For any Giro d’Italia, I will look for a stay in the Dolomites in the northeast first.
My most favorite spot in this cycling heaven, is Corvara in Badia or Kurfar, in the Alto Adige region.
It’s located at the bottom of the climbs up the Campolongo and Gardena, the Valparola just around the corner in La Villa.
This area is part of the Dolomites World Heritage Site.
In total, there are nine mountain systems that make up the Dolomites World Heritage Site:
- Pelmo – Croda da Lago: includes the iconic Mount Pelmo and the Croda da Lago massif
- Marmolada: the Queen of the Dolomites, with the highest peak at 3,343m
- Pale di San Martino, San Lucano, Dolomiti Bellunesi, and Vette Feltrine: a vast, horseshoe-shaped area featuring diverse landscapes across the Belluno and Trento provinces
- Dolomiti Friulane and d’Oltre Piave: the wildest and most unspoiled area, located in the easternmost part of the range.
- Northern Dolomites: the largest of the nine systems, encompassing the Sesto (Sexten) Dolomites, the Fanes-Senes-Braies plateaus, and famous peaks like the Tre Cime di Lavaredo
- Puez-Odle: a prime example of classic dolomitic landscape with jagged peaks and high-altitude plateaus, home to the Sassongher group, towering over Corvara
- Sciliar-Catinaccio and Latemar: known for their complex rock formations and the dramatic “Enrosadira” color changes at sunset
- Bletterbach (Rio delle Foglie): a deep gorge often called the “Grand Canyon of South Tyrol,” revealing millions of years of geological history
- Brenta Dolomites: the only group located west of the Adige River, remaining geographically separate from the main range.
These systems are shown with a darker shade of blue in the interactive map at the bottom of this page.
The Dolomites area is part of the Southern Limestone Alps and extends from the Adige river in the west to the Piava river (Pieve di Cadore) in the east.
The northern border is defined by the Puster Valley (Val Pusteria) and the southern border by the Valsugana and Valbelluna valleys.
The Dolomites are shared between the regions of Veneto and Trentino-Alto Adige, with the corresponding provinces
- Belluno, Vicenza and Verona – Veneto
- Trento and Bozen – Trentino-Alto Adige.
The Dolomites region includes seven of the nine mountain systems that form the World Heritage Site.
The Brenta Dolomites and Dolomiti Friulane are not part of it.
But Friuli-Venezia Giulia (Udine) is home to the infamous Monte Zoncolan…
My Dolomites adventures are mainly in Trento-Alto Adige and the Belluno part of Veneto.
I’ve created a map for each of these “subs”:
The map with passes and dead ends in the Dolomites, the solid grey line roughly tracking the outline of the picture above:
Background picture: Tre Cime di Lavaredo view from Lago di Misurina by kallerna, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
