The Most Beautiful Places in Trentino-South Tyrol
10 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Trentino-South Tyrol are Lago di Braies, Tre Cime di Lavaredo and St. John’s Chapel, Ranui. The list covers 10 places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Trentino-South Tyrol is where Italy climbs into the Alps. Its signature mountains, the Dolomites, are the remains of reefs and lagoons that grew in a warm Triassic sea and were later lifted, folded and cut by ice into pale towers that turn pink at sunset. The region is also a meeting point of cultures: German is the majority language in South Tyrol, Italian in Trentino, and Ladin survives in a few valleys, so onion-domed chapels and Tyrolean farmhouses stand a short drive from Italian piazzas.
The peaks lead. Seceda's tilted grassy ridge breaks off in a sheer cliff above Val Gardena, the Vajolet Towers rise as a tight cluster of spires in the Rosengarten group, and the three north faces of the Tre Cime di Lavaredo are among the most photographed rock walls in the Alps. Beneath them spreads the Seiser Alm, often called the largest high-altitude alpine meadow in Europe.
Water and small details complete the picture. Lago di Braies lies green and still under the cliffs of the Seekofel, and Lake Carezza mirrors the jagged Latemar. At Reschensee a dam flooded the village of Graun in 1950, leaving only its 14th-century bell tower standing in the water. In the Funes valley, St. John's Chapel at Ranui sits alone in a meadow before the Geisler peaks, and on the Ritten plateau earth pyramids — clay columns capped by boulders — stand where rain has worn away old glacial deposits.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lago di Braies | Lake | |
| 2 | Tre Cime di Lavaredo | Mountain | |
| 3 | St. John’s Chapel, Ranui | Church building | |
| 4 | Secëda | Summit | |
| 5 | Submerged Bell Tower of Graun (Lake Reschen) | Bell tower | |
| 6 | Vajolet Towers | Summit | |
| 7 | Seiser Alm (Alpe di Siusi) | Mountain | |
| 8 | Lake Carezza (Karersee) | Lake | |
| 9 | Reschensee | Reservoir | |
| 10 | Earth Pyramids of Ritten | Rock formation |
01 Lago di Braies
Italy46.694° N 12.085° E
Image by 16018388 from Pixabay The lake sits at 1,496 metres in a side valley of the Puster Valley, and it exists because a mountain once fell. 2 kilometres long and 300 to 400 metres wide, reaching 36 metres at its deepest.
Did you know? Records call it simply the lake in Prags from 1296; the name 'Pragser Wildsee', the wild lake, appears only in 1885, and 'Lago di Braies' only in 1940.
02 Tre Cime di Lavaredo
Italy46.619° N 12.306° E
Image by Jerry明 from Pixabay Three blunt towers of pale rock standing side by side on a high, stony plateau: the Tre Cime, or Drei Zinnen, are the emblem of the Dolomites, and their north faces are among the most famous walls in the Alps.
Did you know? In 2002 Alexander Huber climbed the Hasse-Brandler route on Cima Grande free solo, without a rope.
03 St. John’s Chapel, Ranui
Chiesa di San Giovanni in Ranui
Italy · 31.7 km from Bolzano46.635° N 11.724° E
User:Matthias Süßen · CC BY-SA 4.0 The little church of St. John in Ranui stands alone in a green meadow at the head of the Villnöss valley, in South Tyrol, with the jagged pale towers of the Geisler peaks of the Dolomites rising directly behind it.
Did you know? It has been a listed cultural monument since 24 July 1950.
04 Secëda
Seceda
Italy · 30.2 km from Bolzano46.601° N 11.726° E
Image by riddick_soad from Pixabay Secëda is the mountain behind one of the most recognisable views in the Dolomites: a broad, grassy slope that rises gently from Val Gardena and then simply ends, breaking off along its crest into sheer, crumbling cliffs.
Did you know? Just south of the cable car top station, dark lavas crop out: Triassic eruptions that once poured onto the seabed between the Odle and the Sassolungo group.
