DOLOMITES-UNESCO: A HERITAGE SITE WITH MAN AT ITS CENTER
TRENTO – Before the advent of tourism in the Dolomites in the 19th century most of the population got by subsistence farming and artisan crafts.
Human civilisation in these high altitude mountains was the basic forest, pasture and agricultural culture typical of alpine areas. Crops were grown on the steep sunny slopes and for centuries there was little more than agriculture, livestock and forestry. In the long winter months families practised artisan crafts, making objects to sell in country fairs and at weekly markets. The Val Gardena products were particularly prized and are documented starting in 1650 - but certainly existed before - and toys and wooden statues made in the valley were sold all over Europe.
In 1880 2,800 of the 3,600 inhabitants in the Gardena valley were active in the woodworking industry. The people in the Val di Fassa produced toys to sell to the Val Gardena middlemen before specializing as artistic wood carvers for interiors and furnishings, often hired to work in Austria and Switzerland. Today there are two woodcarving schools in Val Gardena and there are also carving schools in Val di Fassa and Cortina d'Ampezzo.
Wrought iron and silver filigree work flourished in Cortina in the 1800s and Val Badia was famous for its fine carpentry, producing especially admired 'cassapanche' chests, as well as textile design. Until only a few decades ago in the Friuli Dolomites there was a long tradition of making wooden utensils that the women sold on long walks carrying their baskets of goods on their shoulders. The tourism industry that started in the middle of the 1800s provided the Dolomite people with a means to escape their laborious conditions of near poverty and subsistence living.
''In 200 million years of geological evolution, in two thousand years of transformation by man, and in 200 years of modern history, since they were named the Dolomites these mountains have accumulated all the characteristics of a recognisable alpine region, with its own specific identity'', reads the introductory description written by Franco de Battaglia and Luciano Marisaldi in the Encyclopaedia of the Dolomites, published by Zanichelli in 2000.
The two authors, great authorities on the Dolomites, affirm that this identity ''has its imprinting in the environment, but has also been reflected over the centuries in the material culture and the social organisation of the population and is manifested in a landscape unique in its balance between man and nature, in various economic structures (from agricultural to artisan crafts and the great tourism explosion) but above all in the capacity to create a style of life''.
This way of life is expressed in the very original life styles the people in the Dolomites have cultivated and conserved, something recognised by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the World Heritage Committee’s advisory body on natural sites. Italy’s application to the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) for the Dolomites to be added to its World Heritage List was approved in June. Nine mountain groups have been selected as representative of two UNESCO criteria: superlative natural phenomena and outstanding examples representing major stages of earth's history.
From the prehistoric epochs when hunters climbed from the valleys to the mountain passes, to the successive colonisations by iron age tribes, Romans, Longobards, and the more recent historic events that moved national borders back and forth, the Dolomite people maintained their cultural unity despite linguistic and administrative differences. The millennium-long relationship between man and the enchanted world of the ‘Pale Mountains’ is expressed a shared life style where man and nature coexist.
The ancient Ladin language and culture cohabitates in the northern areas with the German language and culture, with the Italian language and Veneto culture in the south and the Friuli culture in the east. Even with these different influences the Dolomite areas offer visitors a fairly homogenous image. Some areas have been developed for tourism and other places only marginally, but overall - as the recently successful UNESCO bid proves - the natural integrity of the Dolomites has been preserved.
