Centro visite del Parco naturale Puez-Odle

In San Maddalena in Val di Funes stands a papyrus-coloured concrete cube: the Puez-Geisler Nature Park visitor centre, opened in 2009. Its exhibits include an aerial photograph of the park, Dolomite rock samples and a film featuring local alpinist Reinhold Messner.

Why it matters

This was the last of South Tyrol's seven nature parks to receive its own visitor centre, opened in 2009. The two-storey papyrus-coloured concrete building stands in San Maddalena in Villnöß/Funes. The Puez-Odle park covers 10,729 hectares across seven municipalities and was expanded in 1999. Exhibits present its landscape, geology and natural history, alongside films about South Tyrol's nature parks.

What to notice

An aerial floor image depicts the park's plateaus, valleys and peaks. The exhibition "Dolomites, hands-on" presents rock types and strata, with stereoscopes showing their geological formations. "Nature's cabinet of wonders" contains nests, feathers, hides, antlers, footprint casts and medicinal herbs. In "Conquering the mountains", Reinhold Messner narrates his mountain experiences. The Mountain cinema screens films about South Tyrol's nature parks, including a film about Puez-Odle.

Context and history

The centre's short history mirrors the park's institutional one. The Puez-Odle park was enlarged in 1999 to its current 10,729 hectares across the municipalities of Badia, Corvara, Funes, San Martino in Badia, Ortisei, Santa Cristina and Selva Val Gardena — all Ladin in character except Funes — and in 2009 the province finally gave it this purpose-built home in San Maddalena. 2009 mattered twice over. Inscription of the Dolomites on the UNESCO World Heritage List fell in that year, and the Dolomites UNESCO Foundation now counts the Puez-Odle among the property's nine systems, placed in the grouping called "Northern Dolomites". A further node of the network, the Zannes infopoint for the Dolomites UNESCO World Heritage in the same valley, extends the centre's work outdoors, and the portal directs visitors there explicitly.