Martell Valley
The Martell Valley (also simply Martell ; Val Martello in Italian ) is a south-facing side valley of the upper Adige Valley or Vinschgau in South Tyrol ( Italy ). Most of the valley is in the administrative area of the municipality of Martell with 829 inhabitants (as of December 31, 2019). The valley entrance area belongs to the municipality of Latsch .
etymology
The valley was first mentioned in a document around 1280 as "Martel", in dialect "Martell", which, according to some namers, comes from the Latin Martellum, the "hammer" of the miners. Both Mortell and Martell were used in the oldest documents from the 14th to the end of the 17th century , without one or the other form being preferred. In the documents of the 18th century, other forms were used in addition to the previous ones, such as Mohrtel, Mahrtel, Muhrtel (Muhrtal), Marchtel (Marchtal = border valley between Ulten and Sulden) etc. The name Martell has been officially in use since 1910 . The striking similarity between the names Martell and Morter could indicate a connection in their name genesis. The Italian equivalent is "Martello".
geography
location
The Martell valley is a pronounced notch valley, which is fairly straight and flanked by steep valley slopes from the area of the municipality of Latsch in Vinschgau, 27 km south-south-westerly into the Ortler group. The valley furrow has several steps and merges into the wide valley floor of the Vinschgau at 727 m at Morter . At this point a transverse narrow shale ridge forms a natural barrier on which the castles Obermontani and Untermontani and St. Stephen's Chapel stand. The Martell Valley is embedded in the Stilfserjoch National Park and is drained by the Plima . The valley head is formed by the Cevedale group , which belongs to the Ortler group, with the 3769 m high Monte Cevedale as the main summit.
topography
After the Felsriegel near Morter, the entrance area is not very narrow, but still relatively steep. Up to Bad Salt, which is at the top of the first valley step at 1158 m , you have to climb over 400 meters of altitude over a distance of 4.6 km. The few and scattered farms in this area, the courtyards, still belong to the municipality of Latsch. The area of the municipality of Martell does not begin until Burgaun, and with Bad Salt it belongs to the elongated district of Ennewasser. Its hamlets and individual farms are embedded in a flatter and wider valley basin and extend as far as the Flimbach, a side stream of the Plima. This is followed by the Gand, a densely populated valley floor, from which a side street branches off to the orographically left side. There, at an altitude of 1350 m, lies Mieren, with the main town of Thal, also known as the “village”, the actual community center with town hall, elementary school, kindergarten, post office, bank and church. Behind it, the sparsely populated Sonnenberg extends from the hamlet of Eberhöf to Steinwand. The scattered settlement above Mieren is called Ennethal, from which a road at Premstl leads through steep forest terrain to the district of Waldberg, where one of the highest grain farms in South Tyrol is located, Stallwies at 1953 m . This farm is also run as an inn and is the starting point for both easy and demanding hikes, including on the Lasa peak .
Behind the Gand, the valley narrows and rises again noticeably, especially at Hölderle. Hintermartell begins in the Schmelz at 1556 m . At around 1700 m , the Rosimtalbach flows from the orographic left side of the valley into the Plima. Its embankments have created a wider valley floor in which individual mountain meadows, the Grogg-Alm and a modern biathlon center are located. At a narrow point behind it, a mighty 83 m high dam built in the 1950s towers at 1800 m . Today it forms an abrupt step in the terrain. Behind it is the Zufrittstausee with a few restaurants at the rocky end of the lake. The following, flatter section of the valley merges into a wide rock belt, on which the road ends at 2051 m after several bends. Here the valley opens into a wide step-shaped cirque, the last hill of which at the Zufallhütte ( 2265 m ) merges into the broad head of the Zufall valley. The hut is an ideal place to stop for refreshments before tackling the easier tour to the Marteller hut ( 2610 m ) , built in 1980, or more demanding tours to the Casati hut ( 3269 m ) or other areas of the Ortler group.
