Asiago Discovery Guide

Asiago is the Veneto's accessible mountain: a high, open plateau rather than a valley, with wide meadows, spruce forest and long views, reached in an hour and a half from Vicenza.

It is one of Italy's best cross-country skiing areas -- the plateau's flat-to-rolling terrain suits it far better than downhill, and there are well over a hundred kilometres of prepared track.

The First World War is inescapable and is the reason many people come. The Leiten military ossuary holds around 54,000 remains, Italian and Austro-Hungarian together, and trenches, tunnels and gun positions survive across the plateau, some of them restored as walking routes.

The cheese is the everyday reason. Asiago DOP is made here and across the surrounding provinces, and the mountain dairies -- the malghe -- still make it in summer at altitude, which is a very different product from the supermarket version.

And there is the observatory: Cima Ekar, above the town, houses Italy's largest optical telescope.

If you travel slowly: a week, walking or cycling between the seven communes -- Asiago, Enego, Foza, Gallio, Lusiana, Roana and Rotzo -- each of which has its own character and dialect memory.

If you want the essentials: the Leiten ossuary, a malga for lunch and cheese, and the old railway cycle path. A full day.

If you're after local character: a summer malga at altitude, where the cheese is made in the morning and the herd is on the pasture outside. Several take visitors and some serve food.

If you want to go past the obvious: the war landscape properly -- Monte Ortigara, the most fought-over ground on the plateau, or the restored positions on Monte Zebio, walked with an understanding of what happened rather than as scenery. And the Asiago observatory, which runs public evenings.

The plateau is a working landscape, not a park. The high pastures are grazed and the malghe operate through the summer, and the cheese and the meadows depend on each other -- the flower-rich grassland exists because it is mown and grazed. Buying cheese, honey and meat directly from the malghe keeps that system going.

The forests here were badly damaged by storm Vaia in October 2018, which flattened enormous areas of spruce across the eastern Alps, and the plateau still shows it. Recovery is slow, and some paths remain rerouted.

War remains are everywhere and are protected: trenches, tunnels, positions and, still, unexploded ordnance. Do not dig, do not remove anything, and do not enter unmarked tunnels.

The plateau's visitor pressure is concentrated in August and at Christmas, and heavily on a few roads and viewpoints. Coming outside those weeks, and walking rather than driving between the villages, is the useful thing.

June to September is the walking and cycling season, and the malghe are open and making cheese at altitude. July and August are busy; June and September are better.

January and February are the cross-country skiing season, and the plateau is at its best -- cold, snowy and quiet outside the holiday weeks.

Christmas and New Year and the Italian mid-February half-term are the peaks, when accommodation is tight and the roads up are slow.

Autumn is beautiful and very quiet, with larch and beech turning, though many mountain huts close in October and November.

Spring is the awkward season: snow gone, meadows not yet out, and much still shut.

What a visitor actually spends in Asiago