The best mountain towns within two hours of Turin
Turin sits with its back to the Alps, and the mountains begin closer than most visitors expect. Drive west into the Val Chisone or the Valle Po and the houses turn to dry stone under heavy slate roofs, with balconies of weathered larch stacked for drying hay. The eating is high-country eating: rye bread, toma and other alpine cheeses, polenta with game, gnocchi alla bava, honey from summer pasture. Late spring brings meltwater and wildflower meadows, autumn brings chestnuts and the first snow on the ridgelines, and winter turns the same valleys over to skiers and ski-touring.
The obvious version of the Piedmontese mountains is Sestriere and the wider Via Lattea, built for the Winter Olympics and geared to volume. Car parks, lift queues and purpose-built apartment blocks are what a busy February weekend looks like there, and prices follow. It skis well and it was designed to, but the architecture is machinery rather than village, and very little of the older valley life survives inside it.
Those valleys carry on above and beyond the resorts. The same larch woods, fortress walls, walking passes and mountain dairies continue up the Valle Varaita, the Val Chisone, the Gran Paradiso side valleys, the Walser settlements of the Lys and the Ligurian Alps behind Garessio, and they carry on into towns where fewer people go. Every one on this list sits in the mountains proper, and each is within about two hours of the centre of Turin.
Of the 84 communes we have mapped in a 120-minute drive of Turin, 10 qualify as mountain towns: each sits in the mountains proper. The smallest, Ostana, has 85 residents.
Two more lists worth reading alongside this one: The best mountain towns in Piemonte and The best ski towns in the province of Valle d'Aosta/Vallée d'Aoste.
Ostana
Why visit Ostana
Ostana sits at 1,280m on the south-facing slope of the upper Po valley, in the Occitan linguistic island that runs across the upper valleys of Cuneo and Torino provinces, a dialect still spoken by maybe 50,000 people. In 1921 the village had 1,200 residents working rye, pasture and chestnut at altitude; by 1985 that had fallen to 25, with over 60 houses in ruin and the village close to abandoned, near-officially so.
The reversal began in 1985 when the newly elected mayor, an architect named Giacomo Lombardo, set a 30-year masterplan in motion: rebuild the ruined houses in their original 17th-19th-century stone-and-larch style, draw in residents through Occitan culture, and reposition the village as both an alpine architecture showcase and a cultural centre for that language. It worked on its own terms.
By 2024 the population had climbed back to 85, still small but stable, the demographic curve reversed rather than merely slowed, and the 60-plus restored houses carry insulation modern enough to meet Class A energy ratings behind their traditional stone and larch. The cultural centre, combining library, restaurant and events space, has anchored the new community life since 2012.
The village holds the Borghi piu belli d'Italia inscription despite its tiny population, and architectural press across Europe has taken to citing the case as a model for alpine village rebirth generally. The upper village of restored houses and the lower functions of trail junction and literary festival now depend on each other: walkers on the long-distance trail that crosses the village, and on the former royal hunting trail alongside it, pass through a place that would have had nothing to offer them forty years ago, and the writers who come each year for the minority-language literary prize, now in its fifteenth year and drawing entrants from Occitan to Sardinian to Maori to Welsh, stay in houses that were rubble within living memory.
The food is Occitan-alpine: gnocchi con bagna cauda, cunsa di bietole, raviolas di rapa, raclette and fontina mountain cheese, with Barolo and Barbaresco from the Langhe 60 km east. Like other alpine villages, Ostana goes quiet in winter, its high season running June to September.
What the demographic curve and the rebuilding record show together is a village that did not simply survive its emptying out but rebuilt itself around the very things, language and landscape, that might otherwise have been lost with it.
The village sits at 1280 metres.
What to see in Ostana
- Monviso direct view (3,841m). Belvedere terraces across the centro line up on the pyramid face-on, the angle that made the village's postcard reputation.
- Restored 17th-19th-c stone borgo. Larch-and-stone houses standing where ruins stood a generation ago, the insulation invisible behind old materials. Streets built for a population many times the current one, now filled in more slowly.
- Occitan culture + Premio Ostana. The Occitan dialect is audible in the village rather than archived, and the Premio Ostana, Scritture in Lingua Madre, brings minority-language writers here once a year.
