Mountain towns
Mountain towns in Aosta Valley
12 towns
Towns inside a named range: the Alps, the Dolomites, the Apennines, the Pollino, the Aspromonte. All above 500 meters and half above 800, where the season decides the trip.
The towns
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.
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.
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.
Gressoney-Saint-Jean
Province: Aosta Valley · 1,385 m
A Walser village in the Lys valley where Titsch is still spoken and the Lyskamm glacier closes the view.
Etroubles
Province: Aosta Valley · 1,280 m
A 476-person Alpine village at 1,280 meters, with an open-air contemporary art museum and the region's first dairy.
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.
Fontainemore
Province: Aosta Valley · 760 m
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.
Aymavilles
Province: Aosta Valley · 646 m
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.
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.
Châtillon
Province: Aosta Valley · 549 m
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.
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.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns
Bellano
Province: Lecco
An eastern shore town where the Pioverna cut a gorge through fifteen million years of rock before reaching the water.
Numana
Province: Ancona
A Conero coastal town at 56 meters above its port, the Picene harbor that traded with Greek ships from the sixth century BC.
Alfedena
Province: L'Aquila
At 914 meters at the head of the upper Sangro valley, the Samnite Aufidena, with a 15,000-tomb necropolis and a Roman conquest in 298 BC.
Monte Isola
Province: Brescia
The largest lake island in southern and central Europe, 4.5 square kilometers in Lake Iseo, with no cars and eleven fishing villages on its shore.
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.