Cortina's Olympic Rewrite

An updated edition of the Winter Games returns to its 1956 home.

Seventy years after Italy hosted its first Olympics, and 20 years after its last one (Torino 2006), the Winter Games return to Cortina d’Ampezzo in early February. It will be only the fourth time Italy has hosted the Olympics, and Cortina will be the first Italian city to host them twice. Whereas the 1956 Winter Games were contested entirely in Cortina, the 2026 events will span six sites and four venue clusters in three provinces: Lombardy, Trentino/Alto Adige and Veneto.

Map top of page: The 1956 Olympic venue map. Cortina hosted every event; in 2026, venues are spread across northern Italy, with Cortina the hub for women's Alpine events.

The regional approach is a response to the enormity of today’s Olympics. In 1956, the VII Olympic Winter Games included 821 athletes (687 men and 134 women) who competed in 24 events, from January 26 to February 5. The XXV Winter Olympics, running from February 6 to 22, will include 2,900 athletes (47 percent of them female) competing in 116 events. Another 600 athletes will compete in six sports at the Paralympic Winter Games, in some of the same venues, March 6 to 15.

No one mountain village can accommodate such a huge operation, which helps explain why the past three Winter Olympics have taken place in decidedly non-Alpine venues where the hosts constructed brand-new facilities (Sochi, Russia; PyeongChang, South Korea; and Beijing, China). Spreading the events across northern Italy allows the host country to use existing infrastructure. It also allows the use of some classic ski venues.

Along with curling and sliding events, women’s Alpine skiing will take place in Cortina, while men’s Alpine events will be held in Bormio. The split comes with logistical complications and eliminates the possibility for mixed-team events. Nonetheless, athletes and fans are happy to return to beloved and traditional Alpine venues.

A Tradition of Natural Attraction

Since the mid-1800s, Cortina has been a favored destination among mountaineers and Italy’s elite. The town sits in a sunny valley surrounded by spectacular mountains that were once a massive coral reef compressed beneath a tropical sea. Over millions of years, that sedimentary carbonate rock was heaved skyward, then weathered into distinctive pink-hued mountains, with sheer walls and craggy edges that tower over the rolling glacial valleys. In 2009 the area was name a UNESCO World Heritage site for its natural beauty and geological significance.

Along the way, this formerly exclusive enclave was discovered by the rest of the world, attracting vacationers and second-home purchasers. The village of 6,000 full-time residents swells to 50,000 during peak summer and winter months.

The town is steeped in skiing history. The first local ski race was held in 1901, and Sci Club Cortina launched in 1903. In 1909 the completion of the road from Bolzano to Cortina brought access to the “Queen of the Dolomites,” as Cortina styled itself. The first cable car opened in 1924. More lifts were added in the 1930s as ski tourism gained momentum. Competitions soon followed, including the 1941 Alpine World Ski Championships.

World War II and Beyond

In 1943, eight-year-old Carla Marchelli arrived in Cortina when her family sought refuge from Allied bombing of their hometown, Genoa. During World War II, Cortina was a
tranquil sanctuary, in contrast to its role in World War I, when the Falzarego Pass above the Ampezzo Valley was the stage for bitter mountain warfare between the Italian Alpini and the
Austro-Hungarian Kaiserjäger. The resort, which had been scheduled to host the canceled 1944 Olympics, was already equipped with hotels to accommodate well-heeled tourists. It became a hospital town for the Wehrmacht and was spared combat.

Marchelli recalls Cortina as a wartime oasis for her and her two siblings: “Everyone was smiling to help the broken soldiers. It gave us possibilities to survive in a dream.” The siblings also learned to ski fast. In 1956, the Marchelli sisters—Carla and Maria Grazia—returned to Cortina as part of the Italian Olympic ski team.

In preparation for the 1956 Winter Games, the regional and national governments invested in infrastructure upgrades to roads, lifts and venues. They built an ice stadium, the
Trampolino Olimpico ski jump and an expanded bobsled track, along with the dramatic Olympia Delle Tofana run for the men’s downhill.

In the Alpine skiing events, electric starting gates were used for the first time; they were triggered by an optical signal, and a buzzer alerted the athlete. The men may have skied the same line as the current women’s course, but they did it on a very different surface. The lower Rumerlo section, now a rolling meadow, was then a minefield of treacherous terrain that took down more than a third of the field, including all the Americans (Buddy Werner finished 11th even after crashing in the Rumerlo).

The men’s and women’s slaloms were held on the Col Druscie run, and the men’s giant slalom (GS) on the Vitelli run, on the valley’s Faloria side. Austrian Toni Sailer swept gold in all three Alpine events, a feat matched only by Jean-Claude Killy eight years later. It was the first Olympics broadcast live on TV to an audience outside the host country, via the Eurovision network. Few people, however, owned televisions, and most followed the Winter Games through radio reports.

After the Games, Cortina’s tourism boomed. More lifts followed, along with more of the jet set. Hollywood came calling, too, using Cortina as the set for The Pink Panther (1963) and For Your Eyes Only (1981), in which Olympic venues like the bobsled and ski jump were used for fantastical chase scenes.

