The best ski towns that eat well in the province of Bolzano/Bozen

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.

La Stüa de Michil - Simone Cantafio, KELINA Fine Dine, Ladinia and 4 more have been named by a guide.

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

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.

Tilia have been named by a guide.

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.

Everything we know about Toblach

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.

Anna Stuben dell'Hotel Gardena have been named by a guide.

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.

Kleine Flamme have been named by a guide.

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.

Gostner Schwaige, Lampl Stube dell'Hotel Lamm have been named by a guide.

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.

Atelier Moessmer Norbert Niederkofler, AlpiNN by Norbert Niederkofler, b.local and 1 more have been named by a guide.

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

Bressanone

Why visit Bressanone

Bressanone, Brixen in German, is the third-largest town and the oldest urban settlement in South Tyrol, founded in the sixth century at the confluence of the Eisack and Rienz rivers at 560 metres, forty kilometres north of Bolzano. The bishopric was established here in the early Middle Ages and received imperial immediacy in 1027; in 1179 Frederick Barbarossa granted the bishop the title of prince of the Holy Roman Empire, and Brixen remained a prince-bishopric until secularisation in 1803.

The Hofburg, the bishops' palace, served as the seat of that power from the thirteenth century, with Renaissance courtyards, Baroque state rooms and the Diocesan Museum of religious art and historic nativity scenes inside. The Romanesque cathedral was rebuilt in Baroque form between 1745 and 1754, faced with thirty-three different types of marble and joined to the older cloister.

The Stufles district, across the Eisack bridge, is the oldest neighbourhood in the city. The Augustinian Abbey of Novacella, founded in 1142 by Bishop Hartmann four kilometres north, runs South Tyrol's northernmost winery, producing Müller-Thurgau, Kerner and Sylvaner.

Apostelstube, Vitis, Alpenrose and 3 more have been named by a guide.

What to see in Bressanone

• Duomo di Bressanone. Cathedral on the site of a tenth-century church, rebuilt as a Romanesque basilica in 1174 and reworked between 1745 and 1754 in Baroque form with thirty-three types of marble.
• Hofburg. Bishops' palace and seat of the prince-bishops from the thirteenth century to 1803, with Renaissance courtyard, Baroque state rooms and the Diocesan Museum.
• Torre Bianca / Weißer Turm. Seventy-eight metre bell tower of the parish church of San Michele, named for its bright tiled roof, with the present shape dating to 1459 and now a museum.

How to get to Bressanone

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 51 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Bressanone