Mountains and side valleys
The rocky and impassable mountain slope on the orographic left side of the valley entrance is the Eichberg. The sporadic appearance of white marble stones in this area does not remain hidden from the attentive observer. At the end of the 19th century, marble blocks were removed from these slopes in the Zelimbruch. Marble veins come to light here, which continue on the opposite side of the valley to the east. There you can still see the notch of the Montani quarry in the slope, where marble used to be extracted. The Sonnenberg follows further inside the valley, from which a hiking trail leads under the stone wall to the Morterlegern. The Eberhöfertal, which runs next to the center of Thal, was feared because of the danger of avalanches in snowy winters. A mighty wet snow avalanche in 2001 was the reason that the Office for Torrent Control started building a 250 m long and 18 m high protective dam at 2150 m above sea level from 2007 . From the Eberhöfertal or from the neighboring Saugbergalpe there are hiking opportunities to the Schlanderser Nördersberg via the Göflaner Scharte ( 2404 m ) and the Kreuzjöchl ( 2050 m ).
Behind the Schmelz near Durraplatt, the Schludertal flows into the Martell Valley. Passing the Schluderalm ( 2005 m ) you can reach the Schluderscharte ( 2987 m ), which is embedded between the Laaser Spitze ( 3305 m ) and the Schluderspitze ( 3230 m ). Other parallel valleys are the Rosimtal behind the Grogg-Alm, the Lyfital with the Lyfi-Alm ( 2165 m ), located above the reservoir, the Pedertal near the Borromeo hut ( 1980 m ) and the Madritschtal behind the parking lots. In the valley heads of these valleys projecting Lyfispitze ( 3352 m ), the medium ( 3462 m ) and exterior Peder peak ( 3406 m ), the Schildspitze ( 3461 m ), the plate tip ( 3422 m ), the interior Peder peak ( 3309 m ), the Hintere Schöntaufspitze ( 3325 m ) and the Madritschspitze ( 3265 m ). From the Madritschtal, a well-traveled route leads over the Madritschjoch ( 3123 m ) into the Suldental . Starting from the Enzianhütte at the car park at the end of the valley, the Marteller Höhenweg via the Lyfi-Alm and the Schluderalm offers a hike to Stallwies.
The heavily glaciated valley head is lined with a number of other three-thousand-meter peaks: the Butzenspitze ( 3302 m ) behind the Butzental, the Eisseespitze ( 3243 m ) with the Eisseepass ( 3141 m ), the Suldenspitze ( 3376 m ) on the Ortler main ridge next to the Langfernerjoch ( 3266 m ), a transition into the Val Cedec with the Casatihütte ( 3269 m ), the Monte Cevedale ( 3769 m ), in front of it the random peaks ( 3700 m the front and 3757 m the rear ), at whose feet the Langenferner , the Random Farmer and the Fürkeleferner. In the southeast there are the Köllkuppe ( 3330 m ) with the Hohe Ferner, the Veneziaspitzen (main summit: 3386 m ), the Hintere Schranspitze ( 3355 m ), the Hintere Rotspitze ( 3347 m ), the Sällentspitze ( 3212 m ), the Hintere Nonnenspitze ( 3289 m ), the Lorchenspitze ( 3343 m ), the Weißbrunnspitze ( 3253 m ) and the Zufrittspitze ( 3438 m ), which can also be adorned with smaller glacier fields. The Fürkelescharte ( 3032 m ) and the Hohenfernerjoch ( 3153 m ) are located high up in the Val di Sole . The Sällentjoch ( 2984 m ) can be reached from the Hotel Paradiso, the Weißbrunnerjoch ( 3153 m ) and the Zufrittjoch ( 3172 m ) can be climbed from the reservoir through the Zufritttal. They are transitions into the Ultental .
The rest of the mountain ridge in the east with the Soyjoch ( 3025 m ), the Flimspitze ( 3130 m ), the Tuferspitze ( 3092 m ), the Gasse ( 3046 m ) and the Grabensprungspitze ( 3014 m ) reached with the easternmost glacier mountain of the Ortler Alps, the Hasenöhrl , again at an altitude of 3257 m , before it drops and continues in the Ultner ridge with peaks that are rarely higher than 2600 m . The eastern slopes of the Martell valley are cut through in the middle and outer area by three side valleys: from the Soytal with the Soyalm ( 2073 m ) and the Soyscharte ( 2887 m ) from the Hölderle, from the Flimtal with the Flim Alm and with the Flimjoch ( 2892 m ) from the Gand and from the Brandnertal with the Morter Alm ( 1908 m ) from the courtyards.
