Pale di San Martino

The Pala group is the largest massif of the Dolomites and impresses with a wide, moon-like high plateau at around 2,600 m, ringed by rugged peaks. The cable car from San Martino di Castrozza to the Rosetta opens up this high plain comfortably. The area belongs to the UNESCO World Heritage Site and to the Paneveggio Nature Park.

Highlights

• A wide, almost moon-like high plateau at around 2,600 m
• Rosetta cable car from San Martino di Castrozza
• Paneveggio Nature Park with the violin forests
• UNESCO World Heritage Dolomites

Good to know

Practical info

Background & History

The Pale di San Martino form the largest continuous high plateau of the Dolomites, a wide karst plateau of pale limestone that floats like a petrified moonscape above the green forests of Trentino. This rock desert is framed by boldly rising peaks such as the Cimon della Pala, which, because of its pointed elegance, is fondly called the Matterhorn of the Dolomites. Like all the Dolomites, the Pale consist of the remains of prehistoric coral reefs and lagoons that formed around 250 million years ago in a tropical sea and were later lifted up by the folding of the Alps into rugged towers.

At the foot of the massif lies the traditional mountain resort of San Martino di Castrozza, which as early as the 19th century attracted pioneers of mountaineering and of early mountain romanticism. The Dolomites as a whole have always been the richest source of legends in the Alps, interwoven with the tales of the Ladin people, who have preserved their own Rhaeto-Romance language in these valleys. The pale glow of the rock faces in the sunset, which mountaineers call Enrosadira, has here, as scarcely anywhere else, contributed to the rise of fairy tales about petrified kings and enchanted realms.