Ormea With Kids: The Italian Mountain Town That Stole Our Hearts

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I had never heard of Ormea until a friend sent us there. We almost did not go. It is not on a single “Italy with kids” list, it does not have a famous piazza, and you will not find it in the guidebooks. We spent ten days there and cried a little when we left.

This is the Italy I keep trying to show my girls. Not the one in line for two hours to see a thing behind glass. The one where the gelato comes from a cow you met that morning, where the whole town shows up in the same little wine bar at night, and where a 21 year old chef is quietly trying to keep her village alive. If you want a slower, realer, kinder kind of family trip, let me tell you about Ormea with kids.

Where is Ormea, and how do you get there?

Ormea sits at the top of the Val Tanaro, right where Piedmont leans into Liguria, tucked into the Ligurian Alps. It is about 1,600 people, 736 meters up, surrounded by chestnut forests and mountains on every side.

The easiest way in is to fly into Nice, Genoa, or Turin and drive. We came by car and I would do it that way again. The last stretch up the valley is the kind of drive where the kids go quiet and just look out the window. Rent a car for this one. Public transport exists but a car is what makes the farms, the hikes, and the nearby towns actually doable.

Where we stayed in Ormea (and the couple you have to meet)

Here is the part I need you to actually do. The reason we found Ormea at all is a couple named Majla and Marco, who run Accidental Tourist. They have been opening their home in the Chianti hills since 1998, teaching families to make pasta from scratch inside a house built around a 900 year old watchtower. You can take a pasta class with them, or stay in their Chianti tower, which sleeps up to ten. If you only do one thing in Tuscany, do this. They are the warmest people, and they are the reason this whole trip happened.

They also host families in Ormea, and they are opening more places there. We stayed in their Ormea home, which is where I would send you first. If it is booked or you want more options in town, you can see what else is available in Ormea here.

One practical thing for a longer family trip like this: we travel with SafetyWing for insurance, because mountains plus two kids plus me equals at least one scraped knee.

The farm that changed how my girls see food

The morning we spent at Azienda Agricola Castagnino is the one my daughters still talk about. It is a family dairy farm run by Anna, and her son Pietro turns their cows’ milk into gelato at Sogni di Latte on Via Roma in town.

We watched them milk the cows. We learned why the cows get moved up to the high pastures, above 1,200 meters, for the summer, and how that changes the milk and the cheese and the meat. We got our hands into the cheese making. Then we walked into town and ate the gelato that started as the milk we had just seen. My girls have eaten a thousand scoops of gelato. This is the one they will remember, because they met the whole story behind it.

This is what I mean by slow travel. It is not slower because it is less. It is slower because it goes deeper.

Hiking in Ormea with kids

Ormea is a hiking town, and the good news is plenty of it works with little legs. Here is where we actually went:

• Sentiero delle Vallette is the one I would start with. It is a 4 km loop through chestnut and conifer forest with big views back down over the town, and it is gentle enough for the kids.
• La Balconata di Ormea is a long balcony trail built by the local CAI hiking club. You do not do all 40 km, you pick a stretch. It runs above the town with one viewpoint after another, and it passes the Piccolo Canyon, a little geological surprise the kids loved.
• Sentiero dei Castagni, the chestnut trail, ties right back to that farm morning. Around 9 km, all about the chestnut forests this whole valley was built on.

Ormea also runs free guided hikes with real environmental guides through the season, which is worth asking about when you arrive. We pushed our youngest plenty of the way in our travel stroller, the one I link to constantly because it has survived cobblestones, trails, and airports: here it is, and code BRAVE20 saves you a little.

Where the whole town shows up

Every town has a heart, and in Ormea it is a wine bar called Il Saraceno. Maurizio runs it, a real sommelier with around 500 labels on the wall, and his girlfriend Kim cooks the most incredible Sicilian food and makes you feel like you have been coming for years. We spent so many evenings here. Our kids ran around with the local kids while the grownups actually talked. This is where the town gathers, and after a few nights, we got to be part of it.

There is also a tiny cocktail bar called Bar Gama, run by a Peruvian owner who is a real mixologist, which is almost unheard of up here in the mountains. The night we went they put music on and we ended up dancing in the street with half the town. Those are the nights you do not plan and never forget.

Dinner, live music, and a castle at night

Eat at Trattoria Il Borgo, in the middle of the old town near the church. Traditional Ormea cooking, the kind that tastes like someone’s grandmother is in the back, and the owner plays live guitar. He could not have been sweeter to the girls.

Here is the magic part. Il Borgo sits right at the bottom of the path up to the Castello di Ormea, the ruins of a castle that has watched over this town since the 900s, until French troops took it apart in 1794. After dinner, we walked up to the castle in the dark. The town glowing below, the mountains black against the sky, the kids half spooked and half thrilled. Do this. It is the kind of ordinary magic that makes a place yours.

The quiet thing happening in Ormea

I have to tell you the part that stayed with me. Ormea, like so many beautiful small towns in Europe, is fighting to not fade away. Young people leave. Shops close. And then you meet the ones who stayed, or who came back on purpose.

There is a forestry school here, one of only four in all of Italy, where teenagers learn to care for the land, tend old vineyards, and make honey and wine the traditional way. There are young women a valley over building restaurants from nothing against everyone telling them it will not work. These towns are not dying for lack of beauty. They are waiting for people to show up and care.

That is the real reason I am writing all of this. Families like ours, the slow ones, the curious ones, the ones who would rather meet a farmer than queue for a museum, we can be exactly what these places need. You traveling here, eating here, staying here, that is not small. That is the whole thing.

Closer to home for us: we are quietly building Brave Family Roots — our project to bring a few like-minded families together to live in and help breathe life back into a tiny, half-forgotten village in the Italian Alps. Honestly, we are hoping to put down our own roots there too. If that tugs at something in you, add your name to the interest list here →

Is Ormea worth it? Honest answer

If you need a packed itinerary, beach clubs, and everything in English, this is not your trip. Ormea is small, it is quiet, and a lot of life here still runs in Italian and in the local dialect. That is the point, and it is also the trade.

But if you want your kids to taste real Italy, to run wild in the mountains, to be welcomed into a town instead of processed through one, give it a few days. Three nights minimum. A week if you can, like we did. The nearby towns of Garessio and Pieve di Teco make easy day trips, and I am writing a whole separate guide on those, so keep an eye out.

Plan your own slow trip to Ormea

If you want my full Italy guide, the off-the-beaten-path version most families never find, it lives in my shop here. And if you would rather have a culturally immersive family trip organized for you, I love what Travec is building, intentional family group trips with real cultural depth. Code BRAVEFAMILY takes 200 dollars off a family group trip.

Everything we pack, from the travel stroller to our trail and travel gear, is in my Amazon shop.

More Italy with kids: 4 off-the-beaten-path towns most families miss.

Affiliate disclosure: this post contains affiliate links, including Booking.com, SafetyWing, our travel stroller, Amazon, and Travec. If you book or buy through them, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. The Airbnb links are direct links to the homes we stayed in and are not affiliate links. I only recommend people and places we truly love.

Xoxo, Marae: your travel mom bestie

www.bravefreetravel.com