Jump in a car and head into the countryside anywhere in Italy and it almost certainly won’t be long before you come across a beautiful historical village.

More than 250 villages here have been awarded the official status of ‘i borgi più bello d’Italia’ and there are hundreds more that, while they don’t meet the strict criteria required to make that list, are nonetheless also very beautiful. So if it’s a picture-postcard pretty, medieval walled village on a hill you’re after, then Italy is the place to be.

Montegridolfo

About 3 hours’ drive south-east of Bologna, Montegridolfo is one of those official ‘most beautiful villages of Italy’. We spent a couple of days there using it as a base to explore the countryside around the border of Emilia-Romagna and Marche.

Montegridolfo dates from the Middle Ages and for much of its early history was the subject of a territorial dispute between two of the region’s most powerful military families. The battles were fierce; the town had to be largely rebuilt in 1137. Today 4 families live in the village’s 3 streets. There’s a fully functioning town hall, a Post Office (which doubles as a bank), a bar and the Palazzo Viviani, once the town’s main fortress and now a beautiful hotel.

Gradara

Not far from away is Gradara, another village that certainly deserves its place on the ‘most beautiful’ list. Surrounded by a double line of medieval walls, Gradara’s huge castle is one of the best preserved in Italy. It’s also the location for the story of doomed lovers Paolo and Francesca in Dante’s Inferno.

Also in Marche is the town that’s been described as the ‘Cradle of the Renaissance’. Urbino is set between two steep sloping hills and from the car park below, its fortified walls seem impenetrable. Fortunately, though, there’s a handy lift nearby to whisk visitors up to the town’s centre.

Urbino

In the 1400s Duke Federico da Montefeltro tranformed Urbino, and the flourishing city attracted the foremost artists and scholars of the time.Today Federico’s Palazzo Ducale provides a glimpse of what life was like inside one the most important courts of Renaissance Italy.

Three days, three towns, a thousand years of history. It seems a lot to take in, but we enjoy discovering these places and then learning a bit about them. The real pleasure for us, though, is in simply being there. And wandering around streets that have existed for centuries is all the motivation we need to start planning the next leg of our ‘beautiful villages of Italy’ discovery tour.

 

Montegridolfo
Gradara
Urbino