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Europe travel tips

216 guides across 31 countries — when to go, how to get around, which ATMs not to use, and what a fair price looks like.

BarcelonaSpainSun, sea, and Gaudi masterpieces

ParisFranceThe city of light, love, and croissants

AmsterdamNetherlandsCanals, bikes, and golden-age charm

LisbonPortugalHills, tiles, and pastéis de nata

RomeItalyThree thousand years of history on every corner

MilanItalyDesign, fashion, and aperitivo culture

FlorenceItalyThe Renaissance, still standing

VeniceItalyA city built on water, sinking beautifully

MadridSpainLate nights, great art, and endless tapas

SevilleSpainOrange trees, flamenco, and Moorish palaces

ValenciaSpainBeaches, futuristic architecture, and the home of paella

PortoPortugalPort wine, tiled facades, and a river worth staring at

AthensGreeceAncient ruins above a restless modern city

SantoriniGreeceWhite villages on the rim of a drowned volcano

PragueCzech RepublicGothic spires, cheap beer, and a river running through it

BudapestHungaryThermal baths, ruin bars, and grand Danube views

ViennaAustriaImperial palaces, coffee houses, and world-class music

BerlinGermanyHistory, nightlife, and space to breathe

DubrovnikCroatiaA walled stone city above the Adriatic

SplitCroatiaA Roman emperor’s palace that became a living city

NiceFranceThe French Riviera at its most liveable

LondonUnited KingdomEvery neighbourhood is a different city

EdinburghUnited KingdomA volcanic castle over a medieval old town

CopenhagenDenmarkBikes, design, and harbour swimming

ReykjavikIcelandA tiny capital at the edge of a volcanic island

KrakowPolandPoland’s best-preserved old town, and very good value

BucharestRomaniaBelle Époque boulevards, communist concrete, and Europe’s fastest broadband

BrașovRomaniaA Saxon square under a forested mountain, half an hour from Dracula’s castle

Cluj-NapocaRomaniaTransylvania’s student and tech capital, with the festival calendar to match

TimișoaraRomaniaHabsburg squares, canal-side cafés, and the city where the revolution started

OradeaRomaniaThe best Art Nouveau in Eastern Europe, restored, above a thermal aquifer

IașiRomaniaMoldavia’s old capital: monasteries, a hundred thousand students, and cheap wine

Danube DeltaRomaniaEurope’s largest wetland: three hundred bird species, and roads that are water

TenerifeSpainSpain's highest mountain, with a subtropical winter around its feet

LofotenNorwayMountains that come straight out of the sea, above the Arctic Circle, in a place the Gulf Stream keeps liveable

StockholmSwedenFourteen islands of pale stone and dark water, with an archipelago of thirty thousand more behind them

Swedish LaplandSwedenA hundred nights a year under the aurora, and a summer when the sun does not set at all

ProvenceFranceLavender, limestone villages and a light that brought half the painters of Europe here and kept them

Amalfi CoastItalyVillages stacked up a cliff above the Tyrrhenian, on a road that should not exist

CreteGreeceAn island big enough to have its own mountains, its own cuisine and its own opinion of Greece

AlgarvePortugalOchre cliffs, hidden coves and three hundred days of sun at the bottom of Europe

MallorcaSpainA mountain range, three hundred beaches and a capital most people fly straight past

Interlaken & the Bernese OberlandSwitzerlandTwo lakes, three of the great north faces, and a railway that goes to 3,454 metres

DublinIrelandA small capital with a very large literature, and a pub for every page of it

KotorMontenegroA walled Venetian town at the head of a fjord that is not a fjord, under 1,200 metres of rock

MunichGermanyBeer halls, baroque and the Alps an hour down the motorway

BrugesBelgiumA medieval trading city that got poor, stopped building, and is now perfectly preserved because of it

SalzburgAustriaMozart, a fortress on a rock, and the Alps starting at the end of the street

SicilyItalyGreek temples, Norman cathedrals, an active volcano and the best street food in Italy

MaltaMaltaSeven thousand years of everybody, on a limestone rock in the middle of the Mediterranean

BolognaItalyForty kilometres of arcades, the oldest university in the world, and the food capital Italians actually name

Cinque TerreItalyFive villages stacked on cliffs above the Ligurian Sea, joined by a footpath and a train

PugliaItalyWhitewashed towns, conical stone roofs, olive groves to the horizon and two coasts to choose from

GranadaSpainThe last Moorish palace in Europe, with the Sierra Nevada behind it and free tapas below

