Sestriere: the back story

About Sestriere: the back story

By the ULTIMATE Ski Resorts Editorial Team

Editor-in-Chief: Jai Michael

Sestriere is not an old village turned resort but the opposite: a project of the 1930s on the open Colle del Sestriere at 2,035 metres. Its two towers, its golf course and its early cable cars became the heart of the Via Lattea, ‘the Milky Way’, 400 km of slopes shared with Sauze d’Oulx, Sansicario, Cesana, Claviere, Pragelato and Montgenèvre in France.

A resort with a plan

The local tourism consortium sums it up neatly: Sestriere’s story is not that of an old village slowly turned into a resort, but the reverse. The first hotels came between 1914 and 1929; in the 1930s the Agnelli family built the great ski station, with its two red and white towers, put up in 1930 as holiday retreats for FIAT workers. The municipality itself was created on 18 October 1934, from parts of Champlas du Col, Sauze di Cesana and Pragelato.

Lifts and races

The first cable car, Alpette–Sises, opened in 1931, followed by the Banchetta in 1932 and the Fraiteve in 1937, and a golf course at 2,035 metres opened in 1932. In 1951 the Kandahar race came to Sestriere, won in the downhill by Zeno Colò, and the World Cup followed in 1967. The Via Lattea has since hosted 70 World Cup races, the 1997 World Championships and, in 2006, the Turin Winter Olympics, when Sestriere was one of the three Olympic villages.

Sestriere was built for skiing, and it still feels like it: lifts on the doorstep, 400 km on one pass.

The Milky Way

From 1984 Sestrieres S.p.A. began linking the neighbouring lift companies, and the first snowmaking system in the area followed. Today the Via Lattea has 400 km of slopes, around 300 of them linked, served by 73 lifts, with 80% of the ski area above 1,900 metres. Its two hubs are Monte Fraiteve, linking Sestriere with Sauze d’Oulx and Sansicario, and the Monti della Luna, above Cesana, Claviere and Montgenèvre.

Every budget

Sestriere is close to Turin (95 km), so it suits a weekend as well as a week. Online day passes for the Italian Via Lattea start at €52 in low season, children born in 2018 or later pay €15.50, and there are family-run three-star hotels, apartments with their own mini market and pizzerias run by the same families for decades.

Our advice: buy passes online, where they cost less than at the ticket office; ski the Fraiteve early towards Sauze d’Oulx; and carry ID if you plan to ski across to Montgenèvre.

Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with Sestriere: the back story before you go.