The 8 prettiest villages in the province of Trento

1. Luserna

Best for a ski week. There is a mapped ski area in the comune.

51 min from Trento · 266 people

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.

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.

Everything we know about Luserna

2. Bondone

Best for a swim. The comune's beach holds a Blue Flag.

1 h 17 min from Brescia · homes €1,200 to €1,500 a m² in the center · 647 people

Why visit Bondone

Fifty kilometers southwest of Trento, on the border with Lombardy, the commune sits in the Valle del Chiese and is made of two settlements at very different heights. The paese occupies a ridge at 720 meters; the frazione of Baitoni lies at 371 meters on the shore below.

A rock cliff between the two carries the castle, built by the Lodron counts who controlled the valley from a string of similar fortresses, and who held this one for centuries after it was first recorded as the castrum de summo lacu. The upper village and the lakeside frazione are administratively one commune but functionally two economies: stone houses and a ridge line above, swimming and sailing on the water below, joined by the fortress that once watched over both.

The distance between 720 meters and 371 meters, covered inside a single commune, is what gives Bondone its character: a hill settlement and a lake shore sharing one name and one history, with the old military architecture still standing at the point where they meet.

What to see in Bondone

• Castello di San Giovanni. Drawbridge approach and a semicircular courtyard opening south over the water, on the cliff between the two settlements.
• Lago d'Idro. Glacial prealpine lake with the Baitoni shoreline carrying the Bandiera Blu, the water the commune's summer draw.
• Bondone paese. Upper village on a ridge, the stone-house core looking south over the Valle del Chiese.

How to get to Bondone

Brescia is about 1 h 17 min away by road.

Everything we know about Bondone

3. Pieve Tesino

Best for a small town. 669 people live here.

53 min from Trento · homes €1,200 to €1,450 a m² in the center · 669 people

Why visit Pieve Tesino

Pieve Tesino sits at 843 meters on the Altopiano del Tesino, a small plateau in eastern Trentino about forty kilometers from Trento, shared with the villages of Castello Tesino and Cinte Tesino. The plateau's isolation shaped its economy: with little arable land to keep them, generations of families went out across Europe instead, working as itinerant sellers of prints, books and small art objects, and some of them settled permanently, founding shops as far off as Madrid and Saint Petersburg.

That outward movement sits alongside the village's other export, a man rather than a trade. Alcide De Gasperi was born here in 1881 and went on to lead eight successive governments between 1945 and 1953, working alongside Schuman, Adenauer and Monnet on the early shape of European integration.

Above the houses, the arboretum climbs through alpine flora to a garden built in the shape of a parliamentary chamber, a piece of landscaping that answers his career directly rather than referring back to the trading families below. The plateau, in other words, has sent two things outward across the same borders: goods carried by hand, and an idea of how the continent's institutions might fit together.

Both are commemorated here, but neither was built here to stay.

The catch: January nights average 6 degrees below zero.

What to see in Pieve Tesino

• Casa Museo Alcide De Gasperi. The statesman's birthplace, opened as a museum in 2006 and set on the European route of the founding fathers' homes, recognized with the European Heritage Label.
• Museo Per Via. A museum tracing the generations who left the plateau to sell prints, books and small art objects abroad, with the routes and trades they built laid out in detail.
• Arboreto di Pieve Tesino. Meadows, wetlands and woodland between 800 and 845 meters, crossed by a signed route of an hour and a half through alpine flora.

How to get to Pieve Tesino

Trento is about 53 min away by road.

Everything we know about Pieve Tesino

4. Ossana

Best for a long lunch. A food guide lists Antica Osteria here.

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.

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.

Everything we know about Ossana

5. Caldes

Best for a trip without a car. The train stops in the commune.

53 min from Trento · homes €1,200 to €1,400 a m² in the center · 1,111 people

Why visit Caldes

The commune sits at around 700 meters in the lower valley, along the river, thirty-five kilometers 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 meters, each holding its own cluster of stone houses on the same grade above the river.

The castle at the center 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.

The catch: January nights average 3 degrees below zero.

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 center 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 meters 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

It has its own railway station. Trento is about 53 min away by road. The full route from Verona.

Everything we know about Caldes

6. Bleggio Superiore

41 min from Trento · homes €1,200 to €1,400 a m² in the center · 1,534 people

Why visit Bleggio Superiore

Bleggio Superiore sits in the Giudicarie Esteriori, twenty-five kilometers west of Trento and above the Sarca valley, with the Brenta Dolomites visible to the north and Lake Garda half an hour south. The commune is a scattered municipality of twelve hamlets, with its administrative seat in Santa Croce at 628 meters and Rango, its highest village, on the slope above at 799 meters.