San SebastiánSpainA shell-shaped bay, more Michelin stars per head than almost anywhere, and pintxos eaten standing up

MálagaSpainPicasso’s birthplace, a Roman theatre under a Moorish fort, and three hundred days of sun

RhodesGreeceA walled medieval city that people still live in, and three hundred days of sun off the Turkish coast

CorfuGreeceVenetian arcades and cricket in the square, on the greenest island in Greece

MeteoraGreeceSix monasteries on top of rock pillars, built where nobody could reach them

BordeauxFranceAn eighteenth-century city of pale stone, with the world’s most famous vineyards half an hour out

LyonFranceTwo rivers, Roman ruins on the hill, secret passages through the buildings, and the food capital of France

MadeiraPortugalA volcanic wall in the Atlantic, laced with irrigation channels you can walk for days

AzoresPortugalNine green volcanic islands in the middle of the Atlantic, with crater lakes and whales offshore

SardiniaItalyCaribbean water on a Mediterranean island, with a stone-age civilisation inland that nobody talks about

IbizaSpainThe island the clubs made famous, with a walled Renaissance town and a quiet north almost nobody sees

HamburgGermanyMore bridges than Venice and Amsterdam together, a harbour that runs the city, and the loudest night in Germany

CologneGermanyA cathedral that took six hundred years, beer served in small glasses until you say stop, and the Rhine going past

Black ForestGermanyDark firs, cuckoo clocks made where they were invented, and spa towns the Romans already knew about

BathUnited KingdomA Roman bathhouse still full of hot water, and a Georgian city built in one colour of stone

CornwallUnited KingdomBritain’s warmest corner, with Atlantic surf on one coast and sheltered coves on the other

Scottish HighlandsUnited KingdomEmpty glens, single-track roads, and weather that changes four times before lunch

ZermattSwitzerlandA car-free village under the most photographed mountain in the world, with skiing in every month

LucerneSwitzerlandA painted wooden bridge over a green river, a lake with steamers on it, and two mountains at the end of the line

ZurichSwitzerlandA banking city with a swimmable river through the middle of it, and a lake that turns into a beach in July

HvarCroatiaLavender fields and a Venetian harbour, with the clearest water in the Adriatic off the islets outside it

Plitvice LakesCroatiaSixteen lakes falling into each other down a limestone staircase, crossed on wooden walkways

BergenNorwayWooden warehouses on the wharf, seven mountains behind, and the gateway to the longest fjords in the world

TromsøNorwayThree hundred kilometres inside the Arctic Circle, with the northern lights overhead and a sun that does not set in June

GdańskPolandA merchant city rebuilt brick by brick after being flattened, on the Baltic where the war started

GalwayIrelandA small city that plays music every night of the week, on the edge of the wildest coast in Ireland

MarseilleFranceFrance’s oldest city, a Mediterranean port with limestone fjords on its southern edge

StrasbourgFranceHalf-timbered houses over canals, a cathedral that was the tallest building on earth for two centuries, and Germany across the river

CorsicaFranceA mountain range in the sea, with the GR20 down its spine and water the colour of a swimming pool around it

NaplesItalyThe loudest, oldest and best-fed city in Italy, with Pompeii on one side and the islands on the other

Lake ComoItalyA Y-shaped lake under the Alps, with villas, ferries and villages stacked up the mountainsides

TurinItalyBaroque arcades under the Alps, Italy’s first capital, and the city that invented the aperitivo

BilbaoSpainA steel city that rebuilt itself around a titanium museum, and eats better than almost anywhere in Europe

CórdobaSpainA mosque with a cathedral built inside it, and courtyards full of flowers in a city that was once the largest in Europe

SintraPortugalPalaces in a misty hill forest above Lisbon, one of them painted like a fairground

Douro ValleyPortugalTerraced vineyards falling into a river gorge, worked by hand since before port had a name

MykonosGreeceWhite cubes, windmills and the loudest beach clubs in the Aegean, with the sacred island of Delos next door

NaxosGreeceThe biggest Cyclade, with mountain villages, marble quarries and the longest sandy beaches in the islands

HallstattAustriaA village of a few hundred people on a lake under a salt mountain, and the most photographed view in Austria

InnsbruckAustriaA Habsburg city with ski runs above the rooftops and a cable car from the middle of town to the Alps

Wachau ValleyAustriaForty kilometres of terraced Danube between two abbeys, with the best white wine in Austria on the slopes

Český KrumlovCzech RepublicA castle above a river bend, a town inside the loop, and almost nothing in it built after 1600

