Piedmont

Piedmont is its own city in name and government, but geographically it’s an island completely surrounded by Oakland — a quirk of a 1907 incorporation race that locals still love to tell newcomers about. That independence, combined with just over a square mile of land, gives it an unusually tight civic identity for such a small footprint.

Grand 1920s and ’30s homes — Tudor, Mediterranean, and Colonial Revival styles among them — line quiet, hilly, tree-canopied streets, and the small-town rhythms of Piedmont Avenue’s shops and cafés (technically in Oakland, but treated as Piedmont’s own front door) round out daily life. The city’s parks and the Piedmont Community Hall anchor a genuinely walkable, low-key civic culture.

Piedmont’s top-rated public school system is as much a draw as the architecture, and it consistently commands some of the highest home prices in the East Bay as a result. It’s small, exclusive, and unmistakably its own place — buyers choosing Piedmont are usually choosing the schools and the address as much as the house itself.