For an authentic glimpse of other-era Italy, a visit to the country’s small, sometimes very small hill towns (with populations under 1000 and requiring several clicks on Google Maps for their names to come into view), provides the chance to experience a way of life that seems like a post card from gentler times.

Despite their size, these medieval and Renaissance areas dotting hillsides and mountaintops house many art and architectural treasures, the patrimony of deeply layered histories often reaching to the Etruscan era.