In Italian they call it Il bel far niente, “the beauty of doing nothing.” It was hot and humid in Rome, and the city was lousy with sweaty tourists. I’d finished my business in Italy, and had scheduled some beautiful do-nothing time in Sperlonga, a beach town about 80 miles south of the capital in Italy's Lazio region. Sperlonga is a medieval village built atop a cliff overlooking a stretch of the Mediterranean known as the Tyrrhenian Sea.

Though it’s well-known in Italy, most Americans have never heard of the town, and those you might encounter there probably work in Europe or have family ties there that bring them back. Still, it’s one of the Borghi piu belli d’Italia, “the most beautiful villages of Italy,” designated by the Borghi Italia Tourist Network, an organization dedicated to bringing visitors to Italy’s lesser-known cultural wonders.