These Ladin ‘viles’ - hamlets - are some of the oldest farming settlements in the whole Alps and beyond and San Vigilio di Marebbe and San Martino in Badia have one of the highest concentrations still surviving to the present day. Protected both architecturally and in landscape and environmental terms, these hamlets are full-blown living lessons of sustainable human settlement in the mountains, to be passed down to the town planners of the present and future. Born in antiquity from what were originally single family settlements, they enlarged over the generations around the concept of sharing without ever, however, going beyond sustainability levels by the environment around them, and in terms of architecture and building, which represented their real potential for subsistence in virtually complete autonomy.

It is still possible today to find hamlets which still blend magnificently into the surrounding landscape and the generally straightforward walks to these are true lessons in mountain and Dolomites life.