Four of the Best Ski Towns in the World

In this guide

1. What makes St. Moritz one of the best ski towns in the world?
2. Why is Courchevel linked to the Trois Vallees?
3. Why is Zermatt car free?
4. Why was Aspen a mining town before it was a ski resort?

Rank the best ski towns in the world side by side, St. Moritz, Courchevel, Zermatt and Aspen among them, and they look like variations on the same idea: snow, altitude, a village at the bottom. They are not. Each one was shaped by a single decision made long before the first chairlift, and that decision is still the reason the trip feels different depending on where you land. The snow is only half the plan.

What makes St. Moritz one of the best ski towns in the world?

Its reputation was not built on terrain first. Local history credits an 1864 wager, a hotelier betting his English summer guests that an alpine winter was worth the trip, and enough of them stayed to prove him right. That origin still shapes the town: St. Moritz treats winter as the main event rather than a season bolted onto a summer resort, with Corviglia and Corvatsch skiing above a frozen lake under light the region is known for. Our guide to the town around the peaks covers what a day there actually looks like.

Why is Courchevel linked to the Trois Vallees?

Because the valley it sits in connects to two others by lift and piste, forming the Trois Vallees, the largest linked ski area in the world. That is the detail that separates a Courchevel trip from most other European resorts: you are rarely skiing one mountain, you are skiing a network of them, with the village itself acting as one entry point among several. For the terrain above the village, see the ridge above Courchevel.

Why is Zermatt car free?

Zermatt banned combustion engine cars in the early twentieth century and the rule has held since. Visitors arrive by train through the valley, the Matterhorn framed ahead of them well before the station, and the village itself stays quiet in a way few resort towns do. That single rule changes the whole arrival, and it is a large part of why Zermatt feels different the moment you step off the train, as covered in arriving in Zermatt.

Why was Aspen a mining town before it was a ski resort?

Silver drew the first settlers to the valley in the 1880s, and the town that grew around the mines is still the town you walk through today, decades before anyone skied there for sport. The mountain came later, laid over a settlement that already had its own streets, its own buildings and its own history. That sequence, town first, mountain second, is why Aspen still reads as a real place rather than a resort built from nothing, as covered in the mountain that rises right above Aspen.

Four towns, four different reasons for existing before the first lift went in, and that is exactly why a trip built around one of them should start with the town, not the terrain. Plan a trip with us and we will build it around the one that actually fits what you want from the season.

For a closer look at sequencing more than one of these stops in a single season, see planning one season across three resorts.