Region
Aosta Valley
Aosta Valley has 14 towns in our catalogue; 3 carry the Borghi più belli d'Italia designation.
14 of 14 towns
14 of 14 towns
Ayas
Province: Aosta Valley
A scattered upper-valley commune of three villages under the Monte Rosa, where Walser settlers and Romance-speaking herders share the slopes below Castor and Pollux.
Aymavilles
Province: Aosta Valley
Gateway to the Gran Paradiso at 646 metres, with a four-towered Challant castle and a 3 BC Roman aqueduct above the Grand'Eyvia.
Bard
Province: Aosta Valley
A 108-person village under the largest Savoy fortress in the Alps, where 400 soldiers held off Napoleon's 40,000 for two weeks in 1800.
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 the Castello Gamba (now the Valle d'Aosta regional contemporary art museum), the medieval Castello di Ussel + the Renaissance Castello Passerin d'Entrèves, and 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 Mont Blanc, 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 village at 1,280 metres on the Via Francigena, with an open-air contemporary art museum and the region's first dairy.
Fénis
Province: Aosta Valley
Italy's most photographed medieval castle — the Castello di Fénis (14th-c, Challant family) with its double-ring of crenellated walls, eight cylindrical towers, and frescoed inner courtyard sits at the centre of a 1,770-resident Aostan commune 18 km east of Aosta, with the Valle di Clavalité Apennine reserve climbing south to 3,000m.
Fontainemore
Province: Aosta Valley
A 418-person Walser-influenced village at 760 metres in the Lys Valley, with a single-arch medieval 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, Queen Margherita summered, 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 Espace San Bernardo ski domain straddling the French border (152 km of pistes shared with La Rosière), the Rutor glacier and its tiered waterfalls behind it, and a Roman-Salassi history that goes back two millennia.
Saint-Vincent
Province: Aosta Valley
The Aosta Valley's belle-époque thermal town — a 4,400-resident commune on a sunny south-facing terrace at 575m with the Fonte Salée mineral spring (in use since 1770), the Casinò de la Vallée (Italy's second-largest legal casino since 1947), and the Matterhorn peak visible north of town.
Valtournenche
Province: Aosta Valley
The valley under the Cervino, home of the guides who raced Whymper up the mountain in 1865 and the resort of Breuil-Cervinia at its head.
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From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover
Pieve di Soligo
Province: Treviso
The market town between the Soligo and Lierza rivers in the Prosecco UNESCO zone, birthplace of the twentieth-century poet Andrea Zanzotto.
Vallefoglia
Province: Pesaro e Urbino
A 2014 merger commune at 295 meters in the Foglia valley, born from Colbordolo, birthplace of Raffaello's father, and Sant'Angelo in Lizzola.
Abano Terme
Province: Padova
Europe's oldest thermal town on the Euganean Hills' eastern slope, where 80°C bromo-iodine springs have been drawing bathers since the eighth century BC.
Bosa
Province: Oristano
A colour-washed riverside town on Sardinia's only navigable river, with a Malaspina castle on the hill and the tanneries of Sas Conzas along the Temo.
Castagnole delle Lanze
Province: Asti
An Asti hill town at 298 meters between Langhe and Monferrato, with two Baroque churches and a nineteenth-century astronomical tower.