Lago di Misurina

Where it sits. Lake Misurina lies at 1,754 metres in the municipality of Auronzo di Cadore, on the saddle where the Ampezzo basin meets the Cadore valleys and the Sexten Dolomites. It is shallow and modest in area — roughly 35 hectares, a shoreline of about 2.6 kilometres, and only five metres or so at its deepest point — but its position is exceptional. The Sorapiss massif fills the southern skyline, the jagged spires of the Cadini di Misurina rise directly to the west, and on a still morning the lake reflects both. Because the water is shallow and the basin sheltered, the surface goes glassy more often than on larger Alpine lakes, and Misurina became a photographic subject before it became a resort.

A high-altitude sanatorium and an Olympic rink. The settlement grew around a handful of large hotels built in the Habsburg period, of which the Grand Hotel Misurina on the eastern shore is the survivor. What made the place unusual was medicine rather than tourism. The combination of altitude, dry air and an almost complete absence of grass pollen led to the founding of the Istituto Pio XII in 1955, a residential centre for children with severe asthma and respiratory allergies; it remains the only high-altitude paediatric asthma institute of its kind in Europe, and its buildings on the lake's northern shore are part of the village rather than an annexe to it. A year later the lake had its moment in the Olympic record. All the speed skating events of the 1956 Winter Games at Cortina were held on Misurina, on a 400-metre track cleared and flooded on the natural ice of the frozen lake, with the Cadini spires as a grandstand. Yevgeny Grishin set world records over 500 and 1,500 metres on that surface. It was the last time the Olympic speed skating programme was contested on a natural lake; Squaw Valley used artificially frozen ice four years later.

On screen. Misurina's screen presence is quieter than that of its neighbours and mostly Italian. The lake, the Cadini and the road up to the Tre Cime recur throughout RAI's series Un passo dal cielo, which has used the Sexten and Ampezzo Dolomites as a standing set since 2011, and the reflection shot is a fixture of Italian television title sequences and advertising. The aerial units working on Cliffhanger in 1992 covered the same airspace on their way between the Cinque Torri and the Tre Cime, which is why viewers who know the area recognise the skyline in a film that claims to be set in Colorado. The most reliably filmed thing here, though, is still sport: television coverage of Giro d'Italia stages finishing at the Tre Cime uses Misurina as the point where the road tilts upward and the cameras change position.

What you actually see today. A level, largely paved path runs the whole way round the lake in about forty-five minutes, with benches, a chapel and several hotel terraces on the way; it is one of the few genuinely accessible circuits at this altitude in the Dolomites, and pushchairs and wheelchairs manage it. Rowing boats are rented on the eastern shore in summer. The village itself is small and functional rather than picturesque — a row of hotels, a couple of shops selling walking gear, a toll booth. That booth matters: the private road to Rifugio Auronzo, the trailhead for the Tre Cime circuit, begins at the northern end of the lake and climbs seven kilometres to 2,320 metres. In winter the shallow lake freezes hard and the shoreline path stays walkable, and the small Col de Varda chairlift on the west side gives quick access to the Cadini viewpoints.

Getting there and timing. Misurina is 14 kilometres from Cortina d'Ampezzo on the SS48bis over the Passo Tre Croci, and about 20 kilometres from Auronzo di Cadore in the other direction. Summer and winter buses connect it with Cortina, Auronzo and Dobbiaco; there is no railway, and the nearest stations are Calalzo-Pieve di Cadore and Dobbiaco-Toblach. Mornings from June to September give the reflections and the best light on Sorapiss; midsummer afternoons bring both thunderstorms and heavy traffic heading for the toll road. Late September, after the Tre Cime crowds thin and before the road closes, is the quietest good week of the year, and the first half of February gives a frozen lake, a clear sky more often than not, and the low sun striking the Cadini from the south.