Toblach

The position is enchanting. Dobbiaco stands just above 1200 metres at the beginning of the high Pusteria valley, the "Land of the Three Peaks of Lavaredo", right at the mouth of the Landro valley, which stretches south towards Cadore and Ampezzano, creeping between high Dolomite peaks. At the gates of the town, there is also a lake, a shallow basin formed by the Rienza, with a perimeter of 4.5 kilometres: a gem set between the two natural parks of Fanes-Senes-Braies and Tre Cime.

It's not difficult to understand why this town was one of the first tourist destinations in the region, famous already at the time of the Belle Époque and the Finis Austriae, when aristocrats, intellectuals and artists such as the composer Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) met in Dobbiaco: people accustomed to the elegance of Vienna who demanded the highest level of accommodation facilities. For them, the "new" part of the village was developed, with the railway station inaugurated in 1871 and the Grand Hotel, built in 1877–78, today home to the Tre Cime Nature Park and a large number of cultural initiatives. Dobbiaco boasts, in fact, a highly respected programme of artistic and musical events, centred between July and August on the concerts of Gustav Mahler Musikwochen. Further north, the historic centre of Dobbiaco clusters around the baroque grace of the Church of St. John the Baptist (1764–74) and Herbstenburg Castle (private), built from a medieval tower and expanded in the 1500s. Halfway between the two villages is Mondolatte, an ideal point of contact between culture, local traditions and gastronomic pleasures: this is the museum of milk and the art of cheese-making of the Latteria Tre Cime dairy, which also organises workshops and tasting sessions.