Madonna di Campiglio, lying at an altitude of 1550 meters in the beautiful basin between the Brenta Dolomites group and the Adamello and Presanella glaciers, was launched for tourism in the second half of the last century by a certain Giambattista Righi from Strembo.

In 1868 he bought for 40,000 florins the entire substance of the ex-monastery of Santa Maria di Campiglio belonging to the chapter table of Trento. In place of the dilapidated buildings of the old hospice clustered around a late medieval church, he erected a first hotel, the Stabilimento Alpino, intended to welcome the first tourists to the mountains.

In 1875, at his own expense, he undertook the construction of the road that connected the centers of the Alta Val Rendena with Madonna di Campiglio: it took three hours to cover it in a carriage. Gianbattista Righi’s entrepreneurial adventure was carried forward 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 brought his own name, Franz Joseph. He transformed Madonna di Campiglio into a highly sought-after place to stay for the nobility and the rich Austrian and Central European 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 lakes around Campiglio and dedicating carefree evenings to waltzes and small meetings with their courtiers. The Oesterreicher family remained in Campiglio until 1955, when their properties were gradually acquired above all by entrepreneurs from Lombardy who transformed the appearance and structures of the locality. Already in 1947, the Società Funivie Madonna di Campiglio was founded with the aim of enhancing the practice of skiing and therefore promoting the resort.

In 1948 the first lift was inaugurated, a chairlift which linked Madonna di Campiglio to Spinale; in the 1950s the 5 Laghi cable car and some ski lifts were built. Today the circuit of lifts extends along 90 km of slopes with a capacity of over 30,700 people per hour and plans are being made for a connection with the Pinzolo slopes (the one already active, skis on, with Folgarida and Marilleva). The 3-Tre, one of the most prestigious ski World Cup races, was born in 1948 from the imagination of Rolly Marchi as a trio of competitions (slalom, giant and free) and only in the following years split up among several locations.

Madonna di Campiglio today is certainly the number one among the Italian ski resorts and one of the most important in the entire Alpine Arc: the variety of its mountain environment ensures in winter the possibility of covering, skis on, countless kilometers of slopes up to 2600 meters, always different in degree of difficulty, for the exciting views of the groups of the Brenta Dolomites and the Adamello and Presanella. Madonna di Campiglio, thanks to its 1550 meters of height, is the only one that ensures that lovers of downhill skiing can spend an intense day on the snow, starting from the town center and returning without taking off their skis.

The charm of Madonna di Campiglio is not denied to anyone: it is a charm that reveals itself little by little, experiencing the silence of nature, immersing yourself in the glitter of snow crystals. The adventure begins by putting on cross-country skis or snowshoes – which here are called snowshoes – or by facing the satisfying challenge of an excursion on ski mountaineering.