The Most Beautiful Villages in Italy
10 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful villages in Italy are Positano, Vernazza and Manarola. The list covers 10 villages. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Italy's villages are the product of a country divided for centuries into rival cities, lordships and states. Settlements climbed onto hilltops and crags for defence, fishing towns crowded into coves along the coast, and each built its own church, tower and square with local stone or tufa. Because the countryside was rarely swept clean by modern growth, many of these places still look much as they did several hundred years ago.
The coast is the best known. Positano descends the cliffs of the Amalfi Coast in tiers of pastel houses, Portofino curves around a small harbour on the Ligurian Riviera, and in the Cinque Terre Vernazza and Manarola wedge their bright façades between rock and sea. In Sicily, Cefalù spreads at the foot of a great headland around its Norman cathedral, and in the Venetian lagoon Burano paints every house a different colour along its canals.
Inland, the hill towns take over. San Gimignano keeps the stone tower houses of its medieval families, raised against a Tuscan skyline, and Pitigliano rises straight out of a tufa cliff, its houses seeming to grow from the rock. Civita di Bagnoregio stands on a crumbling outcrop reached only by a long footbridge, and in Basilicata Castelmezzano clings to the jagged peaks of the Lucanian Dolomites.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Positano | Most beautiful village | |
| 2 | Vernazza | Most beautiful village | |
| 3 | Manarola | Most beautiful village | |
| 4 | San Gimignano | Most beautiful village | |
| 5 | Cefalù | Most beautiful village | |
| 6 | Castelmezzano | Most beautiful village | |
| 7 | Civita di Bagnoregio | Most beautiful village | |
| 8 | Portofino | Most beautiful village | |
| 9 | Pitigliano | Most beautiful village | |
| 10 | Burano | Most beautiful village |
01 Positano
Italy · 25 km from Salerno40.628° N 14.482° E
Image by floydbarbel from Pixabay The focal point at the bottom of the town is the church of Santa Maria Assunta, whose dome of glazed majolica tiles gleams above the beach. Inside is a 13th-century Byzantine icon of a Black Madonna. Local tradition holds that pirates carried it off from the East and, caught in a storm off this coast, heard a voice crying "Posa, posa!", "put it down", so they brought the icon ashore. Offshore lie the small Li Galli islands, linked in legend to the Sirens.
Did you know? One theory derives the name from Posides, a Roman freedman thought to have owned a seaside villa here.
02 Vernazza
Italy44.135° N 9.684° E
- one of the most beautiful villages
Bruno Rijsman · CC BY-SA 2.0 The finest way to see Vernazza is to arrive on foot along the coastal path from Monterosso or Corniglia, when the village appears suddenly below, tower and bell tower framing the harbour, or to watch it from the harbour wall as the evening light warms the façades.
Did you know? The name may come from the Latin verna, meaning native or local, and some scholars think the medieval vernaccia wine praised by Boccaccio was named after the village.
03 Manarola
Italy44.106° N 9.727° E
Image by tristanmimet from Pixabay Manarola has one unusual winter spectacle. Beginning in 1961, a local man, Mario Andreoli, built a nativity scene from lights and figures across the hillside above the village; it grew into what was recognised in 2007 as the largest illuminated nativity scene in the world, and it is switched on each year on 8 December. The whole coast, with Portovenere and the islands, has been a World Heritage Site since 1997. Between Manarola and Riomaggiore runs the Via dell'Amore, a short cliffside path of about a kilometre.
Did you know? In July 1545 the villagers drove off a flotilla of galleys led by the Ottoman corsair Dragut, with help from neighbouring Riomaggiore.
04 San Gimignano
Italy · 30 km from Siena43.468° N 11.043° E
Image by Makalu from Pixabay Behind the plain façade of the Collegiata, consecrated in 1148, the walls are covered with fourteenth-century painting: an Old Testament cycle by Bartolo di Fredi, completed around 1356, a New Testament cycle generally attributed to Lippo Memmi, and a Last Judgement by Taddeo di Bartolo dated 1393. The Chapel of Santa Fina, designed by Giuliano da Maiano, holds frescoes of the young local saint painted by Domenico Ghirlandaio around 1475, and the church of Sant'Agostino has works by Benozzo Gozzoli. The historic centre became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1990. The surrounding hills produce Vernaccia di San Gimignano, a white wine, as well as saffron.
Did you know? E. M. Forster turned San Gimignano into the fictional town of Monteriano in his 1905 novel Where Angels Fear to Tread.