geology
The Martell Valley is embedded in the Campo-Crystalline, which consists largely of sediments from the ancient world and has a very complex history of development. The outer valley area lies in the Lasa unit, highly deformed paragneiss , mylonitic mica schist and amphibolite , in which white marble trains and pegmatite gneisses are embedded. Behind the Gand, the slopes of the valley up to the Zufrittstausee consist of Martell granite , which comes from a pluton from the Permian period and is heavily eoalpidic , so that it should correctly be referred to as gneiss. The zebrù scale zone stretches across to the rear of the Martell valley, which extends to the rear part of the reservoir, consists of strongly deformed quartz phyllites and meets the paragneiss and the staurolite mica schist of the Pejo unit on the eastern side of the valley .
Waters
The Plima gets its water from some tributaries, which are still fed to a large extent by glaciers. In the 19th century, glacial lakes were repeatedly created in the glaciers at the foot of the Cevedale, the eruptions of which devastated the valley and wreaked havoc. For a long time, the population could not explain these sudden bursts of water, because they could appear for no reason even when the weather was fine. In 1891, such a catastrophe prompted the accidental erection of a protective wall. It was able to prove itself successfully for the first time as early as 1894. Today this danger no longer exists because the glaciers have disappeared in these places. Smaller lakes can be found in the Karen of the side valleys, such as the Flimseen above the Flim-Alm. Below the Zufrittspitze are the yellow and green lakes, not far from the black hole. In the Pedertal and in the vicinity of the Marteller Hütte there are some other varnishes that owe their origin to the work of digging glaciers.
In the 1950s, the dam wall for the Zufritt reservoir was built in Hintermartell on a sloping glacier base . It is 83 m high and belongs to the Laas-Martell hydropower plant , which has a catchment area of 117.4 km 2 , in which, in addition to the Plima (the access dam alone, 77 km 2 belong to) the Flim, Soy and St The Maria, the Schluder and the Rosimtalbach in the Martell valley and the Laaserbach in the Laas valley are included. The power plant is part of the water use plan originally designed by the Montecatini Group for the Adige region above Merano . The fall height is 968.50 m. The maximum output is 63 MW, the average annual production is 226 million kWh. The dam of the Zufritt reservoir consists of 17 solid head piers, each 18 m wide. The apex length is 300 m. It was completed in 1957.
flora
The great difference in altitude in the Stelvio National Park means that a variety of different plants and flowers can be found, from the colline level to the montane and subalpine level to the alpine and nival level. On the low slopes of the valley entrance, plant species of the hill level such as downy oaks, robinia, bladder bush thrive. The pine stocks there are quickly replaced by spruce and larch, which are in turn strongly mixed by the Swiss stone pine at 2000 m . The tree line in Martell is around 2400 m above sea level . This is followed by dwarf shrub heaths and alpine lawn communities with cabbage florets, arnica, edelweiss and with the survivors of the rock regions such as alpine clove, alpine chamois cress, spring gentian, hornwort, alpine toadflax, alpine man's shield, cinquefoil, mountain carnation and glacier buttercup.
fauna
For a long time, the introduction of the national park met with little approval from the population; one of the reasons was the hunting ban. The great damage caused by game browsing in the forests and in the agricultural corridors forced those in charge of the park to commission so-called "extraction specialists" to shoot down annually set quotas for the game population. Red deer, roe deer, red fox, badger, pine marten, squirrels and other forest animals live in the mountain forests. The high-alpine area is a habitat for chamois, marmots, mountain hares and ptarmigan. Particularly protected bird species are golden eagles, bearded vultures, eagle owls, black woodpeckers, wood grouse, play cocks, dipper, alpine choughs, red chalk and pine jays. One of the brown bears that can be found again in South Tyrol stayed briefly at the beginning of the Martell Valley.
Accessibility and traffic
The valley is accessed by a well-developed, 22 km long asphalt road, which starts at the roundabout in Goldrain towards the south, leads past Morter and changes to the orographically right side of the stream behind the village. In serpentines it overcomes the first valley step and leads after the districts Ennewasser and Gand mostly along the Plima to Hintermartell, where it crosses to the left side of the valley until the end of the lake and overcomes the steep step in narrow bends in the area of the dam wall. Only a short flat stretch behind the lake, the road leads again along the right side of the Plima. In front of the parking lot at 2051 m , the road overcomes another steep and rocky step and in places has a gradient of up to 18%. In the snow-free time, the valley road can be used by car to this end point without any problems. Parking behind the lake is chargeable in summer. The offshoot via Mieren and Ennethal can also be used without problems as far as Stallwies.
