Ortisei

The town's names record its past. Urtijëi and its Italian form Ortisei come from a farmstead called Ortiseyt, documented as early as the 13th century, a name built from the Latin urtica — the "place of nettles". The German name, St. Ulrich, comes from the parish's patron saint, a reminder of the medieval possessions of the church of Augsburg in the Eisack valley and Gröden. The first written record of the Val Gardena itself dates from around the year 1000.

From the 17th century a large part of the population took up woodcarving — sacred sculpture, altars and wooden toys — and for more than two centuries the town was regarded as an international centre of the craft. A major road down to the railway brought rapid growth from 1860 to 1914, and the carvers flourished. Mountaineers such as Paul Grohmann discovered the peaks above, English visitors followed and then others from Austria-Hungary and Germany, and Emil Terschak, who lived in the town in the 1890s, gave winter tourism its push. Sacred carving peaked around 1900 at the art school founded by Ferdinand Demetz.

During the First World War, Russian prisoners of war built the Val Gardena Railway, which linked the valley to Klausen until 1960. The first cable car of the valley, to the Seiser Alm, opened here in 1935, and the town hosted the Alpine World Ski Championships in 1970. The Second Vatican Council brought a sharp decline in demand for sacred carving, and since the 1960s mainly small, largely machine-carved figures have found buyers abroad.

Ortisei is a majority Ladin-speaking municipality, and the Val Gardena is one of five valleys where most people speak Ladin, a Romance language related to Romansh and Friulian; the local form is called Gherdëina. The Cësa di Ladins, which houses the valley museum and a library of Ladin language and culture, is the seat of the association that works to keep the language alive, and the local schools belong to the Ladin language group.

Carving remains the town's signature. In the 18th century the valley produced statuettes of beggars and figures of the four seasons alongside religious work; by the 19th century toy-making was so widespread that the writer Amelia Edwards called Urtijëi the "capital of Toyland", and its peg wooden dolls were sold across Europe and America. Statues and altars carved here were shipped to Catholic churches around the world. The town has the valley's only secondary schools, among them an art high school and a vocational school for arts and crafts. The Moroder family has produced generations of sculptors and painters, and the film-maker and mountaineer Luis Trenker is among the town's best-known figures.

Winter sport runs deep: the Saslong downhill brings the World Cup to the valley most winters, the Olympic medallist skier Isolde Kostner and the figure skater Carolina Kostner, who lives in the town, are local names, and the valley's ice hockey club, HC Gherdëina, was originally based here.

About 4,700 people live in the municipality, which covers only the northern side of the valley floor, at around 1,170 to 1,350 metres, and the slopes rising behind it. It is the largest of the valley's three municipalities, and its secondary schools serve the whole Val Gardena.

The economy rests on winter skiing, summer hiking and woodcarving. Lifts, hotels, guesthouses, ski schools and restaurants employ much of the town in season, while carvers' workshops and galleries keep the old craft going. The valley's fields were traditionally sown with barley, rye, potatoes, flax and buckwheat, and most of the steep slopes around are pine forest.

The year follows the seasons. From December the streets fill with skiers heading for the lifts and the circuits around the Sella group; in summer the crowds are walkers bound for Seceda and the Seiser Alm. Between the seasons, in spring and late autumn, many lifts close and the town returns to its residents. Daily conversation moves easily between Ladin, German and Italian.

Ortisei eats as the rest of South Tyrol does, where Tyrolean and Italian kitchens meet. Speck Alto Adige, a dry-cured and lightly smoked ham with protected status, appears on boards and in dumplings. Knödel are boiled dumplings of the Central European kind, and Schlutzkrapfen are semicircular filled pasta made from white and rye flour, eggs and oil, typically stuffed with cheese, spinach or mushrooms.

Sweets lean towards Austria. Kaiserschmarrn, a lightly sweetened, shredded pancake named after Emperor Franz Joseph I, who was fond of it, is eaten as a dessert or a light lunch, and apple strudel is everywhere in a land of apple orchards. The restaurants, cafés and bars of the town are concentrated along Strada Rezia, the main street, and there is a restaurant at the top of the Seiser Alm cable car.

Drinks come from the wider region: South Tyrolean white wines and reds from the Lagrein and Schiava grapes, and grappa.