Upon leaving Lake Garda we headed North towards Bolzano then turned East to cut through the mountains via the famous Passo di Rolle pass. The road North was along a vast mountain river valley abundant with fruit tree plantations and vineyards, as far as the eye could see. Along the flanking mountain sides out of the mist would appear the odd precariously placed medieval castle like this one!
Once we turned Eastwards and started to climb high into the mountains the change in architectural style was pronounced and became decidedly Teutonic and before long we found ourselves in the ski resort of Tesero….
which happens to have a small but intriguing chapel to the left of the parish church….
The chapel is decorated with very interesting and quite unusual frescoes….
particularly the centre fresco, The Christo della Domenica, depicting activities prohibited on a Sunday. Look closely and you will see that crossbow hunting, wood chopping, music and a couple in bed (!) are amongst the banned activities….
Next we climbed even further up into the mountains and crossed the summit of the Passo di Rolle at 1984 metres above sea level (around 6500 ft!). We would love to show more photos but we were in the clouds and this is the best we could do! The rain and the temperature (3c) were a bit of a shock after the last week of blue skies and 20c+ ….
Coming down the other side of the pass we drove through the glitzy ski resort of San Martino di Castrozza. As you can see in the photos the ‘look’ is very much Austrian.
After 125 miles today we night stopped in the Sosta in Feltre. After visiting Venice soon we will return to the Dolomites, hopefully in better weather so that we can take more photos of the mountains!
Tara!
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