Hillside Villages

Anghiari in Tuscany's Valtiberina sits above the plain where the 1440 Battle of Anghiari was fought, the subject of Leonardo da Vinci's lost fresco.

Arquà Petrarca in the Euganean Hills, Veneto, was the final home of Petrarch (1370–1374), whose house and marble tomb still stand in this medieval village.

Civitella del Tronto in Abruzzo is crowned by Italy's largest fortress, which surrendered last at Italian unification on 20 March 1861.

Albarracín in Teruel wraps a Guadalaviar river loop at 1,171 m, its salmon-pink medieval walls nearly intact, surrounded by UNESCO-listed Neolithic rock art.

Frigiliana in the Málaga Axarquía preserves Andalusia's best Moorish barrio, its street panels depicting the 1569 last stand of the Morisco population.

Puebla de Sanabria in Zamora commands a hilltop with a 15th-century frontier castle above the Tera river, gateway to Iberia's largest glacial lake.

Conques is a steep Aveyron valley village on the Camino de Santiago, UNESCO-listed since 1998 for its Romanesque Abbey Church of Sainte-Foy.