At the foot of the Ortles, a Turin industrialist had a world-famous architect build a hotel for his twenty-two-year-old son which on its completion was described as the most modern and expensive hotel, and not only in the whole of Italy; it was twelve stories high and actually took only eighteen months to build. Before work was begun on the building, a road nineteen kilometers long had to be constructed into what was, until then, completely inaccessible countryside, some of the most unspoiled in the whole of the Alps, which the industrialist from Turin had first noticed on a walking tour he had undertaken with some English friends and which had at once seemed suitable for the building of such a hotel. About one thousand workers are said to have found work on the site. On the day before the hotel was to be opened, the son of the ambitious native of Turin had a fatal accident on the automobile race track in Monza. As a result, the opening ceremonies at the hotel did not take place. The unhappy father decided, on the day of his son’s funeral, never again to set foot in the just-completed hotel and to let it fall into total disrepair from that day on. He paid off and dismissed all the people who had already been engaged as necessary for running the hotel, blocked off the approach road, and forbade anyone to enter the valley at the end of which the hotel stands. We came upon the hotel after leaving Gomagoi while on a walking tour in the Ortles Mountains, three years after its completion; even at that time it made a shocking impression on us. Years of storms had long since destroyed the windows and had taken off large parts of the roofs, and tall trees, probably pines, were already growing out of the still fully equipped kitchen.

Mimosa

MIMOSA