The 8 best high-altitude villages within 90 minutes of Bolzano

Corvara in Badia

Why visit Corvara in Badia

Corvara sits at 1,568 metres in a wide basin at the head of the Val Badia, below the rock spire of the Sassongher and inside the Dolomites UNESCO area. Ladin is the everyday language: in the 2024 census 87 percent of residents named it as their first tongue, with Italian and German distant second and third.

The settlement was a scattered group of farms until tourism arrived in the early twentieth century, and Corvara is considered the birthplace of organised Alpine tourism in the Val Badia. The village is one of four bases on the Sellaronda, the forty-kilometre ski circuit that loops the Sella massif through Corvara, Arabba, Canazei and Selva di Val Gardena on a single lift pass.

Above the village, the Pralongià plateau opens a long view to the Marmolada glacier. The Gran Risa piste at the next hamlet of La Villa hosts the men's giant slalom on the World Cup tour each December.

The village sits at 1568 metres.

What to see in Corvara in Badia

• Chiesa di Santa Caterina. Late Gothic church first documented in 1347 and consecrated to Saint Catherine in 1452, holding the only well-preserved winged altar in Val Badia, dated 1520.
• Sassongher. Rock peak at 2,665 metres above the village, the signature silhouette of Corvara and a classic via ferrata climb on the eastern flank.
• Altopiano di Pralongià. Grassy plateau above the village reached by cable car, with open views to the Marmolada glacier and the surrounding Dolomite groups.

How to get to Corvara in Badia

There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Bolzano is roughly 75 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Corvara in Badia

Falcade

Why visit Falcade

Falcade sits at 1,148 meters in the upper Biois valley, the southwestern corner of the Agordino, ringed by the Focobon group, the Pale di San Martino, the Marmolada and the Civetta. First settlers arrived between the tenth and eleventh centuries, and trade with the neighboring Fassa and Fiemme valleys built through the medieval period, carried over the col that still connects the Agordino to Trentino.

The village works as a hinge between two mountain worlds: the sharp Focobon spires and the broader Pale di San Martino to the west face each other across the valley, with the pass threading between them as it has since travelers first needed shelter there. Summer walkers follow the Alta Via 2 through this gap, between peaks that were shaped by the same geology the UNESCO listing recognizes.

The valley's long function as a crossing point, medieval trade route, refuge, ski link, explains why a settlement this size sits exactly where the Agordino gives way to Trentino.

The village sits at 1148 metres.

What to see in Falcade

• Focobon group. The massif rises directly north of the village, its spires visible from the valley floor. The Alta Via 2 threads past it toward the Forcella delle Comelle.
• Ski Civetta and Trevalli. Linked ski domain across the Falcade-Le Buse and Passo San Pellegrino-Alpe Lusia areas, slopes up to 2,500 meters.
• Passo San Pellegrino. 1,918-meter col into the Val di Fiemme, with a travelers' hospice documented from 1358 and now a working ski station.

How to get to Falcade

There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Bolzano is roughly 77 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Falcade

Canazei

Why visit Canazei

Canazei sits at 1,465 metres at the head of the Val di Fassa, one of the thirty highest towns in Italy, ringed by the Marmolada, the Sella Group and the Sassolungo. The commune includes the hamlets of Alba, Gries and Penia, which run together with the central village along the upper Avisio river.

Eight in ten residents speak Ladin as their first language, part of the small Dolomitic minority recognised by the autonomous statute, and the local Folk Group preserves the costumes, music and language traditions of the valley. Four ski areas connect from the village base: Belvedere, Ciampac, Col Rodella and the Marmolada cable car from Malga Ciapèla, all part of the Sellaronda and the wider Dolomiti Superski circuit.

The Pordoi cable car climbs to the Terrazza delle Dolomiti at 2,950 metres for a full view of the surrounding peaks, including the Marmolada at 3,343 metres, the highest summit in the Dolomites and a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2009.

The village sits at 1465 metres.