The valley road to Gasthof Waldheim vor der Schmelz and the offshoot to Thal are definitely passable for buses, because there is suitable turning area there. A further journey to the end of the lake is theoretically (!) Possible for buses up to 12 m in length because the tight bends have been eased so much, but not recommended in practice because long stretches, especially along the lake, the road is very good is narrow and there are no alternatives. The buses of the public transport companies - starting from Schlanders or Goldrain train station - offer connections to Martell, in summer to the Enzianhütte at the end of the valley.
Land use
The area of the municipality of Martell covers 143.82 km 2 . Only 3% of this can be assigned to permanent settlement areas. The agriculturally used areas (green areas, alpine pastures, pastures) make up 2,824 ha, the forest area 3,356 ha.
history
colonization
Apart from the legendary impulses that are supposed to have emanated from the "Klösterle" at an altitude of 2,498 m (presumably a former hospice located above the Zufallhütte), it can be assumed that Martell was not settled until the 11th century as part of the "high medieval colonization “ Was promoted as planned by the counts' manors . A notarization of 15 farms is documented around 1228. The first mention of the name comes from 1280. The Frühmesser chronicle knows to report that 1340 is already a community existed Martell ( Comunitas hominum de Martelle ). This type of settlement meant that previously only seasonally or sporadically used alpine pastures were converted into all year round inhabited Schwaighöfe. The farmers who put up with this heavy clearing activity were rewarded with the heritable building right. In this way, the population increase that began in the High Middle Ages was controlled and overpopulated areas relieved. The meaning of the farm name “Greit” can be traced back to such clearing. From an ecclesiastical perspective, Martell has belonged to the diocese of Chur since the early Middle Ages , before it became part of the diocese of Bressanone in the 19th century and is now part of the diocese of Bozen-Brixen . In a document from 1362, the area is precisely localized with "in Valle Venusta in dyocesi Curiensi in loco dicto in Martel" .
Settlement thrusts occurred again after depopulation in times of the plague and from the 15th century onwards by miners who initially privately, i.e. “wildly”, exploited more easily accessible and more productive deposits. Around 1650, Count Hendl brought professionally well-trained miners from Schwaz . Not all miners left Martell after the mining activities ceased around 1800. They stayed in the Gand (in the mercenary houses) as impoverished peasants who were boycotted in many ways by the peasants and earned an extra income through handicrafts such as basket weaving, turning or as cooper in addition to the irregular work on the farms. In 1427 there were 50 fireplaces (households) in Martell. In 1847 the number of inhabitants exceeded the thousand mark for the first time.
Mining
A document from 1448 deals with mining in Martell for the first time. In the course of time, digging took place in very different places, in the salt trenches, on the Saugberg, Ober Steinwand, in the Schluderwände and above all in the Pedertal, in the Grueb . Many collapsed and no longer accessible tunnels are evidence of this. The richest deposits were found in the salt trenches (later muddy) and in the Pedertal. Only with the creation of a separate mining office in Imst around 1540 was the wild mining subject to rules. From 1650 Count Hendl from Vinschgau had the areas around Latsch, Morter, Goldrain and Martell systematically searched for ore deposits and exploited. Recovered were copper , iron and silver . The ores were processed in stamping works and smelting works in Morter, Ennewasser and in der Schmelz. In the alleged gold mine in Pedertal around which popularly stubbornly most adventurous rumors entwined, 1910 copper, iron and were in test excavations sulfur but hardly Gold found. The Count Hendl had a chapel built in the Schmelz in 1711 for the pastoral care of his miners, which was renovated in 1894 in the neo-Gothic style. The mining activities lasted until 1800. The old Gruebhütte was bought in the 1930s by the company that built the Hotel Paradies. This became the Borromeo shelter . From an economic point of view, the Martell population did not benefit from mining.