Rango is a member of I Borghi più belli d'Italia, recognized in 2006 for the density and integrity of its rural architecture: stone houses joined by covered passages called vòlt, internal courtyards and cellars that once stored Bleggio potatoes, walnuts and cured meats. Rango holds an annual Christmas market in those same vòlt from mid-November through December.

The Noce del Bleggio, a small oval walnut grown on terraces between 400 and 800 meters, became a Slow Food Presidium in 2016 and goes into the local bread, salami and cakes. The Pieve di Santa Croce, visible from across the valley, was one of the seven medieval pievi of southwestern Trentino.

What to see in Bleggio Superiore

• Rango. Hamlet at 799 meters recognized by I Borghi più belli d'Italia in 2006 for its stone houses linked by covered passages, internal courtyards and cellars.
• Pieve di Santa Croce. Medieval parish church visible from across the Giudicarie valley, one of the seven historic pievi of southwestern Trentino, in the commune's administrative seat.
• Mercatini di Natale di Rango. Christmas market held weekends from mid-November through December inside the stone vòlt of Rango, with artisan stalls, music and Giudicarie food.

How to get to Bleggio Superiore

Trento is about 41 min away by road.

Everything we know about Bleggio Superiore

7. Tenno

Best for a slow weekend. The Touring Club gives it its orange flag for small inland towns.

43 min from Trento · homes €1,550 to €1,750 a m² in the center · 2,061 people

Why visit Tenno

Tenno sits at 428 meters on the slope above Riva del Garda, on the old road that climbed from the Sarca valley toward the Giudicarie. The territory wraps the upper end of the lake, and the south-facing slopes carry vineyards and olive terraces up toward the settlements above.

Two places anchor the commune, a few kilometers apart. A fortress holds the high ground on a rocky outcrop, built over an older prehistoric site and positioned to watch the road below.

North of it, the hamlet keeps to its four streets and a square, stone houses joined by arches, close enough to the mountain lake that the walk between them takes half an hour. The olive groves run along the slopes between all of them, the northern edge of a growing tradition that has otherwise moved south with the climate.

What holds the commune together is elevation: a hilltop position that let a fortress watch the valley road, a hamlet keep its shape for centuries, and olives ripen further north than anywhere else that grows them by tradition.

What to see in Tenno

• Canale di Tenno. Arched passages tie the stone houses together over the road, and the four streets still converge on the same small square the hamlet was built around.
• Castello di Tenno. Fortress on a rocky outcrop above the Sarca valley, raised over the remains of a prehistoric site, once controlling the road between Garda and the Giudicarie. The view runs down to the lake below.
• Lago di Tenno. The water sits at 570 meters, still enough to show its color, with a small island near the center and the reserve's paths tracing the shoreline.

How to get to Tenno

Trento is about 43 min away by road.

Everything we know about Tenno

8. Borgo Valsugana

Best for everyday life on foot. Eight of the ten everyday services we look for are mapped within 500 meters of the center.

49 min from Trento · homes €1,500 to €1,900 a m² in the center · 7,147 people

Why visit Borgo Valsugana

Borgo Valsugana sits at 380 meters on the Brenta, thirty kilometers east of Trento, in the lower part of the Valsugana valley that carries the road and the railway between Trento and the Veneto plain. The Roman settlement of Ausugum stood on the same site, on the Claudia Augusta Altinate road from Altino to Tridentum, which set the town on a route between the plain and the mountains long before the present center took shape.

The centro storico straddles the Brenta, arcades opening onto the quays on each bank, which is why locals and visitor guides call it the Little Venice of Trentino. The castle above the town looks down on this river center, and the side valley to the west holds the art project among the meadows, so the town reads in three layers: the water level where the old houses face each other across the river, the height of the watchtower on the hill, and the separate, quieter valley given over to the works in natural materials.

The valley was the front line in 1915 to 1916 and much of the historic center was rebuilt after the war, so the painted facades standing over the water today are largely a twentieth-century reconstruction of a much older river town.

What to see in Borgo Valsugana

• Castel Telvana. Medieval castle on Mount Ciolino above the town, built around a square watchtower five meters per side and twenty-six meters high.
• Ponte Veneziano. Fifteenth-century bridge over the Brenta crowned by two aedicules with graffiti inspired by seventeenth-century works of Jacopo Fiorentini.
• Arte Sella. Open-air contemporary art project in the Val di Sella since 1986, with works in natural materials around Malga Costa, including the Cattedrale Vegetale.

How to get to Borgo Valsugana

It has its own railway station. Trento is about 49 min away by road. The full route from Verona.

Everything we know about Borgo Valsugana