Ten Small Towns in Italy Worth the Detour
No queues, no cruise ships, and dinner for two under forty euros. The places Italians go when they want Italy.
Italy has a problem it would not call a problem: too many people wanting to see the same ten places. The fix is not to avoid Italy. It is to go two hours in any direction from where everyone else is standing.
These ten towns are not secrets, exactly. Italians know them well. But you will not queue, you will not pay Venice prices, and you will eat better than you would in any city on the standard route.
1. Pitigliano, Tuscany
A town that grows straight out of a tufa cliff, so that from the road it is hard to tell where the rock ends and the houses begin. Once home to a thriving Jewish community, it still has a synagogue and a bakery making sfratti, a honey and walnut pastry you will not find elsewhere.
2. Civita di Bagnoregio, Lazio
Reached by a single footbridge, with a resident population you can count on two hands. It is called the dying town because the cliff it sits on is slowly eroding. Go early, before the day-trippers, and have coffee in the square with the cats.
3. Castelmezzano, Basilicata
Wedged into the Lucanian Dolomites, a landscape that looks like it was designed by someone showing off. There is a zip line to the next village if you are that way inclined, and a very good restaurant if you are not.
4. Tropea, Calabria
Perched on a cliff above a beach that would be famous anywhere else. The town is known for its sweet red onions, which appear in everything from pasta to ice cream. The second one is better than it sounds.
5. Orta San Giulio, Piedmont
The quiet one among the northern lakes. A small square on the water, an island with a basilica you can reach by rowing boat, and none of the traffic of Como. Nietzsche fell in love here, which tells you something about the light.
6. Montefalco, Umbria
Called the balcony of Umbria for the view, and worth visiting for the wine. Sagrantino is a deep, serious red that almost nobody outside Italy has heard of. The town's cellars will pour it for you without ceremony.
7. Bosa, Sardinia
Pastel houses stacked up a hill beside a slow river, with a castle on top and a beach ten minutes away. Sardinia's west coast gets a fraction of the visitors of the east, and Bosa is the reason to come.
8. Scanno, Abruzzo
A medieval town in the mountains where older women still wear traditional dress, not for tourists but because they always have. A heart-shaped lake sits below it. The lamb is extraordinary.
9. Castelluccio di Norcia, Umbria
A tiny village above a high plateau that, for a few weeks in late June and early July, turns into a sea of wildflowers. Damaged in the 2016 earthquake and slowly rebuilding, it needs visitors who spend money. Buy the lentils.
10. Procida, Campania
The small island between Naples and Ischia that the ferries full of people heading for Capri sail straight past. Fishermen's houses in every colour, lemon groves, and a fish lunch on the harbour for less than a Capri coffee.
