Travel Guide San Martino Di Castrozza

A pretty little mountain village of 500 souls nestled in the heart of the eponymous mountain at an altitude of 1,500 metres, it owes its existence to a very ancient religious institution, the hospice of Saints Martino and Giuliano. This retreat welcomed travellers who crossed the Passo Rolle from the Primiero to the Val di Fiemme. Today, the church, with its Romanesque bell tower, is a remarkable vestige of that era. The first alpine tourist hotel was built in 1873, at the instigation of the Irish mountaineer John Ball who loved this place. San Martino was an early alpine resort frequented by the high society of the neighbouring Austro-Hungarian Empire, and it is here that the story of the short story Miss Else, written by the Austrian Jewish writer Arthur Schnitzler in 1924, is set. The resort continued to develop after the First World War, particularly during the Alpine resort boom of the 1950s.Its position in the heart of a green valley offers the visitor a scenic landscape as it is surrounded by the spectacular and imposing Pale Mountains of San Martino (Cimon della Pala, the Vezzana, the Rosetta, the Sass Maor, the Val di Val Roda). While on the other side, the relief is softer, with the porphyry peaks of Colbricon and the small Colbricon, as well as the Feltrine peaks, with a characteristic pyramid-shaped summit of Mount Pavione.