The best towns worth staying overnight in the province of Bolzano/Bozen
South Tyrol is built out of larch, granite and whitewash, with painted oriel windows on the main streets and hay barns going grey on the slopes above them. Breakfast is speck, rye bread and mountain butter, dinner is often canederli in broth or barley soup followed by strudel, and the wine list runs to Lagrein and Gewurztraminer grown on the valley floor below the pastures. Winter brings groomed pistes and Christmas markets smelling of mulled wine and roasted almonds. Late summer brings cut grass, cows coming down off the high alps, and long evenings when the Dolomite walls go pink then ash grey. Two languages sit on every road sign, and both are used.
Most people take the province in through Bolzano, the provincial capital, where the Otzi museum, the arcades of Via dei Portici and the Renon cable car absorb the coach traffic and the cruise-style day tours out of Verona. It is a good city and it is also the funnel: everything arrives there, looks at the same few streets, eats lunch and leaves. The same is true of the Alpe di Siusi meadows and Lago di Braies, both photographed to exhaustion and both busiest between mid-morning and late afternoon. Day-tripping keeps you inside those hours.
The valleys carry on well past the funnel. The Isarco runs north through episcopal towns with cathedral cloisters, the Pusteria heads east towards the Sesto Dolomites, and the Gardena and Badia sides climb into Ladin-speaking country where the language is neither Italian nor German. The towns in this list all sit on that continuing line, and each one has a hotel that a travel guide has vouched for, which means you can arrive in the afternoon, eat properly, and be on a path or a lift before the buses reach the famous meadows. Fewer people stay the night here, which is the whole point of doing it.
Of the 10 communes we have mapped in the province of Bolzano/Bozen, 8 qualify as towns worth staying overnight: each has a hotel a travel guide has vouched for, so you can stay rather than day-trip. The smallest, Corvara in Badia, has 1,396 residents.
Two more lists worth reading alongside this one: The best mountain towns in the province of Bolzano/Bozen and 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Our tip
June through September is the high-meadow season on the Alpe di Siusi, with the Seiser Alm pastures green, the chairlifts running and hiking and biking routes open from the village to the Sciliar. December through March is the ski season: the Seiser Alm has fifty-six kilometres of slopes, mostly red and blue, and connects by the Saltria-Mont Sëuc gondola to the rest of the Dolomiti Superski. Late June brings the Oswald von Wolkenstein Riding Tournament, the historical equestrian event held in the meadows around the village.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Our tip
April through June brings mild weather in the Eisack valley, with the cloister gardens of the Duomo and the courtyards of the Hofburg in shade and the high paths above the Plose opening from late May. September and October are dry and cool, with apple harvest across the orchards north of the city and the Törggelen season starting in early autumn. July and August can hit thirty degrees at 560 metres, with the Plose cable car carrying day-trippers up to cooler ridges.
Meran
Why visit Meran
Merano sits at 324 metres in the basin where the Passer river meets the Adige, at the entrance to the Passeier and Vinschgau valleys, with mountains rising to 3,335 metres around it. The town was the capital of the County of Tyrol from the thirteenth century until 1420, when the Habsburgs moved the residence to Innsbruck.
Empress Elisabeth of Austria began wintering here in 1870 for the climate and the mild basin air; her stays turned Merano into a late-Habsburg spa destination, drawing Kafka, Rilke and Richard Strauss. The Kurhaus, an Art Nouveau pavilion on the Passer promenade, and Castel Trauttmansdorff, where Sissi stayed and which now holds twelve hectares of botanical gardens and the Touriseum, anchor the imperial layer of the city.
Merano was annexed to Italy in 1919 under the Treaty of Saint-Germain. The bilingual city today is the centre of South Tyrolean wine and apple farming, host of the Merano WineFestival each November at the Kurhaus.
What to see in Meran
- Giardini di Castel Trauttmansdorff. Twelve hectares of botanical gardens around the castle where Empress Elisabeth wintered, with eighty landscapes over a hundred-metre slope and the Touriseum tourism museum.
- Kurhaus. Art Nouveau pavilion on the Passer promenade, the spa-town centrepiece of nineteenth-century Merano and venue of the Merano WineFestival each November.
- Passeggiata Lungo Passirio. Spa promenade along the Passer river through the centre of the city, lined with palms, flowers and the Wandelhalle, the covered Art Nouveau walking gallery.
How to get to Meran
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 29 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through October is the long season in the Merano basin: the Trauttmansdorff gardens open from March to November with the spring bloom and the autumn colours, the Passer promenades fill with walkers, and the apple orchards above the city move from blossom to harvest. June through August can hit thirty degrees on the valley floor; the covered Wandelhalle and the shaded lungo Passirio keep the city walkable in the afternoon. November brings the Merano WineFestival at the Kurhaus and the Christmas markets that follow.
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