- The villageThe highest village in Italy, and the third highest of the 55 resorts we cover.
- 2,050m
- Top of the skiingThe highest top of the skiing in Italy, and the second highest of the 55 resorts we cover.
- 3,480m
- SeasonThe joint longest season in Italy. Longer than the December to April season that 42 of the 55 resorts we cover run.
- Late November to May
- Lift-linked from the village176km above the median of 146km across the 24 resorts we have a connected figure for. That is piste you can reach from the village without a bus, not what the pass covers.
- 322km
Is Cervinia right for you?
If you want snow you can count on and long, wide runs you can point down all day, this is one of the safest bets in the Alps. The village sits at 2,050m and the lifts top out at 3,480m, so the season runs from late November into May. It is not pretty and it is not steep. It is reliable, sunny and good value.
Cervinia at a glance
- Ski area
- Matterhorn Ski Paradise
- Best for
- Snow sure · Mileage chasers · Value for money
- Fly to
- Turin, Milan Malpensa or Geneva
- Transfer
- About 1h45 by road from Turin
- Doorstep skiing
- Widely available
Who Cervinia suits, and who it suits less
Best for
- Snow sure. Breuil-Cervinia sits at 2,050 metres, almost all of its piste lies above 1,800 metres, and the Italian lifts climb to 3,480 metres at Plateau Rosà.
- Mileage chasers. Long runs drop nearly a vertical kilometre to the village, and the link to Zermatt makes a shared area of about 360 kilometres across the border.
- Value for money. It is good value against Zermatt over the ridge, and the pizzerias and trattorias in the village keep eating out kind on the budget all week.
- Groups of friends. Groups get a solid week of blues and easy reds without Swiss prices, plus the party trick of skiing over to Zermatt for lunch and back.
Less good for
- Après. Après is friendly and low key, an Aperol in the last of the sun and a long dinner, so anyone wanting a big party scene should look elsewhere.
- Non skiers. Off the slopes there are walks, snowshoeing, sledging and hotel spas but no packed programme, so a non skiing partner may run short of things to do.
Skiing from 1,524m to 3,480m, village at 2,050m.
Where these heights are
- Lowest skiing
- 1,524mValtournenche, bottom of the Italian side. Breuil-Cervinia sector alone bottoms out at about the village (2,050m).
- Village
- 2,050m
- Top of the skiing
- 3,480mPlateau Rosà, top of the Italian lifts on Cervinia's own pass. The Swiss side reaches 3,883m on the international pass.
- 39km blue25%
- 107km red68%
- 11km black7%
The resort's own figures, covering Breuil-Cervinia and Valtournenche, the Italian side without Zermatt.
No green: Italian pistes are graded from blue.
- Black piste
- 8km, 7% of the pisteThe seventh smallest share of black of the 55 resorts we cover.
- Off piste itinerary
- 8kmMarked routes, not pistes, and never added to the piste figures.
- Ski area
- Matterhorn Ski Paradise, 360kmCervino Ski Paradise on the Italian side.
- Cross country
- 2km of trails
Sources
- Village height: balteus.lovevda.it
- Lowest skiing: zermatt.ch
- Top of the skiing: balteus.lovevda.it
- Piste by colour: lovevda.it
- Cross country: balteus.lovevda.it
- Ski area: zermatt.swiss
- The steep end: our measurement of the OpenStreetMap piste map
The published figures were read on 29 October 2026.
322km, and you can ski all of it.
- 24km blue21%
- 83km red72%
- 8km black7%
Plus 8km of off-piste itinerary, kept out of the piste total.
- Improvers, blue into redFine
- Confident intermediatesA real strength
- Strong skiersThin
The spreadA resort that knows what it is. 72% of the piste is red, and it scores 0.69 for evenness, where 1 is a perfect three way split between blue, red and black. Wonderful if that is your speed, and worth knowing if your group is mixed.
Longest pisteMatterhorn, 5.3km of red with 741m of vertical.
Matterhorn Ski Paradise is one lift-connected domain, so 322km is what you can ski from Cervinia without a bus. The official figure is 360km. 322km is what an independent survey measures as graded piste, and the two are counting different things.
Sources disagree about Cervinia's own side. We put it at roughly 120km, and we would rather say that is approximate than pretend to a precision nobody has. Measured from the run geometry ourselves, we make it 116km.
