5 Days in Cortina d'Ampezzo

Freccia nel Cielo, the Arrow in the Sky, is how Cortina gets you up the Tofane in two stages: a gondola from town at 1,217 m to Col Drusciè at 1,778 m, then a cable car to Ra Valles at about 2,470 m. The gondola replaced a 50-year-old cabin lift in 2019.

It is the way into the Tofana sector, and the base is next to the Olympic Ice Stadium. Buy the pass the day before at the ticket box, or online two days ahead for the 5% discount, and collect it at the pick-up box at the cable car.

Ra Valles is the top station of the Freccia nel Cielo and the start of the Tofana sector's best skiing. The snow here is completely natural, so no snow cannons. Tofana is also the most beginner-friendly of Cortina's three areas, with 20 of its 35 runs graded blue, plus 10 red and 5 black.

Spend the first run on the easy slopes below the station to warm up, then decide how hard to push.

The Olimpia delle Tofane is Cortina's great race course. It staged the men's downhill at the 1956 Olympics, hosts the women's World Cup races here and held the women's alpine events of the 2026 Olympics and the para-alpine events of the Paralympics. The downhill starts at 2,320 m, drops 760 m over about 2,560 m and reaches a 65% gradient at the Tofana Schuss, a steep chute between two rock outcrops where racers reach about 135 km/h.

It counts among the legendary slopes of this sector, alongside the Vertigine and the Col Drusciè A. Check the piste map for what is open and how it is graded before you commit.

Stop for lunch where the course begins. The hut at Pomedes was built for the 1956 Olympics at the top of the chairlift that carried the racers to the start of the men's downhill. That makes it the right place to order a plate of casunziei or a bowl of soup and look back up the course with your own legs still working.

Huts in Cortina are not cheap, so check the menu board before you sit.

Corso Italia is Cortina's main street and the place the jet set comes to be seen. It is cobbled, pedestrian and lined with boutiques, pastry shops and bars, and it runs past Piazza Angelo Dibona, named after a local mountain guide, to the Basilica of Saints Philip and James at number 88. At number 40 stands La Cooperativa di Cortina, founded in 1893 as the Consumverein Ampezzo and still the symbol of Cortina shopping, a three-level store selling everything from confectionery to ski gear.

The evening passeggiata, the slow stroll before dinner, is the real show here. Look at the shop windows with Gucci, Bulgari and Benetton in them and pick a bar for the end of it. It is the most expensive main street in the Dolomites, and it knows it.

Finish the day at Pasticceria Embassy at Corso Italia 44, a bar and pastry shop whose specialty is homemade confectionery and homemade ice cream. Order a spritz, the Veneto aperitif, and something sweet from the counter. It is a gentle end to a day that began at about 2,470 m. tip: "Prices on Corso Italia are higher than in the side streets. Move one block off the main street for a cheaper round."

The Faloria cable car, built in 1977 and 2.5 km long, leaves from the edge of the center near the bus station and has a mid-station at Mandres. It carries 50 people at a time and is the main way up to the sector, so on a busy morning expect a queue.

From the top you can pick out Cristallo, Sorapiss, Pomagagnon and the Tofane.

Faloria has five black runs, the same number as the much larger Tofana sector: Vitelli, Canalone Franchetti, Stratondi, Bigontina and the brand new Scoiattolo. Stratondi, Scoiattolo, Canalone Franchetti and Vitelli are the technical ones, famous for hosting the giant slalom at the 1956 Olympics.

Vitelli is the one to pick if you can only ski one black: it is one of the most scenic pistes in the Dolomites. If the blacks feel like too much, the eight reds in the Faloria and Cristallo sector are the alternative.

Cristallo is the other half of the sector, and the chairlifts from Rio Gere to Son Forca take you toward the foot of the peak. The big reputation here belongs to Staunies, one of the most technical runs in the Dolomites, with a steepness of about 63%. It is an expert run, not a place to cruise.

Rifugio Son Forca is the hut at the top of the Rio Gere chairlift and a good place to stop if the weather turns. If Staunies is more than you want, ask the lift staff which of the reds in the sector suit your level.

Mietres is the gentle end of the eastern sector, the area suitable for beginners and children, and the contrast with Staunies is big. Rifugio Mietres is the hut here, and a lunch stop before the last runs of the day.

Order a plate of canederli in broth, the classic mountain lunch, or a bowl of soup, and give your legs a rest.

The Olympic Ice Stadium was built between 1952 and 1954 as an open-air figure-skating arena and inaugurated on 26 October 1955. It held the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1956 Olympics, the figure skating and some of the ice hockey. A roof went on some time after 1981, and in February 2026 it hosted the curling of the Milano Cortina Olympics. It also held wheelchair curling and the closing ceremony of the Paralympics.

