The Medieval Villages Italy Walked Away From Are Its Best-Kept Secret

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You hear the quiet before you see anything. A narrow footbridge, a medieval gate, and then a whole world made of stone — ancient, unhurried, and almost impossibly beautiful. Italy’s borghi have been waiting for you.

What Is a Borgo?

The word simply means “village” in Italian. But in modern conversation it has come to mean something specific: ancient stone settlements, often perched on hilltops or tucked into valleys, that have been inhabited for a thousand years or more.

Italy has more of them than anywhere else in Europe. I Borghi più belli d’Italia — “The Most Beautiful Villages of Italy” — is an official association that has certified more than 350. And that’s only the ones that qualified.

Why Italy Walked Away

After the Second World War, Italy modernised quickly. New roads connected cities. Factory work paid more than farming. The young left — first to Rome and Milan, then to the Americas. The families who remained grew old. The houses fell quiet.

By the 1970s and 80s, thousands of borghi had been partly or fully abandoned. Roofs caved in. Streets fell silent. In some villages, entire neighbourhoods became uninhabitable. A way of life that had survived centuries simply stopped.

It wasn’t dramatic. It was gradual. And it left behind something extraordinary.

The €1 House Experiment

In the last decade, a curious thing happened. Some borgo mayors, desperate to reverse the decline, began offering houses for €1 — about the price of an espresso. The condition? You had to renovate within three years.

The idea spread. Sambuca di Sicilia. Mussomeli. Ollolai in Sardinia. The headlines reached the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom. Diaspora families began contacting their ancestral villages. Retirees from abroad arrived with renovation dreams.

Not every experiment worked perfectly. But the attention shifted something. People began looking at borghi differently — not as places left behind, but as places worth finding.

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The Villages Worth Every Step

Civita di Bagnoregio, in Lazio, is perhaps the most dramatic. Sitting on a crumbling plateau of volcanic tufa, accessible only by a narrow footbridge, it has just a handful of permanent residents. They call it la città che muore — the dying city. But every visitor who crosses that bridge tends to stay far longer than planned.

Pitigliano, also in Lazio, rises organically from the rock beneath it. The old stone buildings and the tufa cliff blur into one. It was once home to a significant Jewish community, and the ancient Jewish quarter is still walkable — a reminder of the many layers beneath every Italian street.

Santo Stefano di Sessanio, high in the Abruzzo mountains, was almost completely deserted when an entrepreneur arrived with a bold plan. Rather than selling individual houses, he restored the entire village and turned it into a scattered hotel — where guests sleep in ancient stone rooms while the mountains watch from every window.

If you already admire Alberobello’s remarkable trulli houses, you’ll find the borghi of Puglia offer a natural continuation — villages built with the same ingenuity and the same defiant determination to endure.

What to Expect When You Visit

Borghi are not manicured. That’s precisely the point.

Cobblestones are uneven. Restaurants may keep unusual hours. The Wi-Fi, if it exists, will likely be slow. Some shops close for three hours in the afternoon — and nobody apologises for it.

This is not failure. It is a different relationship with time. In a borgo, lunch lasts two hours because that’s how long lunch should last. The piazza fills at 6pm not because there’s anything scheduled, but because gathering at dusk is simply what you do.

For visitors accustomed to the pace of Rome or Florence, a borgo demands a small adjustment. And then, usually by the second afternoon, it delivers something those cities cannot — a particular peace found only in places that have survived everything and learned to savour what remains.

Finding Your Borgo

The richest regions for borghi are Lazio, Umbria, Tuscany, Abruzzo, and Puglia, though extraordinary examples exist across every part of the country.

If Matera’s extraordinary cave city already captivated you, the nearby borghi of Basilicata will feel like a natural next chapter. The same spirit of resilience, the same ancient stones, the same stubborn beauty.

Most borghi are best reached by car. Public transport exists but is infrequent. The drive itself — winding through hills and valleys, past olive groves and stone farmhouses — is usually part of the experience.

These villages were never built to be tourist attractions. They were built to house people who farmed the land, buried their dead in the village church, and passed recipes and habits down through the generations.

That they are still standing — still beautiful, still quietly waiting — is one of Italy’s most unexpected gifts to the curious traveller.

You Might Also Enjoy

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• The Tuscan Town They Called the Manhattan of the Middle Ages

Plan Your Italy Trip

Ready to explore Italy’s borghi and beyond? Our ultimate Italy travel guide covers everything you need to plan an unforgettable Italian adventure — from hidden villages to iconic cities.

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