Top 20 Natural Monuments around Trambileno

Beautiful thematic route related to the First World War. It is a long Austro-Hungarian trench entirely dug into the rock that can be easily walked. Also suitable for children and teenagers. No strollers!

The strategic position of Corno Battisti was the source of bloody battles for its possession during the Great War. To this end, it was equipped with numerous tunnels dug into the rock, with three separate entrances and numerous firing positions. The tunnels can be accessed with great caution, with a torch and preferably a via ferrata kit. Currently (2025), the upper entrance is closed.

Wolf's Gorge Trench

Beautiful and interesting, not only from a naturalistic point of view, but also from a historical one

Contrary to popular belief, the seven crosses do not refer to the clashes on Pasubio, but rather to seven farmers who killed each other over grazing issues in the pre-war era.

Il Corno Battisti, an isolated rocky spur of the Pasubio Group, sheer above Vallarsa, offers a spectacular panorama of the long valley and the surrounding mountains: Pasubio, Sengio Alto, Carega, Monte Zugna. Precisely because of its strategic position, it was fiercely contested during the First World War: the possibility of controlling all troop and supply movements in the valley from above made the Corno a crucial point to occupy and defend at all costs... it was indeed nicknamed 'the eye of the Pasubio' or 'the spy of Vallarsa'. At the beginning of the conflict, it was a garrison of the Italian army, but with the Strafexpedition in 1916, it was occupied by the Austro-Hungarians. The Italians, unable to recapture it, dug a mine gallery from below to pierce the Corno and blow up the summit; the imperialists in turn dug a counter-mine gallery from above. Everything was ready for detonation, but a daring raid by a few commandos allowed the summit to be recaptured by the Royal Army, which held it until the end of the war. In 1916, near the summit, the Austro-Hungarians captured the irredentists Cesare Battisti and Fabio Filzi, who were immediately taken to Trento and hanged at the Castello del Buonconsiglio as traitors: for this reason, the summit, known at the time as 'Corno della Vallarsa', was renamed 'Corno Battisti' after the war. The Austro-Hungarian observatory survives on the summit. The bowels of the Corno, on the other hand, are excavated by a surprising labyrinth of dark and damp tunnels with steep steps: they are passable, but to reach them from the summit, one must go around the spur following a narrow, steep path; furthermore, to complete the loop of the tunnels, one must face a short, equipped and exposed section, and descend a metal ladder of about fifteen meters which is by no means trivial (EE). https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Corno_Battisti https://www.esercito.difesa.it/storia/pagine/monte-corno.aspx

The Dente Italiano and the Dente Austriaco are two rocky towers of equal altitude facing each other, separated by a saddle but sadly united by history: during the First World War, they were the point on Pasubio where enemy lines were closest. With the Strafexpedition of 1916, the imperial army reached the Dente Austriaco, but was blocked by royal troops who had arrived on the Dente Italiano. A grueling and bloody standoff began, with several attempts to break through, all in vain. The impending winter prevented further fighting, and both sides began to fortify their positions and make them more livable... In the Dente Italiano, the Army Corps of Engineers created a veritable underground citadel. It could accommodate 500 men, with all the necessary means of subsistence: shelters, storage facilities, a cistern for drinking water, a generator for lighting, dressing stations, and command posts. The armament consisted of five machine guns, two cannons, and one flamethrower, supported by artillery from the nearby Palon and Cogolo Alto peaks. In contrast, the Austrian Tooth was transformed into an impregnable fortress, thanks to its elongated, square shape, with fire on three sides. There were 10 machine gun emplacements and six artillery emplacements in the cave, complemented by the armament arrayed along the trenches at the summit: 18 grenade launchers, 12 grenade launchers, four flamethrowers, five cannons, and 10 machine guns. Here, too, the bowels of the mountain housed the troops with all the logistical and survival equipment: shelters, storage facilities, lighting, ventilation, a cistern, a telephone exchange, searchlights, etc. Faced with the impossibility of advancing, both commands believed the only solution was to blow up the enemy stronghold from the ground up: thus began the war of mines and countermines, with a dense network of underground tunnels. Between the autumn of 1917 and the spring of 1918, there were 10 explosions, five Austrian and five Italian, until the gigantic 50-ton Austrian dynamite charge on March 13, 1918, which shattered the northern slope of the Dente Italiano, altering its morphology and causing casualties on both sides. After years of war and thousands of deaths, the great war on Pasubio ended with the front line virtually unchanged! To pass between the two Denti, one passes through the chasm created by the mine, amidst enormous boulders and debris: impressive.

Tradition has it that the Seven Crosses were placed in memory of an ancient feud in the 15th century between shepherds, who bitterly fought over the meager pastures of the Pasubio massif: in a violent fight that broke out between seven herdsmen, six were killed; the last, desperate in front of the lifeless bodies of the others, took his own life. They were buried on the spot where they had died. The Seven Crosses do not therefore refer to war episodes of the Great War, despite being located in the middle of a combat zone, close to the Dente Italiano and the Dente Austriaco: here in particular on 2 July 1916, during the Strafexpedition, the imperial Kaiserjäger broke through and broke through the enemy lines, reaching the point of maximum penetration into the Pasubio.