Once you're out of the confines of the park,
PREDAZZO is the first town you come to in the
Val di Fiemme, at the turn-off for the Val di Fassa. The town itself has become something of a pilgrimage site for geologists, owing to the extensive collection of local rocks and fossils in the newly enlarged
Museo Civico Geologia e Etnografia on Piazza Santi Filippo e Giacomo (closed for refurbishment at time of writing; call
0462.508.210 for up-to-date information). Surprisingly accessible to non-experts, the displays include samples of the Dolomitic calcite rock first identified by, and named after, the French mineralogist Dieudonné Sylvain Guy Tancrède de Gratet de Dolomieu.
Predazzo is a useful point to overnight, and
bus connections to Trento and Bolzano are reasonable. A good
hotel, though it may insist on half-board, is the
Maria (
0462.501.203,
www.hmaria.it;
€101-125), five minutes' walk from the centre on the main Corso Dolomiti, with a lovely garden.
Camping Valle Verde (
0462.502.394,
www.campingvalleverde.it) is a thirty-minute walk east from the central bus station, but has spectacular views, and facilities include a restaurant and shop. The
tourist information office at Via Cesare Battisti 4 (Mon-Sat 9am-noon & 3.30-7pm, July & Aug also Sun 9am-noon;
0462.501.237,
info.predazzo@valdifiemme.info) can help you out if both places are full.
Throughout the valley, hotel hoardings are ubiquitous, and even the tiniest villages hereabouts have a plan of the mountain ranges with chair lifts marked, but behind the modern Dolomites tourist industry, this is an ancient region that from the twelfth to the seventeenth centuries was virtually autonomous. A local parliament met at the
Banco de la reson, a circle of stone benches surrounded by trees in
CAVALESE, the next town along, and the Magnifica Comunità of Cavalese is still relatively powerful, administering extensive communal land. A short way beyond the town centre, at Via Fratelli Bronzetti 60, the road to Tésero, is a small
tourist office (Mon– Sat 9am– noon & 3.30–7pm; July & Aug also Sun 9am– noon,
0462.241.111) which can arrange visits to the medieval
Palazzo della Magnifica Comunità. This was the Bishop of Trento's summer palace, and now houses a small
museum and gallery (guided tours only; July & Aug daily 4.30, 5.30 & 6.30pm; rest of year for hours contact the tourist office; free). Wood-panelled rooms redolent of sawdust and polish, with fine wooden ceilings and painted friezes, contain the original valley statutes, together with some unremarkable paintings by local seventeenth-century artists. The building's lack of fortifications indicates that Trento's bishop felt safe from the armed rebellions that had plagued him in the city, and its exterior is covered in frescoes depicting St Vigilio (Trento's patron saint) enthroned in the centre of a trompe-l'oeil pediment.
Many people pause at Cavalese simply to stroll the cobbled streets, grazing at some of the cake and ice-cream shops, or to take the cable car up to the
Catena dei Lagorai. This mountain chain, concealing a string of lakes, is accessible on foot from any of the small villages along the main road. There was a tragic accident here in February 1998, in which a number of skiers were killed when a low-flying US airforce aeroplane sliced through the wires of their cable car; the lift has since reopened (July, Aug & Dec– Easter; €12.50 return). Leisurely day-trips are feasible, but if you feel inspired once you're up on the ridges, either follow the paths towards Passo di Rolle, or go west. A day or two of walking west (via refuges) brings you to the Val dei Mócheni, which was colonized in medieval times by German farmers travelling south, and has kept its own language and Gothic script. The first farmers were joined later by speculators searching for the rich seams of copper and silver that lay in the mountains. For somewhere to
stay, head for the recently refitted
Laurino (
0462.340.151,
www.hotegarnilaurino.com;
€50-75) in Cavalese.