Breathtaking beauty in Dolomite region of Alta Badia

By Jens Golombek Jan 24, 2012, 3:06 GMT

Bolzano, Italy - The houses are clustered like building blocks around the village church in blinding snow cover. They are nestled against steep, as yet unspoiled mountain slopes, on which later on the steel beams of ski lifts would be erected.

'This is the way things looked more than 70 years ago,' a sales girl in a clothing shop in Corvar says about the old black-and-white photograph which can be seen on the walls of many stores and souvenir shops of the South Tyrolean town. It almost appears as if the residents of the picturesque Alta Badia valley still cannot really grasp what an incredible change has been wrought over their region in the Dolomite mountains.

Right behind the luxury hotel La Perla there stands, like a relic from another period in history, a typical old-style farmhouse. Since the death of its last owner it has been uninhabited. Now the hotel owner has bought it and has converted it with its ambience for local folklore evenings.

Employee Stefan Mayr leads visitors through the rustic rooms, the floor boards creaking as he goes past sleeping nooks and heavy wooden benches set against the masoned oven.

But in the old days, even in the winter months the mountain farmers scarcely had any idle time. And Roberta Rinna, who manages a four-star hotel in the neighbouring village of La Villa does not shed any tears for those years, so much romanticized, before the Dolomites were discovered by the tourism industry.

'Those were hard times,' she recalls, 'especially for my mother. After my father's death she had four children to feed all by herself. I can remember there were days when there wasn't enough to eat.'

It was with the German 'economic miracle' toward the end of the 1950s, when tourists began showing up, that progress and some affluence came to the Dolomite mountain region.

Back then, pop music singer Caterina Valente sang 'Come along a little bit to Italy ... come a little bit to the blue sea.' Many tourists heading towards Italy's beaches would often pass through Alta Badia. The journey then was an adventure, because the Alta Badia valley was only reachable from the north via the nearly 100-year-old Gadertal valley road.

Alta Badia to this day can thank its remote location for its special character, above all, of course, the local language, Ladin. Its kinship with Italian is quite evident, and yet some words of Teutonic origin have become embedded in Ladin. For example the word 'stuea' which is derived from the German word 'stube' (parlour). This word can be seen on the white-plastered wall above the entrance to the invitingly cozy parlour in the Maso Runch Hof inn in Pedraces.

Today, the Nagler family plays host to tourists in a setting of shelves with antique plates, family pictures and a wooden crucifix in the corner, serving up home-made Ladinic food which is at once tasty and filling. You start out with a rich barley soup, followed by a spinach-and-cream crullers fried in brown butter, pork knuckles with polenta and sauerkraut, dumplings with goulash, and topped off by desert - apple strudel.

Good dining belongs to South Tyrol the way snow belongs to winter - not only in the valley, but also up on the mountain. When skiers have a craving for something like sausages and French fries after a strenuous morning of skiing, they will come up against a wall of resistance against such simple fare in the 'rifugi' inns.

South Tyrol tends more towards the elegant Italian cuisine, a place for gourmets. So it comes as no surprise that even the simplest mountainside ski hut will have a high-class menu of various dishes.

In Alta Badia, the combination of recreation and culinary specialities is a tradition. During the 2011/2012 winter season the 'Skiing With Pleasure' programme is taking place for the seventh time. High-level gastronomy at elevations above 2,000 metres is on offer at 10 selected mountainside gourmet huts. Top international chefs from Austria, Slovenia, Switzerland and Germany are creating a special dish for each restaurant.

One such gourmet point is the Utia Lee beneath the Kreuzkofel peak. Anyone who has managed to hike up to it should go one kilometre further along in the direction of the gigantic mountain wall. At the foot of the massive cliffs there is a small pilgrimage church, the Heilig Kreuz (Holy Cross), which was consecrated in 1484.

You can take a seat on one of the benches in the tiny church and let your vision wander across the simple ceiling decorations and the beautiful altar. The reverent solitude might only now and then be interrupted by the clomping sound of the ski boots of skiers who have also stopped by to visit the church.