05 Submerged Bell Tower of Graun (Lake Reschen)
Campanile di Santa Caterina
Italy46.811° N 10.537° E
Image by tassilo111 from Pixabay A medieval church tower standing up to its waist in an Alpine lake is one of the strangest sights in the Alps, and it is the only thing left above water of the old village of Graun (Curon in Italian).
Did you know? The first plans to dam the valley date from 1920 and foresaw a far smaller lake, only about 5 metres deep.
06 Vajolet Towers
Torri del Vajolet
Italy · 21 km from Bolzano46.462° N 11.627° E
Vincenzo Gianferrari Pini · CC BY-SA 2.5 it The Vajolet Towers are a cluster of slender rock spires standing shoulder to shoulder in the heart of the Rosengarten group (Catinaccio in Italian) in the Dolomites.
Did you know? The famous Delago ridge was first climbed on 9 August 1911 by Tita Piaz together with Francesco Jori and Irma Glaser.
07 Seiser Alm (Alpe di Siusi)
Alpe di Siusi
Italy · 22.3 km from Bolzano46.541° N 11.645° E
Image by maxmann from Pixabay The Seiser Alm, called Alpe di Siusi in Italian, is a vast rolling meadow lifted high into the Dolomites of South Tyrol.
Did you know? Until 1934 the plateau could only be reached on foot; that summer a cable car from Ortisei in Val Gardena opened and visitor numbers soon rose sharply.
08 Lake Carezza (Karersee)
Lago di Carezza
Italy · 19.4 km from Bolzano46.409° N 11.575° E
Image by shogun from Pixabay The Karersee — Lago di Carezza in Italian, Lec de Ergobando in Ladin — is a small lake, only about 300 metres long and 140 wide, but it sits in one of the most theatrical settings of the Dolomites.
Did you know? The Grand Hotel burned down on the night of 15 August 1910 and was rebuilt within two years with 350 rooms.
09 Reschensee
Lago di Resia
Italy46.801° N 10.531° E
Image by Glavo from Pixabay In the 1920s the Italian company Montecatini began planning a hydroelectric reservoir in this high Alpine valley, and by the time the dam was finished, in 1949, the project had merged two natural lakes and drowned the villages of Graun and part of Resia.
Did you know? The first plan of 1920 foresaw raising the water by just 5 metres; the 1939 revision raised it to 22 metres.
10 Earth Pyramids of Ritten
Piramidi di terra del Renon
Italy · 10.4 km from Bolzano46.554° N 11.472° E
Image by Olga_Fil from Pixabay On the Ritten plateau above Bolzano, slender columns of clay stand in steep wooded gullies, each one crowned by a single boulder balanced on its tip like a hat.
Did you know? Earth pyramids form best on sheltered slopes, where rain strikes mainly from above and cannot undercut the columns from the side.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in Trentino-South Tyrol?
- On our list, Lago di Braies ranks first, followed by Tre Cime di Lavaredo and St. John’s Chapel, Ranui.
- Why are the Dolomites a UNESCO World Heritage Site?
- The Dolomites were inscribed in 2009 both for their scenery and for their geology: they preserve fossil reefs and carbonate platforms from the Triassic period in unusual clarity, exposed in vertical walls and spires.
- Why is there a bell tower in Lake Reschen?
- When the reservoir was raised in 1950, the old village of Graun was flooded and its buildings demolished. Only the 14th-century bell tower of its church was left standing, and it still rises from the water.
- How did the earth pyramids of Ritten form?
- They are carved from clay-rich glacial moraine. Where a boulder sits on top, it shields the clay beneath it from rain, so the surrounding material washes away and a tall column is left under the stone.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Trentino-South Tyrol?
- In our collection, the places in Trentino-South Tyrol are most often summits (2), mountains (2), lakes (2) and rock formations (1).
- How many places are on this list in Trentino-South Tyrol?
- The list covers 10 places.