The White War: What the Dolomites Looked Like During World War I and Why the Evidence Is Still There

I have written before about via ferrata, the iron road climbing routes bolted into the Dolomites cliffs. Here is the thing I glossed over in that article: most of those routes exist because the Italian and Austro-Hungarian armies needed to move troops up vertical rock faces in 1915. The cables and iron rungs that climbers hook into today are the direct descendants of infrastructure installed during one of the strangest and most brutal military campaigns of the First World War.

The campaign is called the White War, and most people outside of Italy and Austria have never heard of it.

What the White War Was

Italy entered World War I in May 1915, declaring war on Austria-Hungary and opening a new front along a border that ran directly through the Alps. The Dolomites, which formed the natural boundary between the two empires for centuries, became a battlefield.

The fighting lasted from 1915 to 1917 when the Austrian forces finally collapsed the Italian line at Caporetto, which is the battle that Ernest Hemingway depicted in A Farewell to Arms. At its peak, both sides had thousands of soldiers living year-round at altitudes between 6,000 and 12,000 feet, fighting not just each other but the mountain itself.

Weather killed more men than combat in the first winter. Temperatures fell to minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit. Supply lines were impossibly difficult. On December 13, 1916, a series of avalanches triggered across the Marmolada and surrounding mountains, killing somewhere between 2,000 and 10,000 soldiers in a single day. Both sides reportedly triggered some of the avalanches deliberately, firing artillery into unstable snowpacks to bury enemy positions. This day is known as White Friday. The mountain did not distinguish between nationalities.

What the Engineers Built

The Austrian Corps of Engineers built an entire city inside the Marmolada Glacier, the highest mountain in the Dolomites. They carved dormitories, storerooms, a kitchen, and an electrical plant directly into the ice, connected by several miles of tunnels. Soldiers lived inside the glacier. Officers had gramophones. The glacier has been retreating since then and periodically disgorges artifacts, weapons, and human remains from the ice as it melts.

Both sides built cable car systems to move supplies up rock faces too steep for any other method. They carved roads through the mountains, blasted tunnels through entire peaks, installed permanent ladders and cables up vertical cliff faces. They built telephone lines, hospitals, and observation posts at altitudes where previously only shepherds had ventured. The infrastructure they installed became the permanent infrastructure of the mountains. The roads they blasted still carry modern traffic. The cable routes they pioneered became the first commercial gondola systems in the region.

The via ferrata routes are what the troops used to move. The iron rungs and cables they installed became, after the war, the basis of a civilian climbing tradition that now draws hundreds of thousands of people to the Dolomites annually. When you clip into a cable on the Lagazuoi and haul yourself up a vertical cliff face, you are using a system that was military infrastructure before it was recreational infrastructure.

The Mine War at Lagazuoi

Lagazuoi is a mountain in the Ampezzo Dolomites, between the valleys of Cortina d’Ampezzo and Alta Badia. During the war, it was the site of one of the most extraordinary and terrible chapters of the entire campaign.

Italian and Austrian forces dug competing tunnel systems into the same mountain, from opposite sides, trying to detonate explosives under each other’s positions. The mountain contained both armies simultaneously, moving toward each other through the rock. When the Italian engineers detonated their largest charge in June 1917, they blew the entire top section off the mountain.

The tunnel system is still there. After the war, workers restored and extended portions of it, and today hikers can descend through approximately 1,600 feet of tunnels from the summit to the base, following the route that Italian soldiers used during the war. The tunnels pass through former dormitories and supply depots, descend steep wooden ladders through rock passages, and emerge at the bottom at the ruins of the original Austrian fortifications. It takes around two hours. It is one of the more visceral historical experiences available to a hiker in Europe.

What You Can See Today

The Dolomites are genuinely covered in WWI evidence. The question is not whether you will encounter it, but how close you want to look.

At Cinque Torri, the five distinctive rock towers above the Cortina valley, an open-air museum preserves Italian artillery positions, trenches, and supply routes that the Italian army carved into the surrounding terrain. The trenches run through the meadows between the towers. You can walk them. The views from the artillery platforms show exactly why these positions mattered: total visibility across multiple valleys simultaneously.

The Col di Lana, a mountain near the village of Livinallongo, had its summit blown entirely off by Italian engineers in April 1916. The crater is still visible from a distance. A chapel marks the position. The mountain looks truncated.

At Tre Cime di Lavaredo, the three vertical towers that have become the most photographed image in the Dolomites, supply lines, barbed wire anchors, and dugouts remain in the cliff faces and meadows around the base. The towers themselves were a strategic asset. The meadow below them was a contested no-man’s land. The trails around them today pass through the remains of both.

Forte Tre Sassi, at the Valparola Pass, is a restored Austrian fort that now functions as a free WWI museum. It sits at 6,900 feet and gives a comprehensive account of the war across this section of the front.