Hilltop Villages

Domme in Périgord Noir is a 13th-century bastide town above the Dordogne valley, its fortified gates and grid streets built for Philippe III in 1281.

With fewer than a hundred residents, Gerberoy is one of the smallest members of Les Plus Beaux Villages de France.

Gordes rises in tiers of pale limestone up a Luberon hillside, its Renaissance château rebuilt in 1525 on the walls of a 12th-century fortress.

Les Baux-de-Provence in the Alpilles crowns a limestone spur with medieval château ruins — the site that gave bauxite its name.

Pérouges near Lyon, a walled medieval village once a linen-weaving centre, is so well preserved it serves repeatedly as a film set for period productions.

Vézelay's hilltop basilica, a starting point for medieval pilgrims heading to Santiago de Compostela, is itself inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Asolo occupies a hilltop above the Prosecco-growing hills of the Veneto, a position that earned it the nickname ‘the city of a hundred horizons.’ Several Palladian villas lie within a short drive.

Castelrotto sits at the foot of the Alpe di Siusi, the largest high alpine meadow in Europe.

Civita di Bagnoregio stands alone on an eroding tufa pillar, reachable only by a footbridge — no vehicle has ever been able to reach it.

Montefalco in Umbria, the 'Balcony of Umbria' at 472 m, is the centre of Sagrantino DOCG wine country and houses Benozzo Gozzoli's Renaissance frescoes.

Pitigliano rises directly from a tufa cliff in Tuscany's Maremma, its buildings seemingly continuous with the rock beneath them.

Sovana, a frazione of Sorano with barely more than a hundred residents, sits above an Etruscan necropolis carved into the surrounding tufa cliffs.

Spello climbs a ridge of Monte Subasio in Umbria, its Roman and medieval layers visible in the same walls.

Aínsa in the Sobrarbe Pyrenees commands a promontory at two rivers' confluence, its 11th-century walled old town the former capital of the Kingdom of Sobrarbe.

Morella in Castellón at 1,004 m is enclosed by its original 2,500-metre medieval walls, crowned by a castle above a 14th-century Gothic basilica.

Alberobello in Apulia is built of trulli, dry-stone huts with conical roofs, UNESCO-listed since 1996. Its Rione Monti district remains fully inhabited.

Pienza in Tuscany's Val d'Orcia was rebuilt as an ideal Renaissance town for Pope Pius II in 1459, designed by Bernardo Rossellino. UNESCO-listed since 1996.