Region
Aosta Valley
Aosta Valley has 14 towns in our catalogue; 8 carry the Ski Area designation.
14 of 14 towns
14 of 14 towns
Ayas
Province: Aosta Valley
A scattered upper-valley commune of three villages, where Walser settlers and Romance-speaking herders share the slopes below Castor and Pollux.
Aymavilles
Province: Aosta Valley
A village at 646 metres above a river gorge, where the road up the valley begins and a Roman aqueduct still crosses the Grand'Eyvia on a single arch.
Bard
Province: Aosta Valley
A 108-person village under the largest Savoy fortress in the Alps.
Châtillon
Province: Aosta Valley
The Aosta Valley's three-castle commune, a 4,358-resident town at 549m at the mouth of the Valtournenche where it meets the main valley, with direct access up the road to the Cervino/Matterhorn at Cervinia 26 km north.
Cogne
Province: Aosta Valley
The mining town turned capital of the Gran Paradiso, the Aosta Valley's largest commune with 95 percent of its land inside Italy's oldest park.
Courmayeur
Province: Aosta Valley
The Italian base of the 4,810-meter peak, a Roman waystation on the Via delle Gallie that became the country's highest commune and its best-known ski address.
Donnas
Province: Aosta Valley
The first DOC of Valle d'Aosta, a Nebbiolo-on-terraces wine town at 322 metres where the Roman Via delle Gallie was carved into living rock.
Etroubles
Province: Aosta Valley
A 478-person Alpine village at 1,280 metres, with an open-air contemporary art museum and the region's first dairy.
Fénis
Province: Aosta Valley
The Castello di Fénis, with its double ring of crenellated walls, eight cylindrical towers, and frescoed inner courtyard, sits at the centre of a small Aostan commune east of Aosta, with an Apennine reserve climbing south to 3,000m.
Fontainemore
Province: Aosta Valley
A 418-person Walser-influenced village at 760 metres in the Lys Valley, marked by its stone bridge and a five-yearly pilgrimage to Oropa.
Gressoney-Saint-Jean
Province: Aosta Valley
A Walser village in the Lys valley where Titsch is still spoken and the Lyskamm glacier closes the view.
La Thuile
Province: Aosta Valley
Italy's gateway to the Petit Saint-Bernard pass: a 1,441m alpine village under Mont Blanc, with the Rutor glacier and its tiered waterfalls behind it and a Roman-Salassi history that goes back two millennia.
Saint-Vincent
Province: Aosta Valley
A belle-époque thermal town on a sunny south-facing terrace at 575m, where a mineral spring, a landmark casino, and a Matterhorn view north of town define a resort built for the 19th-century cure.
Valtournenche
Province: Aosta Valley
The valley under the Cervino, home of the guides who raced Whymper up the mountain in 1865.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover
Bernalda
Province: Matera
A 127-meter hill town between the Bradano and Basento, Francis Ford Coppola's ancestral home, holding the Magna Graecia columns of the Tavole Palatine.
Pietracamela
Province: Teramo
A village of 218 people clinging at 1,005 meters under the north wall of Corno Piccolo, birthplace of Italian Apennine climbing in 1925.
Dozza
Province: Bologna
A 190-meter painted borgo above the Sellustra valley, where contemporary artists have repainted the house walls every two years since 1960.
Gangi
Province: Palermo
A Madonie hill town stacked in concentric rings at 1,011 meters, RAI's Borgo dei Borghi 2014 and the launching pad for the one-euro-house programme.
Gravina in Puglia
Province: Bari
Puglia's deepest gravina: a Bari-province town of 42,700 built on the lip of a 100m-deep limestone canyon, its cliffs threaded with rupestrian cave churches.