Forcella dei castrati
Pass · 2201 m · Dolomites
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Forcella dei Castrati, at 2201 m, splits the summit plateau between Monte Piana to the south and Monte Piano to the north. From 1915 to 1917 the saddle sat on the front line of a high-altitude war, Italian alpini holding the southern summit and Austrian Kaiserjäger the northern one. A monument here recalls Lieutenant Ruggero De Simone, killed by an iron mace blow in the war's final days.
Long before any war, shepherds from the Val Pusteria drove flocks of castrated rams up here to graze, which gave the saddle its name. Uncertain prewar borders left this exact depression classified as no man's land, where infantry from both armies clashed directly across the gap between the two summits. Fighting across Monte Piana and Monte Piano cost close to 14,000 casualties on both sides before the Italians abandoned their positions on 3 November 1917. A bell placed on the old front line just past the saddle in 1988, the Campana dell'Amicizia, marks the war's end seventy years on.
What you see
Trench lines, tunnel mouths and bomb craters still cut into the bare rock across the saddle, preserved as an open-air war museum between the two summits.
Practical
The road from Misurina to Rifugio Bosi, the nearest hut, is closed to traffic; it's reached on foot, or by jeep shuttle from 20 June to late September and by snowmobile in winter.
wwi historyopen air museumno mans land