Cortina d'Ampezzo rests in a sun-soaked basin at around 1,224 metres, ringed by an amphitheatre of peaks that few places in the world can match: the Tofane, the Cristallo, the Sorapis, the Cinque Torri, and the long rampart of the Pomagagnon. They call it the Queen of the Dolomites, and you need only look up from Corso Italia to understand why. The church bell tower, the boutiques, and the historic hotels speak of a glamour that has always coexisted with serious mountaineering.
Behind the fashionable image lies a tenacious identity. The Ampezzani speak Ladin and have administered their forests and pastures for centuries through the Regole d'Ampezzo, an ancient form of collective land ownership. Their more recent history is also the history of the Great War: the Dolomite front ran through here, and the Lagazuoi and the Cinque Torri are now open-air museums of trenches, tunnels, and galleries carved into the living rock.
Elite tourism has roots here going back to the nineteenth century, but it was 1956 — with the first Winter Olympics broadcast to a global television audience — that consecrated Cortina as a byword for sport and the international jet set. In February 2026 the basin returns as an Olympic host for the Milano-Cortina Games, seventy years on, with women's alpine ski racing taking place on the legendary Olimpia delle Tofane. In between seasons there are the larches that blaze in autumn and the trails leading to the turquoise waters of Lago di Sorapis.