The Marteller early knife book
The priest Josef Eberhöfer (born March 16, 1786 in Martell, † November 8, 1864) recorded everything he could find about his surroundings in his handwritten document collections and records. He documented historical facts, war events, natural disasters and many occurrences in everyday life. His “Frühmesserbuch” is also a treasure trove for cultural historians and for legend researchers. He had attended high school in Merano and stayed in Innsbruck during the Tyrolean wars of freedom . He was ordained a priest in Brixen in 1812 and soon afterwards became an early knife in Martell. Because of a foot ailment, he retired as an early knife and devoted himself almost exclusively to his chronicle.
Modern times
The First World War must inevitably have affected the Martellians particularly, as from May 1915 the front ran on the then much more glaciated ridges of the Cevedale. A crew of about 700 men was by chance permanently stationed; a legacy of this time is a chapel built by the soldiers there. There were repeated rumors of an imminent evacuation of the residents.
As for the majority of the rest of the South Tyrolean population, the annexation of South Tyrol to Italy and the subsequent measures of the fascist administration were depressing and discouraging for the Martellers. The Stilfserjoch National Park, introduced by the Italian government in 1935, terrified the people because they feared it would seriously affect their previous way of life and economy. In the 1939 option , 1100 of the 1175 inhabitants opted for Germany. 290 of them, mostly dispossessed and servants, emigrated.
The most noteworthy events in the valley chronicle are often associated with one name, the Plima. Due to the much more glaciated catchment area in the 19th century, not only weather phenomena were the cause of mudslides, but also the often hidden glacier lakes, whose eruption chased huge waves through the valley, destroyed paths and bridges and also carried away buildings in the valley floor. If there were any comparison between such events in the past, the disaster of August 24, 1987 would probably far surpass any such event. At that time, unusually heavy rainfall led to mudslides across the country. In the Martell Valley, too, the amounts of rain were enormous and had filled the Zufritt reservoir to the brim. The lock keeper, who was on his own (against the regulations), opened the basic locks of the reservoir at night on the orders of his superiors, a kind of large gate at the foot of the dam, which is intended for exceptional situations such as bombing to drain water. Technical problems - allegedly also a power failure - made it impossible to close the locks during the following hour. An additional tidal wave with 350 m 3 of water per second shot down the valley, tore 16 houses with it in the municipality of Martell and left a trail of devastation as far as the Laces industrial zone. Despite the enormous damage, there were neither injuries nor deaths because the residents were evacuated in good time. After a series of lawsuits, the operating power plant company was found guilty by the judgment of the Court of Cassation in Rome on June 24, 1998, of having contributed to this disaster through negligence (draining the water too late).
Sacred buildings
A non-verifiable reference to the existence of a Walpurga chapel around 1203 stands in the way of a contract, also in German, which the Martellers concluded with the Teutonic Order in Schlanders on March 22, 1303, in which the latter undertook to be in the "Capelle Sant Walpurgen - sing or speak" to celebrate a mass. The Walpurgis Church, which was originally Romanesque, was rebuilt several times - most recently in 1759. At that time, the Viennese chamber painter Joseph Adam von Mölk, who was commissioned with the renovation and painting of churches in various churches in South Tyrol, painted the ceiling of the nave with a scene of farewell to St. Walpurga from everyday life.
In the Schmelz, where Hintermartell begins, there used to be buildings and smelting furnaces for ore mining. In 1911 the chapel of St. Maria in der Schmelz was built for the miners. By chance it was soldiers during World War I who built the chapel there.
The Hotel Paradiso del Cevedale
Behind the dam is at an altitude of 2160 m , a ruined building, the former luxury hotel Paradiso, or more precisely, the Albergo Sportivo Valmartello al Paradiso del Cevedale , the 1933-1935 at the initiative of the Italian Tourist Ministry and with the backing of the fascist party one of Joint stock company had been built under the direction of Colonello (Colonel) Emilio Penatti. Gio Ponti , a well-known Italian architect and designer, was entrusted with the planning . The style, unusual for the surroundings, in which Ponti combined elements of the Novecento and the modern age, was supposed to correspond to the ideas and the lifestyle of the representatives of financial and industrial capital courted by Mussolini's regime as well as the high fascist party sizes. In a symbolic act, as it were, a stone-turned demonstration of power by Italianità and the new regime that glorified the "noble sons of the Italian people" and demonstrated the cultural self-confidence of fascist Italy. In this context, the hotel is an expression of the Italianization of South Tyrol.