What to see in Canazei

• Marmolada. Highest summit in the Dolomites at 3,343 metres, reached by cable car from Malga Ciapèla above Canazei, with the only Dolomitic glacier on its northern face.
• Passo Pordoi. Dolomite road pass at 2,239 metres with a cable car to Sass Pordoi at 2,950 metres, called the Terrazza delle Dolomiti for its 360-degree view.
• Belvedere Ski Area. Main winter base of Canazei, gondola-linked to the Sellaronda circuit and the lift system across the four Ladin valleys of the Sella group.

How to get to Canazei

There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Bolzano is roughly 86 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Canazei

Moena

Why visit Moena

Moena sits at 1,184 metres at the entrance to Val di Fassa, which climbs north toward Canazei and the Sella massif. To the southeast a side valley rises toward the Passo San Pellegrino and the Marmolada group, while a plateau above the village, reached by cable car, opens onto the Catinaccio, Latemar and Pale di San Martino to the south.

The village is the largest in the valley and functions as its entrance point, with the high peaks visible on three sides and the pastures of San Pellegrino working land rather than backdrop. What holds the place together is less the geography than what the two festivals and the church commemorate: a language kept alive as an everyday tongue, a costume festival built around a foreign soldier's arrival, and a painter who left and came back.

Moena reads less like a single Alpine village and more like a crossing point, between valleys, and between a local story and the outside events that keep getting folded into it.

The village sits at 1184 metres.

What to see in Moena

• Chiesa di San Vigilio. Parish church rebuilt across the centuries, with a gilded wooden altar by Valentino Poschiavin and 18th-century paintings by Valentino Rovisi. It also holds work by Domenico Chiocchetti.
• Chiesa di San Volfango. Small Romanesque church next to the parish, with 15th-century frescoes and a wooden Baroque ceiling carved by Giovanni Guadagnini in the 17th century.
• Museo Ladin de Fascia (sezione Moena). The Ladin cultural museum network with a Moena exhibit on local language, costume and rural life in the lower Val di Fassa.

How to get to Moena

There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Bolzano is roughly 65 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Moena

St. Ulrich

Why visit St. Ulrich

The valley climbs east from the Eisack toward the Sella and the Sassolungo, and the town sits at its middle point. Almost all residents speak Ladin at home, and signage runs trilingual in Ladin, German and Italian.

Three cable cars leave the village in three directions: one to the northwest onto a plateau, one north onto a long ridge below the Odle, and one south onto a high meadow that forms the valley's southern edge. The museum inside the Cësa di Ladins holds the record of the valley's carving tradition alongside fossils from the surrounding peaks and material on Luis Trenker, the mountaineer-actor-director who came from here.

The layout, a village hemmed by three lifts and named for the saint of its own parish church, reads as a place organized entirely around the ground it sits on: craft below, peaks and plateaus in every direction above.

The village sits at 1236 metres.

What to see in St. Ulrich

• Parish church (St. Ulrich/San Udalrico). Neoclassical church with Baroque elements, rebuilt in the late 18th century, dedicated to the Epiphany and to St. Ulrich, the patron saint who gives the town its German name.
• Museum Gherdëina. Local-heritage museum inside the Cësa di Ladins documenting four centuries of woodcarving, wooden toys, sacred sculpture, Dolomite fossils and the Trenker family archive.
• Seceda. Long limestone ridge reached by cable car from the village, with the Odle/Geisler peaks rising sharply to the north and high meadows dropping toward the valley.

How to get to St. Ulrich

There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Bolzano is roughly 43 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about St. Ulrich

Sterzing

Why visit Sterzing

Vipiteno sits at 948 metres in the upper Wipptal, twelve kilometres south of the Brenner Pass and the Austrian border, with the Eisack river running through the medieval town and the Stubai Alps rising on three sides. The German-speaking population calls it Sterzing and outnumbers the Italian speakers by roughly three to one.

The town grew rich in the late fifteenth century from silver and lead mined in the Schneeberg deposits of the Ridnaun and Pflersch valleys to the west, and from its position on the Brenner trade route. The mines belonged to the Fuggers of Augsburg, the banking family who financed Habsburg emperors; Vipiteno is still sometimes called Fuggerstadt.

