You don’t need to be royalty or the owner of a pimped-out palanquin to get a chair lift. In the Dolomites, your chariot awaits.
This scenic mountain range near the Boot’s border with Austria is serviced by nearly 500 elevated public transportation options that put luxury car services to shame. They range from two-person “coffin-style” cable cars to deluxe 12-seater gondolas that connect a sprawling network of towns. Better yet, it’s all accessible via one lift ticket.
And while most decamp to the Dolomites in the winter to take advantage of Dolomiti Superski’s 12 ski resorts — a few of which will host the 2026 Winter Olympics — nearly 150 lifts open in the summer months of June, July and August. Provided you’re not afraid of heights, they allow easy transport from town to town. The Alta Badia region alone is home to six alpine villages in a stretch of just 10 miles.
Locals certainly aren’t acrophobes. They’ve been experimenting with using lifts to access the Italian Alps on their doorsteps since before WWII. In fact, Italy’s first official chairlift opened here in 1946. The wooden and iron single-seater featured repurposed parts stolen from tanks that survived the war.
Today’s lifts are far more modern. The roofs of their stations are a quilted patchwork of solar panels providing enough green energy to ferry up to 3,500 passengers per hour at speeds of up to 16 feet per second.
While rental cars do exist in the Dolomites, they should be called redundant cars. Why mess with trying to find parking in towns with more lift stations than stoplights? Plus, unless you have a helicopter at your disposal, many accommodations are only accessible via cable car.
Take the historic mountain inn Alpine Hut Pralongià: it’s perched at 7,076 feet above sea level and there’s really only one way to get there (and you guessed it). Rates start at $177 per person, per night and include half-board.
You’ll also need to get high to chow down in these parts. You can expect lots of Ladin dishes, since, while the Dolomites are technically in Italy, many locals speak Ladin (a 2,000-year-old Rhaeto-Romanic language). Their diet is heavy in barley soup, dumplings and wild game. At Alpine Hut Pralongià, it’s not uncommon for guests to dine on roe deer and wild boar harvested by the hut’s owners who describe themselves as avid hunters.
Guests at Agriturismo Lüch da Pastrogn, a traditional four-story farmhouse with rooms from $43 per person/night, enjoy organic milk, cheese and eggs sourced from the on-site cows and chickens. As soon as the snow melts, livestock graze on the same slopes skiers whiz down during the winter. Many of the farmers, who also run hotels, live under the lifts and operate them between feedings.
For an even more elevated experience, consider Hotel Cristallo where the 602-square-foot Cristallo suite features a private spa complete with an infrared sauna. Rates in June start around $380 per person, per night.
You’ll also be perfectly perched at Las Vegas Lodge (rates from $155 per person, per night) where the sunrise buffet breakfast — served at 6,726 feet above sea level — is a destination in and of itself. In the winter, its guests arrive via snowcat. In summer, they rely on the Piz Sorega gondola.
Of course, if you have decent quads and calves (and not much luggage), you can always hike up. The Dolomites were designated a UNESCO World Heritage in 1992 because of their “intrinsic beauty” derived from a “variety of spectacular vertical forms such as pinnacles, spires and towers.”
Today, you’ll find more than 6,200 miles of well-marked trails leading to an array of attractions. Courtesy of Mother Nature you have Lago di Sorapiss, a high alpine lake the color of Listerine due to the pristine glacier that feeds it. In the man-made department, you’ll find mountain-top cultured spots like the Messner Mountain Museum, designed by the late, great architect Zaha Hadid. Although part of it is subterranean, it’s situated on a cloud-scraping plateau accessible via a four-hour hike or 10-minute cable car ride.
Cycling to the summit is also an option. In the summer, village rental shops swap out their skis for impressive fleets of wheels. You can also take advantage of Alta Badia’s unique bike-share program featuring mountain e-bikes found at six high-altitude stations. Each station is equipped with a charger; some mountain lodges have them, too. Bikes ride for free on most lifts with a paying rider.
So how much does your chairlift chariot cost? A daily pass — giving you access to all 140-plus lifts open in the summer — is just $70. Stay for a week and pay around $40 per day. And no need to tip your lift operator. A good old-fashioned “grazie” will do.