05 Cefalù
Italy38.038° N 14.026° E
- one of the most beautiful villages
Ludvig14 · CC BY-SA 4.0 The rest of the old town rewards slow walking. Stretches of megalithic wall from the late fifth century BC still ring the historic centre; up on the Rocca, the so-called Temple of Diana is a sanctuary built of huge dolmen-like slabs over a far older cistern. Down in Via Vittorio Emanuele, a medieval washhouse is fed by spring water pouring from a row of cast-iron mouths, many shaped as lions' heads. The Osterio Magno on Corso Ruggero, traditionally linked to Roger II though probably fourteenth-century, was the seat of the Ventimiglia lords, and the Museo Mandralisca keeps Antonello da Messina's Portrait of a Man — the sly, half-smiling face often called the Unknown Sailor.
Did you know? The cathedral nave rests on sixteen ancient columns, fourteen of pink granite and two of cipollino marble, with bases and capitals dating to the 2nd century AD.
06 Castelmezzano
Italy · 24.4 km from Potenza40.533° N 16.050° E
- one of the most beautiful villages
Image by nonmisvegliate from Pixabay A high-wire zip line, the Volo dell'Angelo, opened in 2007 and runs across the valley between Castelmezzano and Pietrapertosa at heights of around 400 metres. In 2020 the Touring Club Italiano awarded the village its orange flag for small inland towns of quality.
Did you know? Every September, villagers celebrate the Wedding of the Trees: oxen haul a giant oak trunk that is ritually married to a holly crown.
07 Civita di Bagnoregio
Italy42.628° N 12.114° E
- one of the most beautiful villages
Orlando Paride · CC BY-SA 4.0 Come early in the morning or late in the day, when the light is low and raking across the calanchi and the ridges stand out in relief.
Did you know? Only 11 people were registered as permanent residents in 2021, and journalists have noted that the town's cats outnumber them.
08 Portofino
Italy · 25 km from Genoa44.304° N 9.207° E
Quintin Soloviev · CC BY 4.0 The whole municipality lies within the Portofino regional nature park, which protects the promontory's Mediterranean woods and, offshore, seagrass meadows and coral. Offshore, the Christ of the Abyss statue by Guido Galletti has stood on the seabed at 17 m since 1954, in memory of the diver Dario Gonzatti.
Did you know? In 1409 Charles VI of France, then ruling Genoa, sold Portofino to the Republic of Florence; it returned to Genoa when he lost power.
09 Pitigliano
Italy42.634° N 11.668° E
- one of the most beautiful villages
Image by felix_w from Pixabay Pitigliano is also known as "Little Jerusalem". For centuries it lay close to the border between the Grand Duchy and the Papal States, and Jews fleeing the Counter-Reformation persecutions in Rome found refuge here. The community built a synagogue in 1598, ran its own matzah bakery in one of the caves, and by the mid-19th century made up about a fifth of the population. Most later moved to larger cities; during the Holocaust, the remaining Jews of the town are reported to have escaped deportation with the help of their Christian neighbours. The synagogue, restored in 1995, is still used for services from time to time.
Did you know? After roughly 150 years of on-and-off war, Siena recognised Pitigliano as a county in 1455 in exchange for the town accepting Sienese sovereignty.
10 Burano
Italy · 8.3 km from Venice45.486° N 12.418° E
Image by rperucho from Pixabay One more detail worth looking for: the bell tower of the church of San Martino leans visibly off its base, a tilt severe enough that from certain angles in photographs it looks like it's about to go over — Burano's own quieter answer to Pisa, standing over a lagoon town a fraction of the size.
Did you know? Burano lace is worked with a needle alone, without a pillow, a technique known in Italian as punto in aria, stitch in the air.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful villages in Italy?
- On our list, Positano ranks first, followed by Vernazza and Manarola.
- Why is Civita di Bagnoregio called the dying town?
- Civita di Bagnoregio sits on a hill of volcanic tuff over soft clay that is steadily eroding, so parts of the town have collapsed into the valley over the centuries. Today it is reached only by a pedestrian bridge.
- Why does San Gimignano have so many towers?
- In the Middle Ages the wealthy families of San Gimignano built tower houses as displays of power and as refuges during feuds. Dozens once stood in the town, and around fourteen survive.
- Why are the houses of Burano so colourful?
- Tradition says the fishermen of Burano painted their houses brightly so they could recognise them from the lagoon. The custom is kept up today, and owners need permission from the municipality before choosing a new colour.
- How many villages are on this list in Italy?
- The list covers 10 villages.