Fénis

Fénis is here for the castle, full stop. The Castello di Fénis (built between 1242 and the 1390s by the Challant viscounts of Aosta) is the most-photographed and most-visited medieval fortress in the Valle d'Aosta, and arguably the most architecturally complete medieval castle in northern Italy — double pentagonal ring of crenellated walls, eight cylindrical corner towers, a square donjon at the centre, and the courtyard with its semicircular staircase and 15th-century fresco cycle by Giacomo Jaquerio (the same painter who did Aosta's cathedral). It's the image on every Valle d'Aosta tourist board poster, the cover of countless medieval-architecture textbooks, and it appears in dozens of films set in any vaguely medieval European setting.

The Challant ran the castle until 1716, the Savoy royals owned it 1716-1895, the Italian state restored it 1895-1939 under the architect Alfredo D'Andrade (who did similar work at Borgo Medievale in Turin), and it's been a state-run museum since 1942. The village around the castle is small — 1,770 residents across the main settlement and several upland frazioni, with a quietly handsome stone-house centro at 537m, parish church (15th c, with detached Romanesque bell tower), and the Valle di Clavalité opening south behind it. The Clavalité is a wild Apennine side-valley climbing into the Mont Avic Regional Park (one of the protected areas of the Valle d'Aosta), with marked trails up to 3,000m peaks and the Tersiva massif, larch and stone-pine forests, marmot and chamois territory.

Down at the village level, the food is Valdostan-mountain: fontina (the regional cheese, produced just up-valley), seuppa à la valpellinentse (a thick bread-cheese-cabbage soup, the regional warming dish), Mocetta cured beef, lard d'Arnad pork lard from the next village, polenta concia, and the local Petit Rouge red. The Sagra del Castello in mid-August is the year's main event with a medieval-pageant + costumed-procession theme. Aosta — capital of the Valle d'Aosta with its Roman walls and arch — is 18 km west.