Presenting issue 100 of Borghi Magazine means pausing for a moment to look back at the journey we have made. The magazine was founded in November 2015. Since then, issue after issue, we have chosen to tell the story of a less obvious Italy—often far from the spotlight, yet extraordinarily rich in meaning and memory. We have seen how fragile our country’s remarkable heritage can be and how essential it is to protect it. Villages are not merely a geographical or sentimental category: they are reservoirs of civilisation, laboratories where past and future can find balance, and safeguards against standardisation and the loss of identity threatening so many places. Reaching issue 100 is therefore about more than celebrating an editorial history. It reaffirms a cultural choice: to continue giving voice to the country’s fertile margins—to what endures, what is reborn and what deserves attention even before it earns recognition.

The thread running through these one hundred issues is our belief that beauty also has an ethical value: it teaches us to look more closely, show greater respect and feel a sense of belonging toward what risks being forgotten. For us, telling the story of a village has never been an exercise in nostalgia, but an act of trust—trust in places, in the people who live there, in the young people who may rediscover them, in the communities that keep them alive and in readers who seek not only destinations in these pages, but meaning. In a world that moves quickly and flattens differences, small towns—even the most remote—continue to teach us depth, balance and a more mindful way of inhabiting the world. From late 2015 to today, one hundred issues later, Borghi Magazine continues along this path: looking where others pass by, naming what risks falling silent and recognising the value of what seemed lost. It is our way of saying that Italy’s most precious side is often the one still waiting to be truly seen—like the villages of the Marche featured in these pages; those awarded the Blue Flag or the Livio Scattolini Prize; and all the others we will introduce in future issues. Issue 100 is also a new beginning: more stories await us, more towns to encounter and more hidden heritage to reveal. This milestone was made possible by the support of publisher Adriano Marchesini, the work of the editorial team, art director, managing editor and marketing agency, our collaboration with I Borghi più belli d’Italia, and the trust of our readers.