The hotel, which plays the role of a luxury hotel with all-round infrastructure services (150 beds, post and telegraph office in the house, butcher, confectioner, hairdresser, masseur, ski instructor, reading room with English chimneys, sauna, tavern) for well-heeled guests from Italy and England , Luxembourg and even Japan, as well as that of a sports hotel for mountain tourists and alpinists, only enjoyed a brief heyday from 1936 until the outbreak of war. The hotel had to be closed due to the war.
In 1943, after the Nazi occupation of South Tyrol , the building was seized by the German Wehrmacht and served as a vacation base for soldiers (e.g. for members of the "Brandenburg" division ; Otto Skorzeny was awarded a four-week vacation there as a bonus after the liberation of Mussolini ). Although the hotel enjoyed lively guests right after World War II , it went bankrupt in 1946. In 1952 the Venetian shipowner Benati, who had become very rich through real estate speculation, had the formerly green building painted red and expanded the hotel with various additions and superstructures. In 1955, due to the tragic death of his son, Benati changed his mind about the future prospects of the hotel and finally left it to its fate in an unfinished state. It was then stripped of all of its moveable inventory, and in 1966 the property was acquired by Alois Fuchs from the Forst Brewery .
economy
Agriculture
Up until the 1960s, livestock farming and agriculture were the dominant forms of economy in the valley. The farmers were highly self-sufficient, who used the fields and pastures as intensively as possible in order to make ends meet with the meager yield. Time and again they had pioneers in their own ranks who opened up to technical progress (1910 the first threshing machine, from 1920 material ropeways) or who put new ideas into practice (1928 cattle insurance). One obstacle was the poor accessibility, a valley path that was more difficult than quite passable only went as far as Bad Salt. The Martellers had to wait until 1934 for a functioning valley road. At that time, the construction of the Hotel Paradiso began in Hintermartell, which employed over 100 workers. In the actual hotel business there were hardly any employment opportunities for the village population (due to the lack of language skills), but there were sales opportunities for their farm products. The Martellers didn't like the hotel from the start because their cows were no longer allowed to graze there. With the construction of the dam and the water tunnels in the 1950s, the infrastructure was again improved, but the farmers had to sacrifice their best alpine pastures for this purpose.
Grain cultivation declined in the 1960s. It was replaced by grassland management and special crops, on which some peasant pioneers began growing berries (currants, strawberries, raspberries) and vegetables. They improved their production and marketing methods year after year. In the beginning the berries were sold by the farmers directly to traders and beverage manufacturers. Increasing competition from Romania then forced them to be marketed via the wholesale markets in Innsbruck and Munich, where the berries were very popular. At the end of the 1970s, the production area had already increased to 25 hectares. Marketing did not always go smoothly: there was a lack of storage rooms and cold rooms, problems that could best be solved by cooperatives. In 1989, nine farmers founded the MEG (Marteller Producers' Cooperative), which took over the marketing from 1992 onwards and in 1994 opened the new cooperative building in Ennewasser with cold rooms, storage rooms, office and retail business. In 1999 the Martell Strawberry Festival, which has meanwhile become an institution, took place for the first time as the start of the strawberry harvest. In 2005 the cooperative already had 64 supplying members, 7 independent suppliers and 11 non-producing members. The catchment area covers an area of around 70 hectares. The Martell Valley has meanwhile advanced to become the stronghold of strawberry cultivation in South Tyrol, where strawberries are grown from 900 m to 1700 m above sea level.
tourism
Alpine tourism began in the Ortler region in the second half of the 19th century and also reached the Martell valley. By chance in 1882 the Dresden section of the German and Austrian Alpine Club built a refuge. It offered 20 mattress stores on the ground floor, 20 hay stores on the top floor, a room with four beds and a kitchen. The hut was expanded in 1912 and 1913, housed the section command of the Cevedale Front of the Austrian army during the First World War and was confiscated by the Italian state in 1919. In 1921 it was taken over by the Italian Alpine Club CAI, which repaired it in 1925/26. It got the name "Rifugio Dux" and from 1939 the name "Rifugio Nino Corsi" of an Italian mountaineer who died in a mountain accident.
