The Queen of the Dolomites arouses fear even if you only glance at it, as it is made of dark rocks jutting out on the emptiness for thousands of metres, with sharp rock spires standing out against the sky, leaving below abysses that close your stomach only to look at them.
Marmolada is a fascinating huge rock massif, taller than three thousands metres which entitles it to be the Queen of the Dolomites. It is a mountain covered by glaciers. A mountain that holds a story that goes from chivalry to horrid craziness.
A story told in the highest museum of Europe. Accessible only through hard trails or with a cableway, it is open only during summer time. The Queen of the Dolomites was in fact the theatre of some of the worst and most heroic fighting during the First War World. An environment so amazing and harsh that you cannot stop thinking how it was possible to fight there. It is unbelievable to think which political and military madness brought human beings toward a so hostile environment where a fighting is absurd even to imagine.
Still the museum has a lot, too much to tell about it and it complies its mission excellently. You can perceive the beginning of the story already getting out of the cableway and feeling the drop of temperature that passes from the summer warmth to around zero up in altitude.
The museums itinerary is divided in five areas. Each one of it has didactic panels, videos, remaining and a good quantity of photos coming from those times.
A “bridge” passing by a crevasse represents the first area. Here you can see parts and instruments of the ancient cableways. Cableways that brought up men, munitions, supplies and materials and that brought down injured and dead soldiers.
A second room tells the beginning of the war and how this one arrived silently due to powerful people and politicians that started to push on cultural diversity and ethnicity, on borders and nationalisms. Thinking the analogy with nowadays is something that worries me.
Second area tells about the transformation of a human being into a soldier showing from the departure from home to the equipment and uniforms used to fight.
Third part, called “tunnel of life”, represents the common enemy for both the armies, the environment and cold. Fighting at more than 3000 metres high meant to cope with extreme temperatures, extremely complicated alpine exploits and to be often buried under avalanches. A dramatic and dreadful video of those times shows the soldiers on patrol falling down from a cliff swept away by an avalanche. Considering the short distance from the camera to the fallen I can imagine that also the cameraman lived terrifying moments. Moments when men were falling down for thousands metres losing life and love on a glacier that still nowadays returns skeletons and mummies.
Fourth sector shows the so-called “trench of death”, here you can see the tools used by the soldiers to fight. From bombs looking like bowling balls made to roll down the slope to hit and destroy the enemy posts till the saws used to cut injured legs and arms. Looking outside the museum through the wide windows you can see the old military trails and trenches carved into the rocks. Places built up on vertical slopes and it is unbelievable to think that soldiers climbed and fought there. This makes you think about what was the value of a human life back in those times.
Here is represented also a secret of the giant mountain, the “ice city”. Eisstadt, in its original Austrian name, was an entire barrack built up into the glacier under its surface in order to be protected from the extreme temperatures and to pass unseen from the enemy. There were more than 10 kilometres of tunnels with names that recalled the far away from their normal life. A city under a glacier, something incredible, like it was a James Bond movie but that was instead a sad and tragic reality.
The visit at the museum ends with a room where a video with scenes of that age are displayed showing life and fighting in that lands where only the eagles dare to go. Many interlaced stories of men that have lived when Europa was at war and the Union was only a faraway dream that would have become reality only after a second tragic war world conflict. My question that has no answer is if nowadays we still remember that tragedy.
A visit to this important museum, the highest of Europe, helps to understand, to remember, and we hope, to never repeat that the craziness will over power again the intelligence.
For any additional info about opening time and more have a visit to museum website.
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