Museo all'aperto della Grande Guerra — 5 Torri

Above the meadows of Scoiattoli, beneath the five stone towers of the Cinque Torri, a First World War battlefield has been preserved as an open-air museum. Trenches, shelters and gun positions are restored and marked with panels in Italian, German and English.

Why it matters

Between 1915 and 1917, this shelf of rock and pasture at around 2,000 metres was the base of an Italian mountain-artillery command directing fire across the valley at Austro-Hungarian positions on Lagazuoi and Tofane. Paths lead through partly reconstructed trench lines, with descriptive panels and life-size figures in the shelters. Together with the sites on Lagazuoi and Sass de Stria, it forms what the Cortina portal describes as the most extensive open-air museum of the Dolomites.

What to notice

The remains include firing steps facing Lagazuoi and observation posts with views across the former front. The artillery positions show the scale of the deployment: eight 75 mm guns in 1915, two 149 G howitzers in 1916, and a 210 mm howitzer by September 1917. The command post operated on Averau, south of the Cinque Torri. The battlefield remains part of a working mountain landscape of pasture and climbing routes.

Context and history

When Italy entered the war in May 1915, the front in this sector ran along the ridges to the north and west. The Cinque Torri area remained in Italian hands and served as a base for the mountain artillery group, whose command was on Averau. The batteries shelled opposing Austrian positions during the high-mountain campaign. After the Italian front collapsed following Caporetto in late 1917, the line shifted away. King Vittorio Emanuele III visited the sector more than once. After decades of decay, volunteers and local institutions recovered the trench system and presented it as an educational route.