Orvieto — Umbria · Italy →Photo: bluejayphoto / iStockAll destinations.
99 places carrying our editorial line — every one of them genuinely undertouristed, every one of them with a named editor and a real local voice.
Castelmezzano
A village glued to the Lucanian Dolomites, where the main road runs out and the path begins.
Cividale del Friuli
Where Julius Caesar's marketplace became Italy's first Lombard duchy: a UNESCO town on an emerald river at the Slovene border.
Orvieto
A flat-topped town of volcanic tufa on the Rome–Florence main line. Most visitors leave by mid-afternoon; stay a night and Orvieto becomes yours.
Pietrapertosa
The highest village in Basilicata, split by a Saracen alley and a Norman castle, twin to Castelmezzano on the opposite cliff.
Ravenna
Eight UNESCO mosaic monuments, Dante's tomb, and a direct train line: the Carinthian Door trunk route ends here, at the western edge of the Po delta.
Salento (interior)
The deep heel of Italy, where a Greek-derived language still lives in a cluster of whitewashed villages and the whole coast empties after August.
Spoleto
An ancient hill town below a papal fortress, joined by a soaring medieval bridge to a sacred wood: one of Umbria's quietest "name" towns outside festival weeks.
Trieste, through its writers
The Habsburg-Adriatic city of Joyce, Svevo and Saba, best read in October and November, when the Bora blows and the cafés half-empty.
Kranj
Slovenia's Prešeren town: a compact medieval promontory above two river canyons, open to visitors by train on the Ljubljana–Villach corridor.
Soča Valley
A turquoise river running south from Triglav, villages that remember a different war, and no fast road in from anywhere.