THE DOLOMITES
NATURAL HERITAGE
Mountains that are majestic beyond every definition: more than a series of summits, the Dolomites are a line of patrol boats on an ocean with its waves breaking here in the remote past. Anyone who goes through the woods and across the meadows which lead to the Dolomite summits is a deep-sea diver without water walking on what millions of years ago was the bottom of a tropical sea, filled with multicoloured fish and undulating corals, phosphorescent anemones and effervescent columns of bubbles. The Pale Mountains are a “fossil archipelago” and it does not take much to recognise, in the buds of daphnes, campions and buttercups and the thousand other flowers that dance in the wind, shoals of brightly coloured fish; and, in the waterfalls that break against the rocks, the columns of bubbles that millions of years ago rose up. The rock that forms these mountains is different from all the others: white during the day, so that it is said that it was clad in “moonlight” as a gesture of love; pink at sunset, as though that sensual passion were still alive; and shiny after the rain, as though wet with tears. Roads in the bottom of the valleys and mountain paths are the routes that join precious lakes, ledges and crests, hamlets and villages; and, as in every archipelago that is worth its name, languages, dialects and cultures. To the west, there are painted churches with slender bell towers and a myriad of medieval and Renaissance castles, each one different from the other; to the east there are towers of rock and nature wins the competition with man. Mapping out the navigation between these old arms of sea, like harbours where to stop for supplies, there are fine cities of art, welcoming restaurants and beer houses, and brightly-lit fires in the homes, equally distributed among Trentino-Alto Adige, Veneto, and Friuli-Venezia Giulia.
NOT TO BE MISSED
“It is noon in the tranquil clearing. Every so often the forest murmurs, and you can see all the lofty peaks very clearly. Today they are white, and luminous clouds cast shadows here and there: the three peaks of San Nicola, the Croda dei Marden, the King’s Sceptre, then farther right, moving from west to east on the same ridge, il Palazzo, the Polveriera and, at the end, the outline of the Pagossa. Towering above them all and streaked with snow stand the Cima Alta and the Lastoni di Mezzo, which look like four very thin bell towers.”
These are real descriptions, places and names that Dino Buzzati slips into Barnabo of the mountains, because the Dolomites, the Val Canali and the Pale di San Martino were an ideal backdrop for the Belluno-born writer. In the places and in the events of his novels, the “fantastic” is but a veil, like a light curtain in front of a window which separates reality from invention.
Google Maps
“The Villnöss Valley is similar to
the famous Grodner valley but
the majority of holiday makers
don’t know that. There are few
historical objects of interest
and scarcely any ski lifts, It is
a peaceful Dolomite valley of
harmonious beauty, sunny,
wedged in between high wooded
ridges and steep mountains. Often
it seems to me as if these delicate
limestone cliffs have absorbed all
melancholy, harshness, isolation
from the place itself.”
Reinhold Messner
Reinhold Messner cultivated his passion for climbing among those elegant ramparts of limestone. Born in a village at the foot of the Odle, the mountains with the sharp profiles that frame the Val di Funes, Messner became one of the greatest climbers of all times. As well as being sublimely beautiful mountains, the Dolomites have been the undisputed heroes of the history of mountaineering: great climbers like Tita Piaz, Emilio Comici, Riccardo Cassin, Cesare Maestri, Maurizio Zanolla (Manolo) and Heinz Mariacher have reinterpreted climbing on their vertical walls, opening up new routes and facing increasingly greater difficulties.
NOT TO BE MISSED
“The first time I climbed into this wild corner, curious from where the sun went to set, I brushed against the foot of a wall that was too smooth and still too small to see. I was stunned by the fantastic world that surrounded me, I had immense mountains in my eyes and still many dreams in my rucksack; I did not realise that it even existed. From up there, looking at the horizon, I was even able to catch a glimpse of the sea, which sparkled as flat as a pond; around it, the mountains, the pinnacles and the clouds were lost beyond imagination.”
This is the incipit of Eravamo immortali by Maurizio Zanolla, “Manolo”, the climber who wrote great pages of the history of climbing on these walls.
Google Maps
“In the distance, beyond the freight
trains on dead-end tracks [...],
illuminated by the moon, the
mountain peaks, called Catinaccio
in Italian and the Rosengarten
in German. More than simply
two different names, it’s really
about two different ways of living
in nature. As a loudspeaker
announces arriving and departing
trains, the distant, pale presence
of the Dolomitian pinnacles seems
to occupy, as well as another
space, another time. Seen from
the station, they look magical and
unreachable.”