Sources: skiresort.com
The highest village of its Italian peers
Of these five, Cervinia has the highest village, 2,050m. The median across the 55 resorts we cover is 1,350m.
The far side is on a pricier pass, and the high crossing closes in wind.
Snow-sure and sunny. The village is functional rather than pretty, and some people mind that more than they expect to.
Who should look elsewhere
If you want a village with a heart
Val Gardena or Bormio will suit you far better.
If you want steep skiing
Look hard before booking. Only 8km of the 116km of piste we measure here is graded black, about 7%. Chamonix, in France, has 23km of black and 44km of marked off-piste itinerary.
Know the mountain before you go.
The skiing
The terrain is wonderfully gentle and forgiving, perfect for building confidence and clocking up mile after mile of well groomed piste. The link to Zermatt adds a world of extra terrain for the adventurous.
The village and the evenings
The village is modern and functional rather than pretty, but it makes up for it with sunshine, snow reliability and friendly Italian value. It is a great pick for improvers.
Beyond the skiing.
Free, and worth knowing
Who skis free, and who rides free. A child born after 31 October 2018 gets a pass of the same duration as the accompanying adult's, at no cost, across the whole of Cervino Ski Paradise. At the other end of the scale, anybody born before 1 November 1946 goes free on production of identity, on the daily pass as well as the Explore Pass. Both are confirmed in the winter 2026/27 tariff.
The playpark at Cretaz. A castle structure flying Matterhorn flags, with slides and forts around it, at the foot of the Cretaz chairlift. Nothing to book and nothing to pay, and it is the one place in the village where small children can be turned loose without a ticket. It sits immediately next to the paid Kid Zone Fun Park and the two are separate things.
The two snowshoe routes that need no lift. Five marked snowshoe routes are published here and three of them start where the lifts drop you. The other two do not. The Lago di Loz loop is 3.7 km with two hundred and twenty seven metres of climb, starting either from the hamlet of Losanche or from the gondola car park, and it is the quietest of the set. The Plan du Bois route starts from Plan du Bois itself.
The free winter ski bus. Two of the four bus lines in the valley are free winter services rather than ticketed ones: the Green line up to Cime Bianche and the Light Blue line, which is the ski bus proper. Neither wants a ticket, a guest card or a pass. The other two, the Blue trunk route down the valley to Valtournenche and Châtillon and the Violet up to Cielo Alto, are paid and cheap.
A few of the rest
The snowshoe routes off the top. Three of the five marked routes start at a lift station. The Rifugio Teodulo route runs 4.5 km from Plan Maison up to three thousand three hundred and thirty metres and crosses pistes on the way, which is worth knowing before setting off. Plan Maison to Fornet to Cime Bianche Laghi is 6 km and tops out at two thousand eight hundred and twelve, and it is the gentler of the two. 20 to 50 euros.
Dog sledding at Avouil. The standard outing runs fifty five minutes all in, fifteen of briefing and forty on the sled, over about four kilometres. The detail worth knowing is who drives: adults take their own sled behind three or four dogs, children of nine and over who weigh under forty kilos drive their own behind two, and the three to eights ride as passengers with the instructor. The premium version is an hour and twenty over about five kilometres, run as a private sunset group. Over 50 euros.
Snowmobiles, including after dark. Two seat machines on groomed marked routes with a guide at the front and another at the back, running from mid December to the twentieth of April. What makes it unusual is the hours: ten in the morning until midnight, so this is one of the very few things here that works as an evening rather than an afternoon. There is an option to stop at a baita and eat. Price on request.
These are our own picks, not paid placements. Prices and opening times change, so it is always worth checking before you set off.
20 places we would send you to
On a near flat shelf beside the piste with a big sun terrace, and the self service counter is the better bet in good weather because it gets you outside faster.
Book it, because they turn people away and the phone is not always the way in.
The late one, and one regular calls it the only genuinely late and rough edged apres bar in Cervinia, which is the character rather than a fault.
These are our own picks, not paid placements. Opening times and ownership change, so it is always worth checking before you set off.
Getting there
Turin is about two hours away, with Geneva a similar distance on the far side of the mountain.
- Turinabout 1h45 by road
- Milan Malpensaabout 2h25 by road
- Genevaabout 2h45 by road