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Finding the location for this shot had me completely beaten for several hours. The valley leading to, and beyond, Arabba has been formed by the Torrente Cordevole, which is named on maps. The Great Dolomite Road follows the valley for many kilometres. However, the area is also on the join of two modern maps of the area, which doesn’t help for locating views. I was simply unable to find the small white church seen in the Zardini photograph. The detail on my map was also too coarse to show it.
Confused, I sat on a bench near to the village store in the hamlet of Renaz to eat some lunch, and lo! There, right before me was the view for which I had been searching! Trees between the Road and the church had concealed it from my view. Sad to say, the view is now inelegantly bisected by a very large concrete pylon for power cables. That aside, and allowing for the growth of trees etc, it has otherwise changed very, very little in 100 years.
For the guide to the Road heading west towards Bolzano, Zardini used a significantly different viewpoint:
It is a shot taken quite some way left (north) of the one already described. The West Face of the Civetta provides a more satisfying backdrop, although it does not show the village and church tower. My visit in September 2013 failed to find this viewpoint, although I was a little short of time for a detailed search, so I need to spend more time locating it, on a subsequent visit.
In the second of the booklets covering Zadini’s photographs from Cortina to Bolzano, the photographer gives us a different photo altogether at this point. This one looks in a westerly direction, coming from Pieve di Livinallongo towards Arabba, with the summit of Piz Boe, on the Sella Plateau ahead, very clear on the left-hand skyline:
Although it has been improved many times over the years, I believe I found the same piece of the Road, in September 2013:
Tom Barnes (see my Home page) was here in the summer of 1938 and took this photograph from somewhere along this stretch of The Road:
I have also found a postcard, also from the 1930s, of this piece of the Road:
I think I was close to it, in 2013:
