torre delle Guinigi, a tower that belonged to one of the feuding families of the town; you can climb all the way to the top, which supports a cluster of splendid oak trees.
Lucca also has the ghost of a fine Roman amphitheatre; houses have been built where the walls once were, so the oval space has become one of the main piazzas of the town. There’s enough history here to satisfy anyone – and a fine walk all the way round the top of the walls if you feel energetic enough.
7. Urbino belonged to Federico da Montefeltro, a mercenary soldier with a taste for the finer things in life. He assembled many of the greatest humanists and scholars of his time in Urbino, and commissioned a fine Renaissance palace for himself. Its fairytale twin towers still dominate the town, but it now houses not a court, but a fine picture gallery. Urbino was a model Renaissance city, and it still retains its charm, with its pink brick houses and steep alleys.
8. Matera, deep in the heel of Italy, is a highly unusual town – because quite a lot of its houses and churches are underground! Monks fleeing Saracen invasions elsewhere on the coast carved tiny huts and churches out of the soft rock here, and painted many of them with fine frescoes. The ‘sassi’ (‘rocks’) district has quite a middle Eastern feel, and film directors have often used Matera as a stand-in for Jerusalem.
The more conventional part of the town is charming, too, with a Romanesque cathedral containing a lovely carved Christmas Crib, and an unfinished Renaissance castle.
9. Noto was completely destroyed by an earthquake in 1693 – and rebuilt as a fine Sicilian Baroque town. The creamy, yellow limestone lends itself to carving and gives the whole town a light, sunny aspect. The town is so artfully planned that it could almost be a stage set, with fine perspectives – but this is a real town and there are real buildings behind the extravagant façades.
If you fall in love with the style, the other towns around Noto were all rebuilt in the same way - and all are UNESCO heritage sites.
10. Vigevano, in Lombardy, was laid out for Lodovico il Moro Sforza, ruler of Milan, who built the fine Renaissance castle. The even finer Piazza Ducale.is one of the best Renaissance squares in the whole of Italy, its long sides twice the length of its shorter sides. The main street enters under a fake façade at one end, and the cathedral stands at the other. Most of the buildings are by Bramante, or at least influenced by him – and Leonardo was brought here by Lodovico, his patron.
Vigevano is at the centre of the Lomellina, a flat, rice-growing district. Almost every town seems to have a castle; there are fine roads bordered by poplar trees, and sluggish rivers with trees lining their banks. This isn't tourist country – but it has a quiet attraction all its own.
Inevitably a list of the top ten will miss out some lovely towns. I could so easily have included Cortona, Spoleto, Norcia, Fiesole... or a dozen others! And that’s the charm of Italy off the beaten track – there are so many interesting and unspoiled small towns to visit.