Six hamlets here form a Villnöß, or Funes[township] of more than two thousand inhabitants. Although you are touring the north of a Italy; Trentino-Alto Adige[country], you are currently at the southern edge of a cultural realm where ninety-nine percent of the locals speak a German[mother tongue] different from the Italian[national language] (listen carefully and you might even catch a few folks conversing in a Ladin[third language, ancient and extremely rare]).

Leslie Stephen; The Playground of Europe[Virginia Woolf's father], a prominent early mountaineer, observed that the peaks in Dolomites[this range] "recall quaint Eastern architecture, whose daring pinnacles derive their charm from a studied defiance of the sober principles of stability." Perhaps his notion was inspired by staring at this Saint Johann in Ranui[Baroque church], erected in 1744.

The valley is located in a Puez-Geisler/Puez Odles; villnoess.com[25,000-acre natural park] that enjoys a quiet renown-apt for such a sleepy environment. One of the world's Reinhold Messner; messnermountainmuseum.de[most celebrated mountain climbers] was born here and cut his crampons on the vertiginous Sass Rigais, Furchetta[ten-thousand-foot peaks] you see before you. Maybe with luck-and binoculars-you'll spot chamois in the heights. Most likely, you'll stick to admiring the insane variety of wildflowers and majestic forests of pine and fir trees, or to visiting the mineral museum. The biggest danger is getting slammed by a mountain biker careening around a curve or, if you hang out for a few more months, being upended by an out-of-control tobogganer.

Perhaps you came north to escape the crushing crowds at a Milan[glam fashion show] or in a Venice[World Heritage Site lagoon]. After stopping in a Bolzano [provincial capital], you traveled twenty miles northeast on the A22 to get here. From converted farmhouses to hunting lodges, you found no lack of rustic accommodations. If you'd like the keys to the church, incidentally, inquire at the neighboring Ansitz Ranuihof; ranuihof.it[twelfth-century farmstead].

Freya Stark, who knew her mountains, wrote, "To me, the great and simple lines of the granite are ever the most satisfying"; the range possesses "a domestic loveliness; old age can walk about in their meadows, where no distance is too unmanageable. . . . Few countries in the world look more happy or more beautiful." You really aren't going back, are you?