Andalo

Situated on a green plateau and surrounded by wonderful conifer woods Andalo originally consisted of 12 hamlets, built around old maso or houses spread in the large meadow saddle between Paganella (m. 2124) and the Brenta Dolomites Group (m. 2242).
The landscape, mountain and sylvan, testimony the Quaternary glaciations and all the characteristics of the medieval colonisation of the mountain with the classic division into little hamlets.
Going backwards into the history of the village you will learn that in the XII century Andalo and its mountain belonged to the Gastaldia del Banale and it has been probably from this area of the Giudicarie Alps that the first settlers of Andalo came from. The origin of the name and the birth of a fief jurisdiction are not well-known since there are only few documents that quote it.
However it is well-known that between 1200 and 1300 in the area a hard fight between the Counts of Flavon – a family settled in Val di Non- and the Counts of Tyrol took place. Andalo represented a strategic village for both the families since it closes the Val di Non in the South and is a direct bridge to the Giudicarie valleys. After 30 years of war the Flavons were eventually defeated and excluded from the politics. In that period the houses that later originated the village were grouped all around the traditional 12 maso which still maintain their original name: Toscana, Casanova, Doss, Bortolon, Monech, Clamer, Fovo-Ponte, Melchiori, Perli, Ghezzi, Cadi and Pegorar. Till the beginning of 1900 the economy of the village was based mainly on agriculture and cattle-breeding.
Since 1930, with the construction of the aqueduct, the introduction of electricity and the public illumination, tourist and trade activities began to develop. Thanks to a continuous growth, Andalo is nowadays a renowned summer and winter tourist resort, equipped with modern lifts that get to Cima Paganella at 2125 m. and with many sport facilities such as the ice stadium, the indoor swimming pool, the cross-country ski centre, the bowls field, the miniature golf, the horse riding centre and the practice wall.