Karlovy VaryCzech RepublicA spa town in a wooded gorge, where you walk the colonnades drinking hot mineral water from a porcelain cup

Brno & South MoraviaCzech RepublicThe Czech second city, functionalist and unbothered, with the country’s wine country on its doorstep

Killarney & the Ring of KerryIrelandLakes under sandstone mountains, a national park you can walk into from the town, and the most driven road in Ireland around it

Cliffs of Moher & the BurrenIrelandTwo hundred metres of sheer Atlantic cliff, and behind them a limestone desert with Mediterranean flowers in it

Cork & KinsaleIrelandIreland's second city, built on an island in a river, with a food town and a harbour twenty minutes away

TiranaAlbaniaA capital painted in colours to shake off the grey, with bunkers turned into galleries and a café on every corner

SarandëAlbaniaA horseshoe bay facing Corfu, the gateway to the Riviera, and a town that quadruples in August

KsamilAlbaniaThree tiny islands you can swim to, water the colour of the Maldives, and a village that has grown faster than its plumbing

BeratAlbaniaA thousand windows climbing two hillsides above a river, a castle people still live in, and the best raki in the country

GjirokastërAlbaniaA city of stone roofs on a mountainside, a fortress with a captured plane on the wall, and the birthplace of a dictator and a novelist

HimarëAlbaniaThe quiet middle of the Riviera: a Greek-speaking old village on the hill, a beach town below, and the Llogara pass above it all

SofiaBulgariaA capital with a mountain at the end of the tram line, Roman ruins under the metro, and the cheapest good coffee in the EU

PlovdivBulgariaOne of the oldest cities in Europe, a Roman theatre still in use, seven hills, and a bohemian quarter called the Trap

BanskoBulgariaThe cheapest serious skiing in Europe, a stone-house old town under the Pirin, and a summer of hiking to glacial lakes

Veliko TarnovoBulgariaThe medieval capital stacked above a river gorge, a fortress lit up at night, and a craft street still working

VarnaBulgariaThe Black Sea capital: a Roman bath the size of a block, a sea garden that runs for miles, and the oldest worked gold on earth

LjubljanaSloveniaA capital you can cross on foot in twenty minutes, a river lined with terraces, and a castle on the hill above a car-free centre

Lake BledSloveniaAn island church in an alpine lake, a castle on a cliff above it, and a cream cake that is the reason half the visitors came

PiranSloveniaVenice’s little sister on a point of the Adriatic: a marble square, a bell tower, and the whole of Slovenia’s coast in a day

Lake BohinjSloveniaBled’s quieter, wilder neighbour: a glacial lake inside the national park, a waterfall above it, and Triglav at the end of the valley

BudvaMontenegroA walled old town on a spit of rock, a beach either side of it, and the loudest summer on the Adriatic

DurmitorMontenegroBlack Lake, the Tara canyon a kilometre deep, and forty-eight peaks over 2,000 metres, from a village at the top of the country

UlcinjMontenegroThe far south: a pirate old town on a rock, a twelve-kilometre beach of grey sand, kitesurfing, and a town that is more Albanian than Montenegrin

SarajevoBosnia and HerzegovinaWhere the Ottoman bazaar meets the Austro-Hungarian boulevard on one street, a city that hosted an Olympics and survived a siege, and the best coffee ritual in Europe

MostarBosnia and HerzegovinaA stone bridge rebuilt after the war and dived from for money, an Ottoman bazaar either side of it, and the Neretva running green underneath

TallinnEstoniaThe best-kept medieval city in northern Europe, with a startup nation behind the walls, a sauna culture that means it, and Helsinki two hours across the water

TartuEstoniaThe university town on the Emajõgi, a kissing-students fountain, a science centre for the family, and the intellectual capital of a country that takes the idea seriously

PärnuEstoniaThe summer capital: a long shallow beach on a warm bay, spa hotels from the tsars’ time, and a wooden town behind the dunes

SaaremaaEstoniaThe big island: a Teutonic castle with a moat, windmills, a meteorite crater, juniper heath and a coast that nobody else has found

LahemaaEstoniaEstonia’s first national park, an hour from Tallinn: bog boardwalks, manor houses, fishing villages on a stony coast, and the forest that is most of the country

HaapsaluEstoniaA small spa town on a warm bay with a bishop’s castle, a promenade Tchaikovsky walked, a railway station with the longest platform in the north, and a lace shawl to buy

