An Austrian rifle found melting out of the ice.
At first glance Peio is a small alpine ski resort like many others in northern
Italy. In winter it is popular with middle-class Italians as well as,
increasingly, Russian tourists. In summer there’s good hiking in the Stelvio
National Park. It has a spa, shops that sell a dozen different kinds of
grappa, and, perhaps, aspirations to be the next Cortina. A cable car was
inaugurated three years ago, and a multi-storey car park is under
construction.
But in Peio, reminders of the region’s past are never far away. Stroll up
through the village and, passing the tiny First World War museum on your
left, you come to the 15th-century San Rocco church with its
Austro-Hungarian cemetery and sign requesting massimo rispetto. Here, one
sunny day last September, 500 people attended the funeral of two soldiers
who fell in battle in May 1918.
In Peio, you feel, the First
World War never quite ended. And in one very real sense, it lives
on, thanks to the preserving properties of ice. For Peio was once the
highest village in the Austro-Hungarian empire, and had a ringside seat to a
little-known but spectacular episode of that conflict called the White War.
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