4 Best Ski Resorts in Italy
Giant ski areas, spectacular scenery and a laid-back culture on the slopes – Italy offers some of Europe’s very best skiing. Plus, it’s less expensive and less crowded than rival Alpine nations. Deep in the white stuff, below are some of Italy’s best ski resorts… Alagna Alps, Piedmont: 25 miles southwest of Milan. Best for: Experts With a cult following among serious skiers, Little Alagna is a picturesque village centered on an old stone church ringed by meandering streets. Traditional Swiss-style wooden farmhouses add piquant local color, although the majority of buildings here are modern. A whole clutch of mountains spiral round the horizon, giving the place a majestic, away-from-the-rest-of-the-world feel. Alagna itself has only 15km of piste, but the tremendous scope the place offers for off-piste exploring makes it a major lure for powder hounds. Long, glorious snowfields thrill and challenge expert skiers, and heli-skiing is available. Alagna also boasts the most vertical skiing slope in Italy, making for imaginably thrilling descents.
Courmayeur Alps, Valle d’Aosta: 60 miles northwest of Turin. Best for: Intermediates One of the very best all-around ski resorts in Italy, pretty Courmayeur sits in the lee of Europe’s tallest mountain, Mont Blanc. The views, the slopes and the nightlife all ensure a dedicated clientele. The core of the town is a traditional Alpine village, all cobbled streets and cozy chalets, now sporting plenty of slick
designer boutiques and stylish cocktail bars. Both down in town and up on the mountain, stupendously good eateries are the norm. Chic Milanese and Torinese roll into Courmayeur in their finery every weekend to ski a little but relax a lot – they are generally keener to party than hit the piste, which means the slopes are surprisingly uncrowded. La Villa Dolomites, Trentino-Alto Adige: 80 miles north of Venice. Best for: Beginners and children Trentino-alto Adige is a charmingly jumbled corner of the world. Dark wooden Hansel-and-Gretel chalets and Gothic lettering make you think you’re in Bavaria or Austria, while sleekly-dressed Italians doing the evening passeggiata remind you you’re in Italy. The language? Well, it can be anything from German to Italian to Ladin – an obscure tongue spoken only in these parts. Picturesque La Villa (‘La Ila’ in Ladin, ‘Stern’ in German) is especially recommended for beginners and for skiers who are also gourmets. This is for the simple reason that there are 18 Michelin-starred restaurants hereabouts, in an area the size of north Devon. Some cater to the little mountain huts or rifugi, and charge very little. Cortina d’Ampezzo Dolomites, the Veneto: 80 miles north of Venice Best for: Intermediates and Experts Perched on a high plateau ringed by the elegant needle-like peaks of the Dolomites, this ancient mountain town full of chalets, fin-de-siècle mansions and soaring bell towers is physically beautiful in every way. Little surprise, then, that it attracts the beautiful people – the rich, the famous, the sophisticated as well as the über-athletic – nor that the resort has become a film star in its own right. Some memorable James Bond stunt sequences in For Your Eyes Only were filmed here, as were several scenes in Sylvester Stallone’s Cliffhanger. More travel adventures, destination and tips on vacation-now.com