Cortina d'Ampezzo

A Mesolithic burial found in 1987 at Mondeval de Sora, high in the mountains south of the town, shows that people hunted here as early as the 6th millennium BC. The Romans called the valley Amplitium, from amplus, "wide" — the origin of the name Ampezzo. In the Middle Ages it belonged to the Patriarchate of Aquileia and the Holy Roman Empire; Venice conquered it in 1420, but in 1508 the Habsburgs took it, and in 1511 its people swore loyalty to Emperor Maximilian. The valley was then joined to the Tyrol, and the castle of Botestagno guarded its northern approach.

Ampezzo remained Austrian, apart from a few years under Napoleon, whose troops burned the town before he added it to the Department of Piave in 1810, and it stayed in the Austrian Empire even after Venice passed to Italy in 1866. In the 19th century it became a centre for crafts — furniture, tiled stoves, iron, copper and glass — and a health resort said to be free of cholera, attracting British and German holidaymakers. In 1915 most of its men were serving in the Austro-Hungarian army in Russia when Italian troops arrived, and the mountains above the valley became a front line of tunnels and mine warfare.

The valley was ceded to Italy in 1920, moved to the province of Belluno in 1923, the year the comune's official name ceased to be simply Ampezzo. The Winter Olympics planned for 1944 were cancelled by the war, but the 1956 Games made Cortina world-famous, and tourism transformed the valley. It hosted the Alpine World Ski Championships in 2021 and, with Milan, the 2026 Winter Olympics and Paralympics. In 2007 residents voted to leave the Veneto for Trentino-Alto Adige, a referendum that can take effect only through a law of the Italian parliament.

Ladin, a Rhaeto-Romance language related to Romansh, is the town's own tongue. In a 2006 survey about 16 per cent of residents gave Ampezzan Ladin as their mother tongue and most others Italian, yet the majority of the town speaks it fluently, and keeping it alive across the generations is a point of local pride. The Regole d'Ampezzo, ancient councils of the original village families, still own much of the land and forest and run the town's museums. Ties to the Tyrol and to Austria run deep: the local rifle company was revived in 2002, a memorial to Maximilian I stands on the main square, and portraits of Franz Joseph and Charles I hang in many bars and inns.

Writers have long come here. Ernest Hemingway began his story Out of Season in Cortina, and Saul Bellow, Dino Buzzati and Leonardo Sciascia spent holidays in the town, a tradition continued by the Una Montagna di Libri festival. Music matters too: the town band, which parades in traditional costume, dates from 1861, and the Dino Ciani Festival brings pianists from around the world every summer. The town has appeared in many films, including The Pink Panther, Cliffhanger and the 1981 James Bond film, whose ski chase ends on the bobsleigh run.

Old customs survive alongside the resort life: the town's young people traditionally climbed the hills at sunset to light fires on the eves of Ascension, Pentecost and the feast of Saints Philip and James, and the six sestieri still organise rural festivals and races. Winter sport is central to local identity, and SG Cortina's ice hockey games draw loyal crowds.

About 5,400 people now live in the comune, down from 6,150 in 2008; the population grew until the 1960s and then fell steeply from the 1970s. In winter the town typically swells from about 7,000 people to 40,000, and to around 50,000 at the peaks of Christmas and mid-August. Foreign nationals made up 5.1 per cent of residents at the start of 2025.

Tourism is the economy. The resort's ski areas, ski schools and some 300 instructors, its campsites, mountain huts and hotels employ much of the town, and Corso Italia has branches of major fashion houses beside antique dealers, craft shops and many mountaineering stores. The Cooperativa di Cortina, founded in 1893 as one of the first cooperatives in Italy, still employs about 200 people. Older crafts in wood and metal have their roots in the art school the Austrian government opened in 1874.

Life follows the seasons: crowded and expensive in the ski months and in August, quiet in spring and autumn, when many businesses close. Residents live in the old villages scattered around the basin. The 2026 Olympics brought a rebuilt bobsleigh track and more frequent bus links to the railway at Calalzo.

Ampezzan cooking is close to Tyrolean food, and many dishes keep their German names. It is mountain cooking: simple ingredients, generous flavours. The best-known first courses are chenedi, the local version of Tyrolean canederli — bread dumplings filled with speck, spinach, lard or cheese and served in hot broth or with melted butter; casunziei, half-moon ravioli filled with beetroot or potato and dressed with melted butter and poppy seeds; and pestariei, little pieces of flour-and-water dough cooked in boiling salted milk, once the Ampezzo breakfast.

From Venice came polenta and rije e bije, rice and peas, along with soups of broad beans or barley; from the Habsburgs came goulash soup. Main dishes include roasts with mushrooms from the valley's woods, gröstl, a meat-and-potato dish of Austrian origin, pork ribs, and stews of roe deer or chamois served with lingonberry jam, while patate all'ampezzana are the classic side dish. The local cheese, zigar, is eaten melted with polenta.

Desserts are Austrian: apple strudel, ricotta tart, the fried fartaies, krapfen filled with custard or apricot jam, nighele, small unfilled doughnuts, and Sachertorte. Jams of bilberries, raspberries, blackberries, currants and strawberries are made in the valley, as is honey, especially wildflower and rhododendron honey.