RigaLatviaThe biggest Art Nouveau city in the world with a Hanseatic old town inside it, a market in five zeppelin hangars, and a beach twenty minutes away by train

JūrmalaLatviaThirty kilometres of white sand under pines, wooden villas from the tsars’ time, and Riga half an hour away by train

SiguldaLatviaThe Gauja valley: three castles, a cable car across the river, a bobsleigh track you can ride, caves with medieval graffiti and the country’s autumn colour

KuldīgaLatviaA small town of wooden houses on the widest waterfall in Europe, where the fish jump the falls in spring and the brick bridge is the longest of its kind

CēsisLatviaThe prettiest small town in Latvia: a Livonian castle you explore by lantern, a medieval centre, a beer brewed since 1590 and the Gauja forest around it

LiepājaLatviaThe city where the wind is born: a long white beach, a Soviet naval base you can sleep in the prison of, Art Nouveau streets and the country’s rock music

VilniusLithuaniaA baroque old town on a scale no one expects, a self-declared republic of artists across the river, and a hot-air balloon over it all on a summer evening

KaunasLithuaniaThe interwar capital, a whole city of modernism between two rivers, with a castle, a funicular, a devil museum and a basketball obsession

KlaipėdaLithuaniaThe port that was Memel: a German old town of timber warehouses, the ferry to the Curonian Spit, and the country’s only sea

Curonian SpitLithuaniaA ninety-kilometre sandbar between the sea and a lagoon, with dunes the height of a cathedral, a fishing village of painted wooden houses and Thomas Mann’s summer house

TrakaiLithuaniaA red-brick castle on an island in a lake, a Karaim community that has been here six hundred years and bakes the country’s favourite pastry, and Vilnius half an hour away

ChișinăuMoldovaThe least-visited capital in Europe, a city of parks and Soviet concrete, with the biggest wine cellars in the world under the hills outside it and a country that wants you to come

Orheiul VechiMoldovaA limestone gorge an hour from the capital with a monastery cut into the cliff, a village of whitewashed houses, and two thousand years of layers under the grass

TiraspolMoldovaThe capital of a country that does not exist: Lenin still standing, a currency nobody else takes, a Soviet main street kept as it was, and a day trip from Chișinău that is stranger than anywhere else in Europe

ParosGreeceThe Cyclades without the price of Santorini: a marble island of white villages, a windsurfing bay, and ferries to everywhere

MilosGreeceA volcanic island of seventy beaches, none of them alike: white rock carved by the sea, a fishing village with boat garages under the houses, and the Venus de Milo came from here

IosGreeceAn island with two reputations: a hill village that parties until dawn, and a coast of empty beaches and a poet’s grave that almost nobody walks to

SifnosGreeceThe island Greeks go to for the food: a chef whose cookbook shaped the country, three hundred chapels, and a footpath network you can cross the island on

FolegandrosGreeceA village on a 200-metre cliff with the sea straight down from the square, almost no beaches you can drive to, and the quietest evening in the Cyclades

ZakynthosGreeceThe shipwreck in a white cove that every Greek poster shows, blue caves along the cliffs, and loggerhead turtles nesting on the bay at the other end

KefaloniaGreeceThe biggest Ionian island: an underground lake you row across, a beach between white cliffs that is on every calendar, and a mountain with wild horses on it

LefkadaGreeceAn island you drive onto across a floating bridge, with the most photographed beaches in Greece under white cliffs on the west coast

KosGreeceA flat island you cycle across, with a Roman city in the middle of the town, Hippocrates’ plane tree, and Turkey close enough to see

SymiGreeceA harbour of neoclassical houses in ochre and blue stacked up both sides of a bay, five hundred steps from the port to the old town, and shrimp you eat whole

KarpathosGreeceA long thin island between Crete and Rhodes where a mountain village still speaks a dialect with words Homer used, and the wind makes it a kitesurfing capital

PatmosGreeceThe island where Revelation was written, in a cave you can still go into, under a monastery that looks like a fortress and rules the skyline

SkiathosGreeceSixty beaches on a small green island, an airport where the planes come in over the road, and the pine forest behind the most photographed sand in the Aegean

SkopelosGreeceA green island of pine and plum orchards where they filmed the chapel on the rock, with a harbour town of slate roofs and almost no package tourism

HydraGreeceAn island with no cars at all: everything moves by donkey or on foot, a harbour of stone mansions built by shipowners, and Athens an hour and a half away

SpetsesGreeceA pine-covered island of shipowners’ mansions and horse-drawn carriages, where cars are mostly banned and Athens is two hours by boat

