Tourists crammed onto a ridge, hikers stuck on the trails, long queues to reach a mountain hut... This past summer, hundreds of videos posted on social media showed the flip side of the Dolomites, a mountain range in northern Italy. Long favoured by Italians themselves, the Dolomites have become a highly popular destination for foreign visitors in recent years.
Today, the mountain range welcomes several million tourists every year, boosted by the 2026 Winter Olympics. This growing influx of visitors worries people in the valleys as much as it contributes to their economy. "This tourism that's settling in almost everywhere in Val Badia scares us a bit, because it risks forcing young people like us to leave for financial reasons," explains Marco, a 29-year-old graphic designer.
Marco and his brother Samuel, a 32-year-old pharmacist, both grew up in the Badia Valley, in a small town of less than 4,000 inhabitants. The brothers have watched prices skyrocket, and locals forced to leave their land. "We need to preserve our community, otherwise it will become a bit like a box that’s beautiful, but empty." The community Samuel is talking about is the Ladin community: about 30,000 people, located in five valleys across the Italian regions of Trentino Alto-Adige and Veneto.
Most of these Italians speak both German and Italian, but they also speak Ladin, one of the very last living alpine languages and one of the oldest in all of Europe. At school, at home, at work, in the mouths of the locals, Ladin naturally comes first. "If you're with Ladins, you speak Ladin.
If there's an Italian in the group, you try to speak Italian, or German. You manage about five minutes in Italian, then you go back to Ladin. And for the Italian... too bad, he has to learn it!" laughs Fabian, a cheesemaker and childhood friend of Samuel's.
Read moreGrecanico: Ancient Greek language still spoken in southern Italy In these valleys, Ladin is the majority language, and hardly understandable to tourists, even Italian ones. "In some restaurants or hotels, they have menus in Ladin. So there are those who wonder what it is, people who have been coming here for years who sometimes aren't even aware that Ladin exists.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
