Mountain towns
Mountain towns in Aosta Valley
12 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.
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 478-person Alpine village at 1,280 metres, with an open-air contemporary art museum and the region's first dairy.
Courmayeur
Province: Aosta Valley · 1,224 m
The Italian base of the 4,810-meter peak, a Roman waystation on the Via delle Gallie that became the country's highest commune and its best-known ski address.
Fontainemore
Province: Aosta Valley · 760 m
A 418-person Walser-influenced village at 760 metres 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 metres 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 4,358-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 centre of a small Aostan commune east of Aosta, with an Apennine reserve climbing south to 3,000m.
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From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover
Cicala
Province: Catanzaro
A village of 887 people at 829 meters, founded in 1616 by farmers asking for land.
Fossombrone
Province: Pesaro e Urbino
An inland Marchigiano town on the Metauro river, layered over a Roman colony with a Renaissance ducal court rising above it.
Bagnoli del Trigno
Province: Isernia
The 'Pearl of Molise', a 637-resident borgo built into and around a massive limestone outcrop above the Trigno valley, with a medieval castle rebuilt on its summit.
Varenna
Province: Lecco
A fishing village founded in 769 on the Lecco arm of Lake Como, with a steep grid of streets falling into the water.
Rocca di Botte
Province: L'Aquila
At 750 meters on the Carseolani slopes between Abruzzo and Lazio, the birthplace of an eleventh-century hermit and a fief of the Colonna.