Walking · Italy
Italy walks well from north to south, but the great routes are in the Alps and the Dolomites — refuge-to-refuge circuits through the pale rock towers above Cortina, and quiet trails through the country's oldest national park below Gran Paradiso.
Why walk here
Italy's mountain walking runs on the rifugio — the hut network that lets you cross serious high country carrying a day pack and still eat a hot dinner cooked from valley produce. The Club Alpino Italiano built most of them a century ago; families run many of them still.
The Dolomites are the postcard — Tre Cime di Lavaredo, the Fanes plateau, the Sella group — a UNESCO landscape of pale limestone towers that light up pink at sunset. The Gran Paradiso, further west in the Aosta Valley, is quieter and greener: Italy's oldest national park, protecting ibex and chamois since 1922.
Both regions walk best from late June to mid-September, when the huts are open and the passes are clear of snow. The trails are well waymarked, the villages between them are small and photogenic, and the food is as good a reason to walk as the mountains themselves.
The trails we walk
Every trail is walked and re-walked before we open it. We'd rather do four brilliantly than forty badly.
Book nowCortina d'Ampezzo · Italian Dolomites
94 km · 7 days
The most iconic corner of the Dolomites — Tre Cime di Lavaredo, Lago di Braies, the Fanes and Sennes plateaus — walked refuge to refuge over seven days, with a twin room every night.
Book nowGran Paradiso National Park · Aosta Valley, Italian Alps
74 km · 6 days
Italy's oldest national park — once a king's hunting reserve, protecting his ibex. Glacial valleys, high passes and a fair chance of chamois, marmots and bearded vultures, with a comfortable hotel each night.
The trails on one map
Lines follow each trail's waypoints — live trail pages draw the full GPX route. Tap a line to see the trail.
Reasons to linger
Eat
Canederli — bread dumplings in broth — on cool evenings in the Dolomites. Polenta with wild mushrooms in the Aosta Valley. Fresh pasta made in the rifugio kitchen that morning. Every hut serves a set three-course menu at long shared tables, and there's always a jug of house red on it.
Drink
Lagrein and Kerner from the Alto Adige vineyards you can see from the trails. A crisp glass of Petite Arvine after a hot Aosta afternoon. Grappa or génépi as a nightcap — the huts pour it from a bottle on the bar.
Sleep
We book the family-run rifugios that anchor each stage — Auronzo, Fanes, Sennes, Bergiadi, Chabod — plus small hotels in the valley towns where you'll want a private bathroom and a proper bed. All walker-friendly, all with early breakfasts.
Read
Gillian Price's Walking in the Dolomites (Cicerone) is the working guide. Reinhold Messner grew up under these peaks — his memoirs read differently once you've walked past his home valley. Take Primo Levi's The Periodic Table for the train down.
From the journal
Elise Downing ran the Ridgeway in three days. Two friends tried to walk the same distances. It went about as well as last time.
Sarah and Ros walk a trail together every year — arriving from opposite ends of the country to spend one week together, all the planning sorted. This year it was the South Downs Way. On day five, they walked a mile with Bill Bailey.
Chris Townsend walked the GR5 in autumn, with a tarp on his back and the huts closing behind him.
