Like Val d'Isère, but in Italy: higher villages, gentler mountains

Sestriere is the Italian resort our matching puts closest to Val d'Isère, and on the mountain itself it is close. We measure 160 kilometres of piste around the village against your 158, and 30 percent of it is steeper than one in four, against your 29. It also has 18 kilometres of black and 10.8 of marked itinerary, the most of the 10 Italian resorts we cover on both counts, though still short of yours.

It does the height well too. The village is at 2,035 metres, 185 above Val d'Isère and the fourth highest of the 55 resorts we cover. It is snow sure on our measure: 91 percent of the piste we measure is above 1,800 metres, up to 2,788. And it sits in a big linked area, the Via Lattea. On the standard Italian pass that comes to roughly 305 kilometres, a figure we calculated because no one publishes it; the 400 you will see quoted adds Montgenèvre in France, on the dearer International pass.

The trades are at the top, at the edges of the season and in the evening. The skiing stops 417 metres below your top, and the season runs December to April rather than late November to early May. The marked off piste is well under half of yours. There are only 50 kilometres of blue and easier, and more than half the mountain is red. And our read on the village is high and practical, built for skiing, with value on its list and nothing about nights out. It is a week for the skiing, not the après.

If height is the part of Val d'Isère you love, Cervinia beats it. The village is at 2,050 metres, the highest of the 10 Italian resorts we cover and 200 above yours. The skiing reaches 3,869 metres by our measure, as high as any of the 55 resorts we cover, though that is a top station at the Klein Matterhorn, shared with Zermatt and reached over the Swiss side, so check your pass before you count on it. Ninety-nine percent of the piste we measure is above 1,800 metres, the joint third biggest share of the 55 resorts we cover, and the season runs from late November into May, just like yours.

It is also linked over the top to Zermatt, 322 kilometres measured across the border, a little more than Espace Killy. The Zermatt side needs the International pass, and the high crossing can close in wind. Sources put the Italian side alone anywhere from 104 to 150 kilometres; we measure 116 around the village.

What Cervinia does not have is much that a Val d'Isère expert would call steep. Only 15 percent of its piste is steeper than one in four, against your 29, and seven of every ten kilometres are red, at an average of 18.1 percent, closer to a Val d'Isère blue at 16.9 than to your reds at 23.9. There are 8.2 kilometres of black. What it does have is length: the longest piste we measure there is a red of 5.3 kilometres with 741 metres of vertical. Evenings are low key, an aperitivo and a long dinner rather than a party.

Cortina is the only one of the three that keeps Val d'Isère's upmarket side. Our read on it is stylish and scenic: a historic town under the Dolomites, host of the 2026 Games and of the 1956 Winter Olympics, with an evening that starts with the passeggiata along the Corso Italia and lunches that run long at the rifugi.

The skiing has more bite than you might expect. Cortina's blacks average 32.5 percent, steeper than Val d'Isère's 29.9. Up top, by our measure, its lifts climb to 3,028 metres, above the highest piste we measure, a height only one Italian resort we cover beats, and 177 below yours. Its longest piste, the Armentarola, is a red of 6.9 kilometres with 1,000 metres of vertical. It is snow sure on our measure: 67 percent of the piste we measure is above 1,800 metres, with lifts to 3,028.

But it is small and spread out. We measure 86 kilometres of piste around the town, just over half of yours, with 9.1 kilometres of black, and its own areas are not joined to each other, so the bus or the car is part of the day. The 1,200 kilometres on the Dolomiti Superski pass covers twelve areas, only four of them linked by lift, so it is a pass, not a ski area. The town is at 1,224 metres, 626 below Val d'Isère.