To eat well
Where to eat well in Aosta Valley
8 towns
Towns holding at least one place a guide put its name to. The ones several guides agree on come first.
The towns
Courmayeur
Province: Aosta Valley · 1,224 m
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.
Cogne
Province: Aosta Valley · 1,534 m
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.
Valtournenche
Province: Aosta Valley · 1,524 m
The valley under the Cervino, home of the guides who raced Whymper up the mountain in 1865.
Ayas
Province: Aosta Valley · 1,710 m
A scattered upper-valley commune of three villages, where Walser settlers and Romance-speaking herders share the slopes below Castor and Pollux.
Bard
Province: Aosta Valley · 400 m
A 102-person village under the great Savoy fortress that guards the mouth of the Aosta Valley.
Fénis
Province: Aosta Valley · 537 m
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.
La Thuile
Province: Aosta Valley · 1,441 m
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.
Saint-Vincent
Province: Aosta Valley · 575 m
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.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns
Castelsardo
Province: Sassari
A Doria sea fortress at 114 meters above the Gulf of Asinara, Genoese from 1100, Aragonese from 1448, Savoyard from the 1700s.
St. Ulrich
Province: Bolzano
A Ladin wood-carving town at 1,236 meters, set between two high plateaus.
Bagolino
Province: Brescia
A mountain village at 778 meters in the Valle del Caffaro, with a three-day February carnival of masked dancers and violins.
Fontanellato
Province: Parma
A Parma-plain town built around the Rocca Sanvitale, the moated fortress at its center.
Sestri Levante
Province: Genova
The Tigullio town of two bays, split by a peninsula where a river once silted an island to the shore.