ThessalonikiGreeceGreece’s second city and the one Greeks say eats best: a Roman rotunda, Byzantine churches, a waterfront to walk at sunset, and a student population that never goes to bed

HalkidikiGreeceThree peninsulas off Thessaloniki: one for the beaches, one for the pine forest and the quiet, and one that is a monastic republic women may not enter

NafplioGreeceThe first capital of modern Greece: a Venetian old town under two castles, with a third on an islet in the bay and Mycenae and Epidaurus down the road

DelphiGreeceThe place the Greeks called the navel of the world: a sanctuary on a mountainside above a sea of olive trees, where the oracle spoke for a thousand years

OlympiaGreeceWhere the games were held for a thousand years: a sanctuary in a green river valley, the original stadium you can still run in, and the Hermes of Praxiteles in the museum

MonemvasiaGreeceA Byzantine town on a rock joined to the mainland by a causeway, invisible from the shore, with no cars inside and a church at the top of the cliff

ZagoriGreeceForty-six stone villages in the mountains of Epirus, linked by arched packhorse bridges, above a gorge that is among the deepest in the world

PelionGreeceThe mountain of the centaurs: cobbled villages in chestnut forest on one side, empty Aegean beaches on the other, and a narrow-gauge train between them

SamosGreeceA green island a mile from Turkey, with a tunnel dug through a mountain in the sixth century BC, the sweet wine it exports, and Pythagoras born here

VeronaItalyA Roman arena that still fills for opera on summer nights, a pink-marble city around it, and Venice an hour away without Venice’s prices

PaduaItalyGiotto’s chapel, the oldest botanical garden in the world, and a student city that has been arguing in the same square since 1222

TriesteItalyAn Austrian port city that ended up in Italy: Viennese coffee houses, a Habsburg square open to the sea, and a wind that can knock you over

DolomitesItalyPale limestone towers that go pink at sunset, a network of huts you can walk between for a week, and two languages plus Ladin in the valleys

Lake GardaItalyItaly’s biggest lake, with lemon houses and olive groves at the southern end and a fjord between cliffs at the northern one — two different holidays on one body of water

BergamoItalyA walled Venetian city on a hill above the plain, reached by funicular, with a lower town nobody bothers to visit and mountains behind it

SienaItalyA medieval city that stopped growing in 1348 and never restarted: a shell-shaped square, seventeen districts that still hate each other politely, and a horse race twice a summer

PisaItalyEveryone comes for four buildings on a lawn and leaves in three hours, which is why the rest of a real Tuscan university city on a river is empty

LuccaItalyA walled city whose ramparts were turned into a park you can cycle right round in half an hour, with an oval piazza built inside a Roman amphitheatre

PerugiaItalyAn Etruscan hill city with escalators running up through a buried medieval quarter, a jazz festival in high summer, and chocolate the rest of the year

AssisiItalyA pink stone town on the side of Monte Subasio, built around the basilica of a man who wanted nothing, and visited by five million people a year

OrvietoItalyA town on a slab of volcanic rock with a striped cathedral that has no business being this big, and a second town of caves cut underneath it

ParmaItalyThe town that gave its name to a ham and a cheese, with a Correggio dome, a Farnese theatre made entirely of wood, and no crowds at all

ModenaItalyBalsamic vinegar aged in attics for twenty-five years, Ferrari and Lamborghini within half an hour, and a Romanesque cathedral that is the best in northern Italy

RavennaItalyEight buildings on the UNESCO list, all of them lined with fifth- and sixth-century mosaic, in a quiet provincial town that was once the capital of the western empire

RiminiItalyFifteen kilometres of sun loungers and Europe’s loudest clubs on one side of the railway, and Fellini’s Roman town with a bridge still carrying traffic on the other

GenoaItalyA republic that ran the Mediterranean, squeezed between mountains and port into the densest old town in Europe, and still not really on the tourist map

PortofinoItalyA fishing village of about four hundred people that became the most expensive harbour in the Mediterranean, with a free walk through a nature reserve behind it

SorrentoItalyA town on a cliff facing Vesuvius, with lemon groves behind it and Pompeii, Capri and the Amalfi Coast all within an hour — which is why everyone bases here

CapriItalyA limestone rock an hour from Naples with two towns, a blue cave, and a day-tripper crowd that arrives at ten and leaves at five, which is the whole trick of visiting

IschiaItalyThe volcanic island Capri’s crowds do not reach: thermal gardens cut into the hillside, a castle on its own islet, and a working population of sixty thousand

