Cortina d'Ampezzo sits in a sun-soaked basin at about 1,224 metres, inside a ring of peaks that few places anywhere can match: the Tofane, the Cristallo, the Sorapis, the Cinque Torri, and the long wall of the Pomagagnon. They call it the Queen of the Dolomites, and one look up from Corso Italia tells you why. The bell tower, the boutiques, and the old grand hotels all speak of a glamour that has always lived alongside serious mountaineering.
But behind the fashionable face there's a tough, rooted identity. The Ampezzani speak Ladin, and for centuries they've run their forests and pastures through the Regole d'Ampezzo, an old form of shared land ownership. Their more recent past is the past of the Great War. The Dolomite front ran straight through here, and the Lagazuoi and the Cinque Torri are now open-air museums of trenches, tunnels, and galleries cut into the rock.
Wealthy tourists have come here since the nineteenth century, but it was 1956 that made Cortina a household name. The first Winter Olympics broadcast to a worldwide television audience tied the place to sport and the international jet set for good. In February 2026 the basin hosts the Games again, seventy years on, as part of Milano-Cortina, with the women's alpine racing on the legendary Olimpia delle Tofane. Between the big seasons there are the larches that turn gold in autumn and the trails down to the turquoise water of Lago di Sorapis.
