The best mountain towns you can reach by train in Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol
The valleys of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol are built around railway lines that were laid when the region was Austrian, and the towns along them still look it: arcaded main streets, houses of stone and lime render with deep timber balconies, onion-domed church towers against limestone. The food follows the same border logic, speck cut thick, canederli in broth, barley soup, apple strudel, and Lagrein or Gewürztraminer from the vineyards further south. Summer brings hay meadows and long light on the Dolomite walls; winter brings snow that arrives at the station platform. Spring, when the apple orchards of the Val Venosta and Val di Non flower, is the quietest good season.
The obvious plan is Bolzano, then a hire car to the Alpe di Siusi or up the passes towards Cortina, and in high summer the road to Lago di Braies is metered, ticketed and full before breakfast. Ortisei and the Val Gardena take the rest, coaches parked along the valley floor, ski lifts running through August. It is beautiful and it is heavily managed, and the cost of arriving by car is a good part of the day spent parking it.
The same mountains, the same speck and the same painted facades continue along the track well past the famous stops. The Val Pusteria line runs east under the Dolomites to the Austrian border, the Brenner line climbs north through old customs towns, and a branch line pushes up the Val di Sole under the Brenta. The towns here sit on those lines, so fewer people bother, and you can walk off the train into them.
Of the 33 communes we have mapped in Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, 7 qualify as mountain towns you can reach by train: each sits in the mountains, and we have confirmed each is reachable without a car. The smallest, Glurns, has 937 residents.
Elsewhere in the catalogue: The 8 best hidden towns you can reach by train in Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol and The 9 best towns you can reach by train that eat well in Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol.
Glurns
Why visit Glurns
The town sits at 907 metres in the upper valley, twenty minutes by car from both the Austrian and Swiss borders, on the Adige river at the southern entrance to the national park. City status was awarded by Emperor Henry of Bohemia in 1304, an honor that has stayed attached to the place ever since even as the population inside the walls stayed under a thousand.
After the Battle of Calven in 1499, the Habsburgs under Emperor Maximilian I rebuilt the town as a bulwark against the forces of the Three Leagues of Graubünden, and it is that rebuilding which produced the fortification standing today. The walled core and the church outside it mark the two halves of the town: the streets and Lauben arcades, paved in cobble, enclosed within the ring of walls, and the parish church standing apart on the riverbank, holding its own late Gothic frescoes away from the defended center.
A city built for defense against the Three Leagues of Graubünden still reads, in its layout, as a place organized entirely around the line where the walls stand and the ground just beyond them: the guarded interior on one side, the river and the open approach to the mountains on the other.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Glurns
- Mura cittadine. Walls built under Emperor Maximilian I after 1499, following the Battle of Calven, as a bulwark against the forces of the Three Leagues of Graubünden. The patrol path still runs continuous along the inside face.
- Centro storico. Walled core of unbroken three-storey Lauben arcades along the two main streets, paved in stone and listed on the Borghi più belli d'Italia.
- Chiesa di San Pancrazio. Parish church just outside the walls on the bank of the Adige, with a Gothic nave and a series of late medieval wall frescoes inside.
How to get to Glurns
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 102 minutes away by road.
Our tip
May through October is the open season in the upper Val Venosta. Late May brings green on the valley floor and the start of the Stelvio Park hiking calendar from Glorenza north. June through September is the busiest period, with the Stelvio passes open, the Adige cycle path running from Resia south, and Glorenza markets under the arcades on Tuesdays and Fridays.
Fortezza
Why visit Fortezza
Fortezza sits at 750 metres in the Isarco/Eisack valley, on the trunk railway line between Bolzano/Bozen and the Brenner pass. The narrows here mark the point where the Pusteria valley joins the main Isarco corridor running north to Innsbruck, which is what drew Austria-Hungary to fortify the site and what still gives the village its railway junction today.
The fortress was designed by Franz von Scholl on direct orders from Emperor Francis I, whose name it carries in German as Franzensfeste. After 1918 it passed to the Italian army.
