The best small ski towns that eat well in Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol
Winter here smells of woodsmoke and larch resin, and the food changes dialect as you cross a valley. In the Südtirol half you eat canederli in broth, speck cut thin at the counter, apple strudel with the pastry still warm; drop south into Trentino and the same lunch becomes barley soup, polenta with smoked ricotta, a glass of Teroldego. The houses are stone at the base and timber above, with stacked wood under the eaves and snow held on wide roofs. Snow generally holds from December into April on the higher sunny slopes, and the light on the Dolomite walls at the end of a ski day does most of the work.
Most winter traffic funnels towards Madonna di Campiglio and the big Sellaronda circuit, and for good reason: the linked kilometres are enormous and the marketing has been relentless for decades. Car parks fill by mid-morning, the mountain huts on the main loop take bookings weeks out, and the après crowd in the resort centres is dense enough that a table without a reservation is unlikely. It is excellent skiing. It is also the version of these mountains that everyone photographs.
The valleys keep going past the famous circuits, and the smaller towns along them have their own lifts and their own kitchens. Val di Fiemme, Val Gardena, Val di Fassa, Alta Badia and the Ladin-speaking pockets on the plateaus all hold places where a guide-listed dining room sits a short walk from a chairlift, and where fewer people go. These are the towns on this list.
Of the 33 communes we have mapped in Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, 15 qualify as ski towns that eat well: each has a ski area on its own territory, and a dining guide has named a table in each. This list is the small ones, 9 in all, ordered smallest first. The smallest, Luserna, has 267 residents.
Elsewhere in the catalogue: The best ski towns with a serious restaurant in Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol and The best small towns that eat well in the province of Trento.
Luserna
Why visit Luserna
Luserna sits on the northwestern edge of the Folgaria plateau, four kilometres south of Lavarone and forty kilometres southeast of Trento. The village was founded around 1400 by Bavarian-Cimbrian colonists who moved up from nearby Lavarone, and the dialect they carried is classed by linguists as the oldest peripheral language of the German domain and the southernmost surviving in the Alps.
It was protected after the Second World War by the Gruber-De Gasperi Agreement and officially recognised in 2001 under Trentino's minority law, a legal history that runs a full half-century behind the community's own persistence in speaking the language at home. The village itself holds 267 residents, small enough that the museum complex, the restored peasant house, the old fort and the stone-and-wood core all sit within reach of each other rather than spread across a larger settlement.
What holds the place together is less any single building than the fact that the colonists' original tongue outlasted the empire whose frontier fort now stands as a museum piece nearby: the language, not the fortification, is what makes the plateau edge worth the four kilometres from Lavarone.
Lusernarhof have been named by a guide.
What to see in Luserna
- Centro Documentazione Lusérn. Documentation Centre with permanent exhibitions on the Cimbrian community, the Great War on the plateaus, prehistoric metallurgy, and Cimbrian bobbin lace.
- Casa Museo Haus von Prükk. House museum in a restored nineteenth-century Cimbrian peasant dwelling, presented by guides who explain the dialect and the traditions of plateau life.
- Werk Lusérn. Austro-Hungarian Great War fortress on the imperial frontier with Italy, heavily shelled in 1915 and now part of the plateau's fortification museum circuit.
How to get to Luserna
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Trento is roughly 51 minutes away by road.
Our tip
June through September is the alpine summer at 1,333 metres: cool evenings even in July, hiking on the plateau between Luserna and Lavarone, and the museums open at full schedule. December through March is the ski season on the Alpe Cimbra circuit, with snow holding above 1,300 metres into early April. April and May are quiet shoulder months between the lift closure and the green-up of the high pastures; many services close.
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.
Our tip
December through March is the ski season, the village at full capacity around the Sellaronda lifts, with the men's World Cup giant slalom on the Gran Risa each December at La Villa next door. June through September is the summer Dolomite season, cool even in July at 1,568 metres, with hiking, via ferrata and gravel cycling across the Pralongià plateau and the Puez-Odle park. April and May are quiet shoulder months, snow gone from the village but lifts mostly closed and hotels shut between seasons.
