What happens when the place that made you no longer wants you? I found myself turning that question over this morning in a quiet corner of Verona, standing beneath a pale marble figure that almost everyone walks straight past. They…
Archives for August 2026
A Warmth in the Stone – The Dolomites
Nobody warns you that these mountains keep a secret hour. All day the Dolomites stand pale and severe, grey rock against a hard blue sky, handsome in the way a cathedral is handsome, which is to say a little forbidding….
How to Get to the Dolomites
The Dolomites feel remote in the way all the best mountains do, and yet they are closer than their drama suggests. You can land at a small Italian airport in the morning, watch the plains give way to foothills over…
The Best Things to Do in the Dolomites
I have come back to the Dolomites in every season, and I still cannot decide whether they are best met on foot, from the seat of a slow cable car, or through a windscreen on a high pass at dawn….
The Best Time to Visit the Dolomites: A Month-by-Month Guide
I am often asked, usually over dinner and usually by someone who has just booked flights, when they ought to go to the Dolomites. The honest answer is that there is no single best time, only a best time for…
Victoria’s Complete Guide to the Dolomites
There is a moment, most evenings in the Dolomites, when the grey rock catches fire. The peaks that stood pale and severe all afternoon turn rose, then coral, then a deep burning red, and for a few minutes the whole…
The Best Photo Spots in the Dolomites
I have never quite made peace with the fact that the Dolomites photograph better than they have any right to. Most beautiful places ask you to work for the good frame, to hike and wait and forgive the weather. These…
Victoria’s Guide to Cortina d’Ampezzo
Some towns you arrive in, and some you arrive above. Cortina d’Ampezzo belongs to the second kind. Whichever road you take, you drop down into a wide green bowl ringed by pale towers of rock, and the town lies at…
Where to Stay in the Dolomites
The question I am asked more than any other about these mountains is not which trail to walk, but where to put down a suitcase. It matters more here than almost anywhere I know. The Dolomites are not one place…
The Best Hikes and Via Ferrata in the Dolomites
I have walked in a great many mountains, and I still cannot think of a range that gives so much for so little effort as the Dolomites. You step off a chairlift into a meadow, turn a corner on a…
Victoria’s Guide to Val Gardena and Ortisei
There is a particular kind of arrival that tells you a valley is going to be kind to you. You come up out of the Isarco gorge, the road tips over a lip near Ponte Gardena, and suddenly the world…
Verona – Letters for Juliet
There is a small courtyard in the middle of Verona where several hundred strangers stand at any one time, shoulder to shoulder, looking up at a balcony and thinking about love. It is the Casa di Giulietta, Juliet’s house, though…