The village below is small, under 1,100 residents, predominantly German-speaking, built around a single main square, the railway station, and the parish church at its core. The cycle path running through on its way east to San Candido/Innichen keeps the fortress in view for kilometres, a reminder that the settlement below has always been the smaller, later counterpart to the works above it: the valley junction made the place strategically necessary, and the fortress built to hold it is still what the village is organised around.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Fortezza
- Forte di Fortezza / Franzensfeste. A 65-hectare complex of three connected forts on opposite banks of the river, built to defend the Isarco/Pusteria junction. Now a permanent exhibition site, with a programme covering the architecture and history of the Habsburg defence system and a run as Manifesta biennial venue in 2008.
- Stazione di Fortezza/Franzensfeste. A stone station building from 1867, still in active use, marking the point where the Pusteria branch leaves the main Brenner line.
- Parrocchia di Sant'Eligio (St. Eligius). A parish church from 1820 on the village square, the centre of the small German-speaking community before the fortress above it existed.
How to get to Fortezza
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 105 minutes away by road.
Our tip
May through October is the open season at 750 metres. June and September are the best months — long warm days, the fortress exhibitions running, and the Pusteria cycle path at its most comfortable. July and August fill the Pusteria valley with cycling and family tourism passing through; the fortress is a stop on most regional itineraries.
Caldes
Why visit Caldes
The commune sits at around 700 metres in the lower valley, along the river, thirty-five kilometres northwest of Trento and below the southern ridge of the Brenta Dolomites. It is a scattered municipality of six hamlets: the village itself, Samoclevo, San Giacomo, Cassana, Tozzaga, Bordiana and Bozzana, strung along the slope between 635 and 767 metres, each holding its own cluster of stone houses on the same grade above the river.
The castle at the centre of the arrangement was built between 1230 and 1235 by Rambaldo and Arnoldo da Cagnò as a five-storey tower-house, controlling commercial traffic up the valley together with the higher fortification above Samoclevo. It passed to a noble family in 1464, who rebuilt it into the form it holds now, and it belongs today to the autonomous province of Trento as a museum venue.
What emerges is a settlement pattern of small hamlets set at deliberate intervals along a single slope, held together historically by one river route and one controlling tower, and preserved since as a recognized example of that rural arrangement.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Caldes
- Castel Caldes. Five-storey tower-house begun in 1230 and rebuilt by the Thun family from 1464, with sixteenth-century painted rooms and coats of arms, now a Buonconsiglio museum venue.
- Borgo di Caldes. Stone-built historic centre below the castle, member of I Borghi più belli d'Italia for the preservation of its rural architecture and lanes.
- Samoclevo. Upper hamlet at 767 metres above Caldes, paired in the medieval period with the Rocca di Samoclevo to control traffic on the Val di Sole road.
How to get to Caldes
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Trento is roughly 53 minutes away by road.
Our tip
May through October is the open season in the Val di Sole: the Noce runs high with snowmelt from May through July for the rafting season, and the slopes above Caldes are green for hiking from June onward. July and August are warm at 700 metres, cooler than the Trento valley but still busy with summer visitors crossing toward the Brenta Dolomites and the Stelvio. September and October are the quiet shoulder months, with clear air, low water on the river and the chestnut and walnut harvest across the hamlets.
Toblach
Why visit Toblach
Dobbiaco sits at 1,256 metres in the upper Val Pusteria, on the Austrian border, its written record going back to 827. The old settlement, Alt-Toblach, grew around the parish church, while the newer part of town took shape lower down around the railway station built alongside the hotel that opened in 1877, which turned Dobbiaco into one of the first alpine resorts in the Habsburg empire.
Further out in the woods at Alt-Schluderbach stands the cabin where a composer once retreated each summer to write, apart from the hotel guests and the trains. South of the settlement the land opens into the Fanes-Sennes-Braies Nature Park, holding an alpine lake with a trail for walkers, and the old railbed continues in that direction as a route over Cimabanche pass toward Cortina d'Ampezzo.
Beyond all of it, reached by way of Val di Landro and Misurina, rise the three spires that anchor the eastern Dolomites. The Gustav Mahler Musikwochen festival fills the town each July and August with concerts named for the man who once needed its quiet.
Taken together, the town reads as three layers set one behind the other: a medieval nucleus, a Habsburg-era resort built on the railway, and beyond both, the mountains and woods that drew a composer to withdraw and now draw everyone else to pass through.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Toblach
- Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista. Rebuilt 1764-1774 over the remains of a ninth-century Benedictine chapel, standing at the centre of the historic settlement of Alt-Toblach, the nucleus the rest of the town grew around.
