For foodies
Where to eat well in Trentino-South Tyrol
20 towns
Towns holding at least one place a guide put its name to. The ones several guides agree on come first.
Brunico
Province: Bolzano · 838 m
The largest town of the Pustertal at 838 metres, built around the prince-bishop's castle and the Stadtgasse, with Plan de Corones rising above the valley.
Corvara in Badia
Province: Bolzano · 1,568 m
The Ladin centre of Alta Badia at 1,568 metres, at the foot of the Sassongher, on the four-pass Sellaronda ski circuit.
Bressanone
Province: Bolzano · 560 m
The oldest town in Tyrol, a prince-bishopric for eight centuries at the confluence of the Eisack and Rienz, below the Plose ridge.
Cavalese
Province: Trento · 1,000 m
The capital of the valley at 1,000 metres, seat of the Magnifica Comunità and its open-air parliament, the Banco della Reson.
Moena
Province: Trento · 1,184 m
The largest village in the valley, Ladin-speaking, dressed in Ottoman costume for three days every August.
Canazei
Province: Trento · 1,465 m
A Ladin village at 1,465 metres at the head of Val di Fassa, ringed by Marmolada, Sella and Sassolungo and the Sellaronda circuit.
Riva del Garda
Province: Trento · 73 m
The north tip of the lake at 73 metres, where the Trentino mountains close in on the water and a Habsburg port town stayed bilingual into the twentieth century.
Trento
Province: Trento · 194 m
The Alpine capital on the Adige at 194 metres, where the Council that reshaped the Catholic Church met in a castle still standing above the city.
Pinzolo
Province: Trento · 770 m
The Val Rendena base town at 770 metres, set between the Adamello-Presanella massif and the Dolomites to the east.
Brentonico
Province: Trento · 692 m
The Monte Baldo plateau town between Lake Garda and the Vallagarina, with chestnut groves, war trenches and a botanical garden.
Levico Terme
Province: Trento · 520 m
A Habsburg spa town in the Valsugana at 520 metres, built on arsenic-iron thermal waters.
Meran
Province: Bolzano · 324 m
A Habsburg spa city at 324 metres on the Passer river, palm-lined promenades below 3,000-metre peaks and the gardens where Empress Sissi spent her winters.
Kastelruth
Province: Bolzano · 1,060 m
South Tyrolean village on a shelf below the Sciliar, eighty-two-metre bell tower over the square, home of the Kastelruther Spatzen.
Glurns
Province: Bolzano · 907 m
A ringed sixteenth-century circuit of walls encloses a city of 937 inhabitants near the Swiss border.
Luserna
Province: Trento · 1,333 m
A Cimbrian island at 1,333 metres on the Alpe Cimbra plateau, the last village in Italy where the medieval Bavarian dialect is still spoken at home.
Ossana
Province: Trento · 1,003 m
A small borgo at the foot of a 25-metre stone keep, with Christmas nativity scenes filling its streets every December.
Rovereto
Province: Trento · 204 m
The Vallagarina city at 204 metres where a Venetian-Austrian castle holds the Italian war museum and a domed contemporary art museum holds Italy's largest collection of its kind in the Alps.
St. Ulrich
Province: Bolzano · 1,236 m
A Ladin wood-carving town at 1,236 metres, set between two high plateaus.
Sterzing
Province: Bolzano · 948 m
A bilingual mining town at 948 metres on the Brenner road, where a 46-metre tower built in 1472 still divides the old town from the new.
Toblach
Province: Bolzano · 1,256 m
The Val Pusteria gateway where Mahler wrote his last three symphonies in a cabin behind town.
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From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover
Giano dell'Umbria
Province: Perugia
A hill commune between Foligno, Spoleto and Todi, anchored by a Romanesque abbey built over the tomb of a fourth-century martyr.
Assisi
Province: Perugia
A pink limestone town at 424 meters on the western flank of a mountain above the plain, the birthplace of Francis and a UNESCO site since 2000.
Servigliano
Province: Fermo
An eighteenth-century ideal city at 215 meters in the Tenna valley, rebuilt by papal commission on a 137-by-144-meter quadrangle after the old hill village collapsed.
Labro
Province: Rieti
A 355-person stone borgo at 628 meters, restored since the 1960s by a Belgian architect and his descendants.
San Nicola Arcella
Province: Cosenza
A cliff village above the Tyrrhenian Riviera dei Cedri, where a sea arch fronts a cove only reachable on foot or by boat.