A week in the Dolomites by car

We had crossed the Dolomites twice before, always on the way to somewhere else, and both times we promised ourselves a proper week. This June we finally kept it: a slow loop out of Bolzano, over the old Great Dolomite Road to Cortina d'Ampezzo, up to the Tre Cime and back through the Braies valley. Seven days, barely 400 km of actual driving, and not one evening where we wished we had covered more ground. This is a range that rewards the slow version.

Three days on the Great Dolomite Road

The spine of the week is the Grande Strada delle Dolomiti, finished in 1909 and still the most theatrical way across the range. It runs roughly 110 km from Bolzano to Cortina as the SS241 and then the SS48, over the Costalunga, Pordoi and Falzarego passes. You could drive it in three hours. We took three days, sleeping in Canazei and letting the road set the pace: coffee at the pass tops, one short walk a day, dinner wherever we were parked by seven.

Two moments stood out. The first was Lago di Carezza, half an hour out of Bolzano, a small lake the colour of bottle glass under the Latemar wall; be there before 9 in the morning or the car park queue eats an hour of your day. The second was Passo Pordoi at 2,239 m, where the descent towards Arabba counts 33 numbered hairpins and the Sass Pordoi cable car hoists you onto a bare stone plateau at 2,950 m in four minutes. Up there it was 6 degrees in late June and we could see the Marmolada glacier from the terrace.

The booking game: Tre Cime, Braies, Seiser Alm

This is the part that has changed most since our first visit. The famous corners of the Dolomites now meter cars, and if you do not know that before you arrive, you will spend your mornings being turned around by polite men in high-vis vests. The toll road from Misurina up to the Rifugio Auronzo car park under the Tre Cime is reservation only: you book a 12-hour slot online, tie it to your number plate and pay 40 euros for a car. The Braies valley closes to unbooked traffic from 9:00 to 16:00 between 1 July and 15 September. And the road up to the Seiser Alm at Compatsch shuts to private cars from 9:00 to 17:00 whenever the cable car is running.

None of this ruined the trip. If anything it saved it: the Auronzo car park was full but not chaotic, and Braies at 7 in the morning, before the gate hours began, was as quiet as the postcards pretend it always is.

What we would change

Two things. We would skip Cortina as a base; it is handsome but expensive, and Villabassa in the Val Pusteria put us closer to both the Tre Cime road and Braies for half the price. And we would plan the Seiser Alm for the last morning rather than an afternoon: driving up before 9, walking across the meadows while the light was still low, then rolling back down to Bolzano for the autostrada felt like the right full stop.

Seven days was right. Enough to drive every pass we cared about at the hours when it was empty, and to learn that in the Dolomites the car is for getting between walks, not the other way round.