Worth mentioning is the Bauernbad Bad Salt , which enjoyed great popularity until the First World War, which resulted in a sizable complex of houses with an inn and bathing houses. The source is located in the salt trenches at 1730 m and can only be reached via a two-hour walk. Their water is slightly mineral-rich, colors the stream bed red and contains iron, manganese and traces of arsenic, barium, iodine, lithium and zinc. In the past, the water was carried down to the valley via long wooden pipes that ran above ground and had to be repaired every spring. The bathing business was closed when the Second World War broke out.
In the interwar period, the Martell Valley soon attracted mountaineers again, who were fascinated by the world of glaciers at the head of the valley. Among them was the already mentioned industrialist Emilio Penatti, who developed the idea of building a luxury hotel in Hintermartell. The construction and operation of the Hotel Paradiso was a suspiciously eyed spectacle for the Martellers, which was perceived more as an annoying interlude than an exemplary hint for possible tourist developments. The hotel has undoubtedly given the valley a certain degree of popularity and ensured that the influx of alpinists continued even after it was closed. The Martellers themselves increasingly took care of their accommodation. The tourist office was founded in 1950 and in 1960 the first Belgian youth groups came to Martell. Summer tourism developed and the number of overnight stays rose steadily in small steps. In the absence of suitable development opportunities for traditional skiing, Martell tried to become attractive to cross-country skiing and tobogganing enthusiasts. The lack of a well-developed ski area with lifts and cable cars has made Martell an insider tip for ski tourers in winter. In 1980 the Marteller Hütte was built by the five AVS sections Malles, Vinschgau, Untervinschgau, Martell and Lana and rebuilt and expanded in 2006/07. Martell came to 60,233 overnight stays in the tourism year 2008/09 (Nov. 1, 2008 - Oct. 31, 2009).
Personalities
- Gregor Schwenzengast (born March 3, 1646 in Martell, † July 4, 1723) was a sculptor who was highly valued in aristocratic circles and who had a workshop in Latsch.
- The priest Josef Eberhöfer (born March 16, 1786 in Martell, † November 8, 1864) wrote the Martell early knife chronicle .
- Franz Eberhöfer (* 1801 in Martell, † 1882), commonly known as Latin Franzl or Der Weise von Martell . He was self-taught and, in addition to hard work on the farm, acquired respectable knowledge of Greek, Latin, mathematics, philosophy, French and Hebrew, which he could hardly use professionally because of the arrogance of his time (he had not studied). He left an autobiography Sunital (by Latinus , read backwards).
- Josef Stricker, from Stallwies, a well-known worker priest and trade unionist in South Tyrol
literature
- Giovanni Denti & Chiara Toscani: Gio Ponti. Albergo Paradiso al Cevedale. Momenti di Architettura Moderna , Firenze 2011.
- André Pircher: Hotel Val Martello - Paradiso del Cevedale and the origins of tourism in the Martell Valley , specialist work 2012/13.
- Josef Rampold : Vinschgau. Athesia Publishing House, Bolzano 1974.
- Carmen Tartarotti : Film about the history of the hotel “Paradiso del Cevedale”, broadcast on January 8, 2011 by RAI Südtirol .
- Sandra Regensburger: The Martell Valley, "Schianbliamltal" - the valley between the glacier and strawberries. Diploma thesis summer semester 2005/2006.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ [1] , accessed on January 8, 2017.
- ↑ Martell on the website of the Tirol Atlas.
- ^ Josef Rampold: Vinschgau. P. 357.
- ^ Hannes Obermair : Bozen Süd - Bolzano Nord. Written form and documentary tradition of the city of Bozen up to 1500 . Volume 1. Bozen: Stadtgemeinde Bozen 2005. ISBN 88-901870-0-X , p. 350, no. 712.
- ^ Martell parish - population development , accessed on February 11, 2011.
- ^ Ore mining in the valley. (PDF; 332 kB) More detailed information on mining in the Martell Valley
- ^ Josef Rampold: Vinschgau. P. 358.
- ↑ Albergo Sportivo Valmartello. (PDF; 2.1 MB) Brochure of the Hotel Paradiso (approx. 1936)
- ^ Elisabeth Perkmann: The strawberry. (PDF; 1.4 MB) March 28, 2006.
- ↑ A replica of the historical random hut. (PDF; 513 kB) In: The Vinschger. August 9, 2006.
- ^ Tourism in South Tyrol - tourism year 2008/2009.
Coordinates: 46 ° 33 ' N , 10 ° 47' E