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.
Wine & Dine, Alla Locanda, Locanda degli Artisti Art Hotel and 1 more have been named by a guide.
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.
Our tip
December through March is the ski season, the village's busiest months, with the Sellaronda circuit running from the Belvedere base and snow held above 1,500 metres into early April. June through September is the summer alpine season, with the Pordoi cable car running to the Terrazza delle Dolomiti and a full network of hiking and via ferrata routes on the Marmolada, Sassolungo and Sella. July and August are the peak months, with refuges full and bookings tight on the Fedaia and Pordoi passes. Gran Festa da d'Istà falls in September.
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.
Malga Panna, Foresta, Ostaria Tyrol and 3 more have been named by a guide.
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.
Our tip
June through September brings the green Dolomite season: alpine pastures open, the Catinaccio and Latemar are walkable from the cable cars above town, and the August Turchia festival fills the streets for three days. December through March is the ski half of the year, with lifts running on Alpe Lusia and over the Passo San Pellegrino into the Tre Valli circuit. April, May, October and November are quiet, between seasons. Festival del Puzzone falls in September.
Pinzolo
Why visit Pinzolo
Val Rendena runs the length of the valley floor, separating the granite of the Adamello-Presanella to the west from the Dolomites to the east, and Pinzolo sits at its center at 770 metres. The settlement is documented from 1211 as Penzollo, a medieval community of farmers and pastoralists that kept a degree of independence from the D'Arco counts through its own village assembly, the Università.
Most of the municipal territory now falls inside the Adamello-Brenta Nature Park, the largest protected area in Trentino, which places both mountain ranges within the same administrative boundary as the town itself. Up the valley, the frazione of Madonna di Campiglio grew from a travelers' hospice into a resort, and the two settlements are now linked by gondola as well as by governance, the older farming village at the valley floor and the younger resort on the slopes above it.
Pinzolo became a ski town in the second half of the twentieth century, and the cable car climbing from its centre to 2,100 metres is the physical expression of that link, carrying the town's growth up toward the peaks that have always framed it.
Grual, Rendenèr Alpine Food, Il Gallo Cedrone dell'Hotel Bertelli have been named by a guide.
What to see in Pinzolo
- Chiesa di San Vigilio. The church stands above the village. Its painted procession of eighteen skeleton pairs leads pope, emperor, king, beggar and child in a single line across the exterior wall, the fresco surviving in near-complete condition.
- Chiesa di Santo Stefano. Cemetery church on the edge of the village, frescoed inside and outside by the Baschenis painters with another Dance of Death cycle and scenes of saints.
- Parco Naturale Adamello-Brenta. Largest protected area in Trentino, covering most of the Pinzolo territory and including the Brenta Dolomites and the Adamello-Presanella glaciers.
How to get to Pinzolo
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Trento is roughly 93 minutes away by road.
Our tip
May through October is the open season in Pinzolo, with the longest days in June and July and the Val Genova waterfalls running full from snowmelt. September is the cleanest light, the larches still green, the high refuges in the Brenta Dolomites still staffed. December through April reopens the village as a ski base, but the editorial calendar tracks summer use: hiking, the rifugio circuit, the Baschenis frescoes accessible without snow.
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.
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.
Cavalese
Why visit Cavalese
Cavalese sits at 1,000 metres on a south-facing terrace above the Avisio, forty kilometres northeast of Trento, the main town of the Val di Fiemme. The valley's eleven communes held their forest commons in common under the Magnifica Comunità, the self-governing body founded by the founding charter of 1111, and Cavalese has kept its seat through the Bavarian abolition of 1807 and every legal change since.
The valley floor carries the working memory of that governance: the archive of parchments, the frescoed council chambers, the bench in the open air where disputes were once judged. Above the town, the cableway to the Alpe Cermis climbs toward 1,912 metres, and the flat route along the Avisio ties Cavalese to the other Fiemme communes strung along the valley floor from Predazzo down toward the Adige.
