Petralia Soprana: Sicily's Highest Village, and Its Most Beautiful

Most “most beautiful village in Italy” claims are marketing. This one has an actual title behind it: in 2018, Petralia Soprana won Borgo dei Borghi (“Village of Villages”), a national competition run by Italian public broadcaster Rai, beating out entries from every region of the country. It’s also the highest town in the Madonie, at 1,147 meters — which means views the coastal towns simply can’t match, and a climate that feels like a different country in August.

Why this specific village won

Petralia Soprana isn’t a single-era showpiece — it’s a genuine layer cake of history. The area was inhabited going back to the pre-Roman Sicanians, one of Sicily’s oldest known populations, and the town itself carries visible traces of Byzantine, Arab, and Norman rule in its churches and noble buildings. By 1258 it appears in records as a distinct settlement from its lower neighbor, later passing through the hands of several noble families — the Ventimiglia, Centelles, Cardona, Moncada — until feudalism was abolished in 1817. None of that is staged for visitors; it’s just what centuries of continuous habitation at 1,147 meters looks like.

The Chiesa Madre and the old town

The Mother Church of Saints Peter and Paul, in Piazza del Duomo, is the town’s architectural centerpiece — a late-medieval structure rebuilt over the centuries into a two-nave church with early-1700s Baroque stucco work, plus a portico and bell tower added toward the end of that century. The facade’s portico is carried by 18 columns, wide enough that it reads more like a covered gathering space than a simple church entrance — a detail that becomes obvious once you’re standing under it rather than just looking at a photo. Beyond the church, the reason to come is simply walking the town itself: narrow stone streets, wrought-iron balconies with flowers spilling over, and mountain views around almost every corner that make it genuinely hard to believe the coast is little more than an hour’s drive away.

Petralia Soprana also keeps a lower-key artisan tradition alive: handmade musical instruments, a craft passed down in the town for generations and still practiced by a handful of local workshops today.

Piazza San Michele and Piazza del Popolo

Walk from the Duomo toward Piazza San Michele and the first thing that catches the eye is a circular fountain at its center — a small, unglamorous landmark that still functions as the square’s natural meeting point. From there, Piazza del Popolo continues the run of civic architecture: the town hall, housed in a former Carmelite convent, sits alongside the 19th-century Palazzo Pottino, whose frescoed halls now double as a permanent home for a photography exhibition by Sicilian photographer Damiano Macaluso. None of this is dressed up for tourists — it’s simply what a working Sicilian hill-town civic center looks like when nothing’s been demolished to modernize it.

The Belvedere of Santa Maria di Loreto

The single best view in Petralia Soprana isn’t from the Duomo — it’s from the Chiesa e Belvedere di Santa Maria di Loreto, a viewpoint on the far edge of town where the Madonie drop away and, on a genuinely clear day, the sightline runs all the way from Mount Etna to the sea. It’s an easy, short walk from the main piazzas, and it’s the spot locals actually mean when they tell you Petralia Soprana has “the view” — not the postcard shot of the town itself, but this one, looking out from it.

What to eat: Madonie cheese country

This is deep cheese country, and it shows on every menu in town: caciocavallo, provola, fresh and aged (salata) ricotta, and properly aged pecorino, mostly from small producers working the pastures just outside town. A handful of family-run kitchens — Trattoria da Salvatore and Ristorante Lu Carmè among the names that come up most — build entire meals around these cheeses rather than treating them as a garnish, which is the real tell that you’re eating what the town actually eats, not a tourist-season menu.

Pair it with Petralia Sottana

Petralia Sottana sits just below, close enough to combine into one real day in the inland Madonie. It’s flatter, a bit less dramatic in its views, but has its own distinct old town worth the short drive or walk between the two — treat “Petralia” as two stops, not one, if you have the time.

Getting there

By car, it’s about 1 hour 20 minutes from Palermo and under an hour from Cefalù — the realistic way to visit. A direct bus does run from both cities, but only once a day and taking 2 hours or more, which makes it workable for a dedicated overnight stay but impractical as a quick day trip without a car. If you go that route, staying up here changes the visit entirely — the village empties of day-trippers by late afternoon and you get the streets and the views to yourself.

My honest verdict

Petralia Soprana won’t be on most first-time Sicily itineraries, and that’s precisely the point — this is what the Madonie look like once you’re actually inside them, not just glancing at the mountains from the coast. Pair it with Castelbuono for a full day genuinely away from the beach-and-Baroque-town circuit most visitors stick to.

More on the area in the Cefalù region guide, and see Petralia Soprana plotted on our interactive Sicily map.