The 7 best small towns that eat well in the province of Trento
Seven towns: what each is best for, what a home costs, and the catch. A square meter runs from €1,500 in Brentonico to €5,300 in Canazei.
From the 1,000 towns picked by Peter Benei.
92 towns written about, 908 to go. Follow along, free: Subscribe on Substack
Trentino cooking sits where the Alps meet Italy, and it tastes like it: barley soup, canederli in broth, smoked speck and cured carne salada, polenta from Storo maize, trout from cold rivers, apples from the Val di Non. The kitchens work with butter as often as oil, with lard, with mountain cheeses pressed in valley dairies and aged into something sharp. Houses are larch and stone, balconies stacked with split wood, and in the villages of the Val di Fiemme and the Val di Fassa the timber has gone silver with weather. Autumn is the strong season for eating, when the woods give mushrooms and the menus turn to game, and deep winter brings the long lunches that skiing was invented to justify.
Most people who come to eat in this part of the Dolomites end up in Madonna di Campiglio, or else they base themselves in Trento and drive out for a day. Both make sense. Campiglio has the ski lifts, the hotel dining rooms and the guide entries that people search for by name, and in February its main street moves at the pace of a lift queue. Tables book out weeks ahead, prices climb with the season, and the food, good as it is, arrives inside a resort.
The valleys carry on past the resort, and so do the kitchens. The same dairies, the same butchers, the same larch-panelled dining rooms turn up in towns further along the Val di Fiemme, over the Passo Tonale side, up under the Latemar, and in the Cimbrian-speaking uplands above the Valsugana. Fewer people go, which mostly means you can get a table. Each of the towns below has one a national or international dining guide has bothered to name.
Of the 21 communes we have mapped in the province of Trento, 11 qualify as towns that eat well: a national or international dining guide has named a table in each. This list is the small ones, 7 in all, ordered smallest first. The smallest, Luserna, has 266 residents.
Elsewhere in the catalogue: The best ski towns that eat well in the province of Trento and The best small ski towns that eat well in Trentino-Alto Adige.
All the towns within a day trip: day trips from Trento.
Why visit Luserna
Luserna sits on the northwestern edge of the Folgaria plateau, four kilometers south of Lavarone and forty kilometers 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 recognized 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 266 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 kilometers from Lavarone.
Lusernarhof is listed in Slow Food's Osterie d'Italia.
The catch: January nights average 6 degrees below zero.
What to see in Luserna
- Centro Documentazione Lusérn. Documentation Center 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
Trento is about 51 min away by road.
Our tip
June through September is the alpine summer at 1,333 meters: 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 meters 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.
2. Ossana
Best for a walk through the old town. It is on the list of Italy's most beautiful villages.
1 h 13 min from Trento · homes €1,600 to €1,800 a m² in the center · 820 people
Why visit Ossana
Ossana sits at 1,003 meters in upper Val di Sole, where the Vermigliana stream joins the Noce and the road climbs to the Passo del Tonale on the border with Lombardy. The keep was probably raised in the Lombard period, long before the 1191 record that first names it, and stood over the junction of the valley route and the mountain iron mines that made it worth holding.
Its owners changed with the centuries, prince-bishops, counts, and eventually an Austrian pacifist, tracing the wider shifts of power through the Adige and Sole valleys onto one hill above the village. The village below has kept its stone houses close around that hill, small enough that the castle is never out of sight from the streets.
What the place adds up to is a settlement built and rebuilt around a single point of control, the keep watching a road that once carried ore and armies and now carries travelers over the Tonale pass.
Antica Osteria is listed in the MICHELIN Guide.
The catch: January nights average 7 degrees below zero.
What to see in Ossana
- Castello di San Michele. Fortress dominating the village, restored by the Province of Trento and open as a visitable monument. It controlled the route between the Adige valley and the Brescian uplands, and the iron mines in the surrounding mountains.
- Borgo di Ossana. Compact historic center of stone houses around the castle hill, recognized as one of I Borghi più Belli d'Italia in 2022.
- Chiesa di San Vigilio. Parish church of the village, with origins in the medieval period and frescoes inside the apse, a few steps below the castle.
How to get to Ossana
Trento is about 1 h 13 min away by road.
Our tip
June through September is the high-valley summer: trails open into the Stelvio National Park and the Adamello-Presanella group, the castle keeps long visiting hours, and night skies are dark enough for the village's dark-sky program. December through March is the ski half of the year, with the Tonale and Pejo lifts ten kilometers away and the December presepi display drawing weekend visitors from across Trentino. April, May, October and November are the closure months.
