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edited by G. M. Jonghi Lavarini e Sara Sperolini
Writing

Not many will remember, but Cortina's destiny as an international tourist locality began when Austria took Veneto,
with Cadore, at the fall of the Venetian Republic. From 1823 to 1825, engineers were sent by Vienna to build a
six-metre-wide road from Cortina to Dobbiaco, with a slope that was almost always constant, so as to connect
'the pearl of the Dolomites' to the imperial road of Alemagna, thus making it possible for the first wagonloads of
heroic Alpine tourists to arrive.

Mountain tourism was a completely new form of collective behaviour that became fashionable with Romanticism and its taste for fantasy (from fairy tales collected systematically to the many 'dark' stories set in castles). Before then the inaccessible mountain world was considered a difficult and unpleasant place that was best left to mountain dwellers. With the arrival of tourists in Cortina, the first inns began to emerge and development took place in a gradual and spontaneous fashion. Only in 1851 was this new phenomenon regulated with the first official operations. Now hotels had to have a guest book, and forest laws were made for the protection of the landscape and for hunting and fishing.

Cortina, prior to being a locality of large and small villas, was the head office for hotels of world renown, and this also took place gradually. As early as 1780 there was already an inn, the legendary 'Aquila Nera', which was the only one there until the arrival of the engineers who built the road (and who were accommodated there). Half way through the nineteenth century this was joined by the Hotel Croce Bianca, the Hotel Stella and the Locanda Ancora (or Anchor Inn, a strange name for a mountain hotel).

They were built in the Tyrolean style of the period with deep and very protected wooden balconies, almost like verandas, where people played cards on rainy days. By the end of the century there were no less than 17 hotels offering a total of 530 beds. But the best was to come with the new century when the large hotels of the belle époque began to be built: the Cristallo Palace, the Hotel des Alpes (now the Codevilla Hospital), the Miramonti Majestic, and finally the spectacular Hotel Faloria, which thanks to a donation is now a school for Ursuline nuns.

Now no longer was it visited by American millionaires or English lords, but by the Princesses of Savoy, Giovanna and Mafalda, daughters of the King of Italy, and by many Venetian nobles including Barone Francetti, who in 1924 built the first cableway in the Dolomites. From the church square it took you to Pocòl from where you could come back down on skis. During this period the first rationalist constructions were built, including Luigi Vietti's Villa Settecamini, where the inventor of 'Cortina style' began to attempt to merge functionality with alpine style (large windows and lots of fireplaces).

The second world war saw the large hotels turn into convalescent homes for Italian and German officials, coupled with a slackening of high-class tourism. It is during this period that Luigi Vietti, having acquired a very well preserved 17th-century house, was able to develop a new fashion of living in the Alps: a tasteful mix of mountain simplicity and city elegance, such as the sofas with visible wooden structure, covered with sweet-scented sheep skins, alongside prized antique furniture. With the war over, the 1950s for Cortina (as with the rest of Italy) was a period of rebirth, and there was one exceptional event: the Winter Olympics of 1956. The year before the Olympics the entire valley became a building site, not only for the construction of sports facilities but also for the refurbishment of the hotels.

The Olympics were enormously successful, and the little narrowgauge train transported 7000 people every day: it was the real international relaunch of Cortina's image. Over the last fifty years, society life has established itself and the number of villas has increased. The interiors of the houses built or renovated in this period have been reviewed in the following pages, bearing witness to a firmly established style known as 'Cortina style', which architect Luigi Vietti has been recognised as the precursor of.

Walter Pagliero