Trying to decide if we’re gonna rent a car after we leave Venice . We are traveling to the dolomites for a week. And if we rent a car, we want to see one of the ww one sites on our way to the Val Gardena . Anyone visited any of these sites to give us more information.?
My Dolomites' relatives who live in Pozza di Fasso regularly take visitors to the stone fortress in Passo Valparola - the "Forte Tre Sassi" – Three Stone Fortress. It was built in 1897 and damaged by bombs in WWI. The fortress has been restored and is now a military museum. Apparently, one of the great great grandfathers spent some time there as an Austrian soldier. The border was pretty fluid so my relatives ancestry is both Austrian and Italian.
One half-day of our ten-day guided hiking trip in the Dolomites was devoted to exploring WWI trenches on a signed interpretive path around the Cinque Torri, a part of the Musei Della Grande Guerra not far from Cortina. We started with an ascent by lift to Refugio Scoiattoli, and hiked a loop around the five towers, part of it in the trenches themselves.
This area was described by our guide as “perhaps the best-restored and best-interpreted of the World War I sites in the Dolomites”. It was certainly a sobering look at what a h€!! those soldiers went through.
You would need a car to get there and it would be well worth a stop.
From Cortina go up to Passo Falzarego and take the cable car to Lagazuoi. The whole top was a fighting area and has even changed shape as Italians, at a time, blew up a whole side mountain. It is even possible to walk back to base station through a long elicoidal tunnel, in the shape of a cork driver, carved in the rock by soldiers to bring up mines (this hike is not difficult, but better undertaken by fit persons with appropriate equipment). When you travel up the cable car, remember that Austrians had the pass and top area, but Italians were clinging to a narrow ledge in the middle of the almost vertical rock wall. Austrians bombed them from above and from the pass for years, without being able to dislodge them.
Another hike, less dramatic, is to the Monte Piana area near Misurina, adapted as an open air museum. It will take a few hours as access is only by foot or by shuttle jeep and the area is somewhat dispersed.
When you are in the Val Gardena, be sure to walk the Sentiero del Trenino which is on the former bed of a railroad built by Russian POWs in WWI. The path also goes through a little museum in a tunnel in the center of Santa Cristina. You can walk from S. Cristina to Ortisei if you like.
On the same tour I mentioned above, but a different day, my husband did that downhill hike through the WWI tunnel described by lachera. To be honest, he hated it. It was cold, dark, and slippery, and not at all the type of historical learning experience he expected. I was very glad to have opted out of that. I stayed with others on the tour at the top and hiked from the Lagazuoi hut to a memorial and back before taking the lift down and a bus to meet the others where they emerged from the tunnel.