Film fans will know it from the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only (1981), where Roger Moore meets his villain in the stadium. It is also the home rink of the local hockey club, SG Cortina.

After a day on the steep side of town, a Pizza Margherita is the simplest dinner in Cortina. Pizzeria Il Ponte in Via Barone Franchetti is a local favorite for wood-fired pizza and does not take bookings. The classic order is the Margherita, mozzarella, tomato and basil, the colors of the Italian flag. tip: "It is closed on Mondays and open for lunch and dinner the rest of the week. Check the hours by phone on +39 0436 867624, especially outside the holiday weeks."

On the Falzarego road at 1,535 m stands the Sacrario militare di Pocol, a massive square stone tower visible from most of the Ampezzo valley. The cemetery was begun in 1916 by the 5th Alpine group, and the tower was added in 1935 as a memorial to the thousands who died on the Dolomite front in World War I. General Antonio Cantore, awarded the gold medal for military valor, rests in the crypt.

It makes a quiet start to a day about the Great War. The Skyline base is a few minutes further up the road.

The Cortina Skyline is a gondola that crosses the 4.5 km between Son dei Prade and Bai de Dones in a straight line, with a middle station at Cianzopè, in about 15 minutes. It opened in December 2021 and links the Tofana area with Cinque Torri and Lagazuoi, which is what makes Cortina one of the few places where two sectors join.

It also opens a direct route between the Ampezzo valley and Alta Badia, and it runs in summer too. It is the lift that makes today work. Its 2026/27 winter hours were not published on 12 October 2026, so check them before you rely on it for the way home.

The Cinque Torri, the Five Towers, are a group of pale grey dolomite spires, the tallest, the Torre Grande, reaching 2,361 m. Climbers love them, and so do skiers, because the sector's chairlifts and huts sit right beside them. Rifugio Scoiattoli at 2,255 m and Rifugio Cinque Torri at 2,137 m are the two huts at the foot.

In World War I the Italian army dug trenches, shelters and gun positions here, and they have been restored as an open-air museum with information boards. Under midwinter snow the trenches are hard to see, so in winter this is a skiing and viewpoint stop.

Rifugio Averau sits at Forcella Nuvolau, in the saddle between Mount Averau and Nuvolau, and cooks Ampezzo and Friulian dishes with a wine cellar at altitude. Mount Averau was first climbed on 10 August 1874 by Santo Siorpaes and Richard Issler, a date the hut is happy to remind you of.

Come for a bowl of canederli or a plate of pasta. It is a more serious lunch than a sandwich, and one of the reasons to spend a day on the Cinque Torri side.

The Super 8 is a 16 km figure-eight ski tour around Mount Averau and the Lagazuoi massif, entered by the Col Gallina slope. It takes in views of the Tofana, Pelmo, Civetta, Marmolada, Fanes, Averau, the Cinque Torri and the Conturines, and the Col Gallina and Lacedelli slopes form Cortina's training center on the way.

Most of the area is red, with five blue runs for weaker skiers, so this is the day to string runs together and cover distance. Sunset snowshoe walks at the restored Col Gallina stronghold, with Alpine guides and re-enactors in vintage uniforms telling the war story, are the evening option.

Ristorante Ra Stua at Via Grohmann 2, near the foot of the Corso Italia pedestrian zone, counts among the resort's earliest restaurants. It has kept its tiled stove, added a fireplace for meat grilled over embers and cooks Venetian dishes, with a Fiorentina steak and grilled ribs as its recommended orders.

Go for the grill, and ask whether casunziei, the beet ravioli of Cortina, are on tonight.

The Falzarego-Lagazuoi cable car climbs from Passo Falzarego to the summit area at about 2,778 m in around three minutes. Lagazuoi itself was a battlefield: in World War I both Italian and Austro-Hungarian troops dug tunnels into the mountain and tried to blow up or bury each other's positions, and the Italian tunnel under the Austro-Hungarian lines is now open to visitors.

The restored tunnel is a kind of via ferrata inside the mountain, more than a kilometer long and equipped with cables. Whether it is open in winter was not confirmed on 12 October 2026, so ask the operator before you plan around it. The view of the Marmolada, the Sella group, Civetta, Pelmo and the Tofane is the other reason to come.

The Rifugio Lagazuoi sits at the top of the cable car, at about 2,750 m, next to the start of the Armentarola run. It is a coffee or an early lunch stop before the long descent, with the same view of the Marmolada, the Sella group, Civetta and Pelmo that the cable car gives you.

