Capital of the Val Gardena, Ortisei — Urtijëi in Ladin, the mother tongue here — has been carving wood for at least four centuries: Gardena sculptures once travelled Europe with itinerant pedlars, and the workshops in the centre carry on the craft. Around it, the best of the UNESCO Dolomites: a cable car rises to the blade-ridged Seceda, a gondola reaches the Alpe di Siusi, Europe's largest high-altitude plateau.
The village is pedestrian, tidy, almost too perfect — then you look up at the Sassolungo and understand that here, perfection is the landscape.
Near Ortisei
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
