Day trips
Day trips from Aosta
14 towns within 90 minutes
Closest first. Etroubles is 18 minutes out. Drive times are computed on real roads, so they are a fair estimate rather than a promise about traffic.
The towns
Etroubles
Province: Aosta Valley · 1,280 m
18 minutes from Aosta. A 476-person Alpine village at 1,280 meters, with an open-air contemporary art museum and the region's first dairy.
Fénis
Province: Aosta Valley · 537 m
19 minutes from Aosta. The Castello di Fénis, with its double ring of crenellated walls, eight cylindrical towers, and frescoed inner courtyard, sits at the center of a small Aostan commune east of Aosta, with an Alpine reserve climbing south to 3,000m.
Aymavilles
Province: Aosta Valley · 646 m
22 minutes from Aosta. A village at 646 meters above a river gorge, where the road up the valley begins and a Roman aqueduct still crosses the Grand'Eyvia on a single arch.
Châtillon
Province: Aosta Valley · 549 m
28 minutes from Aosta. The Aosta Valley's three-castle commune, a 4,303-resident town at 549m at the mouth of the Valtournenche where it meets the main valley, with direct access up the road to the Cervino/Matterhorn at Cervinia 26 km north.
Saint-Vincent
Province: Aosta Valley · 575 m
34 minutes from Aosta. A belle-époque thermal town on a sunny south-facing terrace at 575m, where a mineral spring, a landmark casino, and a Matterhorn view north of town define a resort built for the 19th-century cure.
Cogne
Province: Aosta Valley · 1,534 m
37 minutes from Aosta. The mining town turned capital of the Gran Paradiso, the Aosta Valley's largest commune with 95 percent of its land inside Italy's oldest park.
Courmayeur
Province: Aosta Valley · 1,224 m
42 minutes from Aosta. The Italian base of Mont Blanc, the roughly 4,806-meter peak, a medieval mountain village near the Roman road over the Little Saint Bernard that became one of the country's best-known ski addresses.
Valtournenche
Province: Aosta Valley · 1,524 m
46 minutes from Aosta. The valley under the Cervino, home of the guides who raced Whymper up the mountain in 1865.
Donnas
Province: Aosta Valley · 322 m
50 minutes from Aosta. The first DOC of Valle d'Aosta, a Nebbiolo-on-terraces wine town at 322 meters where the Roman Via delle Gallie was carved into living rock.
Bard
Province: Aosta Valley · 400 m
52 minutes from Aosta. A 102-person village under the great Savoy fortress that guards the mouth of the Aosta Valley.
La Thuile
Province: Aosta Valley · 1,441 m
59 minutes from Aosta. Italy's gateway to the Petit Saint-Bernard pass: a 1,441m alpine village under Mont Blanc, with the Rutor glacier and its tiered waterfalls behind it and a Roman-Salassi history that goes back two millennia.
Fontainemore
Province: Aosta Valley · 760 m
61 minutes from Aosta. A 447-person Walser-influenced village at 760 meters in the Lys Valley, marked by its stone bridge and a five-yearly pilgrimage to Oropa.
Ayas
Province: Aosta Valley · 1,710 m
63 minutes from Aosta. A scattered upper-valley commune of three villages, where Walser settlers and Romance-speaking herders share the slopes below Castor and Pollux.
Gressoney-Saint-Jean
Province: Aosta Valley · 1,385 m
70 minutes from Aosta. A Walser village in the Lys valley where Titsch is still spoken and the Lyskamm glacier closes the view.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns
Castel del Giudice
Province: Isernia
An Alto Molise borgo of 305 residents at 800m that rebuilt an abandoned schoolhouse as a diffuse hotel and recovered 5,000 ancient apple trees into an organic-orchard cooperative.
Bolsena
Province: Viterbo
A medieval town at 350 meters on the eastern shore of Europe's largest volcanic lake, where a Bohemian priest reported a Eucharistic miracle in 1263.
Forte dei Marmi
Province: Lucca
The Versilia luxury beach built around an eighteenth-century marble-loading fort, with 99 bagni concessions and a Wednesday market that draws Milan.
Gallipoli
Province: Lecce
The Ionian beach city on a limestone island, Greek Kallipolis meaning beautiful city, tied to the mainland by a seventeenth-century bridge.
Moena
Province: Trento
The largest village in the valley, Ladin-speaking, dressed in Ottoman costume for three days every August.