• 2 The all-round resort: Kronplatz/Plan De Corones (South Tyrol region)

This is the most peculiar-looking mountain you’ll ever see

When viewed from Monte Elmo (about 20 kilometres away), there’s a neatly-rounded white top with some wiggly lines running through the tree-darkened lower slopes. It is as though someone very measured had to design the perfect ski mountain. Happily, they included stinging runs and banging après-ski, as well as one of the best lift systems anywhere.

A while back in this region, all roads led to Rome. Now, all lifts near Kronplatz place you right on the top of its baldy head where, in an initially unsettling fit of inverted layout, all the beginner slopes lie. The mountain gets steeper the further down you go, and so you’ll find the keen types top-to-bottoming while the newbies, tinies and ski-less sorts can be seen lurking around the gentler summit. This is the halo resort for the South Tyrol and has a lot of very shiny new lifts. Because of its circular nature you can also follow, or avoid, the sun. Like all the longer runs we’ve skied in the Dolomites, there’s very little uppy-downy under-the-lift action going on.

Snaking through the trees under the Gipfelbahn and Kronplatz 2000 lifts are some wide, sweeping black pistes that send you into a direction-baffling series of turns and rollers, which keep you guessing if the damn things will end before your legs fall off. The mountain is capped by a giant Peace Bell, which tolls three times a week making a not very peaceful clang in the key of C. On sunny Sundays, a group of eccentrics turn up in traditional costume on wooden skis and proceed to get extremely pissed. Since they involve everyone within range of their copper ladles too, you’re up for a jolly afternoon, made jollier when you try out their Böckls, which are small stools on cut-off bits of ski. They’re ridiculously hard to master and therefore extremely funny.

• www.kronplatz.com