DOLOMITES-UNESCO: THE GREAT DOLOMITES ROAD TURNS 100
TRENTO - While still part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire ambitious plans were devised to open up the isolated alpine mountain groups on Austria's border with Italy to the outside world. One hundred years ago this month the last section of the Great Dolomites Road was opened to traffic. The road from the Falzarego Pass to Cortina d'Ampezzo, inaugurated on June 13 1909, completed the marvellous work of engineering - including the three mountain passes Costalunga, Pordoi and Falzarego - connecting the two most important towns in the Dolomites: Bolzano and Cortina d'Ampezzo.
Although the occasion signalled the real start of tourism in the Dolomites, its military value was behind the financing provided in 1897 by a special decree from the Austro-Hungarian authorities. At the time the Austrian border with Italy was just south of the Dolomite range. The Pordoi Pass, now crossing the border between the provinces of Trento and Belluno and the highest surfaced road in a Dolomite pass, cost more than one million crowns when it was built between 1904 and 1907. Work on the equally expensive Falzarego Pass in the province of Belluno called for innovative solutions to deal with the weak rock structure.
Two of the staunchest supporters of the road for the purpose of bringing tourists to the region were the mountaineer Albert Wachtler and Theodor Christomannos, both members of the Austrian Alpine Club (Alpenverein). Christomannos is remembered in the Alto Adige region as a nearly legendary personage who dedicated his whole life to developing tourism in what was then the Suedtirol. Born in Vienna to a wealthy Greek-Macedonian family, Theodor moved to Bolzano when he was 17 years old and was enchanted by the beauty of the surrounding mountains. In 1884 after graduating from university with a degree in law he opened a legal studio in the Alto Adige spa town of Merano. Christomannos' motto was ''No road without a hotel and no hotel without a road'', and soon he was building luxury hotels, had founded the Association of the Alps Hotels, and was lobbying heavily for the Dolomites road. Between 1894 and 1895 his project to make the Val d'Ega road suitable for vehicles used dynamite in the canyon that leads to Carezza Lake, the site of his Grand Hotel Carezza. The quickly renowned hotel welcomed guests like Elizabeth, Empress of Austria, wife of Emperor Franz Joseph II, popularly known as Sissi; the father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud; authors Arthur Schnitzler and Agatha Christie; film directors Leni Riefenstahl and Luis Trenker; and later the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
A monument to Christomannos, a large bronze eagle meant to symbolize his energy and force of will, was erected in the Catinaccio mountains, famous for their red-hued evenings. In a guide presenting the new Great Dolomite Road the indomitable hotelier boasted that the entire route from Bolzano to Cortina and then as far as Dobbiaco could be travelled in three days by carriage and even, at a good clip, on foot: 51 kilometres from Bolzano to Canazei at the extreme north of the Val di Fassa, 61 kilometres from Canazei to Cortina and 30 kilometres from Cortina to Dobbiaco in the Val Pusteria on the existing Alemagna road. With the arrival of the automobile the trip could be made in a day and cars soon appeared prominently in travel posters advertising the road and the Dolomites.
Aside from the Great Dolomites Road, the Austro-Hungarians undertook a veritable storm of road building in the nineteenth century. The Alemagna road, already passable by carriage in the seventeenth century, was improved between 1828 and 1838 and made an 'empire post road' providing both a stage coach service and postal service. Another important road from the Valle dell'Adige to the Val di Fiemme, running through the San Lugano Pass and as far as Moena in the Val di Fassa in Trentino, was built between 1838 and 1878.
After 1850 a road through the long deep Cordevole valley led to the towns of Agordo and Cencenighe in the province of Belluno. In 1856 the road through the Val Gardena reached the market village of Ortisei, now the valley's main town. The Rolle Pass, built between 1869 and 1875, connected the Valle del Primiero to the Val di Fiemme and led to the development of San Martino di Castrozza as a popular resort. By 1882 a connection to Fonzaso in the province of Belluno had been built through in the Schener gorge.
Cadore, in the northernmost part of the Belluno province was connected to Carnia in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region through the Mauria Pass in 1866. The road from Longarone on the Piave River to Zoldo in the heart of the Belluno Dolomites dates from 1880. Il Bel Paese (The Beautiful Country), a popular book published in 1876 by the Italian author and geologist, Antonio Stoppani, opens with a carriage trip from Belluno to Agordo. Stoppani called the town of Canale di Agordo ''horrifyingly beautiful''. During the First World War Austria's defensive lines ran through the Dolomite groups, linked by the empire's military roads. Scenes of fierce fighting and great deprivation were later replaced by tourists using the former soldiers' routes including the Cereda Pass in the Trentino, the San Pellegrino Pass between the provinces of Trentino and Belluno, the Valles Pass between the Trentino and Veneto regions, and the Giau Pass connecting Cortina d'Ampezzo and the Val Fiorentina.
While the new viability helped to stem depopulation in the mountains, today's environmental sensibility has led to closing some of the roads in national and provincial parks and regulating access in areas most at risk to damage from heavy use. Italy has applied to the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) for the Dolomites to be added to its World Heritage List. The 2008 bid was endorsed this May by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the World Heritage Committee's advisory body on natural sites. The committee's final verdict is expected by the end of 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.
