The Urban Intelligence (UI) paradigm conceived by CNR consists of an ecosystem of digital technologies joined within a Digital Twin (DT) of the city aimed at improving the city governance towards goals addressed also by the UN Agenda 2030, such as urban environment, sustainability and resilience, wellbeing and quality of life, local development, and social inclusion. In particular, UI provides a set of candidate policies in complex scenarios, and supports policy makers and stakeholders in designing shared, evidence-based, and integrated solutions. UI is being applied for the first time to two Italian cities, Matera and Catania, paving the way for a deeper scientific framing of the paradigm, as well as for the technological development and testing of the core UI ecosystem in real-life situations. The paper introduces the UI key-concepts and components, illustrates the ongoing experimentations in these pilot cities related to the development of two DTs on parts of the urban areas, and presents some initial results.