Wood
Thursday 1st June 2017
Wood has always been an essential resource for the Trentino people. It is an accessible material easy to work but resistant, so it was used to build houses, furniture, working tools and many decorative and artistic objects.
You may also find it in churches ornate altars where, at times, wood is painted to look like marble. Also nowadays wood is the essential material to give warmth to a room, to make it feel like home.
The smell, the colour, the veins of this simple but precious material, enrich the mountain houses, making them warm and welcoming.
Each wood has different characteristics and uses.
The sculptors prefer the "Cirmolo" wood, with its amazing aroma, as it is extremely soft and allows you to carve tiny details. Also Eugenio loves the pleasure of transforming, after many hours of work, a humble piece of wood into an ornate sculpture that will last in time. You can admire a carved chair that he produced in our reading room, where you may relax in peace.
The spruce is the most common tree in our valley and it is used for the construction of houses and furniture, in-fact many of our hotel rooms are furnished with this wood. It is also used as fuel in our traditional stoves, the "mussa", which warms the houses during the cold winters. You may find one in our bar, where you can warm up by drinking a hot chocolate or tasting a good Trentino grappa!
The larch tree has a very hard wood that is highly appreciated for the construction of buildings, balconies and roofs. Also the roof of our church, which was originally built in the XII century, is covered with "scandole" (wood shingle) of larch wood.
In the village of Vigo you may find the "Museo Ladino di Fassa" (Museum of Ladino Culture), which exhibits many wooden pieces from different centuries, from working tools to carnival masks. The exhibition will allow you to discover how the valley existed before the arrival of tourism. There are also some separate sections where wood is always the main protagonist: the sawmill in Penia, the flourmill in Pera
and the cooper store in Moena.