How to get to Ostana
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Torino is roughly 94 minutes away by road.
Our tip
Ostana is alpine-seasonal — June through September is the high season for trails + alpine activities + the Premio Ostana literary festival (late June). May and October are shoulder for cooler hiking. Winter is genuinely Alpine at 1,280m with heavy snow possible Nov-April, ski touring + winter walks but most services scaled back.
Usseaux
Why visit Usseaux
Usseaux sits at 1,416 meters in the upper Val Chisone, fifty-five kilometers west of Torino on the road that climbs toward the Colle delle Finestre. The commune holds 175 residents across the capoluogo and four high hamlets: Balboutet, Laux, Fraisse and Pourrieres, each with its own parish and its own dialect inflection.
In 1343 these communities joined the autonomous Escartons Republic, a federation of alpine villages that bought their freedom from the Dauphin and self-governed in Occitan for four hundred years until Napoleon dissolved them. The Waldensian Reformation reached the valley in the sixteenth century and left a network of temples on the slopes below.
The contemporary signature of Usseaux is the murales project: more than forty paintings on house walls showing alpine work, animals and peasant scenes, layered over stone facades that already carry sundials and carved lintels. Balboutet faces south and reads its hours from those dials.
Laux holds a small lake at the foot of the meadows above the village.
The village sits at 1416 metres.
What to see in Usseaux
- I Murales. More than forty painted murals across stone facades in the capoluogo and the borgate, depicting alpine work, peasant scenes and forest animals.
- Balboutet. South-facing hamlet known for the sundials painted and carved across the facades of its stone houses, marking time in alpine tradition.
- Lago del Laux. Small alpine lake on the meadows above the hamlet of Laux, a short walk from the village and ringed by fishing huts.
How to get to Usseaux
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Torino is roughly 92 minutes away by road.
Our tip
June through September is the open alpine season at 1,416 meters: meadows in flower above the borgate, trails through the Orsiera-Rocciavrè park clear of snow, and the Lago del Laux walkable from the village in twenty minutes. December through March is the winter window, when the Vialattea ski domain a short drive west fills the valley and snow holds long on the murales walls. April, May, October and November are the difficult months.
Ronco Canavese
Why visit Ronco Canavese
The commune's territory climbs from the valley floor around 774 meters up to alpine summits above 3,400 meters, much of it inside the protected area of the park. The first settlements between the tenth and eleventh centuries cleared land the Romans had left forested; the name comes from the Latin runcus, ground newly broken.
The first parish was recorded in the thirteenth century. Two hundred and seventy-one people live in the commune year-round, spread across the capoluogo and a dozen hamlets that make up the Valle Soana.
The park visitor centre based here turns that geography into its subject, tracking the biodiversity, ibex, chamois and golden eagle among it, that the valley's climb from 774 to over 3,400 meters supports. The Comuni Virtuosi recognition signals a working line on waste, water and community use of public land.
A village this size, spread this thin across a valley this steep, has had to make an ongoing practice of managing what little flat ground and shared resource it has.
The village sits at 956 metres.
What to see in Ronco Canavese
- Parco Nazionale del Gran Paradiso. Reached on the Piemonte side from the Valle Soana, home to ibex, chamois, marmots and golden eagles.
- Centro Visitatori del Parco. Park visitor centre titled 'Tradizioni e biodiversità in una Valle Fantastica', dedicated to the natural and cultural heritage of the valley.
- Frazioni della Valle Soana. Stone hamlets scattered up the valley, where the local language is still spoken in households and on the trail signs.
How to get to Ronco Canavese
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Torino is roughly 88 minutes away by road.
Our tip
May through October is the window when Ronco Canavese is fully reachable and the Gran Paradiso opens to walkers. June through September is the high season for the park: ibex on the upper slopes, the GTA running through the valley, and refuges staffed. July and August are the busiest months in the hamlets, though crowds stay modest by alpine standards.
Fontainemore
Why visit Fontainemore
Fontainemore is the easternmost commune of the Aosta Valley, set against the Mont Mars Nature Reserve in the middle of the Lys Valley. The Lys was settled in the Middle Ages by Walser communities from the upper valley, who left fragments of patois further upstream along with their building style.
