Outstanding Universal Value
Landscape
Visitors to the Dolomites cannot fail to be moved by the enormous variety of forms and colours, the sheer rock faces, richly varied habitats, from the deepest gorges to the highest peaks. All of these elements come together to create the Dolomitic landscape, a brilliant mosaic that has long captured the imaginations of those who live in these valleys and visitors from far and wide.
The Dolomites are widely regarded as being among the most attractive mountain landscapes in the world. Their intrinsic beauty derives from a variety of spectacular vertical forms such as pinnacles, needles and towers, with contrasting horizontal surfaces including ledges, crags and plateaux, all of which rise abruptly above extensive talus deposits and more gentle foothills. A great diversity of colours is provided by the contrasts between the bare pale-coloured rock surfaces and the forests and meadows below. The mountains rise as peaks with intervening ravines, in some places standing isolated but in others forming sweeping panoramas. Some of the rock cliffs here rise more than 1,500 m and are among the highest limestone walls found anywhere in the world. The distinctive scenery of the Dolomites has become the archetype of a ‘dolomitic landscape’. Geologist pioneers were the first to be captured by the beauty of the mountains, and their writing and subsequent painting and photography further underline the aesthetic appeal of the property.
