The stone village of Santo Stefano di Sessanio below the Gran Sasso
Foglio HPart. 324Scala 1:2000
Towns

Fourteen towns in fourteen regions

All under five thousand residents, none in the standard rotation, each chosen because something specific happened there that you can still go and look at. Population figures are Istat, 1 January 2026.

Browse every current story by region

Driving times are road-routing estimates, not certified data · Last checked 2026-09-13

Santo Stefano di Sessanio, Abruzzo. Ra Boe / Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE.

The stone roofs of Triora on a wooded Ligurian ridge
Liguria

Triora

419 residents. During a famine that had lasted for more than two years, Triora opened a witchcraft prosecution in the late summer of 1587.
Stone houses and a mountain lane in Ostana beneath Monviso
Piedmont

Ostana

78 residents. By the 1980s Ostana had fallen to five year-round residents; a century earlier it had reached about 1,200.
A stone street and restored medieval buildings in Venzone
Friuli Venezia Giulia

Venzone

1,941 residents. The earthquakes of 6 May and 15 September 1976 killed forty-seven people in Venzone and reduced much of the medieval centre to rubble.
Compiano and its castle above the green Taro valley
Emilia-Romagna

Compiano

1,047 residents. Compiano Castle contains the Marchesa Gambarotta house museum and the Orizzonti Massonici museum.
The brick loggia and clock tower of Offida town hall
Marche

Offida

4,569 residents. Offida's bobbin-lace museum fills seven rooms with historic and recent work.
Calcata Vecchia rising from a wooded volcanic outcrop
Lazio

Calcata

905 residents. During the Fascist period Calcata was classed as a settlement to be rehabilitated under a law written for earthquake-damaged towns.
The stone village of Santo Stefano di Sessanio below the Gran Sasso
Abruzzo

Santo Stefano di Sessanio

102 residents. The 2009 earthquake almost completely destroyed Santo Stefano di Sessanio's Medici tower.
Aerial view of the Roman streets and ruins at Saepinum
Molise

Sepino

1,815 residents. Roman Saepinum was laid out where two established routes met: the path that became the Pescasseroli-Candela drove road and the route descending from the Matese.
The abandoned stone centre of Roscigno Vecchia beneath green hills
Campania

Roscigno

570 residents. Special laws for landslide-prone settlements forced residents to leave Roscigno Vecchia between 1902 and 1908 for a new centre a few kilometres uphill.
Palazzo Risolo and the pale stone centre of Specchia
Puglia

Specchia

4,453 residents. Beneath Specchia's historic centre, guided visits follow a largely underground route through olive presses built between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Castelmezzano clustered beneath the jagged Lucanian Dolomites
Basilicata

Castelmezzano

684 residents. Castelmezzano's Norman Stair is not an ordinary lookout path.
The compact Byzantine church of Cattolica di Stilo on a rocky hillside
Calabria

Stilo

2,306 residents. The Cattolica di Stilo was founded by eastern monks between the end of the tenth and the beginning of the eleventh century.
Petralia Soprana stretched across a high Sicilian ridge
Sicily

Petralia Soprana

2,807 residents. Raffo, two kilometres from Petralia Soprana, contains an active rock-salt mine and the MACSS contemporary-art museum below ground.
A political mural of two Sardinian riders on a street in Orgosolo
Sardinia

Orgosolo

3,803 residents. Orgosolo's first recognised mural dates to 1969 and the experimental Dioniso collective, in the political setting of the Pratobello protest.