The toponym comes from either Fontaine de Saint-Maur or Fontaine de la mort, the second tied to local legend rather than record. The historic centre and the parish church sit close together at the valley floor, the working part of the village grouped around its bridge, while the reserve and the pilgrimage track rise above toward the pass.
Fontainemore was admitted to Borghi più Belli d'Italia in September 2023. The village reads as a settlement shaped as much by the route passing over it as by the valley it sits in: a crossing point first, a destination after.
The village sits at 760 metres.
What to see in Fontainemore
- Ponte medievale sul Lys. The arch clears the river next to the parish church and carries a footpath rather than road traffic, having outlasted its original use.
- Chiesa parrocchiale di San Giovanni Battista. Dedicated to John the Baptist, the church has stood as the religious centre of the village since the late Middle Ages, set right beside the bridge.
- Centro storico. The rows sit tight together: haylofts, stalls and houses under one layout, balconies still carrying flowers against the stone and wood.
How to get to Fontainemore
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Torino is roughly 82 minutes away by road.
Our tip
May through October is the open window. May greens the lower slopes and reopens the Mont Mars reserve trails, June and July bring high-summer hiking and the longest days, and September and October give the autumn colour and chestnut harvest along the lower Lys. August is warm by Valdostan standards and the village fills with returning families.
Fenestrelle
Why visit Fenestrelle
Fenestrelle sits in the middle of Val Chisone, fifty kilometers west of Torino on the road toward Sestriere. The Romans called this point Finis Terrae Cotii, the border of Cottius's land, and from the twelfth century onward the valley held a strong Waldensian community, long before any fortress stood here.
Construction on the ridge began in 1728, commissioned to secure the border against France after the Treaty of Utrecht handed Val Chisone to Piedmont, and work continued for around 120 years. What resulted sits apart from the village in every sense: the settlement stays put at the valley floor while the fortifications climb the slope above it, three separate forts staged up the ridge and joined by a single stair.
The village is the base point of a line that keeps rising until it reaches the crest, so that the same walk that starts among houses ends at open rock looking down over the whole valley. Fenestrelle today is best understood as the foot of that climb, a border town that turned into the ground floor of its own fortress.
The village sits at 1154 metres.
What to see in Fenestrelle
- Forte di Fenestrelle. The full system stretches over the ridge above the village, three connected forts joined by the covered staircase, standing above Val Chisone.
- Forte San Carlo. Lowest of the three forts, the entrance complex above the village at 1,154 meters, where the climb up the stairs begins.
- Forte Tre Denti. Middle fort of the system, home to the Garitta del Diavolo viewpoint at 1,400 meters over Val Chisone.
How to get to Fenestrelle
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Torino is roughly 84 minutes away by road.
Our tip
June through September is when the fortress is fully open for guided visits, the high gradients of the staircase are walkable, and Val Chisone trails above 1,500 meters are clear of snow. December through March is the alpine winter season: the Vialattea ski domain is twenty minutes away, the lower fort is accessible in snow, and the upper forts close. April, May, October and November are the difficult shoulder months.
Gressoney-Saint-Jean
Why visit Gressoney-Saint-Jean
Gressoney-Saint-Jean sits at 1,385 meters in the upper Lys valley, the southernmost outpost of the Walser, a German-speaking people who crossed the Theodul Pass from the Valais in the thirteenth century and settled the slopes around Monte Rosa. The local dialect, Titsch, is an Alemannic variant still taught in the village school.
The traditional Walser stadel, a wood-and-stone barn raised on staddle stones, survives in dozens of hamlets above the village, from the centre up toward Belvedere at the foot of the Colle Ranzola, where older residents still use Titsch daily. The village and its hamlets read as layers of the same migration: the parish sits in the valley bottom, the stadel-built hamlets climb the slopes above it, and the Lys glacier and the peaks that feed it close the valley at its head, the river taking its name from that same ice.
What began as a thirteenth-century Alemannic settlement on the far side of an alpine pass has kept its language, its barns, and its orientation toward the mountain that still supplies its water.
The village sits at 1385 metres.
