Monte Paterno - Paternkofel
Peak · 2744 m · Dolomites
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Monte Paterno, beside the Tre Cime di Lavaredo at 2744 m, sat on the Italian-Austrian front line in the First World War. Italian troops held the summit from the outset, and on 4 July 1915 an Austrian assault led by guide Sepp Innerkofler tried to retake it. Soldiers tunnelled deep into the rock to supply the highest positions, and those tunnels now form the via ferrata De Luca-Innerkofler.
Before dawn on 4 July 1915, Innerkofler led about forty hand-picked Austrian soldiers up the mountain's north side toward the Italian post on the summit. Piero de Luca, a young Alpino already wounded that morning by a shell fragment, refused help so as not to pull another man off the line and held his position on the summit wall. As Innerkofler hesitated on the final stretch of rock, De Luca struck him with a stone and sent him falling to his death, an act for which De Luca later received a bronze medal for valour. Italian troops buried Innerkofler's body on the summit under a plain wooden cross, and it stayed there until Italy's own troops withdrew from the position; his remains were then exhumed in the summer of 1918 and reburied at Sesto, his home village.
What you see
From the summit, the sheer north faces of the Tre Cime di Lavaredo rise directly across the saddle, one of the classic views in the Dolomites.
Practical
The Innerkofler via ferrata starts near Rifugio Locatelli and takes roughly two to three hours round trip; via ferrata equipment is required.
world war onevia ferratatre cimemountain panorama