- Grand Hotel Toblach. Built 1877-1878 beside the new railway station. The building now holds the nature park visitor centre and the Mahler Auditorium, where the composer's name is heard again each summer.
- Lago di Dobbiaco/Toblacher See. Alpine lake south of town in the Fanes-Sennes-Braies Nature Park, with a circular educational trail and observation platforms for waterfowl.
How to get to Toblach
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 93 minutes away by road.
Our tip
June through September is the summer Dolomite season, with cool evenings, the Mahler Musikwochen in July and August at the Grand Hotel auditorium, and the Tre Cime and Dobbiaco-Cortina cycle path at their busiest. December through March is the ski and Nordic season: the Dobbiaco-Cortina cross-country track replaces the cycle path, and the Tre Cime ski circuit runs from nearby Plan de Corones. April and May are quiet shoulder months, snow gone but many lifts and hotels closed.
Innichen
Why visit Innichen
San Candido, Innichen in German, sits at 1,175 metres in the Alta Pusteria valley near the Austrian border, twenty-six kilometres west of Lienz and the headwaters of the Drava river. The town was founded as a Benedictine monastery in 769 by Duke Tassilo III of Bavaria, charged with the Christianisation of the Slavic populations of the eastern Alps.
The monastery was turned into a college of canons in 1143, which is the founding date of the collegiate church that still stands at the centre of the town today. The town is bilingual, German first and Italian second; the Italian name San Candido was applied after 1918 by the Tolomei programme that renamed every place in South Tyrol.
The old town, laid out along the Pusteria road with its squares and burgher houses, sits at the foot of the slope that rises directly into the Monte Baranci ski area, so the built centre and the mountain terrain meet with almost no transition. To the south the Drei Zinnen, the Tre Cime di Lavaredo, mark the most photographed silhouette in the Dolomites, with Innichen serving as the road, rail and trailhead base for reaching them through Sesto and Auronzo.
East, the valley opens toward the Drava river and Austria, followed for its whole length by the cycle path to Lienz. The town works because of this arrangement: a monastic and Romanesque core, a wall of Dolomite peaks to the south, and open riverine access to Austria to the east, three directions of identity meeting at a single, small, bilingual place.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Innichen
- Stiftskirche / Collegiata di San Candido. Extended around 1280 with a Creation cupola that is the largest surviving fresco of its kind, the interior carrying the weight of the building's Romanesque reputation in stone and paint.
- Stiftsmuseum. Chapter museum next to the church, holding thirteenth-century sculpture, manuscripts and liturgical objects that trace the life of the foundation across its centuries as monastery and college.
- Historic centre. Pedestrianised core around the church, with Tyrolean burgher houses, painted facades and the Pflegplatz and Atoplatz squares laid out along the old Pusteria road.
How to get to Innichen
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 101 minutes away by road.
Our tip
Innichen runs on a two-peak alpine calendar. June through September is the hiking and cycling season, with the Tre Cime trails open, the rifugi in the Sesto Dolomites fully staffed and the Drava cycle path busy with families heading to Lienz. July and August are the warmest weeks, comfortable at 1,175 metres while the valley floors farther south overheat. Platzl Fest / Festa in piazza at the Senfter's Platzl falls in August.
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.
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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.
Our tip
May through October is the open season, with the Altstadt streets free of snow, hiking running from the town floor up into the Stubai Alps and the Brenner road clear. June and September are the most comfortable months, mid-twenties by day, cool nights at 948 metres. July and August are the busiest, with German and Austrian visitors stopping on the way south and the Vipiteno yoghurt festival drawing crowds in early July.
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.
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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.
Our tip
May through October brings the warm months in the Pustertal, with the Stadtgasse and the castle terrace usable from early afternoon and Plan de Corones open for hiking and biking from late June. June and July are the cool alpine months, with long evenings in the historic centre and the cable cars running up from the south side of town. September and October bring the autumn colours and the start of Törggelen, the South Tyrolean chestnut-and-new-wine season. Festa dello Speck Alto Adige - Speckfest falls in September.
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