The village street of St. Anton and the Rendl terrace

St. Anton is a one-street village, and the street is the point. The Dorfstrasse runs east to west along the valley floor, closed to through traffic, lined with painted houses, carved balconies and the dark old timber of farm buildings that were here long before the first ski school. Hannes Schneider taught the Arlberg technique here in the 1920s and effectively invented modern ski instruction; the Museum St. Anton in its villa at the eastern end tells that story, and its garden is a quieter frame than the street.

At the western end stands the Galzigbahn, whose boarding hall is the most photographed piece of engineering in the village: cabins are loaded on a slowly turning vertical wheel, so passengers step in at ground level rather than climbing to a platform. Shoot it from the gallery inside, or from outside with the glass and the mountain behind it.

The valley runs east to west, which sets the whole day. The north side, where the village sits, loses the sun early in the afternoon in winter; the Rendl, across the Rosanna to the south, faces north-west into it and keeps warm light much longer. That is why the Rendl terrace is the late-session answer here — a gondola from the village, then an open terrace with St. Anton laid out below and the Verwall behind.

In winter the street is snow-banked and lit from four in the afternoon, and the village is busy from Christmas to Easter. In summer the same street is quiet and full of flower boxes, the meadows on the Rendl side are green, and many lifts run only in July, August and September — check what is open before planning around one.