Italy is full of beautiful places, but you're going to want to bump the small town of Venzone to the top of your travel bucket list since it just was voted the most beautiful village in Italy in the 2017 Il Borgo dei Borghi competition.
Venzone beat out 19 other shortlisted villages to win the competition, which was decided on by a combination of online voters and a panel of judges.
Considering that Italy has been hit by several powerful earthquakes just in the last year alone, it's no surprise that the judges singled out Venzone as a prime example of post-earthquake recovery.
Even though you've probably never heard of this town in Italy's Friuli-Venezia Giulia region near the Slovenian border, here's a few reasons why you'll want to visit this charming place:
After being declared a National Monument back in 1965 for its unique Venetian-Gothic architecture and medieval walls, Venzone's historic center was nearly leveled by the earthquake of 1976. But that didn't stop Venzone's residents from rallying together to help restore their home.
By 1990, the buildings that fell were rebuilt using many of the original materials in the same fashion, according to Lonely Planet, including the Duomo di Sant'Andrea that towers over the rest of the village's red roofs.
Walking through the town's quiet lanes and beautiful squares, you'd barely know that most of the buildings were built within the last few decades.
It's not just the town that's remarkably beautiful, Venzone is also surrounded by natural beauty, including the unique gravel-bed Tagliamento River and the Julian Alps.
The town celebrates the local lavender harvest every August with a festival, but if you're not there in the summer you can still visit the Palazzo della Lavanda, which is an Instagrammer's heaven full of quirky purple items in the center of town.
That's not the only festival Venzone celebrates, either. Each October, people from as far away as Austria, Germany and Slovenia come to celebrate the Festa della Zucca, or pumpkin festival, where chefs carve fantastically intricate designs into gourds of all sizes.
So who's coming with me?
(h/t Lonely Planet)
Lyndsey Matthews is the Destination News Editor for AFAR; previously she was a Lifestyle Editor across all of Hearst Digital Media's brands, and a digital editor at Martha Stewart Weddings and Travel + Leisure.
