This little town, 4790 feet, distant from Arába just over twelve miles, is charmingly situated, and much resorted to by tourists as a centre from which to make numerous interesting short tours in the Dolomites. The inns are simple in character though comfortable, and for that reason many will find that they possess an attractiveness exceeding that which one finds in hotels of a more pretentious class. The high road leads near Canazei, past Gries, Campitello, Vigo, and Möena, to Predazzo, the chief town in the Fassa Thal, 3340 feet, about nineteen miles from Canazei.
The place occupies, so we are told by Baron Richthofen and other authorities, including de Saussure and Churchill, the site of an ancient volcanic crater, although it is indeed difficult for those unversed in geology and seismic phenomena to realize the fact. Predazzo, which stands in a broad valley at the junction of the Val Travignolo and Fleims Thal, is a prosperous town, mainly owing to the mineral wealth in the immediate neighbourhood, which of late years has been developed and worked, and the fertile nature of the valley. The inhabitants are principally iron workers, farmers, and hay or timber merchants, and their sphere of trade is a far wider one than the uninitiated would imagine, extending as it does throughout the Austrian Empire, to Germany, Switzerland, and other countries. The town cannot, however, be described as either very picturesque or pretty; there are too many saw mills and iron furnaces in it, and these in a measure serve to destroy the beauty of a naturally pretty valley. But the painter of figure studies and tiny domestic pictures, and the camera user with an eye for quaint "bits" may find them in the older portion of the town amongst the wooden buildings; and picturesque groups of women and girls are sure soon to reward the patient artist or photographer who takes up a position commanding the stone fountain in the main street, to which many come daily to draw water.
There is a fine new church, which, however, cannot displace in one's artistic or sentimental affection the old one with its Tyrolese belfry and weather-worn look. The famous and curious old house known as the Nave d'Oro, now an hotel, but once the home of Giacomellis for hundreds of years, is worth inspection, as some of the armorial bearings of this erstwhile noble family still appear above the old carved doorways, and serve as decorations of the ceilings and fireplaces. The visitors' book contains what must be one of the most valuable (so far as scientists and geologists are concerned) collections of autographs to be found in any Tyrolean hotel.
Predazzo is one of the finest geological centres in Eastern Europe, and in the immediate neighbourhood of the town many beautiful and varied minerals and crystals are found, amongst them the Tourmaline granite, Uralite porphyry, and the Syenite porphyry, with its marvellous crystals, which, so far as we have been able to ascertain, are unique to this district.
Although Predazzo is chiefly—and, in fact, almost entirely—given over to mining, smelting, and timber-cutting, there is yet, amid all the hum of the timber sawing-mills, and the roar and smoke of the furnaces, a considerable lace-making school for women, where this most delicate of industries is taught and practised. Some exquisite specimens of lace are to be seen, and can be purchased at moderate cost.
An interesting fact in connection with the rich pasturage on the slopes of the Latemar is that it belongs by common right to the descendants of the original families founding the village, and was given to the latter by a grant dating from the Middle Ages, but by whom made it does not appear absolutely certain.
The road leads on through the Fleimse-Thal, past Cavalese, where there is an ancient palace of the Bishops of Trent, which has a painted façade. The building is now used as a jail. There is here a fine Gothic parish church, standing on a hill, with an old marble entrance porch, and some interesting pictures by native artists. The road then leads one on to the railway station at Neumarkt-Tramin, which is twenty-four miles from Predazzo and ninety-eight miles from Toblach.
MOUNT LATEMAR