Winter Issue 2025-26

In January 1935, lack of snow required that a scheduled downhill ski race above Lake Maggiore in Italy’s Piedmont region be modified for both practical and safety reasons. In place of the classic wide-open downhill, Gianni Albertini, boss at FISI (the Italian Ski Federation), set a new course with well-spaced gates that forced racers to follow a more sinuous high-speed path. With the race’s vertical suddenly compressed by snowline considerations into a mere 300 meters, Albertini reasoned there should be two runs. When the race formula proved both a success and a crowd-pleaser, a month later, FISI officially introduced this “Giant Slalom” at the Italian National Ski Championships in Cortina d’Ampezzo, staking the route down 760-meters of vertical that took winner Giacinto Sertorelli —who bested 25 other entrants—six-and-a-half minutes to descend.

The slope would log over two decades of serious racing by the time it officially debuted as “Olimpia delle Tofane”—the men’s Downhill venue during the 1956 Olympic Winter Games held in Cortina. With its steepest and most famous of its dozen sections, the Tofanaschuss—a shadowy drop between two towering rock buttresses—this classic course subsequently became a staple of the women’s World Cup Downhill circuit, charting further history that includes Lindsey Vonn’s six Downhill and six Super G wins there. Olimpia delle Tofane also enjoyed pride of place when the Alpine World Ski Championships rolled into town in 2021.

With the Milano-Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games on the horizon, all eyes are again on Olimpia delle Tofane and the village of Cortina—fondly referred to as “Queen of the Dolomites.” Given the much-changed, ever-evolving sports landscape we now dwell in, Cortina’s return to the Olympic throne after a 70-year hiatus looks to reignite its reputation as a chic, long-reigning winter destination that has always brought la dolce vita.

History abounds in the Dolomites, whether ski racing, architecture or après-ski artifice, and Cortina also boasts no small amount of the latter two. That starts with the village square and cobblestoned Corso Italia pedestrian zone with its beautiful blend of Italian and Tirolean-style buildings and landmark bell tower. Surrounded by classic four- and five-star hotels and their spacious patios, including venerable Hotel Cortina, dating to 1870, the numerous restaurants and bars on the square have forged their own histories among patrons. Places like must-visit Enoteca Cortina—one of Italy’s first wine bars and the town’s busiest such institution—where unbeatable atmosphere and genuine service always make you feel at home; the Clipper Bar, a consideration for early evening that gets busier as the night draws on; and Hotel de la Poste, the choice if you’re looking for something more refined. Sure, you might find enough exotic furs (like, real leopard) courtesy of visitors from Venice and Milan hanging in these bars to warrant a CITES red alert, but it shouldn’t come as any surprise that high fashion and luxury shops dominate commercial offerings as well: at least one jewelry and antiquities store requires you to be buzzed in and out by security.

Beyond après, more substantial fare is available in any direction. Pizza, that great Italian appeaser of skier appetites, is everywhere. Restaurant Ariston across from the Cortina Bus Station is an outstanding, reasonably-priced, family-owned joint with an excellent regional wine list; also favored is Pizzeria Cinque Torri, with its large and varied menu of pasta dishes that include a much-heralded version of casunziei all’Ampezzana—the regional specialty of ravioli half-moons stuffed with red beets and topped with melted butter, poppy seeds and a generous dusting of Parmesan (while locals swear by this or that pasta-maker’s take on this dish, here’s a pro tip: you’ll do no better than the version turned out by the Lorenzi family atop Cinque Torri at Rifugio Scoiattoli). If pizzerias are too proletariat, among Cortina’s top eateries you’ll find heralded Alajmo Cortina and Michelin-starred Ristorante Tivoli and Michelin-bibbed Baita Fraina.

Though well-grounded in the realms of winter-sport competition and fancy-fooding, Cortina is actually better known for being one of the world’s most beautiful ski resorts, where the dramatic walls and towers of the Dolomites offer rocky leitmotif to any activity. It’s a landscape that seems at once both spacious yet filled with nooks and crannies, the latter exemplified in Cortina’s famous couloirs—long, narrow, often sinuous lines that can cleave peaks from top to bottom. Cortina’s four major ski sectors—Faloria-Cristallo-Mietres, Tofana-Socrepes, Lagazuoi and Cinque Torri—are linked by lifts or busses, and also part of the famous Dolomiti Superski—a single ticket that delivers 12 ski areas comprising 450 lifts and 1,200 kilometers of pistes.

Though few other major ski resorts can claim skiing spread so far across such a large valley, its west-to-east character here ensures that each area in Cortina is topographically unique, with differing snow conditions and ski experiences, from the usual perfectly groomed, seemingly always race-ready thruways below tree line, to a glut of rolling, twisting, bucking pistes of varied aspects, to wide-open alpine and the aforementioned couloirs. 

