Vialattea Ski Area Italy – France
Vialattea Ski Area is 6 ski areas combined, 5 in Italy and one in France. On the Italian side you have Sestriere, Sauze d’Oulx, Sansicario, and Claviere and in France is Montgenèvre. Skiers enjoy crossing the French-Italian border to experience the 4th largest ski resort region in the world (or so they still claim). The Ski Region is called Vialattea, English translation – The Milky Way. Its is vast with a reported, 400-km of skiing! Its also sprawling, spanning big valleys, with a mix of new and old lifts, it takes time and effort to navigate it all!
Sestriere, as an Olympic Host village is the most famous ski area, for its ski racing heritage, and its elevation, up to 2600-meters, 8500′ for reliable snow at the summit. Despite our grand expectation to ski Sestriere, and the entire Milky Way, we were disappointed with aging lifts, ugly apartment architecture in Sestriere’s base village, and poor communication of lift operations, closures of lifts and trails. In fact, we were not able to ski across the entire region via interconnected lifts (as marketed) because the connection to Claviere across the valley was closed during our late March 2025 visit.
Since Sestriere is a frequent World Cup ski race venue, and hosted the 2006 Winter Olympics ski events, you encounter many international ski racers training, zooming past you, and dominating famous trails that you’d hoped to ski, restricted for race training.
The skiing at Sestriere is super scenic though, with a few amazing long steep summit runs, when the lifts operate. There’s also vast off-piste freeride terrain on Sestriere’s high alpine summit, when there’s good natural snow.
It’s fun to ski from Sestriere’s Banchetta summit all the way down to Pragelato, where there’s a sleepy Club Med resort, and take the tram back up to Sestriere. We did not find many on-mountain chalets for dining in Sestriere, which is such an important part of skiing in Italy, except a few eateries and bars at the funky base village.
We enjoyed the trails and vibe in Sauze D’Oulx and Sansicario, Vialattea’s other ski areas. These sections are a bit more relaxed, with interesting intermediate trails, particularly the Olympic trail all the way to Sansicario which connects easily by trails and lifts to Sauze D’Oulx. There’s also easy-to-reach freeride terrain in big open bowls here, even some tree-skiing which is rare in the Alps. You will find more on-mountain chalet dining in Sauze D’Oulx Sportina area – its like restaurant row on snow. We heard Sauze D’Oulx has a pretty base village, but there was not enough snow for us to ski all the way down to 1500-meters. Elevation is key to skiing the Alps.
With so many tacky condos and apartments in Sestriere, you can surely find lodging, but be warned – its not the classic alpine chalets nor is it the charming ski town you envision. We preferred the more quaint village of Claviere across the valley, where we could ski to Montgenevre as well. To ski Sestriere, with the connection lifts closed, we had to drive 30 minutes.
The Vialettea lift ticket is just over $50 a day (in 2025), so this region is certainly affordable in the Alps, popular with big groups as well, with its 800 ski instructors!
Of the 6 ski resorts in the Milky Way, we found Montgenevre (the French side) to have the best terrain, a delightful mix of every type of ski terrain on both sides of the ski village and valley. You can ski all aspects, from the north side, south facing, to start the day in the sunshine. Then ski the high plateau Les Anges and steeper Crete with amazing off-piste bowls, and over to Italy and Claviere’s long fun ski runs.
See our review of skiing Montgenevre and “Monts de La Luna” when combined with all of Claviere Italy trails. This region offers its own lift passes, a small savings versus the all-inclusive Milky Way region pass.
Vialattea is in the spectacular Piedmont Alps of Italy, and the French Alps of the Cote D’Azur. Its super historic too, an important ancient trade route, with remains of old stone military forts and medieval chapels scattered about the mountains. The Tour de France often passes through here.
From Vialetta, on a ski safari, we enjoyed skiing nearby Serre Chevalier in Briancon. We also loved skiing France’s Haute Maurienne Alps of Val Cenis, Bonneval sur Arc, and La Norma ski areas in this more authentic high alpine valley an hour away via tunnel from Bardonecchia Italy (another fun but rustic ski area).
Vialattea Ski Resort Ski Stats: 6 Ski Areas – 2 Countries
Elevation: 1538 – 2840M
Vertical Drop: 1302M – 4,272′
Lifts: 70 (this is the claim but several appear defunct)
Trails: 400km (they claim… we think they need to recount)