3. Canazei
Best for a ski week. There is a mapped ski area in the comune.
1 h 4 min from Bolzano · homes €4,400 to €5,300 a m² in the center · 1,915 people
Why visit Canazei
Canazei sits at 1,465 meters 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 recognized by the autonomous statute, and the local Folk Group preserves the costumes, music and language traditions of the valley. The Belvedere and Ciampac lifts leave from the village itself, Col Rodella rises from neighbouring Campitello, and the Marmolada cable car runs from Malga Ciapèla beyond the Fedaia Pass, all within the Dolomiti Superski circuit.
The Pordoi cable car climbs to the Terrazza delle Dolomiti at 2,950 meters for a full view of the surrounding peaks, including the Marmolada at 3,343 meters, the highest summit in the Dolomites and a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2009.
Wine & Dine (MICHELIN), Alla Locanda (MICHELIN), Locanda degli Artisti Art Hotel (Gambero Rosso) and 1 more place are listed in food guides.
The catch: The nearest airport, Venice Marco Polo, is 2 h 35 min away by road.
What to see in Canazei
- Marmolada. Highest summit in the Dolomites at 3,343 meters, reached by cable car from Malga Ciapèla beyond the Fedaia Pass, with the largest glacier in the Dolomites on its northern face.
- Passo Pordoi. Dolomite road pass at 2,239 meters with a cable car to Sass Pordoi at 2,950 meters, 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
Bolzano is about 1 h 4 min 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 meters 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.
4. Moena
Best for a ski week. There is a mapped ski area in the comune.
1 h 5 min from Bolzano · homes €3,400 to €4,400 a m² in the center · 2,571 people
Why visit Moena
Moena sits at 1,184 meters 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 (MICHELIN and Gambero Rosso), Foresta (MICHELIN), Ostaria Tyrol (MICHELIN) and 3 more places are listed in food guides.
The catch: The nearest airport, Treviso, is 2 h 30 min away by road.
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
Bolzano is about 1 h 5 min 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.
5. Pinzolo
1 h 2 min from Trento · homes €3,200 to €4,000 a m² in the center · 3,088 people
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 meters. 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 center to 2,100 meters is the physical expression of that link, carrying the town's growth up toward the peaks that have always framed it.
Grual (MICHELIN and Gambero Rosso), Rendenèr Alpine Food (MICHELIN) and Il Gallo Cedrone dell'Hotel Bertelli (Gambero Rosso) are listed in food guides.
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
Trento is about 1 h 2 min 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.
6. Cavalese
Best for everyday life on foot. Eight of the ten everyday services we look for are mapped within 500 meters of the center.
48 min from Bolzano · homes €2,500 to €3,100 a m² in the center · 4,010 people
Why visit Cavalese
Cavalese sits at 1,000 meters on a south-facing terrace above the Avisio, forty kilometers 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 to about 2,000 meters, and the cycle path along the Avisio ties Cavalese to the other Fiemme communes strung along the valley floor from Molina up to Predazzo and on into Fassa.
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 (MICHELIN and L'Espresso) and Orso Grigio (MICHELIN) are listed in food guides.
The catch: January nights average 4 degrees below zero.
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 Scario and the Regolani of the valley communes met as an open-air assembly to judge valley disputes until 1808.
How to get to Cavalese
Bolzano is about 48 min away by road.
Our tip
June through September is the high-valley season: meadows open above 1,000 meters, 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 meters 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.
7. Brentonico
Best for a wine weekend. It belongs to the national association of wine towns.
42 min from Trento · homes €1,500 to €1,700 a m² in the center · 4,141 people
Why visit Brentonico
Brentonico sits at 692 meters on a plateau between Lake Garda and the Vallagarina. The commune runs from 500 meters 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 meters, face the opposite way, toward pasture and snow.
Palazzo Eccheli-Baisi anchors the center 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 center now holds the record of both.
Maso Palù is listed in the MICHELIN Guide and Slow Food's Osterie d'Italia.
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 meters, 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
Trento is about 42 min 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 meters, 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.
If you only pick one
Which town is yours
One town for each kind of trip, and the reason in a line.
For everyday life on foot
Brentonico
All ten everyday services we look for, from a grocer to a pharmacy, are on the map within 500 meters of the center.
For a short trip
Cavalese
48 min by car from Bolzano, the shortest drive from a city on this list.
For a small town
Luserna
266 people, the smallest town on this list.
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