By now The Spouse and I have visited many, many places in the
Alps, so many that few have seemed particularly blog-worthy. But we recently spent a weekend in a part of
the Italian Alps that was so fascinating historically and geographically I just
had to report in.
“We have to get to the Dolomites,” I said to The Spouse
more than once. I wasn’t exactly sure why,
except that I’d heard that the northern Italian region was especially
beautiful. Inasmuch as every valley we
visit is stunningly beautiful, I had a hard time imagining what could be so
special. Nonetheless, I persuaded TS to
use a vacation day along with the official August 15 holiday (Maria
Himmelfahrt, or Assumption Day) given us as residents of a Catholic canton.
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| The View from Our Balcony |
It took a day’s drive to the southeast to reach the Val di
Gardena. As the road wound through green
pine-covered valleys the afternoon light turned the stone cliffs that
are the Dolomites’ distinctive feature a deep red.
Unlike most valleys in Switzerland these weren’t created by glaciers
but by gradual erosion. The result was
green, sloping hillsides crowned by giant rock formations that reminded me a
bit of mesas in the American west.
Our pretty much randomly-selected destination, Santa
Cristina, is one of several towns scattered along the valley and popular with visitors
for hiking in summer and skiing in winter.
After our friendly and solicitous host helped us settle into our hotel,
La Villa Martha, we decided to walk down the hill to explore town. We knew that this region had for centuries
before World War I been ruled first by the Hapsburgs and then the
Austro-Hungarian Empire and as a consequence many residents still spoke German. During a brief visit last year to Merano,
another town in the region, we noticed that the local culture seemed more
Austrian than Italian.
As we explored Santa Cristina we found that we didn’t have
to worry about not knowing much Italian, because all signs were in both German
and Italian and our basic German was readily understood. But we also discovered that neither was the
first language for residents: when we settled in at a charming wine bar we
noticed that our hosts and a 20-something couple sitting near us were speaking
something quite different.
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| View from our restaurant |
Then we
recalled that we’d read that the towns of Val di Gardena are Ladin-speaking. Like Romansch,
spoken in parts of Graubünden in Switzerland, Ladin is
descended from Rhaeto-Romance, a Latin dialect spoken in northern Italian
provinces during the Roman Empire. Up to
ninety percent of the population of Val di Gardena speaks Ladin. (Actually, that’s the valley’s Italian name; it’s
Gröden in German, Val de Gherdëina in Ladin.)
After sampling some excellent local wines, including a bewitching
Gewürtztraminer, we had dinner at La Forclá (Ladin for fire). The local specialties reminded us a bit of
those in Graubünden – lots of meat, including dried meat and venison – with a
northern Italian touch. For example, I
had an excellent Venison goulash served with polenta.
Friday threatened to be rainy, so we
decided to drive to Bolzano (Bolzen in German), the capitol of the region. Our main goal was the Archaeological
Museum and its most famous exhibit, “Ötzi,” a Stone Age man whose remarkably
well-preserved body and belongings were discovered frozen in a glacier in the
Ötztaler Alps in 1991.
On our way, however, we were sidetracked by one of those
serendipitous twists that makes travel so much fun. Seeking a parking place we turned away from
the pedestrian-only old town and found ourselves in a neighborhood that judging
from the architecture had been built in the 1920s or 30s. After parking we walked toward the old city,
speculating that the new area must have been built during Italy’s Fascist
era. Soon we came to a large triumphal
arch that could only have been a Fascist construction. We stopped to admire its audacious
translation of the classic Roman form.
Then we noticed signs for an exhibition in the monument’s
base, “BZ ’18-’45: One Monument, One City, Two Dictatorships,” and decided to
postpone our visit to Ötzi to explore more recent history. The exhibition had opened in July after
a long period of debate over how to deal with this artifact from an unappealing
part of the nation’s past. The laudable
decision was to use the monument to confront directly the city’s
experiences under Fascism and Nazi occupation.
The arch was erected between 1926 and 1928 by the newly-ascendant
Fascist regime. Ostensibly it was to
honor local men who fought for Italy during World War I – at a time when the area
was still part of the Austrian Empire. But
its larger purpose was to bolster the Fascist program of suppressing local
Germanic-Austrian culture and transforming Bolzano into a “modern,” i.e.
Fascist, Italian city.
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| The monument faces the old city across the river -- note the poles bearing emblems of the Roman and Venetian Empires. |
The neighborhood
we had walked through was constructed as part of this campaign, standing
directly across the river from the old town.
Fascists denounced the quaint old Germanic buildings as antiquated
relics of a by-gone age. Their plans to
demolish them were prevented only by the beginning of World War II. But the regime did succeed in turning Bolzano
into a major industrial area and in importing Italian-speaking workers whose
descendants make the city the only one in the region where the language
predominates.
After absorbing a large amount of new information about the
region’s experiences under Fascism, war, and German occupation after
Italy’s surrender, we moved on to the old city.
Unfortunately, we discovered that “Ötzi” is something of a rock star – a speculative reconstruction, sans shirt, emblazoned a banner hanging in front ofthe museum – and a long line of visitors waited for entry. Learning that we could get advance tickets,
we planned to come back on our way home on Monday, though we later found that
these were already sold out. (A word to
the wise to prospective visitors – always check the website.)
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| Piazza Walther |
Nonetheless, armed with our new perspective on local
history, we enjoyed a walk through the old town. Not only did we appreciate the narrow medieval
lanes and renaissance arcades but we observed that all the banks and government
buildings were in newer pre-war styles.
So the Fascists had left their marks.
During the afternoon we visited Castel Roncolo, a 13th-century
castle on a hill outside town, famous for rare 14th-century frescoes
depicting non-religious themes. 
Then we
returned to town for an early dinner at Hopfen & Co., a 800-year-old inn
that served hearty Süd-Tirolean fare and beer brewed on the premises.
Next morning the weather wasn't perfect – our host
apologized profusely – but we had come to hike the Dolomites, so hike we
did. We took advantage of some of the
chairlifts that were running in the summer months and started our hike closer
to the base of the gorgeous Sassolungo massif. We hiked part-way around these cliffs to the
far side where we could see the even more impressive Gruppo del Sella to the
north.
We had learned that these formations are made up of a type
of sedimentary carbonate rock first described by French geologist Déodat Gratet
de Dolomieu – hence the name of the region.
The mountains began hundreds of millions of years ago as fossil
atolls. Their development
makes them geologically unique – it’s all too complicated
for me to describe here, but this uniqueness has been recognized in their
status as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
All we knew at the time was that they were stunningly beautiful – and
quite different from anything else we’d seen in the Alps.
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| Gruppo del Sella |
We had packed our usual hiking lunch of bread and cheese,
nuts and lots of chocolate and ate it seated on the grass near a mountain
restaurant that had attracted a large crowd of hikers who had come up from the
other side of the mountain.
Later we
were happy to retreat to the inn for a coffee and refuge from a summer
hailstorm.
Our explorations on foot and by car during the short stay
only whetted our appetites to learn more about the area. We plan to return in winter to ski beneath
those golden spires. It is a region of
great beauty, with an intriguing and enjoyable cultural mix.
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