Land of sagas
The Dolomites have been inhabited for thousands of years - enough time to have accumulated material for countless legends and sagas.
The mountains and valleys of the Dolomites are made of contrasts: craggy and rocky pillars among gentle slopes. It’s easy to imagine a peak as a bewitched castle, a mountain lake as a spell-bound treasure and the howling of the wind as the lament of a virgin who once lived in this place.
No wonder that in the area of the Dolomites there are thousands of legends which years ago were passed on orally from one generation to the next and which are now collected in books.
One of the most famous legend of the Dolomites is the one on the dwarf King Laurin and his beautiful rose garden. As the king lost the battle against Dietrich von Bern he bewitched the garden, saying that nobody in future should ever be able to see the beauty of the rose garden, neither by day nor by night. But he forgot the dusk and so the splendour of the garden can still be seen today when the mountain, which is called the “Rose garden” (“Rosengarten”) is hit by the last rays of the red sun just about to set.