Much of the Alps consists of softly rounded shapes. Then you arrive in the Dolomites, and the mountains stand there like cut-off towers with vertical walls. The difference is not the weather. It is the stone.
The Dolomites are named after the rock dolomite, which in turn is named after the French mineralogist Déodat de Dolomieu, who described it in the eighteenth century. It is unusual for a mountain range to be named after its material, but in this case the material is the whole point.
A reef that ended up at 3,000 metres
Around 200 million years ago, during the Triassic, the area lay beneath a shallow warm sea. Carbonate platforms built up there, rather like today's coral atolls: organisms produced lime, the lime was deposited, and the platforms grew both upwards and sideways while the surrounding basins filled with finer sediment.
When the Alps were later folded, the whole package was pushed up into the air. That is why you can walk straight into an ancient reef margin at 3,000 metres, and it is also the reason the area became a World Heritage Site in 2009: UNESCO singles out the fossil carbonate platforms and how well the relationship between the reefs and the surrounding basins has been preserved.
Why the walls come out vertical
Dolomite is hard and brittle, and it weathers unevenly. A massive reef body holds together in large blocks, while the softer sediments around it erode away faster.
The result is the characteristic profile: a steep apron of loose material, and on top of it an almost vertical wall ending abruptly in a flat or serrated crest. No transition, no soft rounding. That is why the Dolomites look like buildings.
Around Cortina
Cortina d'Ampezzo sits in an open valley at just over 1,200 metres, surrounded by massifs on almost every side. Tofane to the west, Cristallo to the north and Sorapiss to the southeast all reach just over 3,200 metres. The highest summit in the Dolomites is Marmolada at 3,343 metres, some way to the west.
It is that geometry - a flat valley floor with two thousand metres of wall around it - that makes Cortina such a rewarding place to render in relief. The contrast does the work. Nothing needs reinforcing for it to read at a distance.
After the Games
Cortina was one of the host towns for the Winter Olympics in February 2026. The alpine events were held on the Tofane course, and the town also took the curling and the sliding sports of bobsleigh, skeleton and luge on a rebuilt track. The town also hosted the Winter Olympics in 1956.
Venues get built and torn down. The valley and the walls around it are the same as they were when the first photographers arrived, and that is the part we had in mind when choosing the window for the Cortina piece.
To compare with a mountain shaped in a completely different way, read about how the Matterhorn got its four faces.