Alta Badia opens at the foot of the Sella Group, in the sunny basins of the Val Badia, scattered with old farmsteads. The villages are Corvara, Colfosco, La Villa, San Cassiano, and Badia, watched over by the unmistakable shape of the Sass Songher and, higher up, by the three-thousand-metre walls of the Lavarella and the Conturines. The land is open and full of light, and the grassy plateaux of the Pralongià and the Piz La Ila seem made for walking slowly.
This is one of the heartlands of Ladin identity. Most people here speak Ladin, and the language turns up in the schools, the local institutions, and the place names. In San Cassiano the Museum Ladin Ursus Ladinicus holds the bones of a prehistoric bear found in the Conturines cave. The old farmsteads, some on record for centuries, tell the story of a stubborn farming world that never gave in. Tradition here isn't a show for visitors. It's just how people live.
Over the past few decades Alta Badia has built a reputation for food that no other valley in the Dolomites can match, putting the old flavours (Knödel dumplings, barley soup) in conversation with award-winning chefs. Winter is all wide, sun-soaked skiing, with the Sellaronda close at hand and the brutal Gran Risa run in La Villa firing up the World Cup giant slalom every December. Few places sit high altitude and fine dining this comfortably next to each other.
When it is worth coming to Alta Badia, month by month: When to Go to the Dolomites: A Month-by-Month Guide.