To explain the phenomenon of the enrosadira, which is when the Dolomite rocks turn pink at dawn and at dusk, when the air is particularly clear, legend has it that there was a huge rose garden (hence the name of Rosengarten) governed by King Laurino, the sovereign of a people of dwarves who dug into the bowels of the mountain in search of crystals, silver and gold. The legend explains romantically and fantastically a phenomenon which is actually due to the characteristics of dolomite rock. The rock contains dolomite, a compound of calcium carbonate and magnesium which has a particular reflectivity: when the rays of the sun, as it sets or rises, hit it, they refract, giving it the characteristic pink colour.
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The Italian UNESCO Heritage sites tell their story through the words of great writers who have celebrated their history and beauty
Listen to all episodesFOR YOUNG EXPLORERS
“‘LORD, THERE IS TOO MUCH PEACE ON THE EARTH THAT YOU CREATED, TOO MUCH SILENCE, TOO MUCH TRANQUILLITY, CLEAN WATERS, SUN AND RAIN WHEN THEY ARE NEEDED, CLEAN SEAS, THE ANIMALS GET ON WELL WITH THE BIRDS, THE FISH GET ON WELL WITH ONE ANOTHER, THE SEASONS CHANGE WITHOUT A MUMBLE, THE ANTS AND THE BEES LIVE HELPING ONE ANOTHER.’ […] A FLASH WENT THROUGH THE EYES OF THE LORD AND, AS THOUGH HE HAD BEEN FREED OF A TROUBLESOME THOUGHT, HE SNAPPED HIS FINGERS AND SHOUTED: ‘[…] LET’S MAKE MAN AND THEN WE’RE SETTLED. […] A TWO-LEGGED ANIMAL THAT BELIEVES HE IS SO INTELLIGENT TO GIVE SOME MOVEMENT TO THIS VERY PEACEFUL WORLD.’”
READING RECOMMENDATIONS
Reading suggestions to travel in the fossil archipelago.
- Barnabo of the Mountains, Dino Buzzati (1933). Barnabo, the guardian of a store with explosives, makes an existential journey in the solitude of the glaciers and forests, as though in contact with an unreal dimension.
- The desert of the Tartars, Dino Buzzati (1940). In this novel more than in his others, Dino Buzzati develops the topic of waiting, making a young lieutenant called Drogo experience it in a fortress in the high mountain.
- My life at the limit, Reinhold Messner with Thomas Hüetlin (1954). Autobiography of Reinhold Messner, the climbing legend born in the Funes Valley, at the foot of the Odle, in the heart of the Dolomites.
- Nanga Parbat Pilgrimage, Hermann Buhl (1954). The autobiography of the great Austrian mountaineer, Hermann Buhl, who often climbed in the Dolomites.
- Crystal horizon. Everest: The first solo ascent, Reinhold Messner (1983). The great mountaineer Messner relates his feats and his career, which he began on the mountains of home, the Odle, to then reach the roof of the world.
- Eva Sleeps, Francesca Melandri (2010). Set in Brunico, this novel goes over the years and events which occurred just after the First World War, when a piece of the Austrian Tyrol was assigned to Italy.
- The Mountain, Luca D’Andrea (2016). Jeremiah Salinger, a young TV writer from New York who has moved to the South Tyrol, happens to learn of a gory event that had taken place several years earlier: the massacre of three youngsters during an excursion to the Bletterbach gorge. Until then, nobody had been found guilty of the crime: Salinger starts to dig into the past, until he discovers the terrifying truth.
- Eravamo immortali, Manolo (2018). Nicknamed “Manolo” or “the Magician”, Maurizio Zanolla tells the story of his life, his first climbs, the routes he opened up often freely and on his own, his family, his loves and the most important, intense and moving experiences of a life lived in a quest for balance.
Children’s books:
- Fiabe e leggende dei Monti Pallidi, edited by Marta Fischer (1992). Stories from the oral and written tradition that form a heritage of popular culture common to almost the whole world of the Dolomites.
- Storie del Bosco Antico, Mauro Corona (2005). Short tales that tell stories of the animals and nature of the Dolomites, in a fantastical vein and an imaginary past.
- I perché dell’Alto Adige, Luisa Righi, Stefan Wallisch (2017). Everything that there is to be known about South Tyrol, from history to gastronomy, up to its traditions, told with irony. A lively book to find simple and precise answers to the most frequent questions.
- Montagna si scrive stampatello, Davide Longo (2023). Davide and his mother have had a difficult year, with Dad having found a “bimbo”. So they decide to treat themselves to a present: they set off for five days of hiking in the Dolomites in their rundown Panda.
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