Cortina is one of the better resorts for introducing beginners or low-end intermediates to the big mountains, and in particular the Alps. There are many gently angled runs off the Socrapes area on Pomedes, with a ton of intermediate terrain to graduate onto. There are also some pretty bad-ass race-style runs in the same sector, such as Labirinti. Of course, everyone also wants to ski Olimpia delle Tofane if only to experience the Tofanaschuss and do something that racers never get to—stop to touch and stare up those foreboding rock walls.

When it’s sunny, as is often the case, it’s best to head up high given that so many of Cortina’s main slopes face south. (That tan you’re cultivating also means the snow is getting baked.) Though you don’t necessarily go high so you can ski couloirs so large they could hold small ski areas, and on whose massive, exit-aprons you may—should you be able to slow yourself enough—spot small groups of chamois nibbling hidden vegetation, you can certainly find them an easy 10-minute bootpack from the top of Tofana chair (another pro tip: many of those bootpacks are from groups led by guides, which you should also definitely have). Mostly you go high to bag shorter runs of better snow and bank your share of incomparable views—the usual Alps-rooftop vibe but with the decidedly singular nature of the Dolomites, possibly the most sunset-ready part of the entire range.

When it’s storming out, locals advise heading toward Passo Falzarego and Cinque Torri, where the skiing is as protected as the stunning 270-degree view (should one be able to see it). From the bottom, the area appears small and compact but, up top, Cinque Torri is a Russian doll that not only unpacks the “five towers” captured in its name, but a bonanza of gullies and slots offering perfect between-piste playgrounds. There’s also no shortage of long cruisers, and the highest chair, Averau (a final pro tip: also recommended is the chair’s eponymous refugio—some of the best eating in the Alps), tips you into one of these that can also deliver the kind of ski safari emblematic of Dolomiti Superski. From the col where the chair leaves off, you ski to valley bottom in the opposite direction, re-ascend to another pass, descend to yet another valley, head up a platter-lift then ski back into Cinque Torri having traversed three ski areas and 3,000 vertical meters in under an hour. This circuit will also introduce you, at least visually, to the historic ramparts of Piccolo Lagazuoi, from whose summit tram station and hostel-like Rifugio Lagazuoi at 2,800 meters you can either ski the long Armentarola route over the back through the beautiful Hidden Valley (topped off by a fun horse-tow) toward Alta Badia and return by taxi/bus to Cortina, or wrap back around the front to the base on the so-called “museum route.” 

Museum, you say—what’s that all about? 

Not only do the towering peaks of the Dolomites rise above Cortina and its surrounding countryside like so many limestone fortresses, but most of them have actually been used for just this purpose. You can go as far back in time as you like to chart the many times this ragged range stood in the way of one invader or another, an historic footnote made no more vivid for visitors than on Lagazuoi, where Austrians and Italians waged their infamous “battle of the caves” during the First World War.

During that conflict, the ski troops of both combatants excavated extensive tunnel systems in Lagazuoi’s 600-meter limestone face, from which they could not only overlook and defend their own front lines, but also blow up the enemy from below. Five enormous chambers packed with up to 32,000 kilos of explosives were detonated within the mountain over the course of the war, leaving indelible marks still visible today. Nothing was accomplished militarily, of course, and the armistice that ended the war was declared shortly after the last fruitless explosion in 1917. While you can still experience the tunnels as an open-air museum either on skis or on foot, there isn’t much left for nations to contest in the Dolomites other than who’s better at scaling or descending them. 

It is then, perhaps supremely fitting, that the 2026 Games will see the debut of ski mountaineering, with men’s sprint, women’s sprint, and mixed relay events, as well as several new events in established sports — men’s and women’s dual moguls, women’s individual large-hill ski jumping, women’s luge doubles, and mixed-team skeleton. The latter two are taking place in Cortina, which, in addition to hosting the sliding events of bobsleigh, skeleton, and luge, is also the venue for curling and women’s alpine skiing. (Men’s alpine skiing is in Bormio, and all freestyle skiing will take place at Livigno.) Having run women’s alpine ski race events continuously since 1993, staging these and providing for spectators is well in hand.

Among the several upgrades taking place, however, Cortina’s sliding-sports center is undergoing a significant rebuild of its century-old track—perhaps familiar to Americans for its many appearances on the long-running program ABC’s Wide World of Sports—at a cost of nearly $100 million, with focus on enhancing the overall experience for both athletes and spectators. The upgrade was a bit controversial, as the IOC urged the Milan-Cortina bid group to include more modern facilities in nearby Austria or Switzerland. But national pride prevailed: adjustments would be made to improve the historic track and hey, who knows what kind of innovation that might conjure up? 

After all, when they turned a snow-starved ski race into the world’s first Giant Slalom, the Italians proved that necessity can indeed be the mother of invention.

Photography by Mattias Fredriksson