10 OF THE TINIEST TOWNS IN ITALY (AND WHAT THEY ALL HAVE IN COMMON)
When traveling to Italy, most visitors flock to major tourist destinations such as Rome, Venice, Florence, Tuscany and the Amalfi Coast – but when you’ve been around the peninsula and back again as many times as we have, sometimes it pays to change it up.
We decided to round up some of the most hidden towns in Bella Italia. By hidden, I don’t mean Taormina or Lucca – I mean off the grid. Believe it or not, the 20 least populated Italian towns are ALL located in Piemonte, the northwest corner of Italy (with just a few exceptions in bordering Lombardia and Liguria).
Piemonte sits at the base of the Alps, bordering both France and Switzerland. Its capital city is Turin and the region is famous for both its world class cuisine (read: TRUFFLES) and for highly sought after wines such as Barolo. If all this talk of enchanted villages, breathtaking mountainscapes, delectable food and velvety wines have you itching to plan a road trip to northern Italy, we’ve rounded up a selection of our favorite tiny villages – all you have to do is connect the dots!
Map of Italy
1. Morterone
The smallest town in Italy has a whopping 29 inhabitants who are mostly elderly, with the occasional young couple. At 1,000 meters above sea level, economic activity in the town is mostly tied to agriculture although you will also find a church, a playground, an ATM machine, and even a trattoria. Leisure activities in the town include (but are by no means limited to) hiking, skiing and snowshoeing as well as an open air museum of modern art.
2. Moncenisio
About 70 kilometers from Turin along the French border lies the tiny town of Moncenisio at 1460 meters above sea level and with just 37 residents. According to the earliest accounts, in medieval times the town earned its place on the map for its proximity to the border with France and the livestock path that fostered commerce between the two countries. Today the town is home to two trattorias, two pristine lakes, a church, and four small chapels.
3. Ribordone
Like many others in this collection of hidden Italian gems, Ribordone exemplifies the pattern of shrinking populations on their way to extinction over the decades due to emigration and the industrial revolution. Ribordone was once a prosperous town with 1442 residents, compared to a mere 48 today.
Travel tip: Ribordone is home to the Prascondu Sancturary, built as a shrine on the spot where a young local mute had a vision of the virgin as she gave him advice that led him to discover his voice.
4. Macra
In the sleepy valley town of Macra, the population speaks a curious dialect known as Occitan, native to parts of France, Monaco, and the Italian Occitan Valleys as well as a “linguistic island” in the southern region of Calabria where northerners settled but maintained their northern dialect.
Travel tip: The stunning San Salvatore chapel is Macra was built by Benedictine monks in the 12th century
Small Chapel in Piemonte