Italy, geographically, has more of the Alps than any other country.

Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in Europe, straddles the French-Italian border, and the Matterhorn is right on Swiss-Italian border.

Italy also has the entire Dolomite range, which many consider the world’s most spectacular. Italian ski areas here are world class cuisine and wines. If the weather changes, there is always a beautiful city such as Milan, Turin, Verona or Venice just a few hours away from the slopes.

This border region of Italy has distinct influences from both the French and the Germans. The cooking in the northwest has distinct French overtones and the wines of Piemonte are more like beefy French reds than the lighter Italian wines. In the far northeast, the Italian and German languages share the limelight—both are spoken with ease. The cuisine is a pleasant mixture of German and Italian taste as well. Here, the locals work with German efficiency and live life with Italian enthusiasm.

This is a land where the people go out to enjoy life as much as they can in the mountains. No one seems to take skiing seriously, even the Italian Olympic and World Cup champions. Relax. Enjoy long, long lunches. Or, if you aren’t into massive midday meals use the time to ski—the slopes empty between 1 and 3 p.m.. Once you get into the Italian swing of skiing, you will have the time of your life. Remember, you can always squeeze that next run in tomorrow, or next year for that matter.

When are the seasons?
Some Italian resorts have adopted a rather complicated series of mini-seasons. Basically, the high and low seasons remain, but are in some cases separated now by in-between seasons. If you follow these season breakouts for planning you will not go too far wrong:

High season: Christmas and New Year holidays, and all of February to mid-April.
Low season: January after New Year holidays.
Pre-season: 6 December to Christmas.

Telephone country code for Italy is 0039.