Passo Valparola
Pass · 2192 m · Dolomites
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Passo Valparola, at 2,192 m, links Alta Badia with the Falzarego pass and Cortina. Astride the summit stands Forte Tre Sassi, an Austro-Hungarian fortress built between 1897 and 1901 to guard the empire's southern border, then knocked out by Italian bombardment on 5 July 1915. Restored by the Lancedelli family, it now houses a Great War museum with over 2,000 wartime artifacts.
Valparola takes its name from iron furnaces that once stood near the pass, a Latin rendering of the German for iron furnace valley; the ovens were still standing as ruins in 1860, and finds at nearby Lake Valparola show the ore here was worked as far back as the Stone Age, and certainly by the Iron Age. Before the First World War only a mule track crossed the saddle; the paved road followed once the army needed to supply the front line above it. Sass de Stria, the rock tower beside the road, was honeycombed with Austro-Hungarian trenches and tunnels, including the Goiginger tunnel dug in 1916 to keep the position supplied under Italian artillery fire; the fortifications were restored in 2004 and are open today as an outdoor museum. From the pass, trails also fan out to Col di Lana, over the Lagazuoi via the Kaiserjäger path, across the Fanes plateau and on to the Pralongia mountain inn.
What you see
Lagazuoi's peak rises on one side of the road and the sheer tower of Sass de Stria on the other, with a small lake at the summit beside the fort.
Practical
Rifugio Passo Valparola, right on the summit, has a bar and restaurant. The road climbs about 11 km from Corvara at an average 5.6%, or 13-14 km from Pocol or La Villa, gaining roughly 600 m either way.
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