To reach Tre Cime di Lavaredo at its best, you have to start in darkness. I began the hike at 4am, guided by a full moon that lit the alpine meadows well enough to navigate without a headlamp.
Tre Cime di Lavaredo — the Three Peaks of Lavaredo — are among the most photographed mountains in the world. Long before photography existed, 19th-century landscape painters made pilgrimages here, their depictions of the impossibly sharp summits shaping how Europeans imagined the Alps. The actual peaks exceeded the paintings.
Geological Formation
The Dolomites were formed through the collision of the African and Eurasian tectonic plates, beginning approximately 250 million years ago. What is now northeastern Italy was once the floor of the Tethys Sea — a warm, shallow tropical ocean. Ancient coral reefs and marine organisms accumulated over millions of years, compressing into the calcium magnesium carbonate rock that geologist Déodat de Dolomieu first described and gave his name to.
Tre Cime consists of three distinct peaks. Cima Grande (Big Peak) is the tallest, reaching 2,999 metres. Cima Ovest (Western Peak) reaches 2,973 metres, and Cima Piccola (Small Peak) 2,857 metres. The north faces are among the most demanding vertical walls in Alpine climbing.
The Photograph
To capture alpenglow — the warm light that strikes the peaks in the minutes before sunrise — I started hiking at 4am. I took a small detour off-trail to reach my vantage point, guided entirely by moonlight. The full moon that night was bright enough to cast shadows. The image was taken at the moment when the first direct sunlight hits the peaks while the valley below remains in deep shadow. This window lasts approximately eight minutes.
World War I
During World War I, the peaks served as a front line. Austro-Hungarian and Italian forces fought for control of these summits for four years in conditions of extraordinary hardship. Carved into the rock faces and inside the mountains themselves are extensive tunnels, trenches, and fortifications — some of which remain intact today. The military tunnels through the Tre Cime massif are among the largest high-altitude tunnel systems constructed during the war. Visiting them reframes the peaks from a landscape subject into a monument.
The Photography
These images were captured on a single pre-dawn hike at Tre Cime di Lavaredo in the Sexten Dolomites.
