Route 3: The Rock of "Podestagno" - "Rio Felizon" ravine
Time:	1.30-2.00 hours (ring-shaped course).
Height difference:	200 metres; (1315 m. Ponte Felizon - 1515 m. Rocca di Podestagno).
Best period of the year:	All over the year; in winter with snow-rakets.
Main sights and points of interest:	Historical sights and landscapes.
Difficulty:	The itinerary is on old roads and some exposed sections are perfectly protected.
How to get to the starting point:	Take the State Highway no. 51 (Alemagna) to the North as far as Km. 109 and take the asphalt road to the left. After a kilometre, you are at Ponte Felizon, at the main entrance to the Park. Alternatively, go as far as Km. 110 and start from the State Highway.
Excerpt from "Tabacco" map scala 1:25000:	Click to enlarge

General description

From the car park near Ponte Felizon low side, go up, immediately above the Park hut, towards the State highway; go past it, on the right, take the old road partially excavated in the rock, once used for the processions from Cortina to Ospitale Church. A first wooden foot-bridge, which provides an enchanting sight of the Felizon river at the bottom of the ravine, leads to a crossroads; go left and continue until you cross the Felizon ravine, where the sides of the ravine are closer together, going over a very hazardous recently-build bridge.

One of the characteristics of most of the valleys in Park is the deepening of the beds of the streams near the respective confluence; this phenomenon is due, firstly, to the rocky nature of the soil and, in the case of the Felizon, to the location of the large block of Principal Dolomite rock which forms the Rock of Podestagno; precipitating from a nearby slope, in fact, it plunged into the soil at the mouth of the Felizon valley in the Boite valley, where the respective streams were forced into an intense erosive action to find a new way out.

Beyond the bridge, go up along the road with not very steep hairpin bends, cross a young wood deriving from the clearings of the First World War and you get to "Pra de Castel", a beautiful meadowland glade mown every year, once within the walls of Podestagno Castle. Moving up from the glade, go left to the tip of the Rock of Podestagno, which can be reached by climbing on the last few remains of the ruined walls of the Castle.

The presence of this castle is related to the control over communication which has always existed between the Boite Valley and Val Pusteria, at an impervious part of the route. It appears that the Castle was built in around 1100 and that its function was always as a bulwark for the border between the territories of the Tyrol and those of Veneto, in the past identifiable with the territories of the Patriarch of Aquileia.
The panorama over the Felizon valleys to the Northeast and the Boite towards the Cortina depression is magnificent and the broadness of the view helps you to understand the strategic importance of the position of this castle for controlling movements through the obligatory passage under the slopes of the Rock.
The existence of an important road (already known then as the “Alemagna road”) dates back to the late-Roman period and is testified to at least since 1190, the age of the third Crusade.
A little to the North, near a pre-existing hostel which sheltered pilgrims going from the Ampezzo valley to the Tyrol, the Ospitale Church was built in 1226.

Go down and right along a path parallel to the previous one to access route 201, which corresponds to the ancient Imperial-Regia Road; after a section built into the rock, cross an exposed half-hill, to pass under the looming walls of the Rock, where you can once again see the broad Boite.

The Imperial-Regia road, which continues downwards, was used by carts from 1300 to 1780, when an improved route was built which passed through the current hairpin bend to the crossroads for Ra Stua. The Alemagna road itself, still State Highway 51, was built between 1820 and 1832, under Emperor Francis I of Austria.

Go along some steep bends to get back to the level of the State Highway, cross it and continue, on the right, along the end part of the ravine of the Felizon river, where you soon arrive back at the starting point, near the Park hut.