Madonna di Campiglio, lying at 1550 meters above sea level in the beautiful basin between the Brenta Dolomites group and the Adamello and Presanella glaciers, was launched touristically in the second half of the last century by a certain Giambattista Righi of Strembo. In 1868 he purchased for 40,000 florins the entire substance of the former monastery of Santa Maria di Campiglio belonging to the capitular mensa of Trento. In place of the dilapidated buildings of the old hospicestretched around a late medieval church he erected a first hotel, theStabilimento Alpino, intended to welcome the first tourists to the mountains. In 1875 he undertook at his own expense the construction of the road linking the towns of Alta Val Rendena with Madonna di Campiglio: it took three hours to travel it by carriage. Gianbattista Righi's entrepreneurial adventure was continued by Franz Joseph Oesterreicher, former owner of the Grand Hotel Trento, who took over the Campiglio property in 1882. It was said of him that he was the illegitimate son of the Emperor of Austria and Hungary who bore his own name, Franz Joseph. He transformed Madonna di Campiglio into the sought-after disoggiorno place for the Austrian and Central European nobility and wealthy bourgeoisie. Among his guests, in 1889 and 1894, he even had Princess Sissi and Emperor Franz Joseph, who spent long days here strolling through the woods, reaching the small lakes around Campiglio and devoting carefree evenings to waltzes and restricted meetings with their courtiers. The Oesterreicher family remained in Campiglio until 1955, when its properties were gradually purchased mainly by Lombard entrepreneurs who transformed the resort's appearance and facilities. As early as 1947 the Madonna di Campiglio Cable Car Company was founded with the aim of enhancing skiing and thus promoting the resort. In 1948 the first lift was inaugurated, a chairlift that joined Madonna di Campiglio to Spinale; in the 1950s the 5 Laghi cable car and several ski lifts were built. Today the circuit of lifts runs along 90 km of slopes with a capacity of more than 30,700 people per hour, and there are plans to link up with the slopes of Pinzolo (since the one, ski on, with Folgarida and Marilleva is already active). The 3-Tre, one of the most prestigious World Cup ski races, was born in 1948 from the imagination of Rolly Marchi as a trio of competitions (slalom, giant and free) and only in later years dismembered among several locations. Madonna di Campiglio today is certainly number one among Italian ski resorts and one of the most important in the entire Alpine arc: the variety of its mountain environment ensures that in winter it is possible to ski down countless kilometers of slopes up to 2,600 meters, always different in degree of difficulty, for the exciting glimpses of the Brenta Dolomites and Adamello and Presanella groups.
