Mountain Villages

Alpbach in Tyrol, Austria's most beautiful village, preserved by 1953 building rules requiring Tyrolean wooden architecture. Base for Ski Juwel and European Forum.

Hallstatt has lent its name to an entire prehistoric era — the Hallstatt culture — after Iron Age salt-mining artifacts were uncovered in the mountain above the village.

Heiligenblut at 1,291 m marks the southern start of the Grossglockner High Alpine Road in Austria's Hohe Tauern National Park.

Ostana in the Cuneo Alps, an Occitan village at 1,250 m that reversed near-total depopulation through strict traditional architecture restoration.

Vigo di Fassa sits at 1 382 m in the Ladin-speaking Val di Fassa. Gateway to the Catinaccio, home of the Museo Ladin de Fascia.

Capileira at 1,436 m in Las Alpujarras, Sierra Nevada, is the highest village in the Poqueira gorge and the standard base for climbing Mulhacén.

Grazalema is the highest of the white villages of the Sierra de Cádiz, set inside Spain's wettest natural park.

La Alberca was the first village in Spain to be granted national historic-monument status, in 1940.

Potes sits at the confluence of four valleys in the Picos de Europa, its medieval bridges and a fortified tower marking the gateway into the mountain range.

Zahara de la Sierra is built beneath a Moorish castle ruin, overlooking a turquoise reservoir that floods what was once the valley floor below — one of the smaller and steeper of the Cádiz pueblos blancos.