Cortina in Summer

Alpine heritage, long lunches and the Dolomite peaks — Cortina d'Ampezzo in the season the locals quietly prefer to the winter one.

There is a question one occasionally hears, in the bars of Cortina in mid-August, about which of the two seasons the town's regulars actually prefer. The winter answer is the obvious one: this is the most cosmopolitan of the Italian Alpine resorts, the host of the 2026 Winter Olympics, the seat of an Italian society that has wintered here since the 1930s. But press a regular for the honest answer, and as often as not it will be summer. Summer in Cortina is the season without the fur coats, without the Christmas-week crowds, without the ski-pageant — and with, in their place, a kind of slow Alpine luxury that the winter week, for all its glamour, does not allow.

The Town in Its Other Skin

Cortina d'Ampezzo sits at twelve hundred metres in the Ampezzo basin, surrounded on all sides by the most dramatic peaks of the Dolomites. The Tofane to the west, the Cristallo to the east, the Sorapis to the south, the Pomagagnon to the north. In summer, with the snow gone, these peaks reveal themselves as the towers of dolomitic limestone they actually are — vertical, pale, etched with the alpenglow at sunrise and sunset. The basin itself is green, lush, watered by the Boite river and dotted with hayfields that the local farmers cut twice a summer.

The town in August is, frankly, busier than the town in March, which surprises some first-time visitors. But the busyness is of a different character. The visitors are largely Italian — Roman, Milanese, Venetian families who own second homes here and have done for generations — and the social rhythm is governed by the Italian August holiday calendar rather than by an international ski schedule. The result is a town that feels, in summer, more authentically itself than in many of its winter weeks.

Walking from a Hotel

Cortina's particular virtue, for the non-Alpine traveller, is that some of the most rewarding mountain walking in the eastern Dolomites can be done as day-walks from a hotel base in town, without the commitment of a multi-day rifugio trek. The Cinque Torri, with its First World War archaeological park and its panoramic view of the Marmolada and the Civetta, is reached by chairlift from Passo Falzarego twenty minutes from the town and offers an excellent half-day with a guide. The Tre Cime di Lavaredo — among the most photographed peaks in the Alps — is forty minutes by car from Cortina, with a four-hour circuit walk that even moderately fit walkers can complete.

We arrange these days with mountain guides from the local Italian Alpine Club register, with a private driver to handle the transfers. Lunches are taken at the rifugi at altitude — Rifugio Lagazuoi, Rifugio Auronzo, Rifugio Scotoni — where the cooking is, almost without exception, far better than the rifugio designation would suggest. The Lagazuoi in particular, perched at twenty-seven hundred metres on a cliff edge with a view that takes in five major peaks, is among the great lunch venues in the Italian Alps.

The Tables and the Hours

Cortina's restaurant scene has improved markedly in the last decade, both in town and in the surrounding valleys. The two-star Tivoli, run by Graziano Prest, is the headline destination and remains an excellent restaurant for the considered evening; the more recently starred Da Beppe Sello is the alternative. Less formally, the El Brite de Larieto, on the slope above the town, offers a long and unhurried lunch in a converted barn that is among the most pleasant midday hours one can spend in the area.

The longer evening hours are, in summer, particularly worth planning around. The light in the Ampezzo basin in mid-August does not properly fail until nearly nine, and the alpenglow on the Tofane between eight and nine is a phenomenon that no photograph captures adequately. We arrange dinners at the higher-altitude rifugi — the Rifugio Faloria, reached by cable car from the town — with the descent timed to coincide with the last of the alpenglow. These are the evenings, in our experience, that clients describe in the post-trip correspondence as having justified the entire week.

Where to Stay

The Cortina hotel scene has been substantially renewed in the run-up to the 2026 Olympics. The recently restored Cristallo Mountain Resort & Spa, on the hillside above the town, remains the institutional answer for clients who want the full hotel infrastructure with a serious wellness floor. The smaller Rosapetra at Pocol, slightly removed from the town, is more refined and more contemporary in feel and is our recommendation for clients who want a quieter base. The Hotel de la Poste, on the main square in the centre of the town, is the local institution and offers a different kind of integration into the daily life of Cortina.

For clients who want more than a hotel, we arrange chalet rentals — the same inventory we curate in winter, taken in summer at a very meaningful discount. A six-bedroom chalet above San Vito di Cadore, fifteen minutes from Cortina, with a private chef cooking three nights of seven and a guide on retainer for the daily walks, is a Cortina week conceived at the highest level. It is, deliberately, an alternative to the August coastal week — and for our clients who have done the coast in August once or twice, it is increasingly the alternative they request.

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