When the Winter Games are over, right here’s what to see in Italy’s spectacular Dolomites

They say you may go to Italy a thousand instances, however you’ll by no means see the identical nation twice. Well, I’m engaged on it. Almost yearly, I go to a brand new area.

Think of it as a bucket checklist, besides your complete bucket is formed like Italy and is crammed with Italian historical past, and sitting beside this Italy-shaped bucket are bottles of Italian wine and plates of Italian meals.

I journey within the low season between November and March when it’s inexpensive and there are fewer crowds. I’ve been to locations resembling Turin in Piedmont, Cilento in Campania, Tropea in Calabria, Spoleto in Umbria and Matera in Basilicata.

When I told a friend that I was going to the Dolomites, a mountain range in the northern Italian Alps, he said, “You know, there are 195 countries in the world. Weren’t you just in Italy?”

“Yes,” I replied. “But ‘just’ is a relative term.”

The mountain range has interested me ever since I read Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, a novel drawn from his time as an ambulance driver for the Italian army in the Dolomites. The region is set to host the 2026 Winter Olympic Games in February, so I chose to visit in May because I wanted to get there before the wintry tourist hordes descend. I spent three nights in the town of Cortina d’Ampezzo (known as the “Queen of the Dolomites”), where the least busy months are November, April and May, followed by three nights in Trento, the capital of the Trentino-Alto Adige, where the off-season is late April to June.

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The Dolomites – which boast 18 peaks, with some rising above 3,000 metres – are a landscape masterpiece and possess a brooding majesty that leaves visitors spellbound. I went hiking in the Natural Park of the Ampezzo Dolomites, led by Manuel Soccol, 35, a certified Alpine guide and helicopter flight rescue specialist. On our trek, I found a river just like the one Hemingway described in his novel, with “pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels.”

The power of the mountains was on full display when we finished the first leg of our climb at Cascate di Fanes, where a 90-metre waterfall cascades down a limestone cliff. The mountains are covered in spruce and pine and are hypnotically beautiful. Soccol grew up in Cortina and can’t imagine living anywhere else. He asked me what Toronto was like. I was tempted to be honest and say that “Toronto is like the movie RoboCop but without the nice RoboCop,” but instead told him, “Well, it’s flat.”

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I encountered the region’s power again when I went on an early morning drive through Trentino, passing along the Avisio river through the village of Valfloriana and continuing past the lakes of the Pinè Plateau. In Val di Fiemme (which will host Nordic skiing events), I stopped for a coffee before driving through the neighbouring Val di Fassa, an Alpine valley that stretches for about 20 kilometres. Every turn seemed to reveal another stunning view. For someone unaccustomed to mountain roads, it was a challenging drive. A persistent rain fell and fog settled on some of the roads. I drove below the speed limit and found myself tailgated by quite a few Italian drivers. Luckily, there were plenty of spots where I could pull over and let faster drivers pass, which I did at least 35 times.

I planned on having lunch in the small town of Moena, but with my nerve fading and the rain getting worse, I turned back to Villa Madruzzo, the hotel where I was staying. The bartender remembered my order from the previous evening and my negroni and aperitivo arrived moments after I collapsed into a cushy bar chair. Even the negroni’s giant ice cube reminded me of the mountains.

Along with their natural beauty, the Dolomites are synonymous with winter sports. Cortina became a centre for European glamour after it hosted the first televised Winter Olympics in 1956. Cortina will play host city again in a few months, alongside Milan. Trentino will hold 21 Olympic events (and 38 paralympic events) in Val di Fiemme.

Curling is extremely popular in the Dolomites, and I visited the birthplace of Italian curling – Palacurling Cembra – located in the Val di Cembra, a steep valley in Trentino. I had a coffee with with Alfredo Mosaner, father of the Italian curler and Olympic gold medalist Amos Mosaner, who explained how the sport took hold in the region. I was stunned by how familiar the Cembra curling arena felt; it was just like Canada but with grappa and better coffee.

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Throughout my mountain travels, I learned a lot more about the cuisine, too. Much of the Dolomites belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire until after the end of the First World War, and the food reflects these influences. I took a cooking lesson from 26-year-old chef Giacomo Apicella at Chalet Tofane, a restaurant at the foot of a ski run. After some crisp white wine accompanied by formaggio ubriaco (“drunk cheese”) – a cow’s cheese soaked in Prosecco that hails from Treviso, a city in the Veneto region – he explained that the Italian and Austrian influences fused together to create rich, hearty, nuanced meals. Apicella taught me how to make casunziei ampezzani, a traditional Dolomiti half-moon-shaped ravioli filled with beetroot and boiled potatoes.

Trentino is also famous for its wines. Val di Cembra is a wine region known for its pinot noir and aromatic whites, such as Müller-Thurgau and chardonnay.

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There, I stopped at Mezzacorona, a wine co-operative in Piana Rotaliana, an area with gravelly soil ideal for cultivating the region’s signature red wine, Teroldego. Over antipasti, accompanied by a selection of his wines, vintner Lucio Matricardi told me that 70 per cent of all Italian pinot grigio comes from Trentino. “We’re blessed here because we have the warm, windy Mediterranean winds and in the afternoons, the cool Alpine breezes. This is what gives the wine its freshness and intensity.”

My Dolomite exploring ended too soon. And, as is often the case on my off-season excursions, I vowed to return soon to my newfound favourite part of Italy. I then drove to Tuscany and rendezvoused with my wife before we proceeded to Naples. I brought a bottle of wine from Trentino with me and we enjoyed it on Ischia, an island in the Gulf of Naples. It was a perfect pairing. Northern bubbly and Neapolitan sunshine. A little of the new and a little of the familiar. Never the same Italy twice.

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If you go

The closest airport is Venice Marco Polo Airport – around two to two-and-a-half hours from Cortina by car, and approximately one-and-a-half hours from Trento.

In Cortina d’Ampezzo: Hotel Ciasa Lorenzi is a picture-perfect, three-star, family-run spot with panoramic views. Guests can loosen up in its Alpine spa and have dinner within the resort restaurant, which is well-liked with locals. Rooms begin from €300 ($488).

In Trento: Villa Madruzzo is an opulent four-star resort situated 4 kilometres from the city centre. Its employees are pleasant and attentive. The decor is a chic combine of recent and conventional kinds. Rooms begin from €143 ($233).

Since 1999, Scrigno del Duomo has been certainly one of Trento’s high eating places and seems within the 2025 Michelin Guide. It presents conventional Trentino delicacies reinterpreted by chef Mattia Piffer and a wine checklist with a number of greater than 750 labels.

The author was a visitor of ITA Airways and the Cortina d’Ampezzo and Trentino tourism boards. None of the events reviewed or permitted the story earlier than publication.