Mountain towns
Mountain towns in Trentino-South Tyrol
23 towns
Towns inside a named range: the Alps, the Dolomites, the Apennines, the Pollino, the Aspromonte. Around 800 metres and up, where the season decides the trip.
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.
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.
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.
Toblach
Province: Bolzano · 1,256 m
The Val Pusteria gateway where Mahler wrote his last three symphonies in a cabin behind town.
St. Ulrich
Province: Bolzano · 1,236 m
A Ladin wood-carving town at 1,236 metres, set between two high plateaus.
Moena
Province: Trento · 1,184 m
The largest village in the valley, Ladin-speaking, dressed in Ottoman costume for three days every August.
Innichen
Province: Bolzano · 1,175 m
An Alta Pusteria town at 1,175 metres on the Austrian border, built around a Romanesque church and facing the Dolomites to the south.
Lavarone
Province: Trento · 1,172 m
A Cimbrian plateau at 1,172 metres above the Val d'Astico, with a karst lake and a wooded fort line.
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.
Andalo
Province: Trento · 1,042 m
An alpine pass at 1,042 metres on the Paganella plateau, with a mountain range on one side and a periodic lake that empties and refills.
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.
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.
Baselga di Pinè
Province: Trento · 964 m
The main town of the Piné plateau at 964 metres, with a Blue Flag lake, Italy's outdoor speed skating oval and a baroque Marian sanctuary.
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.
Glurns
Province: Bolzano · 907 m
A ringed sixteenth-century circuit of walls encloses a city of 937 inhabitants near the Swiss border.
Pieve Tesino
Province: Trento · 843 m
A plateau village in eastern Trentino, birthplace of Alcide De Gasperi, shaped by centuries of families who left to trade prints across Europe.
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.
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.
Fortezza
Province: Bolzano · 750 m
A small South-Tyrolean village in the Isarco valley, at the point where the Pusteria line branches off the main Brenner railway corridor.
San Pancrazio
Province: Bolzano · 736 m
A South-Tyrolean village at 736 metres on the entrance of the Ultental/Val d'Ultimo, German-speaking St. Pankraz, the gateway to one of the most isolated alpine valleys in the Adige basin and the centuries-old larch forests of the Lahnerlärchen.
Caldes
Province: Trento · 698 m
A scattered commune on the Noce, six hamlets gathered around a thirteenth-century tower-house castle that once belonged to the Thun family.
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.
Bleggio Superiore
Province: Trento · 628 m
A scattered Giudicarie commune whose hilltop hamlet of Rango holds the Christmas markets, with a Slow Food walnut grown on the terraces below.
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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.