La Thuile

La Thuile sits at 1,441m in the upper Valdigne, the last Italian village before the Petit Saint-Bernard pass crosses into France's Tarentaise valley. Population 790 year-round; the kind of place where Mont Blanc is the western skyline and where the Romans built a paved road over the col in the 1st century BC — the original Alpis Graia route from Augusta Praetoria (Aosta) to Lugdunum (Lyon). The village's first identity is winter: Espace San Bernardo is the cross-border ski domain La Thuile shares with La Rosière in France, 152 km of pistes between 1,200m and 2,642m, with ski-to-ski-lifts crossings at the top of the col — buy one ski pass, ski two countries.

It's known among Italians as the most reliable big snow in the Western Alps; FIS World Cup downhill races run here regularly. The summer identity is the Rutor — the third-largest glacier in the Valle d'Aosta, 8 km² of ice on the south wall of the valley, with the spectacular Cascate del Rutor (three tiered glacier-fed waterfalls accessible by a half-day walk from town) as the postcard image and the trail up to the Rifugio Deffeyes (2,494m) for proper alpine views. Cross-border drives: the SS26 climbs the cobblestoned Strada del Piccolo San Bernardo to the col (2,188m, open mid-June to mid-October), where a Bronze Age stone circle (the Cromlech du Petit Saint Bernard, 72m diameter) sits next to the 11th-century Hospice founded by Bernard of Menthon.

The food is Valdostan-alpine: fontina (the regional cheese, produced just down-valley), seuppa à la Valpellinentse (bread-cheese-cabbage soup), polenta concia, Mocetta cured beef, the local Bonbon de Val d'Aoste génépy liqueur. La Thuile's blueberry harvest at high altitude makes the Sagra del Mirtillo (mid-August) the year's main civic event.