What to see in Gressoney-Saint-Jean
- Castel Savoia. Five asymmetric turrets in grey local stone, standing above the village as a regional museum open to visitors.
- Walser Cultural Center / Ecomuseum. Museum on Via Castello documenting Walser language, costume, architecture and migration, with reconstructed stadel and traditional interiors.
- Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista. Parish church in the village centre, replaced over the centuries on the site of the earliest medieval chapel of the upper Lys.
How to get to Gressoney-Saint-Jean
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Torino is roughly 90 minutes away by road.
Our tip
December through March is the ski season, with lift access onto the Monterosa Ski domain from neighbouring Gressoney-La-Trinité and 1,385 meters of altitude that holds snow on the valley floor. June through September is the high-mountain season, the months when the refuges on the Lyskamm open and the Walser cultural festival fills the village. April, May, October and November are quiet.
Ayas
Why visit Ayas
Ayas runs along the upper Évançon valley, its municipal seat at Antagnod (1,710 meters) and its main resort centers at Champoluc (1,568 meters) and the hamlet at the valley head. The 1,357 residents are spread across these three villages and dozens of smaller hamlets.
Antagnod is the older village, its parish church holding the seventeenth-century altar that makes it the religious seat of the commune. Champoluc sits lower, on a flat stretch of the upper valley, and functions as the working entry point to the lift domain, with gondola and cable car reaching across two cols into Piedmont.
The hamlet at the valley head keeps the medieval name of the German-speaking settlers who farmed these slopes after crossing from Valais in the thirteenth century, while the valley itself is watered by glacial melt from above. The commune, in short, is a set of villages at different altitudes doing different jobs: worship in one, skiing in another, memory of settlement in a third, all fed by the same glacier and the same river.
The village sits at 1710 metres.
What to see in Ayas
- Chiesa di San Martino. Parish church in Antagnod with a seventeenth-century polyptych altar, the religious seat of the commune.
- Monterosa Ski. Lift-linked domain reaching 3,250 meters, crossing two cols to link the valley with Gressoney-La-Trinité and Alagna Valsesia.
- Castore e Polluce. The 4,226-meter Castor and 4,091-meter Pollux, twin peaks of the Monte Rosa massif on the Italy-Switzerland border above the valley head.
How to get to Ayas
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Torino is roughly 98 minutes away by road.
Our tip
December through March is the Monterosa Ski season, when the lifts at Champoluc run and the link across to Gressoney-La-Trinité and Alagna fills with skiers chasing the Monte Rosa's north-facing snow. June through September is the climbing and hiking season, the months when the Quintino Sella and Mezzalama refuges open and the high routes onto Castor and Pollux become viable. April, May, October and November are the off-months.
Villar San Costanzo
Why visit Villar San Costanzo
Villar San Costanzo sits at the mouth of the Val Maira, fifteen kilometers northwest of Cuneo. The village and its religious complex sit apart from the reserve on the higher ground above: an abbey anchors the settlement itself, founded in the early eighth century as the commune's historic religious center, while a church and the erosion columns both belong to the slope of the massif that rises over the village.
The name Ciciu is Piedmontese for puppet, given to the columns for their shape: a shaft of earth and stone topped by a glacial erratic boulder, the cap shielding the softer material beneath from rain while the surrounding ground wears away around it. Local legend ties the columns to the same ground as the chapel above them, reading the shapes as the petrified soldiers of Diocletian, cursed by a martyr who gave the village its name, a Roman legionary of the Theban Legion killed nearby around 303.
Village below, abbey at its center, and slope above carrying both the sanctuary built on the martyrdom site and the columns the legend attaches to it: the settlement's religious history and its natural landmark trace back to the same rise of ground and the same story.
The village sits at 605 metres.
What to see in Villar San Costanzo
- Riserva Naturale dei Ciciu del Villar. The columns stand on the slope between 670 and 1,350 meters, earth and stone shafts each shielded by its boulder cap while the ground around them erodes away.
- Chiesa di San Costanzo al Monte. The church carries frescoes from the eleventh century and stands on the site of the martyrdom, on the slope of Monte San Bernardo above the village.
- Abbazia di San Costanzo. Benedictine abbey at the heart of the village, founded in the early eighth century and the historic religious anchor of the commune.