Nine centuries of continuous self-rule and a valley of communes bound by a single river explain why Cavalese reads less like a single town than like the administrative floor of the whole valley.
El Molin, Orso Grigio have been named by a guide.
What to see in Cavalese
- Palazzo della Magnifica Comunità di Fiemme. Medieval bishop's residence enlarged in the Renaissance, seat of the community since 1810, with a picture gallery and an archive of parchments from the thirteenth to eighteenth centuries.
- Pieve di Santa Maria Assunta. Parish church of Cavalese, consecrated in 1134 on an older foundation, standing beside the park where the valley's representatives once sat in judgment.
- Banco della Reson. Stone bench in the Parco della Pieve where the representatives named in the Patti Ghebardini met as an open-air parliament to judge valley disputes.
How to get to Cavalese
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Bolzano is roughly 95 minutes away by road.
Our tip
June through September is the high-valley season: meadows open above 1,000 metres, the Latemar and the Lagorai are reachable on day walks from the town, and the cycle path along the Avisio fills with day-trippers. December through March is the ski season on Alpe Cermis and the Lavazè plateau, with snow held above 1,000 metres into early April and the Tour de Ski final climb up the Cermis slope each January. April, May, October and November are the quiet shoulder months between the seasons, when the cable car runs reduced schedules and the valley returns to its residents.
Brentonico
Why visit Brentonico
Brentonico sits at 692 metres on a plateau between Lake Garda and the Vallagarina. The commune runs from 500 metres in the valley to over 2,000 at the ridge, an altitude range wide enough to hold a chestnut hamlet at one end and ski hamlets at the other.
Castione, the lower hamlet, faces the Adige valley and lives by its terraces. San Valentino, Polsa and San Giacomo, the upper hamlets above 1,200 metres, face the opposite way, toward pasture and snow.
Palazzo Eccheli-Baisi anchors the centre and has changed hands once in a way that says something about the town: built in 1597 by mine managers, it passed in 1840 to a family of salami merchants, before ending up, in this century, as a house for fossils and for the office that manages the mountain's protected slope. That slope, and the garden set in front of the palace, both draw on the same fact: the mountain was named by European botanists for what grows on it, and the town's two conservation projects, one wild, one planted, sit on either side of the same building.
Above Crosano the ground still carries the trenches of the First World War, dug where the Austro-Hungarian line crossed the plateau. The valley below has been worked for chestnuts and the ridge above was fought over, and the palace in the centre now holds the record of both.
Maso Palù have been named by a guide.
What to see in Brentonico
- Palazzo Eccheli-Baisi. The building's later life traces the town's own turns: sold in 1840 by the founding mine-manager family to salami merchants, it now sits open to visitors as museum and park office at once, fossils in the rooms where ore accounts were once kept.
- Giardino Botanico di Brentonico. Opened in 2005 at 690 metres, directly in front of the palace, the garden gathers native and rare Monte Baldo plants into a plot small enough to walk in an afternoon.
- Parco Naturale Locale del Monte Baldo. The protected slope is where the mountain earns its old reputation: paths through it cross the endemic flora that gave the range its name among European botanists.
How to get to Brentonico
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Trento is roughly 42 minutes away by road.
Our tip
May through October brings the warm months on the plateau, with the botanical garden in flower from late May, the Monte Baldo paths open above 1,500 metres, and the chestnut hamlets cool against the heat of the Vallagarina below. June and July see the rare Monte Baldo endemics in bloom on the upper slopes. October is the chestnut harvest, the busiest month in Castione, with the marroni roasted at autumn sagre.
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.
Our tip
June through September is the green Dolomite season: the Alpe di Siusi opens fully, the Seceda ridge is walkable from the cable car, and the rifugi of the Odle and Sassolungo run their full summer programmes. December through March is the ski half of the year, with the Sellaronda circuit accessed directly from Ortisei. April, May and November are the closure months.
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