Little-Known Seaside and Lakeside Villages in Italy

Looking for little-known seaside villages in Italy in summer almost always means reckoning with the season: the most photographed towns of the Cinque Terre or Sirmione fill up between July and August until they lose the very sense of what made them beautiful. And yet the peninsula has hundreds of kilometres of coastline and a chain of lakes where liveable villages still exist, reachable on foot or by ferry, made of little harbours, stone houses and calm waters. This guide gathers eleven of them, split between sea and lake, chosen because they stay manageable even in the warm months if you arrive early in the morning or outside the weekend.

Seaside villages

By the sea: fishing harbours and clifftop centres

In Liguria, the starting point is Camogli and Boccadasse, two fishing harbours where Genoa slows down: tall, narrow houses painted in bright colours, a pebble beach and working boats still hauled up onto the shore. From Camogli begins the trail that leads to San Fruttuoso, the abbey with no roads, a bay reachable only on foot or by boat: a Benedictine abbey set between the woods and the water, with no cars and no asphalt. It is the clearest example of how the absence of a road keeps the crowds at bay.

Heading down along the Tyrrhenian you reach Civita di Maratea, the ancient heart above the sea of Basilicata. Maratea is Basilicata's only stretch of sea, and its medieval core, a maze of alleys and stone churches above the coast, stays surprisingly quiet compared to the beaches below. Further south, in Sicily, the climb up to Cefalù: the Temple of Diana and the megalithic walls on the Rocca is well worth it: while the Norman seafront gets crowded, the path up to the Rocca, with its 4th-century temple and cyclopean walls, offers the village seen from above and almost deserted.

Even big cities hide human-scale seafaring quarters: in Naples, Borgo Marinari and the Pallonetto, the Naples you reach on foot is a pedestrian island of boats and restaurants at the foot of Castel dell'Ovo, a stone's throw from the chaos of via Caracciolo. In Tuscany, the inland Maremma offers Pereta, the walled stone village the Maremma keeps in silence: it is not on the water, but it is the ideal base for anyone who wants the sea of the Argentario without sleeping among the crowds of the coast. In Sardinia, finally, the Sinis peninsula preserves Tharros, the Phoenician-Roman city crumbling into the sea of the Sinis, ruins overlooking the water just minutes from the quartz beaches of Is Arutas.

Lakeside villages

On the lakes: calm waters and tucked-away towns

The lake chapter is where undertourism pays off most, because you only need to move a few shores over to change the pace. On Lake Garda, instead of heading straight for Sirmione, it is worth stopping at Bardolino and the Romanesque church of San Severo that the lake never tells you about: a town of wine and cycle paths where, a few metres from the lakefront, you step into an 11th-century church covered in frescoes and almost always empty. On Lake Maggiore, the Lombard shore of Leggiuno offers Santa Caterina del Sasso, the monastery suspended over Lake Maggiore, clinging to the rock face sheer above the water and reachable by boat or by a flight of steps: arriving early means having it almost to yourself.

On the border with Lombardy, on the shores of Lake Lugano, there is the Baptistery of Riva San Vitale, 5th-century stone on the lakeshore: the oldest Christian building in Switzerland, in a lakeside village few Italians know. And not all lakes are the pre-Alpine ones: in Sardinia, in the heart of Barbagia, Gavoi looks out over its slow-paced centre onto Lake Gusana, amid fiore sardo cheese and mountain waters far from beach tourism.

The right time

When to go

To really enjoy them, choose late spring and early autumn, or the weekdays of high summer, arriving in the morning. If you are after other alternatives not on the site, keep in mind Tellaro and Portovenere in Liguria, Numana and Grottammare in the Marche, Posada in Sardinia, and among the lakes Orta San Giulio, Mergozzo and Monte Isola on Lake Iseo: all villages that reward those who travel out of season.