Car-free ski resorts in Europe

Thirteen four-thousanders form a wall around the village, and the glaciers below them hold snow from July to April. Car-free Saas-Fee is where half the World Cup circuit comes to train through the summer.

A car-free, ski-in/ski-out village of striking timber towers, Avoriaz is the French heart of the cross-border Portes du Soleil. Snow gets around on sledges, not cars.

A car-free balcony in the Valais at 1,950 m, perched above the Aletsch glacier, with a UNESCO panorama at the door and 104 km of piste in the Aletsch Arena.

Riederalp is the car-free balcony of the Aletsch Arena, reached only by cable car from the Valais valley below and perched at 1,925 m above the longest glacier in the Alps. Sister to Bettmeralp on the same lift system, it gives 104 km of piste over the UNESCO Aletsch panorama. The Riederfurka and Moosfluh sectors are usually the quietest of the three terrace villages.

Perched on a cliff at 1638 m with the Schilthorn and its revolving Piz Gloria restaurant above, Mürren is one of the most spectacular small resorts in the Alps. Car-free and snow-sure, it is the home of the Inferno, the world's oldest amateur downhill.

Car-free Wengen sits on a sunlit terrace facing the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau, home of the legendary Lauberhorn downhill. It is timeless, genteel and pure Belle Époque Switzerland.

Anzere sits on a sunny Valais balcony at 1,500 m, a tidy pedestrian village high above Sion with three south-facing peaks at the door. The Rhone valley views are the ones Crans-Montana made famous, only with a fraction of the crowds.

Stoos is a car-free village hung at 1,300 m above the Muotathal, reached by the Stoosbahn, the world's steepest funicular at a 110% gradient, whose barrel-shaped cabins rotate to keep passengers upright. Once you step out at the top, you trade the engineering marvel for one of central Switzerland's most generous lake-and-mountain panoramas: the twin Mythen peaks immediately above, the Vierwaldstättersee opening to the north, and the Bernese Alps as a wall in the distance. The 35 km of pistes spread across a broad sun-facing bowl, and the no-car rule keeps the village quiet enough that you hear the cowbells in summer pastures even in deep winter.