The Most Beautiful Natural Wonders in Trentino-South Tyrol
5 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful natural wonders in Trentino-South Tyrol are Secëda, Tre Cime di Lavaredo and Vajolet Towers. The list covers 5 natural wonders. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Trentino-South Tyrol owes its most famous landscape to ancient seas. The pale peaks of the Dolomites began as coral reefs and lagoons in tropical waters more than two hundred million years ago; uplift from the collision of Africa and Europe raised them, and erosion cut them into towers, walls and needles standing above soft green meadows. The rock is named after Déodat de Dolomieu, the French geologist who described it, and the mountains became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2009. At sunset the stone often glows pink and red, a light known locally as enrosadira.
Above Val Gardena, Seceda lifts a tilted grassy ridge that ends abruptly in the jagged teeth of the Odle group. The Tre Cime di Lavaredo, three great blocks of rock on the eastern edge of the region, are among the most recognisable mountain shapes in the Alps. In the Rosengarten group, the slender Vajolet Towers rise side by side, tied by legend to King Laurin and his garden of roses.
The gentler side of the region is just as striking. The Seiser Alm is the largest high-altitude alpine meadow in Europe, rolling beneath the Sassolungo and the Sciliar. On the Ritten plateau above Bolzano, the earth pyramids are tall clay columns, each protected from the rain by a boulder balanced on its top.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Secëda | Summit | |
| 2 | Tre Cime di Lavaredo | Mountain | |
| 3 | Vajolet Towers | Summit | |
| 4 | Seiser Alm (Alpe di Siusi) | Mountain | |
| 5 | Earth Pyramids of Ritten | Rock formation |
01 Secëda
Seceda
Italy · 30.2 km from Bolzano46.601° N 11.726° E
Image by riddick_soad from Pixabay The summit reaches 2,519 metres and marks the meeting point of three municipalities, Ortisei, Santa Cristina and Funes. Its northern and western faces belong to the Puez-Odle Nature Park, where the brittle walls fall away steeply, while the southeastern side is open alpine grassland grazed in summer.
Did you know? The Odle spires beside Seceda are the remains of a Triassic carbonate platform, a shallow sea dotted with small islands covered in conifer-like vegetation.
02 Tre Cime di Lavaredo
Italy46.619° N 12.306° E
Image by Jerry明 from Pixabay The towers have two faces. From the south, where the road arrives, they show their broad shoulders above scree. The celebrated view opens from the north, around the Rifugio Locatelli (Dreizinnenhütte, 2,438 m), where the three peaks stand in a single composition, sheer and dark against the evening sky, their bases lost in slopes of grey debris.
Did you know? In 2019 the Swiss climber Dani Arnold climbed the classic Comici route on Cima Grande in 46 minutes and 30 seconds.
03 Vajolet Towers
Torri del Vajolet
Italy · 21 km from Bolzano46.462° N 11.627° E
Vincenzo Gianferrari Pini · CC BY-SA 2.5 it The towers lie on the border between South Tyrol and Trentino, between the Fassa Valley and the Tiers Valley, within the Schlern-Rosengarten Nature Park. Their history is a compressed chronicle of early Alpine climbing. The Main Tower was first climbed in August 1882 by G. Bernard and G. Merzbacher. In 1887 Georg Winkler made a solo first ascent of the tower now named after him, a bold climb for its time. Hermann Stabeler and H.
Did you know? Hermann Delago's solo first ascent of his slender tower on 22 September 1895 went straight up its south face.
04 Seiser Alm (Alpe di Siusi)
Alpe di Siusi
Italy · 22.3 km from Bolzano46.541° N 11.645° E
Image by maxmann from Pixabay The mountains around it are the real frame. To the south-west rises the Schlern, whose unmistakable profile is one of the best known silhouettes of the Dolomites; to the east stands the Langkofel group, and further away the Sella group, the Rosengarten and the glacier of the Marmolada. The contrast between gentle meadow and vertical rock is what makes the view unforgettable.
Did you know? The first ski lift on the Alm, opened in January 1938, was a sled lift that hauled skiers up to a small hut called Joch.
05 Earth Pyramids of Ritten
Piramidi di terra del Renon
Italy · 10.4 km from Bolzano46.554° N 11.472° E
Image by Olga_Fil from Pixabay The material is moraine left behind by the Eisack valley glacier and its tributary glaciers at the end of the last ice age, about 25,000 years ago: fine clay packed with stones of every size. Dry, the clay sets almost as hard as rock; soaked by rain, it turns to mud and slides down the slope. Where a large stone sits in the moraine, it shields the clay beneath it, and as the ground around is washed away a column grows under the stone.
Did you know? The Ritten plateau is built largely of Bolzano quartz porphyry, volcanic rock of the Adige Valley volcanic group.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful natural wonders in Trentino-South Tyrol?
- On our list, Secëda ranks first, followed by Tre Cime di Lavaredo and Vajolet Towers.
- Why are the Dolomites called the Dolomites?
- They are named after the French geologist Déodat de Dolomieu, who in the late eighteenth century first described the carbonate rock now called dolomite, which makes up much of these mountains.
- What is enrosadira?
- Enrosadira is the pink and red glow the Dolomites take on at sunrise and sunset. The pale dolomite rock reflects the low sunlight especially strongly.
- How were the earth pyramids of Ritten formed?
- They are cut from clay left by glaciers. Rain washed away the soft material except where large stones sheltered it, leaving columns with a boulder on top; when the stone falls, the column erodes away.
- How many natural wonders are on this list in Trentino-South Tyrol?
- The list covers 5 natural wonders.