Cortina continued to be a favorite stop on the ski-racing circuit. In 1969 the World Cup came to town; Cortina then hosted men and women in alternating years until 1984. In 1993 Cortina became an annual stop on the women’s World Cup.

Francisco Ghedina is as local as it gets in Cortina, with family roots that go back 500 years. His father was a young boy in 1956 and remembers his family of six sleeping in the living room because they were renting out rooms to Olympic visitors. Seventy years later, the Ghedinas now serve visitors in their popular pizzeria, 5 Torri.

After getting his finance degree from the University of Denver in 2008, Ghedina, a five-time All American skier, returned to Italy for his master’s degree in sports management. After a dozen years working on Cortina’s annual World Cup event, Ghedina was named sport manager for the 2026 women’s Olympic Alpine events. The year before, however, he had to step down from that role to take over running the pizzeria. He notes that he has seen huge tourism growth in Cortina, even since the 2021 Alpine World Ski Championships, with expectations high for the Olympics. “Every year we have more people,” he says. “But we’re a small town.”

The Next Olympics

In June 2019 Milano-Cortina was awarded the 2026 Winter Games. The dress rehearsal was the 2021 Alpine World Ski Championships, which went off smoothly despite pandemic restrictions. The promise of the Olympics helped secure widespread upgrades to the resort’s infrastructure, including lifts. The Freccia nel cielo (arrow in the sky) whisks riders from the center of town to the top of the 3,244-meter (10,643 feet) Tofana di Mezzo in 30 minutes via gondola and cable car; the new 10-passenger Cortina Skyline gondola connects the Tofana and Cinque Torri ski areas; and the new Lacedel–Socrepes gondola completes the link from town to the finish areas and the Cortina Skyline.

Prepping for the Winter Games has not been easy. While the Alpine facilities were race ready for the 2021 world championships, the rest of town still needed work. The ice stadium was renovated to host curling. The Eugenio Monti Sliding Center, named after Cortina’s local bobsled legend and abandoned in 2008, became a national lightning rod. Construction didn’t even begin until February 2024 and was barely—and miraculously—completed in record time. The Olympic investment brought new five-star hotels to town, while landmarks like the Ancora and Hotel de Len underwent massive renovations.

Local naysayers fear that people will stay away, scared off by the crowds and expense, while others look forward to leaving town and renting their homes for a fortune. Ghedina remains optimistic. “Cortina is going to be better in the future,” he says, hopeful that the Olympics will lead to another boom, as happened 70 years ago. “The money [the businesses] lose next year, they probably will make it back double,” he predicts.

An American Favorite

American women, especially the speed skiers who come for the annual World Cup events, have enjoyed much success on the Tofana. Jackie Wiles scored her first World Cup points in Cortina and has stood on the podium twice—once alongside Lindsey Vonn in 2018 and again in 2024. The Americans consider Cortina one of the best stops on the tour. “We’ve always been traditional downhillers and speed skiers, and Cortina is a very traditional downhill,” Wiles explains. “It’s open, flowy and fast, [with] a lot of terrain and different variables coming at you. I think we’re all really good at terrain, and we all know how to let the skis go. It’s really exciting that we have an Olympics here finally.”

Vonn has scored 12 victories and another eight podiums at Cortina since 2004. Mikaela Shiffrin won the super G in 2019 and at least one medal of each color in the 2021 world championships (bronze in super G and slalom, silver in GS and gold in the Alpine combined). It’s not a reach to think that American women could win multiple medals across all the Olympic Alpine events.

Skiing for Mortals

Cortina’s cluster of ski areas stands at the eastern edge of the Dolomiti Superski, a network created in 1974 that spreads over 12 Italian ski resorts for a total of 450 lifts and more than 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) of slopes. It is the largest ski network in the world.

Among the Cortina areas, Faloria offers north-facing terrain to the east of town, while Tofana lies to the west. Tofana’s upper section, Ra Valles, features some of the steepest terrain, along with spectacular views, while the lower Socrepes area has a variety of advanced slopes (including the iconic Tofana Olympica schuss between two cliffs) and open, intermediate cruisers. Skiers can also visit preserved World War I battleground sites on the 80-kilometer Great War Ski Tour.

During the Winter Games, the crowds may be epic, too, especially as most trails will be closed on Tofana from January to mid-March, but the new lifts will help move skiers along while also eliminating the need for any driving. Plus, the bonus of any European vacation is the more relaxed pace. Most of the rifugios—on-mountain bistros—will be open for business as usual, welcoming skiers for a coffee or beer, or a long Italian lunch.

Ghedina brings an Italian native’s perspective to the process of bringing the Cortina Winter Games to life: “I feel like the Olympics represent exactly our country. Sometimes we are a mess, and we are going to be late,” he admits, before adding, “I think we’re going to do a really good job.”

Frequent contributor and two-time Olympian Edie Thys Morgan explored the success of older World-Cup women racers in the September-October 2025 issue.