Keep this to a coffee: the descent, the horse tow and the taxi back take longer than they look on the map.

The Armentarola run, sold as the Hidden Valley, is a red descent from the top station down to the Val Badia, 8.5 km long, so a competent intermediate can do it. It runs through the Fanes-Sennes-Prags Nature Park, along the rock walls of the Cima Scotoni and past old stone pines and icefalls, and ends at Capanna Alpina.

There a horse tow pulls skiers toward the Armentarola lift, from 9.30 to 16.00, for 5 EUR that the pass doesn't cover. It is the oddest lift ride of the week and a moment worth a photograph. The full loop takes about two hours.

From the Armentarola lift you reach the Piz Sorega lift at San Cassiano, and from there the Sellaronda is within reach: the route to Kurfar joins the green circuit around the Sella massif, which can take up to six hours.

Treat today as a taste of the Sellaronda, not a lap. If a full circuit is what you want, the Val Gardena guide is built around it. Whatever you add in Alta Badia, the taxi or bus back to Falzarego leaves from Armentarola, so work out the return before you ride on. Then ski down to the Skyline and ride it home.

The parish church on Corso Italia was built between 1769 and 1775 on the site of two earlier churches, from the 13th and 16th centuries. Its tall wooden altar, crowned with Christ the Redeemer, is credited to Andrea Brustolon, and three ceiling frescoes by Luigi Ghedina show scenes of the Temple and the martyrdoms of the two patron saints.

It is the parish church and the seat of the deanery, so it is a working church first. The Madonna della Difesa church, built in 1750 on the site of a ruined 14th-century building, has a facade decorated with an intricate fresco. tip: "Keep the visit short and quiet during services. Mass times are on the board at the door."

The Regole d'Ampezzo are the valley's old communal institution, a form of shared ownership of forests and pastures that predates the town, and they run three museums. The Mario Rimoldi Museum of Modern Art, in the Ciasa de ra Regoles on Corso Italia, opened in 1974 after Rosa Braun donated the collection of her husband, the Cortina collector Mario Rimoldi, built over about fifty years. It holds Italian 20th-century painting by artists including Filippo De Pisis, Renato Guttuso and Massimo Campigli.

The Rinaldo Zardini Paleontology Museum shows fossils from the days when these peaks were a tropical sea floor. It and the Ethnographic Museum, in an old Venetian sawmill north of the center, were closed in October. The Ethnographic reopens on 4 December and the Zardini is expected to reopen in December. A combined ticket costs 12 EUR.

The Alverà family has been baking in Cortina since 1914, now in its fourth generation, and the shop in Piazza Pittori Fratelli Ghedina is one of the town's best-known pastry stops. It began as a bakery, added pastry later and has had an indoor tasting room with mountain views since 2016. Lovat on Corso Italia, a historic pastry bar and a reference point since 1928, is the other classic.

Order a krapfen (a fried sweet bun) or an apple strudel, two sweets that show how much of Cortina's food is Austrian by origin, or nighele, small donuts without filling.

The Cortina Sliding Centre is the Olympic legacy you can see from a distance. It replaced the Eugenio Monti Olympic Track, which sat on the same site from 1923 until its closure in 2008, and which was demolished from March 2023. The new track, about 1,750 m long with 16 curves, was built in a rush: construction started in February 2024, the federations approved it after tests in March 2025 and it hosted bobsleigh, skeleton and luge at the 2026 Games.

Its future is debated. It cost about 118 million EUR, and the IOC had urged holding the sliding events on an existing track outside Italy. Critics fear a white elephant, pointing to the Turin 2006 track at Cesana, which was abandoned.

Cortina has about 70 km of cross-country trails, none very demanding, with many tracks in the Ampezzo Dolomites Natural Park north of town and a trail toward Toblach. The area around Fiames is a good place to start. The Dolomiti NordicSki pass opens a much larger network.

It is a gentler way to spend a rest day for your downhill legs. If skis are not for today, a walk or a skate at the Ice Stadium are the alternatives.

Baita Piè Tofana at Località Rumerlo, 1,700 m, at the foot of the Tofane, has been serving since 1956, the year of the first Cortina Olympics. Chef Federico Rovacchi cooks contemporary dishes that look back to tradition, with recognizable ingredients and bold contrasts.

If you want the town's starred option instead, Ristorante Tivoli at Lacedel 34, on the road to Passo Falzarego, lists a Michelin star for 2026 under chef Graziano Prest, who has led it since 2002. Both are outside the center, so plan a taxi or a car, and both need a booking.