How to get to Villar San Costanzo
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Torino is roughly 91 minutes away by road.
Our tip
May through October is the open window at 605 meters under Monte San Bernardo, when the trail through the Ciciu reserve is dry and the columns are fully visible above the dwarf scrub. June and September are the strongest months for the walk, with cool air on the upper sentiero and the larch forest in full leaf. July and August warm the lower village toward the high twenties, but the climb under tree cover stays comfortable.
Aymavilles
Why visit Aymavilles
The village sits on the right bank of the river, eight kilometres west of Aosta, at the point where a side valley opens toward the Gran Paradiso massif. The name traces to Caius Avilius Caimus, the Roman from Padua who commissioned the aqueduct-bridge over the Grand'Eyvia, so the settlement's identity is bound to that gorge crossing rather than to the castle that later came to dominate its skyline.
Around the castle the ground has been given over to terraced vineyards, the fruit of which the Cave des Onze Communes, the region's largest cooperative, draws in from this slope and from the neighbouring communes of Sarre, Saint-Pierre and Introd. The result is a village organized around two axes that rarely overlap: one running up toward the national park and the high side valley, the other lying flat along the river terraces where the vines are grown.
What holds Aymavilles together is less a single monument than this position at a threshold, a place people pass through on the way to the high valley or use as the working ground for wine that is drunk elsewhere.
The village sits at 646 metres.
What to see in Aymavilles
- Castello di Aymavilles. The rectangular medieval core is still legible beneath the additions: Aimone di Challant's four towers give the building its silhouette from the valley road, while the eighteenth-century decoration softens the fortress into a residence.
- Pont d'Aël. The arch carries the water channel across the gorge on a single span, and the covered passage beneath it can still be walked, putting a visitor directly under the old aqueduct bed with the torrent below.
- Cave des Onze Communes. Largest wine cooperative in Valle d'Aosta, open since 1990, working over sixty hectares of vineyards around Sarre, Saint-Pierre, Introd and Aymavilles.
How to get to Aymavilles
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Torino is roughly 106 minutes away by road.
Our tip
May through October is the main window in Aymavilles. May greens the Torrette terraces and reopens the road up the Cogne Valley into the Gran Paradiso. June through September is the peak hiking and castle-visit season, with the Pont d'Aël walkway open and the cooperative cellar pouring tastings of Torrette and the white Petite Arvine.
Garessio
Why visit Garessio
Garessio sits in the upper Tanaro valley, on the watershed where Piemonte meets Liguria. The town is built across four historic quarters, Borgo Maggiore, Borgo Ponte, Borgo Poggiolo, and the borgo that gives its name to the hillside sanctuary and spring above it, each with its own piazza and parish.
The arrangement follows the old traffic of the salt road: Mediterranean salt came up over the Ligurian Alps from Albenga, was repacked in the fortified core, and continued north toward Piemonte and the Po valley. The Savoy family later kept a hunting lodge on the wooded slopes above town, a former Carthusian charterhouse turned retreat, showing a second life for the valley once trade had moved on.
A town built to move salt and later chosen for a royal retreat and a bottling brand: the same slopes have been worked, defended, and rested in by turns, without ever losing the shape of the four quarters that founded it.
The village sits at 621 metres.
What to see in Garessio
- Borgo Maggiore. The medieval core, fortified around 1100 as a ricetto, with three surviving gates, Porta Rose, Porta Jhape, and Porta Liazoliorum, and remnants of the defensive walls.
- Reggia di Valcasotto. Former Carthusian charterhouse converted to a Savoy hunting lodge in the nineteenth century, on the wooded slopes above the town.
- Santuario di Valsorda. Hillside sanctuary above Borgo Valsorda, the town's pilgrimage site, with views over the Tanaro valley.
How to get to Garessio
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Torino is roughly 95 minutes away by road.
Our tip
May through October is the open season. Spring brings the Tanaro running full and the chestnut woods turning green; September and October are dry, with the salt-road footpaths at their clearest. July and August are warm but never coastal-hot at 621 meters; the river keeps the valley cool at night. Cheers Music & Beer Festival falls in August.