The Zwölferturm, a forty-six metre tower built in 1472, stands at the centre of Piazza Città and divides the Altstadt from the Neustadt, the two halves of the medieval town. Both halves are lined with painted facades, oriel windows and stepped gables built when the silver flowed.

The village sits at 948 metres.

What to see in Sterzing

• Zwölferturm. Forty-six metre tower built in 1472 at the centre of Piazza Città, dividing the Altstadt from the Neustadt and serving as the town's symbol.
• Altstadt and Neustadt. Two halves of the medieval town on either side of the Zwölferturm, lined with painted facades, oriel windows and stepped gables from the silver-mining century.
• Schneeberg mining museum. Provincial mining museum in the Ridnaun valley west of Vipiteno, on the site of the Fugger-era silver and lead workings that funded the town's wealth.

How to get to Sterzing

There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Bolzano is roughly 68 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Sterzing

Kastelruth

Why visit Kastelruth

Castelrotto, in German Kastelruth and in Ladin Ciastel, sits at 1,060 metres on a shelf below the Sciliar, twenty kilometres northeast of Bolzano. The commune's territory rises from 720 metres at San Vigilio to over 2,400 metres on the Sciliar massif, with the Alpe di Siusi reached from within that territory.

The name first appears in the tenth century and goes back to the Castellum Ruptum, a destroyed castle on the Calvary hill above the village, so the hill above the square and the name on the map are the same story told twice. Of around 6,500 residents, 82 per cent speak German as their first language, 15 per cent Ladin and 3 per cent Italian.

That balance, and the position on a shelf between the valley floor and the high meadow above it, is what gives the village its Tyrolean character rather than an Italian one: a settlement whose centre, church tower, and surrounding pasture all sit within sight of each other, with the mountain doing most of the work of orientation.

The village sits at 1060 metres.

What to see in Kastelruth

• Campanile della Parrocchiale. Standing apart from the parish church of Saints Peter and Paul, the tower is visible from the surrounding pastures long before the village itself comes into view.
• Chiesa Parrocchiale dei Santi Pietro e Paolo. Baroque interior beside the detached tower, the principal religious building of the commune since the medieval period.
• Alpe di Siusi/Seiser Alm. Reached by cable car from Siusi, the meadow opens out with the Sciliar and Sassolungo on either side, a scale that is hard to read from photographs alone.

How to get to Kastelruth

There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Bolzano is roughly 44 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Kastelruth

Brunico

Why visit Brunico

Brunico, Bruneck in German, sits at 838 metres in the eastern Alto Adige, in the Val Pusteria. The name comes from the castle built above the settlement, and the town below grew up around it rather than the other way round.

First documented as Bruneke in 1256, it received weekly market rights and the privilege of high justice, and grew rich in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries on the Augsburg-Venice trade that ran across the valley, the same trade that filled the Stadtgasse with merchant houses. The town has three distinct layers that sit close together but answer different purposes: the castle above holding the seat of the former prince-bishops, the walled Stadtgasse below as the commercial spine between the four gates, and Teodone at the edge of town, where the Mair am Hof Residence and its rebuilt farmhouses preserve a rural way of life that the town centre does not.

The mountain above the valley, reached from the town, adds a fourth register entirely, modern and built for a single striking structure rather than for defence or trade. Together these layers show a town shaped by three different economies in three different eras: episcopal power, alpine commerce, and now winter tourism, each leaving its own mark rather than replacing what came before.

The village sits at 838 metres.

What to see in Brunico

• Castello di Brunico. The castle sits above the town as the former summer residence of the Brixen bishops. The museum inside occupies rooms that still read as a bishop's seat rather than a purpose-built gallery.
• Stadtgasse. Pedestrian street between the four gates, its townhouses carrying bay windows and ornate shop signs at close range, the kind of detail that only shows up on foot.
• Museo Etnografico Sudtirolese. South Tyrolean Folklore Museum in the Mair am Hof Residence at Teodone, built 1690-1700, with twenty-four rebuilt farmhouses from across the province in its open-air section.

How to get to Brunico

There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Bolzano is roughly 69 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Brunico