Malé

Malé is the chief town of the Val di Sole, and it is one by vocation and by history rather than by size. It stands at the centre of a triangle: the Brenta Dolomites, which are a world heritage site, Madonna di Campiglio and the Stelvio national park. What a valley capital actually is can be read in what Malé holds for the villages around it: the district outpatient clinic, the middle school that also takes in the pupils of the neighbouring villages, the museum of the civiltà solandra — the civilisation of the Val di Sole — whose multimedia section was opened in 2012. The railway that comes up from Trento carries the village's name too: the Trento-Malé line, whose station was opened in 1964 in place of the tramway that ran before it. Until the early two thousands there were also detached branches of some upper secondary schools here, mostly vocational; then they were moved to Cles.

In the census of 2021 nearly eight inhabitants out of a hundred declared that they belonged to the Ladin linguistic group. The comune is made of the capoluogo and of Magras, Arnago, Bolentina, Montes, Pondasio and Molini, each with its own church — San Marco at Magras, San Valentino at Bolentina — and the arms of the comune were recognised in 1929. The economy rests on tourism and on services, but trade, farming and craft count too, and craft here means above all wood, along with apples, cheeses and cured meats. And in June 2008 something happened that had never happened before: Malé hosted the trials events of the mountain bike world championships, and the sections were laid out in the squares of the village — the first time, in the history of those championships, that the courses were built inside a town instead of in the woods.