TaorminaItalyA Greek theatre on a terrace above the sea with Etna smoking behind it, in a town that has been letting rooms to foreigners since the 1800s

MateraItalyA city of caves carved into a ravine, abandoned as a national disgrace in the 1950s and now a UNESCO site with hotels in the same rooms

LecceItalyBaroque carved out of soft golden limestone until the whole city looks iced, at the heel of Italy with two seas twenty minutes away

BariItalyA working Adriatic port with a walled old town where women make orecchiette in the street, and ferries to Greece, Albania and Croatia from the quay

ChamonixFranceThe town at the foot of Mont Blanc, where alpinism was invented and where the Aiguille du Midi cable car puts you at 3,842 metres in twenty minutes

AnnecyFranceA canal town on the clearest lake in Europe, an hour from Geneva and forty minutes from the nearest ski lift — the base people use when the whole family does not ski

Val d’IsèreFranceA high resort that links with Tignes into the Espace Killy, holds snow into May, and has a village underneath the ski area rather than a car park

CourchevelFranceFour villages stacked up one mountainside, from a working valley town to the most expensive address in the Alps, all of them on the Trois Vallées lift pass

MéribelFranceThe middle valley of the Trois Vallées, built in wood and stone by a Scotsman who thought concrete resorts were a mistake, and still the only one that looks like a village

TignesFranceA resort built high and ugly on purpose, with a glacier that skis in summer, a lake that freezes hard enough to walk on, and the snow record to justify all of it

Alpe d’HuezFranceA sunny plateau above Grenoble with the longest black run in the Alps dropping off the back of it, and twenty-one hairpins of Tour de France road climbing up to it

St. MoritzSwitzerlandThe resort that invented winter tourism in 1864 on a bet, in a high dry valley where they race horses on the frozen lake and the sun shines about three hundred days a year

VerbierSwitzerlandA sunny terrace above the Rhône valley with the steepest lift-served terrain in Switzerland behind it, and the Freeride World Tour finishes here for a reason

GrindelwaldSwitzerlandA village under the north face of the Eiger, with a railway that climbs inside the mountain to the highest station in Europe

DavosSwitzerlandThe highest town in Europe, built as a tuberculosis sanatorium in thin dry air, now five separate ski mountains and a conference nobody local enjoys

Saas-FeeSwitzerlandA car-free village in a bowl with thirteen four-thousand-metre peaks standing round it and a glacier that skis all summer

KitzbühelAustriaA walled medieval town that happens to have a ski resort attached, and the Hahnenkamm downhill every January, which is the most frightening race in the sport

St. Anton am ArlbergAustriaThe birthplace of the modern ski school, at the centre of the biggest linked area in Austria, with a reputation for hard skiing and harder drinking that it has entirely earned

IschglAustriaA high, snow-sure resort that links across the border into Switzerland for duty-free shopping, and puts on a stadium concert on the mountain twice a season

SöldenAustriaTwo glaciers, the first World Cup race of every season, and a road that climbs to 2,800 metres — the highest paved pass in Austria — above the village

Zell am SeeAustriaA lakeside town with a glacier twenty minutes away, which means you can swim and ski in the same week and the resort does not shut for the summer

MayrhofenAustriaA valley town at the end of the Zillertal with the steepest piste in Austria dropping into it, a music festival on the snow, and a working village underneath all of it

Bad GasteinAustriaA belle époque spa town built in tiers down a gorge with a waterfall through the middle of it, half restored and half magnificently derelict, with radon thermal baths underneath

Cortina d’AmpezzoItalyThe Dolomites’ grandest town, in a bowl of pale limestone towers, hosting the Winter Olympics again in 2026 having first done it in 1956

LivignoItalyA duty-free valley at 1,800 metres, cut off by passes for half the year until they bored a tunnel, with cheap petrol, cheap drink and reliable snow

Madonna di CampiglioItalyAn elegant resort in a saddle between the Brenta Dolomites and the Adamello glaciers, where the Habsburgs came to ski and the town still dresses for dinner

Val GardenaItalyThree villages in one Dolomite valley where the first language is Ladin, the wood carving is a real trade, and the Sella Ronda circuit starts at the door

BormioItalyA Roman spa town with thermal baths still running, a World Cup downhill dropping into it, and the Stelvio Pass and its forty-eight hairpins starting from the edge of town

Garmisch-PartenkirchenGermanyTwo towns the 1936 Olympics forced into one, under Germany’s highest mountain, with a gorge, a ski jump and a glacier all within half an hour